The Weapons

Etrait, Nine Hundred and Forty Years Before

The mountains were beautiful from the Etrait side. Perhaps more so, Thaelen admitted to himself, than from Concordia. The jagged points were regal and the craggy shadows that they cast mysterious and magical. The land from Etrait eased into slope, running greenly in between the dark rock, giving no hint that the path beyond was as deadly and dangerous as it was.

On the Concordian side, they had carved stairs into stone, and laid roadways from the temple to the strongholds. In Etrait the pass was not much more than the animal trail that was reputed to have begun it, meandering between the rocks, no wider than a wagon. The ground might have been designed to destroy wagon wheels and shoes alike, for it was a slippery path of sharp edged gravel and pot holes.

Thaelen worked his way through the rocks until he could stand and look down at the camp that spread below him. They had been at the new camp for three days, long enough to return to routine