THE BOOK OF LEAFSTA

Preface


Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: The Flight to Minoc From The Northern Isles
Chapter 3: The Rise of the Fretting Family
Chapter 4: The Migration to the Norse Forest
Chapter 5: The founding of the Cadet House of the Leafsta Frettings
Chapter 6: On the defenses and social organisation of Leafsta




Chapter 7: Introduction
Chapter 8: My Leafstan Childhood
Chapter 9: Smaed and I leave Leafsta with Aunt Agnes for Trinsic
Chapter 10: Waiting for news from Leafsta
Chapter 11: My journey back to Leafsta
Chapter 12: Stonekeep and my return to Trinsic

Footnotes


Preface

The original version of The Book of Leafsta was a disorganised collection of chapters and notes that was originally in bardic tale form. It included some parts of both Jern’s and Smaed’s subsequent writings that were more in the nature of personal jottings in diary form. With the exception of Part 2 (which Jern wrote) the writings of my two wards have been removed from this version and now comprise separate works – Jern’s Journal and Smaed’s Story, for which they alone are responsible.

Part 1 of this book, then, is my contribution to the history of my ancestors, the founding of Leafsta that it has been my privilege to set down and so preserve for posterity. This I wrote before the exile, when I began to perceive the storm clouds gathering. Part 2 deals with the tiny Fretting exodus that I led to Delver’s Croft outside the fair city of Trinsic, and Jern’s journey to the Deep Forest from where he brought back the news that our home village was in ruins.

At time of writing, one copy of this book is lodged in the Windenboug Library from where I pen these lines. I myself hold the other copy. Both these copies are without the Preface and Table of Contents. They fill ten volumes of the brown leather-covered 40-page kind of book that can be bought in any provisioner’s shop. There may be further copies as I have granted permission to make any in order to preserve the knowledge therein. For future copies I am happy to make available part or all of this final version of the book in the pages that follow to any who wishes to copy it and add it to their own collection.

Looking back on my younger days from the vantage of middle-age I have been blessed with an innocent and carefree youth. I have fallen in love and born a love-child. And though my true-love chose not to share his life with me, what could otherwise be more rewarding? For love is a passing thing to treasure in memory and my life-task has been to save Jern and Smaed from the fate that befell all that we knew and loved. The Sight showed me what was to be. Yet many Leaftans scoffed at my fears and anxieties, and nicknamed me Angst. Yet my fears proved all to real, and for saving Jern and Smaed I am proud, seeing it as the main purpose of my life. Had fewer dismissed my terrible gift, perhaps the exodus would have been greater and so more lives saved, but, alas, it was not to be.

The life of a single mother that was bestowed on me by The Sight was challenging and hard work, and is now behind me, and both Jern and Smaed have grown into fine upright men and done me proud. But my life continues on the path set when I wrote this book. I now devote myself to researching here at one of the best libraries in Sosaria, within reach of Minoc where I will continue to investigate the roots of the Leafstan families, and most of all the Frettings, and perhaps learn of what befell Leafsta, and whether there are any survivors other than we three.

If in future, further information pertaining to the matters dealt with in these pages is uncovered it can be added in one or more appendices, either by myself or Jern or Smaed or their descendents to whom when I die The Book of Leafsta will pass, to preserve the knowledge and history of Leafsta and the pioneers who built it.

Agnes Fretting
Windenboug Library, The Shadow Court, near Vesper
Spring 351 SR

PART 1: THE FOUNDING OF LEAFSTA

By Agnes Fretting

Chapter 1

Introduction

I am known as Angst Fretting: bard, scribe, wordsmith, collector of legends. The Frettings are an ancient smithying family who took their name from the craft of fretworking that they have by tradition specialised in. I am sisterdaughter of Mastersmith Bellows Fretting, whose son is Tongs Fretting, my younger brother, Mastersmith and Hereditary Mayor of Leafsta.

The Fretting ancestors long lived in Minoc and before that came over sea from the Nordic Isles in a story that I will on another evening tell. I left Leafsta some 8 winters ago with a deep sense of foreboding and came south to Trinsic with my brotherson - Tong’s son, Jern - Iron in the Nordic dialect - who will by birth become, in the fullness of time, the next Mastersmith and Mayor of Leafsta, and my sisterson Smaed, which in our dialect means smith, both of whom have since ventured out into the world on their own and whose stories are still in the making.

My real first name is Agnes. It became twisted to Angst because I foresee the future and, since few recognise that I have the affliction known as The Sight, many take my prophecies of doom and destruction as evidence of a weakness of character, of unreasoned anxieties and fears – even cowardice - that make me see danger and evil where none is. Others see in me a hidden evil, that I use to summon the dark by. As some would have it, I do this by using my bardic powers to, as it were, paint the devil on the wall and thereby summon him, and such false suspicions have led some to name me Doomsong. True it is that I am seen as starting at shadows. True it is, too, that often I wake at night in a cold sweat.

But in recent years the age of shadows that was long prophesied has begun to darken the land and my visions of "what was to be" seem all too horribly to be coming to pass. Monsters multiply, many of a sort that have never before been seen, and issue from the deep places beneath the mountains to raid or even to make their lairs in the wilderness, ever closer to settled areas. New kinds of wytches wield necrotic malefices that summon the dead from their graves, and by so doing multiply the undead that they appear to breed and threaten to become innumerable. These disturbed things in their troubled halfwake stalk the land spreading dismay, fear and horror.

The price of The Sight is often great, and so I have aged before my time. For posterity I here have set down the story of the Fretting kin, my ancestors, of that cadet house, the Leafsta Frettings, from which I am sprung, of the smithyhome that the migrant descendents of my fathermother’s fatherbrother, Anvel “loosefoot” Fretting, wrought in the wilds of the north, the fortified smithstown that is known as Leafsta, as well as the tales of the children of my siblings since I removed with them to the south. This is a long tale of struggle, triumph and despair, that will take many fireside eves to tell. I recount all this mostly in the words and experience of my kin as and where appropriate, elsewhere in lore handed down by our bards in tale, verse and song, and also in my own words that I am setting down in this, The Book of Leafsta.

Chapter 2
The flight to Minoc from from the Northern Isles
The Leafsta Frettings come from a long line of Minoc metal workers. Their origins are obscure, but our ancestors claim to have come to Britannia from the Northern Isles some four centuries ago, and that they originally spoke the Nordic tongue. They were a black-haired humanoid people with sallow complexions, of medium to short height, broadly-built and with high cheekbones, stolid and earthy in their temperament. Unlike Britannians they were fiercely familial and counted their kin to the nth degree.

It is recounted that my ancestors were originally one of a number of families who came over sea to Minoc as refugees crowded into one fishingboat. They were fleeing, it is said, from some major cataclysm in which the very earth under their feet shook and the seas rose, drowning whole islands and throwing up new ones – a veritable war of the gods. More than this we know not, despite which the original “Flight Families” (footnote 1) are proud of their origins. The whole is shrouded in mystery, perhaps as a result of the forgetfulness that follows the trauma of diasporic flight. Despite several voyages of exploration that have been made since by intrepid Britannian sailors and by voyages of exploration funded by Minoc City since our ancestors arrived there, these islands have never been found. But our origins continue to this day to make their mark on our people and their psyche, as the tales in later chapters of the Book of Leafsta tell.

Flight Family lore says that their islands comprised a wide-flung archipelago sometimes paradoxically described as a land of ice and fire, though the reason for such a strange and seemingly contradictory description remains obscure. The songs these migrants handed down tell of tall glacial mountains rearing above deep and wild coniferous forests, of a rich fauna, including bear, wolf, lynx and eagle, of sparsely-peopled lands, with no large settlements of the like of Minoc. They tell of many isolated crofts in forest clearings and scattered hamlets clinging to wild coasts where families tend a few half-wild cattle and goats, trap for fur, and fish and hunt the deep-sea monsters for food, oil and other necessities. The people had simple crafting skills, building seaworthy fishing boats and forging or carving many of their daily needs - their traps, hunting weapons and everyday household and chandlery items. They were an independent folk, men and women alike, resenting the shackles of imposed command and hierarchy and with a deep-rooted but simple egalitarianism.

The Flight Families long resisted integration into the leading Minoc smithy families. Part of the reason for this was their obvious foreign-ness, their language and their own rituals and customs. They continued to speak the Nordic tongue for some generations, but eventually practical needs dictated by everyday life in Minoc prevailed and the process of intermarriage and intermingling led to them learning local skills and of course especially the finer of the smithying arts. The long and slow process of integration proceeded until all that remained was their identity as “the Nordic families” and their strange dialect containing many foreign words but most obvious in their difficulty in pronouncing the curious Britannia “th” and “w”sounds, a difficulty that remains for some Leafstans to this day. Some children are born that look much like our ancestors, especially among the Leafstans, among whom inbreeding has returned, but the Minoc mixing has meant that brown hair and a hint of a dark complexion is mostly what remains.

Chapter 3

The rise of the Fretting family

The Frettings were originally just one of many of the refugee Northern Isles families but in Minoc they became locally famed for their wrought iron grave-markers (footnote 2). These became the family speciality about 200 years ago under the inspired family headship of its great matriarch Millfloe Fretting. Millfloe had remarkable artistic talents and, unusually for a woman in Minoc culture, was a master smith. She wrought inspired gravemarkers that have since become rarities, even collectors’ pieces. My ancestors built on this achievement and succeeded in attaining high levels of skill and artistry, their grave-markers being much sought after.

The next hundred years or so saw the Fretting family reach an apogee of success in craftsmanship and repute. It led to a notable increase in prosperity in the Nordic community as its leading families established positions of influence and standing among the ruling Minoc smithying families who controlled the metalworking industry.

Smaed Fretting, my Great Great Grandfather (my fathermother´s fatherfather, to be exact), raised the Fretting smithying arts to new heights. The finely-worked and imaginative gravemongery, hung with many subtle symbolic meanings and representations of family icons were for a while much in fashion and even became something of a status item. They were often personalised, with wrought images of the deceased’s favourite pet or packhorse, or a fish representing “the one that didn’t get away”. Largely as a result of this new artistic innovation, Smaed became the head of his Guild, and it is said that to this day you may see who the local notable burghers of Minoc were at that time in history by the elaborateness of their grave-markers. Even some of the more prosperous master smiths could afford lesser works of this art.

Chapter 4

The migration to the Norse Forest

It was Smaed´s younger brother, Anvel “loosefoot” Fretting (my fathermother’s fatherbrother), who - partly to escape the shadow of his famous brother and partly to take the skill and its product to pastures new - led a migration of junior branches of the Houses of Fretting, Hammering, Coker, Millster and Treefellows from the by then extensive Nordic Minoc kin (footnote 3) to found a village of Cadet Houses in the wilds. Anvel’s brief three-paragraph account was recorded for posterity by his younger son, the bard Gnosong, and is given below.

“We left with all our possessions in our wœgns (footnote 4) one damp late winter morn as the sun stained the eastern sky bloodred and, keeping the seabay to our northeast and the mountains to our southwest, we headed west across country. By each woegnlaager evecamp the mountains were ever closer, until, joining a road we followed it first north then northwest, passing beneath the steep slopes of these same mountains, now hard to our left. Here we began to look for suitable sites for a mining settlement, so our journey became much slower with frequent stops for exploration and the investigation of promising sites, but we found none. The road crossed a wide river and 10 days out of Minoc we left the road and headed south where we spent some weeks exploring the broad valley from which the river issued. This proved unpromising and so returning to the road we continued along it as it trended first west, then northwest.

“We liked not the mountains to our south here, they felt threatening and evil, the vegetation was stunted and and the water from the streams flowing from this range was foul, so we hurried on (footnote 5). As we pushed further north, we were approaching more temperate climes and despite the onset of summer it grew cooler but no less oppressed by fear. The vegetation also grew less lush here. The road passed closer by the threatening mountains until it became hemmed on both sides, one by sea one by sheer rock, a barren, inhospitable defile.

“Eventually the road crossed a bridge at the western mouth of the defile and the road wound up into a wide forest of birch, evergreen and broadleaf trees, with the mountains trending away from the coast southwest. Here the region had a wholesome feel to it and our hearts and spirits rose. We turned left off the road and, climbing, followed the line of the foothills south. We finally made woegnlaager in rolling and fairly open forestland on the foothills above the eaves of a thick forest that we named the Norse Forest.” (footnote 6)

Chapter 5

The founding of the Cadet House of the Leafsta Frettings

Although the migrants knew not at the time, what we had dubbed the Norse Forest was what Britannians call the Deep Forest , an ocean of trees, stretching from both the northern and western shores to the Serpentspine Mountains, on whose flanks the migrants stood and against which the eastern limits of the forest lapped, seemingly just below the migrants’ feet. Here, a few treks inland from the town of Deepwater at the head of the Northern Ocean inlet known as Point Bay, the Deep Forest can be seen stretching west further than the eye can see, vanishing into a distant guess of hazy green on the horizon.

This is the majestic and breathtaking view to the west over one of the last great forest wildernesses of Britannia, a panoramic view that, we later discovered, can only be obtained from just this particular foothill (footnote 7). It is a forest wilderness almost unique in the world by virtue of both its size and by being a mixture of broadleaf and needleleaf trees, a characteristic given to it by its magnificent and ancient yews of unimaginable girth and majesty.

It is said that on looking down upon the canopy of the forest towards the west, the migrants’ advanced party were for a while speechless with awe and wonder at its beauty and grandeur, while behind them for a backdrop they had the abrupt and snow-decked peaks of the impenetrable mountain range over which eagles soared. Wordlessly they looked at one another in understanding and knew that they had indeed arrived home from home.

Many Leafstans have since marked how the migrants and their descendents developed a fierce attachment to the forest that they to this day still call the Norse Forest. For indeed it is said that the evergreen yews and the soaring peaks combine to kindle a deep folk memory of the splendour of the conifer forests and snow-laden mountains of their lost homeland. In the autumn the broadleaf trees flame gold and red, so characteristic of Britannia and so different, it is said, from the ever green forests of the Nordic Isles, truly home from home.

Here in the rolling forested foothills was an abundance of coking timber for fuel, while the fast mountain streams provided a choice of natural rapids for a watermill to drive the bellows and the hammers of the Fretting forges. Best of all – and for which they had long searched - was the abundance of unusually high-grade iron ores. Anvel’s wife, Millie, witnessed and described this momentous discovery, the day after they left Tonsure Hill (footnote 8):

“My husband took his pickaxe and walked a little way up the mountainside. He swung it up to strike for ore but I was puzzled to see that his pick remained poised above his head and he seemed to stare at his feet for what seemed to be a long moment. Then, dropping his pick he stooped and picked up some rock, examining it closely. He spun round and ran back to his waiting people with a look of excitement animating his face. What he held in his hands was ore so pure that it was almost solid iron. We feasted that night communally inside our wœgnlaager by way of celebration, knowing we had found what we long had searched.”

Angst’s account continues:
It is said that in those early days the orestone lay on the surface and could just be collected. Hard this may be to believe, but even today it is certainly the case that the lodestone is easily quarried locally and is both abundant and of exceptional purity.

The settlers scouted widely to find the best site for their village, and chose with care. They looked for a low, defensible hill with a fine millstream, suitably sited. There, in this ironworker’s paradise, they built their fortified village that they called Leafsta. Despite its remoteness and its vulnerability as a frontier settlement, here we manage, still today, to eke out a simple subsistence, remaining as far as we can tell, unknown to the wider world.

The Leafsta Frettings lost all contact with their Minoc kin, it being a long and difficult journey between them, with evil lands and mountain ranges separating the smoke of Minoc from the fresh forest wilderness of Leafsta. The process of integration that the Minoc kin was undergoing ceased for the Leafsta Frettings, whose social and physical isolation reinforced their inward-looking identity and nurtured a fierce independence and a love of the forest that wakened their soul-longing for their lost homeland, a longing that to some seems to become more intense with each passing generation (footnote 9).

Anvel died content in the fullness of his time, able to look on his life´s work, the simple village he had founded. Anvel’s younger son, the bard Gnosong, recorded some of his last words:
“Life here is, of course, precarious due to the strife between the forces of good and evil in these parts. It is also dangerous on account of the monsters, the closeness of the haunts of the Undead and the fastnesses of the orcs. Orc soldiery occasionally passed through the forest on their raids towards Yew and on their visits to Underhill where they collect the shiregeld. So an uneasy peace prevails on this small eastern outpost of humankind, though we are always aware of our peril, and the fragile thread on which the life of our community hangs.” (footnote 10)

Chapter 6

On the defenses and social organisation of Leafsta

Leafsta village, as befits a frontier settlement with potential enemies nearby, was planned and designed by my father’s mother, Smaed’s wife, Heraxa, the warrior-architect, and built with security in mind. Heraxa’s tactical and combat skills, combined with architecture and building skills were, of course, critical to the success of the settlement. Here follows my transcription of Heraxa’s description.

“Using stone quarried from the foothills and site-cleared timber, the village was constructed using fort-building principles on a low but flat-topped and abrupt-sloped hill which had a fine millstream flowing east-west hard by its northern slope that ends in a rock cliff with a drop of 10 feet to the rapids. The village was built in woegnlaager-fashion, as one continuous building, a bit like a horseshoe-shaped terraced row of initially one-storey houses (though a second storey is being added by the larger families), with its doors and wind-eyes all facing inward. This proved pleasing to they eye, as well as reminding our folk of the woegnlaager that was our first home on this hill. The outer wall of this continuous terrace of houses was equipped with a roof walkway and archer-embrasures, and will be continually thickened by applying the iron-rich molten slag from our forges to make a smooth and very strong metalled outer surface.

“The open end of the horseshoe-shaped terrace faces north and rests against the cliff above the deep and rapid-flowing millbrook. It is closed on the cliff-top by a 10-foot high stone wall with a platform walkway and archer-embrasures. The northern extremity of the western arm of the horseshoe-terrace houses the watermill. South of that is the smithy with its forges and anvils. The first home abutting the smithy is, of course, the home of Mastersmith Fretting, followed by the other workers – carpenter, miller, coker, and so on, in descending order of status (footnote 11). The northernmost building of the eastern arm of the horseshoe houses the stable and meeting room. The size of the settlement is enough to enable the top of the hill to be enclosed inside the horseshoe, with the bend of the horseshoe at the highest (southern) point and the two ends at the lowest, resting, as explained, on the millbrook clifftop. All around, the lower slopes of the hill have been cleared to provide timber for the buildings, so there is a free field of fire to the range of a longbow shot.

“The space inside the horseshoe is given over to growing vegetables (mainly root) while a small herb garden abutts the inner southfacing stone wall. Armed parties go to hunt and trap, to “mine”, to cut wood and to tend the charcoaling. Every adult learns to handle a bow as part of their duties and archery is practised on the slopes outside the village, even though the main melee weapon is, of course, the axe or hammer.” (footnote 12)

PART 2: THE EXILE OF AGNES AND HER TWO WARDS

Chapter 7

Introduction

It would appear that I am the eldest surviving male of the Fretting line, and as such it rests on me to continue the line of mastersmiths. Yet having been brought up by Aunt Agnes since the age of ten I have inevitably acquired some of her writing abilities.

Despite my geneology, since the great migration from Minoc, Leafstans had become countrified and rustic, much like their Nordic ancestors: returning to their roots, as it were. I was born and bred in Leafsta so in many ways I am a simple countryman, unused to the big city and its social graces, which I find bewildering, making me shy and awkward.

You might say I have fallen in this world and now have to make my way alone. I am fairly well lettered, but some say I talk a bit strange. This is because of the Leafstan dialect, which, originating in the Nordic tongue, though much softened still makes it hard to pronounce the Britannian “th” sound that Britannians love - all those "thee" and "thou" sounds make Leafstans sound as if they are hissing - though I came to Trinsic as a child and so rarely say zee or zou.

I want to be a good smith in case I can one day resume my father’s mantle of Mastersmith to which I was born. But therein lies a tale of sorrow, and I have but little hope that this will ever be. Let me, then, start from the beginning and tell how I came to my present circumstances.

Chapter 8

My Leafsta childhood

I was born and bred in this remote and little-known corner of the world. I vaguely remember my Grandfather, Bellows Fretting, a man with a mighty voice, who could issue orders above the din of smiting iron at his forge – or at least, so his children (including my father, Tongs Fretting) claimed. It is said that already as a tiny infant at his name-dipping in the icy Leafsta millrace he yelled so loudly that his forename was from then on given.

I love the dark, dense forests of these northern foothills with its trees of yew and birch and pine, the haunt of lynx, bear, wolf and elk, with the rough-hewn rearing mountains always on the eastern horizon and watched over by majestically-soaring eagles. As I later found, the Norse Forest - or the Deep Forest as Britannians call it - is hard to penetrate and gets increasingly dense, tangled, swampy and treacherous the more west one penetrates, where are also the lairs of dangerous monsters.

As all Leafstans, I was early taught elementary arms lore and to camp and to hide. I went often into the nearby forest hills to forage for blueberries, cloudberries and best of all mushrooms, that I adore - especially the golden chanterel, the king cep and the funnel chanterelle (sometimes called the horn of plenty). Few venture alone far into the Norse Forest. As a child I even went once or twice as far as the nearby eaves of the Norse Forest with the lumber parties or charcoal-burning parties, though never further.

My mothersister, Agnes Fretting (Bellows’ brotherdaughter) predicted a dreadful fate of fire and death for Leafsta. No-one believed she did other than express her own fears, though, with hindsight our exposed situation did give it some credance.

Chapter 9

Smaed and I leave with Aunt Agnes for Trinsic

My life changed when I was 10. One day my parents, emerged from being long closeted with Aunt Agnes. They looked grey of face and worried, and told me that I would be leaving Leafsta with Aunt Agnes and my cousin Smaed to find a safe haven with distantly-related family in the far south for a while. We would not be gone long, perhaps a year or two, and would either return or - if the worse came to the worst - my parents would join us.

To prevent Leafsta morale from suffering from what might have been seen by many as the cowardly flight of Angst Doomsong, Aunt Agnes left with me and my father’s brotherson Smaed, guided by her strange ranger escort quietly early one summer’s dawn, saying nought of our intentions, only that we were visiting relatives, which was true as far as it went.

I took a worried farewell of my parents and with many a backward look at my beloved home - blinded by the rising sun through my tears - and clutching my few belongings, we set out.

I knew not at the time which paths we trod, as we very soon left my familiar stamping grounds. I have since made one return journey and afterhand Smaed and I surmised together that we headed west cross-country to avoid the Crossroads, then joining the road south of Yew we journeyed south, then east through the southern mountain pass, almost to the gates of the city of Britain. There the road turned finally south again and after a long way and many marches we reached a seemingly endless sprawl of cottages, houses and residences west of the mighty city of Trinsic. One of these houses was to be our future - and hopefully temporary - home.

We were warmly received by Aunt Agnes' distant kin, an elderly retired miner-cotter called “Digs” Delver, with whom our ranger escort left us. Despite being a bit forgetful, Digs was a talkative nuncle whose seemingly limitless fund of bedtime stories were both amusing and engaging. He took me on occasional mining trips, teaching me how to dig and then smelt the ore - a skill that I later found well-complemented my rudimentary smithing skill - though these trips became fewer and fewer and eventually ceased altogether. The arrangement was mutually suitable as Digs was becoming infirm and welcomed being looked after by Aunt Agnes, with her young brood able to fetch and carry water, wood and provisions, tend the small vegetable garden, the chickens and the pig, and do other heavier chores.

Chapter 10

Waiting for news from Leafsta

Time passed - first months, then seasons passed, which came full circle, stretching into a year - and I kept anxious watch for a messenger, but while many people passed by our cottage, none came to our door. Aunt Agnes sent her pigeon to my father and others of our kin every now and then but we never got a reply back. A second year passed, then a third. Still nothing, not even a pigeon. She wouldn’t answer questions and looked increasingly grim as time passed and no news came from Leafsta.

Smaed and I greatly missed our family and kin, our home village and the Norse Forests. This wasting sickness that we call the home-longing is a yearning that as time passed and the months lengthened into years became worse rather than better. I used to dream of the Norse Forest with its yew trees, and missed my parents, kin and friends and the close and intimate community of Leafsta.

But life goes on. I well remember my first visit to the city of Trinsic that Aunt Agnes took Smaed and me on – I was 12 at the time. I was overawed by its size and magnificence, and could only gawk at its endless walls, towers and the main Keep from which the banners of the Duchy of Trinsic proudly flew. Also the paved boulevards and squares and the innumerable shops of all kinds made a deep impression on me. It took a long time to explore and find my way about and the city was crowded with all manner and class of people from mighty lords and ladies and the armored knights to the guards, the humblest artisans, the street urchins, beggars, the petty cutpurses, the adventurers and the drifters. I learned to bank valuables and to lounge on street corners, watching girls and chatting to passers by. We only very rarely went to Trinsic, I was there perhaps twice in all during this waiting time. Mostly we lived in quiet but industrious obscurity, if anything even more cut off from the world than we had been in Leafsta.

Digs Delver died when I was 14. With him went the last of the Delvers, one of the original Flight Families. Digs had no natural heirs and he left his cottage to Aunt Angst. It was then, with still no news from the Deep Forest that I decided to return to Leafsta, after I had helped Aunt Agnes to settle in. I had learned basic smithying and mining from Digs and looked forward to taking my adult place in my home community. I was nearly 15. Smaed begged me to take him with me, but Aunt Agnes thought that at 12 he was too young for such an adventure. I secretly agreed. It would be almost too big an adventure just for me alone as a fifteen year-old. I took my leave from Aunt Agnes, who said she would watch over me in her dreams, and I headed north, retracing the long and difficult route alone that the three of us and the strange ranger escort had taken 5 years previously.

Chapter 11

The journey back to Leafsta

The return journey alone proved no more dangerous than the escorted outward one. I followed the road north, staying wary and keeping a sharp look out, so whenever danger threatened I just ran as fast as I could. Perhaps I was just lucky, but I made safe camp each night and managed to avoid trouble.

At last, after many adventures and dangers, the road turned east and I saw my first yew trees. Tears filled my eyes at the sight of my beloved forests: nearly home! I knew it was only a few marches further, but I knew not the way, for of course, I had never gone far from the village as a child, whilst on the outward journey our ranger escort had taken us across country, south of the crossroads.

So I decided to stay on the road east until I came to the mountains then do a dog’s leg turn and follow its western slopes until I found my home village nestling in the foothills, so approaching it from the northeast.

I was nearly home, when, hasting eastwards one dark and blustery night I passed for the first time in my life the famous Crossroads of Yew with its signpost. I noticed the twinkling lights of a settlement and tavern a little way along the turn to my left. I was too eager - nay, anxious - to get home to even think of staying there this night, but I marked it as a good place to spend the night on the return journey.

As I went further east I heard rumour of the deepening darkness cast by the Age of Shadows, and a feeling of foreboding came over me and grew with each mile. I continued east all night on the road as with each mile the mountains to the south loomed larger and closer until I came to a place where the road crosses a bridge over an estuarine river with the sea to my left and the mountains hard on my right.

Here, instead of crossing the river, which would have put the western foothills of the mountains behind me and to my south, I turned right off the road and, staying in the foothills, keeping the mountains on my left as they trended southwest, I so came on a grey dawn to the familiar foothills of my childhood. Now I hurried forward as I approached Leafsta from the east. But even before I came within sight I felt in my bones that something was wrong. At first I could not pinpoint why, but I realised that there was no greeting smoke from the hearths and forges of the settlement that always heralded home. So I approached cautiously, keeping as well-hidden as I could.

The sight that met my appalled sight was a desolation: a bare hill with ruined stone all that remained of Leafsta, my childhood home. I looked for signs of life but found none, not even skeletal remains, just the odd broken weapon among the rank weeds and tall grass and strange patches of burned and black-scorched ground on which nothing grew. What had happened to my village: my folk, my family, my kin?

Very little was also left of the stonework, what little remained was standing like broken teeth. Because Leafsta was horseshoe-shaped it looked less like a ruined village and more like a stone henge, the strange stone circles that the magyck-throwers use to travel faster than the blink of an eye. In fact it looked very like the moongate just west of the road from Britain to Trinsic that Aunt Angst hastened us past on our way south. Already several years of undergrowth and rank weeds were pushing up between the ruins. Judging from the size of the weeds and saplings, the village had been abandoned or destroyed not very long after we had left.

I could in no way figure out what had happened but I spent the next day searching round in widening circles for any signs of life but found none, just an eerie silence. It was too late to return that day as darkness was gathering, so I camped halfway to the road. I slept but little, my mind in turmoil, thrown between sorrow of loss and hope that my parents or someone survived, and so I was unable to mourn.

Next day I began the long journey back to the Crossroads. Perhaps Aunt Agnes would understand the strange magyck-like signs of devastation I had seen. I at last arrived at the Crossroads of Yew at eventide, the lights twinking in welcome. Here I looked for an inn to stay the night, half hoping, half fearing to hear news of my kin.