Lord of Castle Black

Chapter the Thirty-Fifth How Pel Met Wadre and Engaged Him in Conversation Two hundred and forty-six years after Adron's Disaster, Zerika succeeded in retrieving the Orb. Zerika, for her part, was never able to tell how long she had spent in the Paths of the Dead and the Halls of Judgment, but, certainly, it was a length of time measured in hours, or, at the most, in days, which calculation is proven by the fact that Zerika is human, and the human being, with his animal shell enclosing a spiritual essence, cannot remain awake, moving, and active for more than a count measured in hours, or, at the most, days. With this in mind, it may be difficult to comprehend that, in fact, the time between when Zerika leapt from Deathgate Falls and when Sethra Lavode became aware of her (for it is our understanding that the Enchantress of Dzur Mountain was, indeed, the first to become aware of Zerika) must be measured inmonths. Yet this is inarguably the case. The explanations for this phenomenon are many and varied, having come from such diverse sources as the Athyra Hangston, who postulates that between the leap from the top of the Falls to landing in the Paths one, in fact, enters a different world than our own, to the Lyorn Pushtagrae, who suggests that the Lords of Judgment assert conscious and deliberate control of every aspect of their realm. For our part, we will make no effort to solve this mystery, but instead will observe that time was never considered an absolute before the invention of the Orb permitted agreement on the intervals of its passing, and so there is no reason to consider time an absolute in a realm where the powers of the Orb have no effect. Whatever may be the explanation, it is the case: A considerable amount of time passed before Zerika emerged with the Orb. For the historian, this strange, diverging time can present a problem, as history is meaningless without cause and effect, and cause and effect are, in turn, meaningless without sequence. For our purposes, then, we have placed Zerika's re-appearance where it belonged with as much accuracy as possiblefrom her perspective. It remains, then, to explore what had occurred in that time from the perspective of others. And we are obliged to insist that, not only had there been a considerable amount of time passed, but that this time had been filled with activity. Realizing this, it becomes our duty to lay before the reader an account of this activity, so that when we next see Zerikathat is, when the two "diverging streams of time once more form a river," as the above-mentioned Pushtagrae expressed it so eloquently, the reader is in a position to clearly understand the events as they unfold from that moment on. We begin, then, with Pel. Whereas we left him in a small village on the southern slopes of Dzur Mountain, we now find him just outside a small village, this one called Trader's Rock, on the western slopes of Hanging Mountain. We will dispense with a description of Trader's Rock itself for the simple reason that the events upon which we turn our eye are not in the village, but, as we have said, a place near it, within the shadow of the mountain, with its steep slopes, from which so many streams run leading down from its peculiar curved peak. At this time, the day is drawing to a close, and, beneath the slopes of this venerable mountain, there is a small campfire glowing. Pel approached this campfire and said, "Good evening, stranger. May I share your fire? I have some dried fruit, as well as cheese, and, if it should please you, why, I am more than happy to share them." "You are most welcome, sir," said the other, "and would be even if you had nothing. It is lonely in the mountains, or even at their feet, and company is alwBrust, Steven is the author of 'Lord of Castle Black', published 2004 under ISBN 9780812534191 and ISBN 0812534190.