Chapter 106: Ch106 – Big Black Castle

The road was smooth, not half as bumpy as anything near Lithara. Each individual cobbled stone was laid flat and even.

Ryan watched it pass through the carriage window.

Helena practically waved me off.She must’ve been glad to not have to babysit Eleanor and I. He’d expected her to want to keep him in the academy. Instead, she’d listened, asked two precise questions about Lord Blackwood’s intentions, and then told him the fresh air would probably do him good.

I’m glad she let me go so easily. Though it would’ve been nice if she made it seem as though she wanted me around.

Outside, Blackwood knights rode in loose formation around both carriages, the sun hammering down on full plate armour with complete indifference. Ryan watched one of them shift uncomfortably in the saddle about twenty minutes ago and hadn’t shifted since.

Inside the carriage, it was warm but bearable. Their bags and armour were stacked at one end, leaving just enough room for the four of them. Jared had fallen asleep within the first hour, his head against the carriage wall, arms folded. James sat beside him, his eyes were closed. Eleanor was next to Ryan, with a book open in her lap—something thick and old, the spine cracked from use. She’d been reading since they left and had not once looked up to comment on the scenery.

“What is that?” Ryan asked.

Eleanor turned a page. “A history of the great houses. I borrowed it from the academy library before we left.”

“Are the Blackwoods in there?”

“Obviously. They are one of the Great House after all.” She turned another page. “They’re older than most of the other Great Houses too. Their castle predates the capital by about two hundred years.”

Ryan looked back out the window.

The land had been changing gradually for the past half hour—the open farmland gave way to more frequent clusters of trees. The road was lined with dark black trees at intervals, not yet a forest, but it was becoming one.

Occasionally a house or two sat back from the road, made of stone mostly, but with dark timber framing, the same black wood of the trees was worked into every lintel and shutter. Small holdings, well kept. A woman hanging washing between two trees glanced up as the carriages passed and gave a small bow without breaking her rhythm.

Ryan watched her through the back window until the road curved and the trees took her from view.

Then came a city.

It crested into view as the road curved around a long hill, and Ryan found himself leaning forward without meaning to.

It was large though not Lithara’s sizes, not even close.

Ryan estimated a few hundred thousand people at least.

Walls ran the perimeter, thick and high, but were not manned by archers or mages.

Although the walls were stunning, it wasn’t them that made his jaw come ajar, it was the colour of the city that struck him.

Almost every building was black. Black timber framing, black wood panels.

The streets visible from the road were wide and busy, market stalls running along the main thoroughfare.

Flowers hung from window boxes, bright against the dark wood. Someone had painted a mural across the entire side of a building near the gate—something vast and detailed, figures Ryan couldn’t make out from this distance.

As the carriages approached the gate, the reaction moved through the crowd like a slow wave.

People stopped what they were doing, turned, and bowed—not deeply, but a small and natural inclination of people who respected the carriages and who they carried. A market trader mid-transaction. A woman with a basket on her arm. Two old men on a bench.

Eleanor finally looked up from her book.

“Hm,” she said quietly.

Jared had woken at some point during the approach and was watching through the opposite window with his chin resting on his hand.

The mural he’d seen from the road covered the entire flank of a building near the gate—it held a forest scene, enormous black trees rendered with careful brushwork. Small animals moved between them that Ryan still couldn’t quite make out as the carriage rolled past.

Ryan watched a small boy on the pavement stare at the carriages with enormous eyes, then grab the sleeve of the woman beside him and point.

Then the carriage veered off the main road.

Instead of passing through the city gate, it turned right, following a wide road that ran alongside the outer wall. The crowd thinned here, just the occasional person on the road who stepped aside and bowed as the carriages passed. The wall of the city towered above them a couple hundred meters to their left, and to their right the black trees pressed in close.

The road curved a bit further right, and now began to climb.

Gradually at first, then more noticeably.

The trees on either side of them were taller and closer until their canopy reached overhead and the bright afternoon sun arrived in broken pieces through the branches.

Then the trees pulled back.

Ryan caught it through his window first — a fragment of dark grey stone between the last of the trunks, then more of it as the road curved.

“Eleanor.”

“I see it.”

They both pressed to their respective windows, Ryan to the right, Eleanor to the left, trying to piece together what they could from their angles. Dark grey stone, old and impossibly dense. A circular tower with a large base was visible at the far end, capped with a round hat.

“What are you both looking at?” Jared asked as he tried to look through the window.

“The castle,” Ryan said.

James pressed his head against the glass, “I can’t see anything from here.”

“I know.”

A pause.

“Well?” James said.

Ryan glanced at Eleanor. She was still looking.

“Big,” Ryan said.

“That’s it?”

“A very big black castle.”

Eleanor turned from her window and opened the book she’d left on her lap. She flipped through the pages quickly, finding the one she wanted, she stopped and held it up.

A detailed illustration filled the page. It was a bird’s eye sketch of the castle in ink, old and carefully labelled. It had two walls, an outer and an inner, both of considerable thickness, with a wide moat running along the front of the outer wall. Large circular towers punctuated both walls at intervals of roughly thirty metres, each one on the outer wall was wider at the base than the top. In the centre of it all sat a cluster of buildings, with the biggest focus being the keep—a massive square, rising well above the other buildings around it, with its own smaller towers at each corner.

James and Jared leaned in from either side to look at the illustration.

James straightened up and fixed his collar. “I’ve stayed in better,” he said, in a high voice pitched several classes above his own. “But I suppose it will do for a fortnight.”

Jared looked at him.

Eleanor let out a small chuckle.

“What?” James said, dropping the accent. “Too much?”

The carriage slowed.

Ryan looked back out of his window. The outer wall was close now, the stone rose high enough that he had to lean toward the glass to see the top of it.

A drawbridge sat lowered across the moat, wide enough for three of their carriages side by side. The water below was dark and still, reflecting the castle walls in broken pieces.

Two guards stood at either side of the entrance and stepped aside without a word as the Blackwood carriages approached.

The carriages rolled across.

The outer ward opened up around them.

To the left, a row of stone houses ran along the inside of the outer wall. They were small but well kept, washing lines strung between them, a cat-like creature sat on one of the windowsills with the authority of a King. The servants’ quarters, Ryan supposed.

The knights peeled away here, the formation dissolving without any apparent order being given. They moved to a stables at the far end of the ward—a long and low, dark-timbered building with room enough for every horse in the kingdom. A group of stable hands came out to meet them, already reaching for bridles.

A woman hanging something on a line near the houses glanced up as the carriages passed and gave a small bow. A man carrying a bucket did the same. Two boys sitting on a wall nudged each other and bowed in unison, then immediately looked at each other to see who had done it better.

The carriages rolled on through the inner gatehouse.

The inner ward was much louder.

A blacksmith’s hammer rang from somewhere far ahead, or to his right… or behind. Ryan couldn’t tell while inside the echoing gatehouse.

A steward crossed the courtyard ahead of them at pace, carrying something under his arm, and paused just long enough to bow before continuing.

Then the carriages stopped.

The keep was beside them. It was five storeys at least, towers at each corner climbing even higher, the entrance was a broad arched doorway with the Blackwood tree carved into the stone at intervals around it.

To the right was a large garden. Crimson red flowers mostly, a deep red against the black stone. A woman worked at the far end with a basket over her arm and her back to them.

The steward appeared at the top of the entrance steps before the carriage door had fully opened.

“Welcome to Blackwood Castle,” he said.

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