Faashab-Talodin

The fortress sits on a spur on the north bank where the Talodin leaves the mountains below the Tharaxi Gap. The road from Tharxa and Sastorra passes under its walls, crosses the river at the ford below, and runs down the Talodin to Mazbaaran.

The Keep. The top ring holds the commander's hall, the barracks of the picked men, the fire-temple, the rock-cut cistern and the Naphtha Vaults. It is cold even in summer.

The Fire Walls. The middle ring faces the road and the ford. Its towers carry the bronze siphons, and its terraces hold racks of clay firepots, stoppered and sealed. The siphon crews are the proudest men in the garrison.

The Tail. The camp town spills down the spur to the river: stables, smithies, wine-houses, a small market and soldiers' families. Tharaxi Outdwellers and Gap Wardens come down to sell goats, cheese and barley, and some stay. It is the only place in the valley where Zarvani and Tharaxi drink together, and the only place they fight.

The Burning Ford. Below the Tail the river spreads over gravel into the crossing where the Third Crusade was broken. The far bank is still bare in patches, and for a scrap of Tharaxi iron herdboys will show a traveler where the ratorlon stood.

The Walking Stair. At the upstream end of the Tail a flight of stone steps leads down to the water, where the girl of the Walking sets out each spring.

The Keep of Talodeer. The square tower at the top of the spur was the first stone laid in 840. Over its door is carved the seal of the Khaasareem, the Eternal Flame within the eight-pointed star of the Talodin, and its roof looks straight up the valley to Sastorra.

The Naphtha Vaults. Rock-cut stores under the keep hold the fortress's naphtha, carried from the Cinder Teeth by way of Mazbaaran, a haul of well over a month. No lamp is allowed inside, and the vault-keepers work by daylight let down through shafts.

The Burning Ford. Here in 1139 the Zarvani burned the ratorlon of the Third Crusade with Talodin fire as it crossed, and eight thousand Castavari burned or drowned. King Dobarmo IV took the burn on his right hand that he hides under a glove, and King Kenithor of Tharax, guarding the crusaders' flank under the Iron Contract, had his left forearm broken by a Castavari bolt.

The Castavari Mound. A long grassed mound on the far bank covers the crusaders the river gave back. A Castavari priest blessed it under truce in 1140, and nobody has tended it since.

The Walking Stone. A worn flat stone at the foot of the Walking Stair marks where the chosen girl touches the water before she sets out. Travelers leave pomegranate seeds on it.

Winters are hard, with snow on the walls and the road half closed. In spring the snowmelt reaches the fortress, and on the 1st of Khuhor the garrison stands on the walls to watch the girl of the Walking go down the Stair and set out on the month-long walk to Lake Shorooq. No one may harm her, not even in war. The Third Crusade honored that, and the garrison still talks of it.

The soldiers eat barley bread bought over the line, goat, cheese and the small cold-water trout of the headwater streams, with dates and oil sent up from Mazbaaran by ass train. The camp town trades with Sastorra more than either side admits: salt, dates and cloth go up the valley, and goats, barley, cheese and iron bars come down. Prices run about a third above Mazbaaran's, and a cup of Castavari red costs half a balaal. On Truth-day the commander sits in the keep's fire-temple and hears the garrison's true things in the Khaasar's place.

• Men who say they speak for Prince Faasheer have met Tharaxi officers in a Sastorra wine-house. The garrison hears the fortress itself is being offered to King Kenithor in return for closing the pass to Durkaad's friends.
• The Fourth Crusade will come down the same road as the Third. The siphon crews want to know how much naphtha is truly left in the Vaults, and the vault-keepers will not say.
• Tharaxi surveyors have been seen measuring a narrows above the fortress, where the valley walls close. The Khaasar's letter of 1137 has still had no reply.
• The girl chosen for the Walking of 1147 is said to be a daughter of the Kilns in Mazbaaran, and her family is Shadowed.

Faashab-Talodin is CONTESTED, as it has been since 840, and more so every month. It holds the head of the river Zarvand lives on, on ground that is not Zarvand's, and it has kept it three centuries because Tharax was weak, busy or paid. In 1147 the Iron Contract lapses, Castavar wants the Gap, the snows are thin and the Khaasar is dying. Whoever holds Mazbaaran will need this fortress first, and every one of Zarvand's neighbors knows it.

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