Lord Skybolt wrote:Alain takes the best route to catch up the rider that is bearing the package that he trying to intercept .
After purchasing a safe conduct at the fort, Alain hastens rides hard for the northern borders. His route carries him past tall wheat fields and the dark stands of pine. Stooped peasants stare at him with blank, hungry faces as he passes them on the road. Flashing his safe conduct paper at a dozen patrols and check points, he presses on till nightfall.
Resting in a farmer’s barn (which is cheaper and with fewer bugs than the nearest excuse for an inn) Alain dreams of the magical bag. CIrdan appears to him in blackened plate. The fallen elf-knight speaks from the hollow of a great horned helmet-
“Take it, you deserve it. You won it. It is yours by right.” Endless streams of gold coins and polished jade bars pour from the mouth of the bag when the knight turns it over.
‘’Gold, magic, power, secrets—take it all! ”
…
In a couple of days, Alain passes a long row of staked, crow-pecked corpses that marks the border with Lamordia. Soldiers festooned with hawk feathers and necklaces of polished human teeth take his safe conduct from him and usher him out of Faklovnian territory.
Pools of frosted mud spatter the road into Lamordia, and the air changes from autumn coolness to winter’s chill. Alain feels his magic weaken and fade, as if the land were draining it from his body.
Alain’s horse is tired and nursing its right foreleg when he finally arrives at the crossroads ostlery. He learns from the staff that a man matching the description of the courier he seeks handed off a bag to a tall elfin rider-- yesterday morning!
The stocky, balding ostler informs Alain-
"This faerie rider, he’s gone back into the witch country. It is a place full of magic, freaks, and all manner of unreason. You are warned now. If you do mean to go that way, though, I can sell you a new horse..."
Delight is to him- a far, far upward, and inward delight- who against the proud gods and commodores of this earth, ever stands forth his own inexorable self.
-from Moby Dick (Hermann Melville)