Old Jay's Fire And Fury

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Home Sweet Home

Blackwing, Micha and Fresnel spent the night on the floor of the main room taking turns to keep watch. No one slept in Snasta’s room. Micha went to wake Blackwing at about 6am for his turn on watch. As he approached Blackwing, the man’s eyes opened and he waved to indicate he was already awake. Micha lay down on a blanket on the floor and pulled another one over himself. By the time Micha and Fresnel were woken by Shosoal it was 8am and Blackwing was already long gone.

Micha dumped Shosoal at the local orphanage in Volach. He had tried to make things go as smoothly as possible, but dumped was dumped no matter what way you looked at it. He and Fresnel had ridden after Blackwing, but never caught up. Five days later and eight miles outside Sleakeep they found his horse lying dead by the side of the road.

When they reached the Geran farm, Chel told them he had seen the Bluin Fortress burning fiercely from early in the evening two days previous. The forest beside the fortress had caught light and the thin red-orange stripe of the fire-line had been seen for miles as it crept its way across the mountainside. As the night closed in the river of flame wrapped around into a fiery necklace as it approached the mountain’s peak. Everyone in the area had stood at their front doors watching the terrible beauty of nature, in its most destructive and elemental form, let loose to do its worst. Thousands of acres of woodland had been destroyed. From the laneway in front of Chel’s farmhouse small wisps of smoke could still be seen spiralling up from the blackened foothills.

When Fresnel explained how Blackwing had been disowned and stripped of what he had believed was his inheritance, all of the colour drained from Chel’s face.

‘You’ve got to find him, you’ve got to tell him that I haven’t disowned him, bring him back. He’s got to understand.’

Fresnel and Micha went through the motions for Chel’s benefit. They checked the burnt out shell that had been Bluin Fortress. The whole area was dead. Nothing lived there. Nothing could live amongst the choking black soot, not yet. Then they checked all the villages between Sleakeep and Lock for news of anything out of the ordinary. It was useless.

All sorts of possibilities were put forward. Fresnel thought Blackwing might go after Lord Tuneve. Micha wouldn’t let him follow towards Torsen in case he was right and gave Blackwing’s approach away. Another possibility was that Blackwing had gone to the Clavan to destroy the egg that Tuneve had spoken of. This suggestion was one that Micha made and then dismissed almost immediately.

‘The Clavan was supposed to be some sort of dragon spawning ground.’ he said, ‘No man could even approach it as it was protected by dozens of black dragons. If they could see you while they circled miles above the Clavan then you were fair game, so the old story went.’ Micha believed that this was just a made up tale because no one could tell him where the Clavan was, even those that described it in great detail.

It would have been closer to the truth to say that no one 'would' tell him where the Clavan was because somebody did know, or at least had the tools to find out. Fresnel knew of the existence of a map-overlay which when placed over the correct portion of a land map would identify the area as being the Clavan. The overlay itself was not hidden. It had been everywhere you looked in Bluin Fortress, if you knew what you where looking at. Fresnel even carried a copy of if in his pack, it was the design on the seal of Lord Tuneve’s letter.

The design had been explained to Fresnel by Blackwing while he was still very young. The child repeated a story, which his father had told him after he had asked where his father was born. He had no idea of the age of the secret he was imparting.

Three dots and a squiggle, this was the Clavan. The squiggle was a river with two unusually sharp bends. One dot on its own represented a mountain peak to the north of the river. The other two dots on the opposing side of the squiggle were peaks to the south of the river. There was no scale, none was needed. The pattern was woven into the very being of every black dragon.

There were so many things that Blackwing did not know about the Draco, that he hadn’t had the chance to learn and perhaps that may have been kept from him on purpose. The true danger of the Clavan was one of those things.

The Clavan was a haven, but only for a select few. It held a network of caves leading so deep within the earth that the rocks were always warm. The rock temperature never fluctuated by more than a few degrees per decade. It was here that pregnant females would come to lay their eggs, deep in the earth’s womb.

There the eggs would lie buried for centuries waiting for the Life Force to be torn from another of their kind. This freed the essence, the power, the spirit and all that separates dragon from wyrm, allowing it to make its way back to the Clavan’s subterranean chambers. Sometimes the spirit was powerful enough to quicken the heartbeat of more than one embryo, to infuse more than one new spirit with the will of the old.

It was decided by High Council which of the Old Territories the dragon-spawn would be given. Their decision was based largely on how much of the knowledge of the spirit’s old host remained intact in the new. If no territory was available, as in the case of two spawn from the same essence, then the creature was commanded to forge a new territory for itself by whatever means necessary.

Some female dragons did not take a territory for centuries after they hatched. Instead dozens of these females patrolled the ravines of the Clavan, protecting the precious eggs that guaranteed the rebirth of their kin and continued existence of their kind.

Male dragons were driven out of the Clavan as soon as they could fly. It was understood that if any male returned to the Clavan he would be killed on sight, but none ever did. Only pregnant females returned, sometimes one every half-century, sometimes not so often.

None but the Draco knew all of this, but after Blackwing’s midnight row with Tuneve even Fresnel was beginning to put the pieces together. He could see that in the depths of the Clavan lay not Blackwing’s sister, but rather the essence of his father. This would one day come tearing out of the North to reclaim the Bluin sky. It would wordlessly scream with every breath, with every heartbeat, with every movement, how wrong Blackwing’s existence was.

Old Fresnel sat in his own house, in front of his own fire, keeping company with his own thoughts. Blackwing hadn’t asked for his help this time. He hadn’t asked for anyone’s help. Maybe he was charging towards certain death, maybe he was lost or maybe he had been sensible and was getting completely paralytic, who knew? Crap happens, lesson learnt, move on. Maybe that was too simple a perspective. Maybe people never really took the time to learn the lessons and that’s why they made the same damn mistakes over and over again.

‘Selfish, ungrateful little get, he has no idea how much he had and still has,’ thought Fresnel. He could still see Shosoal’s face as she waved goodbye. She had been left with nothing, but still she had smiled. She didn’t understand yet. Maybe someday she would come to kill Blackwing. Maybe he’d deserve it. He looked into the fire. Shosoal’s face still hadn’t disappeared and now there was something else, no, not something else, someone else.

‘As one door closes, another one opens,’ said Fresnel. He stood up and looked out the window at the clear night sky, ‘but probably not until tomorrow morning.’ He closed the curtains and went to his warm, luxurious, elegant bed.

_______________________________

Thankyou.
More soon.

[ June 03, 2003, 11:43: Message edited by: Bluin ]

 

The next post is a bit of a back-step, but sometimes you have to stop to smell the roses.

There are songs that a bard will sing softly to himself away from the noisy crowds. Beautiful songs of sadness and regret that the assembled masses do not want to hear. Powerful songs where sorrow grips the hand too tightly, holds the audience too closely and removes any desire to dance.

Old Jay
_________________________________________________

Ye gods! Did I post that? What was I thinking!

Bluin

[ June 05, 2003, 23:31: Message edited by: Bluinn ]

 

Loaves and fish

It was about five past eight on the same the morning that Blackwing had left. Micha and Fresnel were shuffling about the Maher house trying to get organised. So Blackwing wanted a bit of alone time, fine, that wasn’t a problem, but he had literally left them holding the baby. Shosoal had heard all the shouting in the yard. Thankfully she hadn’t understood most of it including the bits that had referred to her. Before she had returned to the house everything had been cleared away, the body and the blood.

They had told her that her grandfather had hurt his arm when they had played too rough last night. According to their story Snasta had gone to a cleric to get his arm fixed and they were all going to see him later that day.

Micha asked Shosoal if there was anything about the place for breakfast. The little girl opened a low-level cupboard and produced a small sack of porridge. She went outside and came back a few minutes later with an expression of pantomime shock that the small milk urn had not been left out at the gate and that meant that there would be no milk today.

‘I’ll try it with water,’ said Micha. He heated the water, stirred the porridge and tasted it.

‘It’s really quite awful when you get used to it.’ He walked over to the sink and spat the remaining porridge from his mouth.

‘I think its time we headed into town now.’ Said Fresnel as he finished packing their gear.

‘To see Grandpa,’ chirped Shosoal.

‘Aye,’ said Micha, ‘he should be with the clerics.’

Volach wasn’t a particularly big town; it was big enough to run four fairs every year, one for each season. Micha enjoyed the fairs as he found his success with the ‘ladies’ was remarkably improved by him being a stranger in the town. He knew his way about and he knew where the orphanage was.

All three rode towards Volach, Shosoal sitting behind Micha. They reached the bridge a hundred yards from the edge of town. The overflow from Lake Foinse ran slowly below the bridge’s two arches. Fresnel stayed at the bridge, in case Blackwing came back that way and to reduce the amount of attention two strangers would attract on the almost empty streets.

The orphanage was located in a side street off the cobbled market square. Micha helped Shosoal down and knocked on the door. It was opened by a slight woman with grey hair who wore a white apron.

‘I need to talk to someone in charge,’ said Micha whilst covertly nodding down in Shosoal’s direction.

The old woman took Micha too a room full of toys to wait. He sat on a chair whose seat was approximately one foot of the ground. Shosoal started playing with the toys giving each one only a small amount of time before moving onto the next, stopping to show what she had found to Micha every now and then.

Eventually the old woman came to fetch Micha.

Shosoal was perfectly happy to wait for a short while for him in the room with all the toys.

The old woman led him into an office with a large brown wooden desk, which had seen better days. It was too grand for this office. The phrase ‘waste not want not’ came into Micha’s mind, this was obviously someone’s ‘want not’. He sat down.

Already seated on the other side of the desk was a busily occupied woman in her early fifties. Her hair, dark black with flecks of grey, was not brushed and she had obviously had had no time to prepare to meet Micha. In fact he could see that under her frock and apron, she was still wearing her light blue nightdress. Its v-neck collar peeped out from behind the frock’s wide neckline. No doubt there should have been a starched white vest where the small, white, lace-trimmed edges parted to reveal her smooth pale skin that,

‘Do I have your full attention,’ asked a slightly incredulous Matron Arkle.

‘Sorry, miles away,’ replied Micha.

‘It didn’t look that far to me,’ said the Matron, ‘now I need a few particulars from you, I have a form here somewhere.’

She opened the drawer under the central span of the desk and lifted out a mace with a perfectly round highly polished steel head and placed it on the desktop without looking up.

‘Ah here it is,’ she said, pulling a sheet of paper from the same drawer. 'Now who are you leaving with us?’

‘Shosoal Maher.’

‘Really? What has become of Snasta Maher then? Finally got caught with his hand in the till?’

‘You know him?’ asked Micha.

‘Indeed I do and Shosoal. I keep check on all the children in this area, not just the orphans. Nip delinquency in the bud, amongst parents and children. They raise little monsters and then leave them on our doorstep. Snasta’s son was a prime example, rotten to the core because I didn’t straighten him out soon enough.’

The Matron’s mace looked more like it was used to create dents rather than to do any straightening. Micha pressed on.

‘Snasta’s dead. I found him out in the road, his throat was cut.’

‘Now, trust me, I don’t care, Shosoal is here and safe that’s all that matters to me, but have you told the authorities yet.’

‘No, I don’t think it’s really my place to do that.’

‘Will Shosoal tell the same story as you.’

‘No, I can’t get any sense out of her, she keeps talking about guys with wings and dragons. I haven’t told her that Snasta is dead yet. I told her that she was coming here to see him. I didn’t want to upset her.’

‘Didn’t want to deal with the tears and the snot and the screaming more like.’ said Arkle. ‘I don’t want to play hide and seek with a corpse, where’s the body’, she continued.

‘In the barn wrapped in a sheet.’

‘Fine, now that that’s sorted out lets press on with the paperwork.’

‘It’s a bit wet and icky.’

‘Fine.’ said Arkle, wet and icky was what she did all day long.

‘Now, what’s your name?’ Arkle could see the wheels turning behind Micha’s eyes.

‘Let’s make this easy and just call you Mr Sinner, all right? Of no fixed abode.’

‘I didn’t kill him!’

‘Never said you did, never said that you had the slightest hand in it, never said that what happens to your fellow man and their helpless children has anything to do with you.’

Arkle had done this before, too many times to miss a beat.

‘But I have no idea what we are going to feed this poor child with, my rooms are full but my coffers are empty, no one cares anymore, everyone is out for themselves and devil take the hindmost.’

Arkle's lips pursed as she stared at Micha, it was his turn.

‘She has that farmhouse, that must be worth something?’ Micha was struggling.

‘That’s very generous of you, to offer something that you don’t even own. The girl’s property will be held in trust until she is old enough to leave the orphanage, but who knows when that will be, it could be years, years of needing to be fed, sheltered and educated. Where is the money for all that to come from?’

Arkle knew she would be able to place Shosoal in a new family within the week, but she had other children who were not so blessed with health, intelligence or youth. She had Micha on the cusp. She pushed a little bit more.

‘The way things are at the moment I think that prisoners of the Guard are better provided for than these kids, it’s a life sentence she’s got now.’

‘Well,’ said Micha, ‘I suppose there’s this;’ he pulled the Eternal Dragons from a pouch on his belt. ‘It’s silver, those are emeralds and it’s totally legit. I suppose the person who, no matter. It’s hers. Look after her for me.’

Arkle looked at the fine silver sculpture as though it was a cheap brass ornament then dropped it into the drawer beneath her desk.

‘It might see her through a couple of years, but one gift isn’t going to last and what if she gets ill?’

‘Look, all I have is a few coppers and a silver piece, that’s it!’ exclaimed an exasperated Micha whilst spilling his money pouch out on the desk to prove the point.

‘It will have to do for now.’ Said Arkle, standing up and stretching forward to reach the coins. White lace and pale skin, Micha reacted too late, the coins had already slid into the drawer before he could object. Requesting the return of a charitable donation was something the right words probably didn’t exist for.

‘It is standard practice in such cases to make donation commensurate with the child’s needs every six months. I will see you then, and not before then I hope. I don’t want you creating any more strays or bringing me any of your own bastards.’

Arkle would never say such things in front of her children. She just didn’t have time to work out who was good or bad, responsible or irresponsible so she gave all young men the same dose of verbal contraceptive whether they deserved it or not, almost without realising she was doing it.

The mere mention of Arkle’s name was enough to convince many a young man that holding hands and a drinking fruit juice was fun.

‘Now I really must get on. Good day.’ Micha was dismissed.

He slunk out of front door of the orphanage without saying goodbye to Shosoal. He felt really bad. Probably because his behaviour was about as low as he had ever gone.

What happened to the days when thieves would come into your townland to steal your cattle and anything else they could lay their hands on? A quick battle, they all died and that was it. Maybe there was a party.

There was no sifting through the wreckage of your enemy’s life to try and salvage the good, the little gem that said this man was not wholly evil. Micha preferred his enemies wholly evil, despicable as they come, fresh out of hell with the wrapping still on.

His horse’s hooves clacked on the cobblestones of the marketplace. It was still early, approaching nine o’clock he guessed. He could see a baker setting up his stall in the market place. The aroma of warm bread was irresistible. He dropped from his horse and approached the stall. The morning sun seemed to coat the glistening pastries in the most delicate of butter glazes. Then Micha stopped; he remembered the fit of uncontrollable charitable goodwill that had left him penniless. He turned around, mounted his horse and clattered out of the market at a recklessly high speed.

Fresnel was still at the bridge. As Micha approached he saw him heft a very large rock off its apex. Micha dismounted and walked over to the old Lore Master who was now staring down into the river.

‘What are you doing?’ asked Micha

‘Fishing,’ replied Fresnel without looking up.

‘Oh,’ said Micha. He picked up a rock almost as big as his head from the ground at Fresnel's feet. He looked over the low bridge wall, saw a couple brown trout swimming in the lee of the pondweed-covered central bridge support. They moved with slight sideways twiches and then returned to the same spot, swimming against the slow current of the shallow river. Micha raised his rock to his shoulder.

‘Nnnhh……… Crap.’ It wasn’t Micha day; all he wanted was one clean kill, an island of closure in a sea of loose ends and, the word felt foreign, responsibilities.

‘There’s two fish already on the bank,’ said Fresnel.

‘All right, that’ll do, but we can’t cook them here.’

‘Why not asked?’ asked Fresnel.

‘Because at this moment Shosoal is probably telling the Good Matron Arkle about you.’

‘What’s she like?’ asked Fresnel.

‘She took all my money and ran me out of town,’ said Micha.

‘What wrong with her knowing about me?’ asked Fresnel.

‘She will probably ask you to make an offering to invoke the Protection of Tenga.’

‘Protection from what?’

‘Strikes about the head from a mace.’

Fresnel remained silent. He had never heard of a blessing that specific before. It was so hard to keep up in this modern day and age. He hefted his last rock into the river and joined Micha down on the bank.

[ June 05, 2003, 23:23: Message edited by: Bluin ]

 

More roses. Possibly food for roses. Read it if you like. Skip it if you dare.
Back on track soon

 

Lost Boys

Fresnel was a highly educated man. His father had been an illiterate farm labourer who had settled in Sleakeep because of the year-round availability of work. Fresnel’s father had paid the penny-a-day for him to attend the single roomed schoolhouse when he was a child. The boy had been taught to read and count. That had been almost all the help that he had needed. All of the Schoolmaster’s novels, with their epic tales of mighty deeds and all-conquering heroes, were read before he reached nine years of age. He had then proceeded to read all the technical books he could lay his hands on. There had been books on all sorts of subjects in Sleakeep. Books on animal husbandry, books on raising crops and of course the huge, ancient ‘Geograhphie of Galamir, including notef on itf peoplef’.

At the age of fourteen, Fresnel was already following his father out to the fields and to the forests to lift and carry, shovel and sweep his way to earning enough money to buy more books. He went to Lock and searched for the books that answered the questions that had bugged him for years. Questions like why do I get Déjà vu almost every day? How can I recognise the images in my head as being a premonition when they first materialise? Why does the close proximity of some people irritate the muscles which control my eyes, making them tense and cause a soft internal noise like a fingernail being drawn over a piece of deeply grained wood?’ and of course the big one, ‘Why me?’

What Fresnel found was the world of magic. The ability to manipulate the energy of the cosmos, to force it to obey his command, to bend and shape it according to his will and to control its natural behaviour in his immediate environment.

He had started small, with recipes for potions that he had found in very highly decorated (and expensive) books. One of the earliest and simplest he tried was a potion which when drunk would turn his mousy brown hair to jet black. It worked, for four days. On the fifth he stood in front of the mirror, petrified, as he watched his hair changing from black to white. Not old-man grey, filthy-drow white.

After that Fresnel swore never to go near magic ever again and he didn’t, not for about a week anyway. From then on he didn’t test anything out on himself. He also took up the habit of wearing a hat in public. His hair remained white so he cut it short and kept it cropped close to his skull.

At eighteen years of age he had reached a dead end with his private studies so he met with the Admissions Officer of the School of Arcane Lore at Lock to see how much it would cost to advance his knowledge under the tutelage of the Lore Masters that taught there. After Fresnel had run through the most difficult invocations that he knew, in order to display his current level of competence, the admissions officer left the room. He returned a short time later with the Principle of the school who offered Fresnel a teaching position.

Fresnel was surprised and disappointed to find out that there was little that the Lore Masters could teach him. It was the Principle’s offer to give Fresnel access to every restricted tome that the school possessed that made him accept the job.

These were dangerous texts. One magic book contained a convoluted incantation that could theoretically cause an experimental acolyte to sever his own head off. Some would say that this would have been one way to make students concentrate on their verb conjugation but the school had put these books under lock and key. No one as young as Fresnel had ever been allowed access to them. Lore Masters who were old enough and wise enough to deal with the book’s contents had by then generally found a safer way to get by than reading the thoughts of another mage who was probably too dead to finish writing a second book.

The books that described the location of magical artefacts and legendary treasures were another matter altogether. The well-thumbed pages of these tomes spoke volumes about the reasons for most people’s interest in lore. The school made a tidy sum charging secretive strangers for access to these old books with no questions asked.

Fresnel worked at the School of Arcane Lore for ten years. He left because he had become tired of it. He was tired of always seeing the same people who always said the same things. Year on year he would teach a new class that looked almost exactly like the last. At the end of the year his students moved on, they had become more knowledgeable and more experienced than they had been a year ago but he had stayed the same, a nothing, a nobody. His innate affinity with the magical energy that flowed in and out of everything on the material plane was fading through lack of use.

He returned to Sleakeep with the intention of devoting himself fully to his craft. With the aid of the peace provided by the village’s secluded location he had every intention of walking the Dark Paths. These routes led to absolute knowledge, absolute control and absolute power over the one thing that mattered, the Self. Instead he had found himself doing favours for people. These were simple things, inconsequential things for which he was paid very small sums, but they kept him tethered to this life, this existence, this world. In the end he could not commit himself to a process which could have rendered him no more than a zombie because here, amongst the real nobodies, he already was a somebody.

Clothes were important to Fresnel. They were not important because of the way other people viewed the small, sinewy man, but because of the way that they influenced how he felt towards the society. Even whilst teaching in Lock he had almost always worn a thick woollen tunic and a pair of trousers made of heavy cloth. He had looked for all the world like the labourer his previous life had prepared him to be, except that there had been no marks, tears or signs of heavy wear upon his clothes.

He had found the grand outfits that the other professional Masters of Lore had worn were uncomfortable. It wasn’t so much the starched collars and countless buttons, it was more the feeling that he was an impostor, a grouse wearing a peacocks plumage. He had worn honest clothes that didn’t try to fool even the lowliest street cleaner into thinking that he was anything better or more important than they were.

His one concession to the mores of Academia was his cloak. It was a full length, full round woollen cloak, as black as charcoal. It had a hood and a waterproofed linen middle-lining beneath the visible inner-lining of dark red silk. It was very heavy and looked very severe, but Fresnel loved it. It completely insulated him from foul weather and there was something more to it than that. It was as though he was wearing a suit of armour the way it shielded him from, well, everything. Even when he was indoors, if he was in low spirits he would sometimes go and put the cloak on just for the sense of comfort it brought.

This was the same cloak that he reached for this morning. He was returning to Lock to see some very judgmental people within The Order of Dealle. Fresnel was going to have to do the polite dance that some people in the chain of authority demanded before they would show any respect towards a fellow human being. People like Fresnel hated those sort of people and those sort of people knew it so they treated people like Fresnel like dirt. Fresnel was going to have to behave like, umm, one of those over-privileged toadying little rats he used to teach.

He put on the simple black knitted woollen hat he normally wore. This was really just a long knitted tube of material that could be worn on the top of the head or pulled down all the way past the face until it covered the neck to act as a scarf. This was typical commoner wear, he didn’t own one of those imperiously tall hats that the other Lore Masters tended to favour.

He shut the door of his house and cast a warding spell on it. A white glyph appeared on its surface then faded away just as quickly. Local thieves wouldn’t break into Fresnel’s house, they knew better, but it was one less thing to worry about. He headed southwest from the village and walked the half-mile to the Geran farm. Micha had kept his horse there as Fresnel only owned a small herb garden.

Micha would have liked to go with Fresnel, but the work on the farm had already fallen too far behind. There was just Micha, Chel and Triana to work the farm.

Chel’s eldest son, Thesdon, had left four years ago to take a post in the Tabarain National Guard. This army was charged with the protection of the entire country of Tabarain. They operated on a whole other level to the townland faction fighting that Micha had taken part in. The Tabarain National Guard didn’t deal with bandits. It was a huge army of thousands of men that had the power to crush entire countries if ordered to. Its barracks were to be found in Tabarain’s border towns. Bluin was two hundred miles from the border and the National Guard were only seen there if they were passing through. Chel had received a few letters from Thesdon; he had sounded like he was enjoying himself.

Micha wasn’t surprised, there was something about Thesdon, it was very easy to imagine the big man standing in the bloody chaos of battle shouting ‘Kill them! Kill them all!’ at the top of his voice. Some part of the danger, dirt and destruction of battle soothed the impatience in his soul. Micha had seen it many years ago when the Sleakeep malitia had caught up with a band of cattle rustlers. As the raiders got cut to bits all around him Thesdon turned and said ‘See, this is real. Real living. Let’s finish the job.’

Ferla Geran had got married. Micha didn’t like her husband. He was a bit too clever, a bit too quick to put other people down in front of Micha. If he enjoyed putting other people down there wasn’t a shadow of a doubt that he would have a field day when Micha wasn’t around to defend himself. No matter. Ferla and her husband lived in Lock, out of sight out of mind.

Micha saddled Fresnel's horse, a quiet five-year-old grey mare and led it out of the barn to where Fresnel was standing talking to Chel.

‘Keep an eye on that grass, make sure it keeps growing,’ said Fresnel to Micha.

‘Get lost,’ replied Micha.

Fresnel got on his horse and started out on the fifteen-mile journey south-southwest to Lock. It was a nice day and the trip wouldn’t be that bad, but it would have been even nicer to spend the day reading in his garden. Maybe the best a Nobody can hope for is to play a part in the life of a Somebody. Fresnel’s intuition, his special sixth sense, was shouting that Blackwing was a Somebody and that if he didn’t keep moving he was going to miss the party. So he kept moving.

[ June 20, 2004, 04:31: Message edited by: Bluin ]

 

Thanks, Bluin. I was having withdrawal!

 

You've got some serious talent there man! I really enjoyed your story!

 

There Might Be Giants

The main road to Lock slipped through the Bluin Mountain pass. It was a wide and busy road. Other than the coastal route five miles to the west it was the only decent North-South arterial passage for fifty miles. The coastal route was a lot longer. It took a massive detour around the base of Slieve Tirben mountain, which swept on out to the Hosna Sea to form a rocky headland.

Fresnel watched the merchant’s wagons rolling northward. It had been the image of Micha riding into Volach with Shosoal sitting behind him that had reminded Fresnel of Rinn, the priest that had taken Blackwing from a caravan of merchants and that had brought him to Chel. He didn’t know where she was or even if she was still alive, but those officious ‘priests’ in the Order Of Dealle would know. Fresnel’s dealings with these people had led him to suspect that they believed you could not move on to the after-life if you did not have the correct paperwork.

He stopped on the other side of the pass at a house which provided food and drink to travellers during the day. This little business had set up beside the stables which hired out a team of horses to help the merchant’s own team pull their wagon up the relatively steep incline into the pass. Fresnel got a few nods of acknowledgement from people sitting at the tables outside the house. They recognised the silver clasp on his cloak. It was a nod to signify ‘Hello. Stay away,’ rather than ‘Hello. Come and talk.’

Fresnel looked down at the clasp with its wide oval base and top made from the points of three triangles, the whole being slightly crown like in shape. It was a bit chaffed and the silver plating had worn away to reveal the brass beneath. He liked the colour contrast of the two shiny metals and the randomness of their pattern. It made the clasp that bit more ‘honest’.

He reached Lock late in the afternoon. He stabled his horse and bought some flowers. Then he went to see lady friend with whom he had an understanding. They had had an understanding for the last twenty-five years. Sometimes an understanding was all you needed. Some people who had tried for more had ended up with much less.

In the morning he crossed the town of Lock on foot and headed towards the Temple of Dealle. It was a truly massive building in the town centre. Its spires rose high above everything else in the town, ‘so that the people on the docks and the vagrants in the slums can see them and seek solace in Dealle’s presence.’

‘So that the rich and stupid can see that their god is the biggest, most important god,’ thought Fresnel. He had to admit that some of the donations did actually filter down to the poor, but not much after the needs of the priests had been met and the houses for their god had been built and maintained.

The Temple of Dealle was a house fit for a god. Its granite façade was alive with carvings of people, ordinary people, of every trade and profession (almost every profession). High above all these effigies in the centre of the façade, below the apex of the slate roof, which sloped away on either side, was a large alcove. The alcove housed the most magnificent white marble statue of a man that Fresnel had ever seen. It was about twelve-foot tall, with every muscle in crisp outline. All he wore was a cape. For artistic purposes it had been carved as though it had been caught by a wind blowing from Dealle’s right, and one side of it had wrapped around his arm and waist and just happened to cover his (no doubt) god-like manhood.

The doors to the temple were equally impressive. The smooth carved granite archway was a full twenty-foot tall. Two massive dark brown oak doors filled the archway. They were made up from three foot wide oak planks, which were fixed together at a forty-five degree angle. Black iron bars on a similar scale had been nailed to the doors. They may have possibly helped hold the door together; it was more likely that they were ornamentation to give the impression that this was just an ordinary door. An ordinary door to a giant’s ordinary home.

The doors had been opened inwards. People passed in and out and stood talking on the temple steps. They would have appeared to a distant (and rather stupid) observer like little children playing around their father’s front door.

Fresnel entered the Administrative Wing of the temple through an ornate normal sized side door. All the subliminal imagery portraying the might of Dealle was replaced by the cold hard reality of the workplace of small people, with their small minds, doing all the small jobs that kept the wheels of an organisation as large as the Order of Dealle turning.

He did his dance. He sucked up to three different self-important nobodies on his way to gaining a few moments of the time of someone who actually had the information and authority to tell him where Rinn could be found. It turned out that they knew as little as he did. Rinn and a priest called Engel had been returning to Lock when something bad had happened. The record showed that a group of merchants had brought Engel’s dead body to the temple and had accused Rinn of his murder. They had demanded to know Rinn’s whereabouts, but they had been chased away by Lock’s High Priest of Dealle. The High Priest had been 'called to Dealle’s side' several years ago and the current High Priest was presently far away from Lock, continuing to spread the Word of Dealle and sing the praises of his Good Works.

A disappointed Fresnel went back to his friend’s house and spent the rest of the day there. And the night.

[ June 07, 2003, 17:57: Message edited by: Bluin ]

 

My greetings and thanks to you, good people. May Dealle lend you his light in times of darkness and his strength in times of conflict.

Ancalimon, Dealle knows all and sees all and protects all who respect the balance .

More very soon.

[ June 07, 2003, 17:10: Message edited by: Bluin ]

 

Enlightenment

Morning came and Fresnel returned to the stable to collect his horse. Common sense dictated that Fresnel should go home and let events run their course. Fresnel didn't like being dictated to. He had hit a snag, another problem, and Fresnel being Fresnel had worked out another solution. He didn’t particularly like the solution as it meant asking for a favour from a woman to whom he owed far too much already.

She was a psychic, an empath, a seer and all those other names that are used to describe somebody else.

Almost everyone has some extra-sensory perception. The people in whom it is very strong may perceive its presence but never talk about it in case they are thought of as weird or insane. It may manifest itself as intuition, incongruous thoughts, or even full-blown images (especially whilst lucid dreaming when the unconscious mind is in control).

Of course if an empath is receiving these psychic reverberations then someone has to be transmitting. The strongest signals came from people in distress or from those consumed by anger, whether repressed or not. Most folk can only pick up signals from those within their immediate family and only if the source is within a few hundred yards of where they are standing.

Sosime Drumal was different. Geography didn’t matter, who the signal was coming from didn’t matter and the strength of the signal didn’t matter. If a soul was crying out anywhere in the world she could hear it.

All carnival psychics were charlatans, every last one of them. They had to be. The ability to turn the reception of raw psychic vibrations on and off on demand was unheard of. Psychic shields are created by deep, focused meditation often taking half an hour or more to create. The shields protected strong psychics from actually experiencing the emotions of those around them. Carnival psychics claimed to have experienced clear, powerful visions. People that sensitive would have had to have hidden in the deepest, darkest, most remote hole in the ground that they could find in order to get some relief from the anger, love, grief and confusion that fills the air in any crowded space.

The deepest, darkest, most remote hole in the ground pretty much described Sosime Drumal’s home. Fresnel had learnt about her during his first year teaching at the School of Arcane Lore. One of the old Lore Masters had described her abilities, which had caused her much suffering in her youth. Fresnel recognised some of her symptoms because Fresnel had some of her symptoms. He had eventually made the two hundred mile journey to see her.

She had answers. Unfortunately they weren’t the type of answers that made bad things go away. She had explained Fresnel’s gift to him. She had told him that he could not turn his extra-sensory perception on or off, he could only shield himself from the mental onslaught of other people’s emotional jetsam. This seventeen year-old girl had taught Fresnel how to distinguish between his own emotions and those he was picking up second-hand. She had told him that he had never had premonitions, he had simply seen what was in the minds of others and as those people executed their plans he witnessed his ‘visions’ unfolding into his reality. There was no way he could tell when his thoughts were being seeded by fragments of someone else’s thinking, he just had to accept it when it happened.

The girl had also warned him about people that she called Grounds. These unfortunate beings were emotional vacuums that would latch on to an empath and suck all the joy out of his life. The emptiness in a Ground’s existence could be felt by a strong empath who would instinctively try to cure the problem, the trap would be sprung and as the empath tried to extricate himself, emotional carnage would ensue.

Fresnel was happy to hear that he wasn’t mad, just gifted. He was initially saddened to hear that he had virtually no control over this gift, as it was too weak and inconsistent. Then he wised up. ‘Be careful what you wish for, you might just get it’ was the old maxim. Sosime did not possess psychic powers, they possessed her. She was a prisoner in her own home. As soon as she went outside, she would feel the suffering of countless people, she would wish to commit countless murders, she could feel the lust, the longing and the despair of countless tortured souls, each one as pin sharp and clear as stars in a clear night sky.

It was almost twenty-nine years ago that Fresnel had made that trip. He was going to see a woman who could very well be dead, to see if he could locate another woman who could be every bit as dead and who may be of no help even if he did find her and he was still going. He couldn’t help himself. There was a problem; there was a route to the solution. If Fresnel had been able to walk away at this point he would have. He didn’t need any Dark Path to know that he was too weak-willed to fight against his own insatiable curiosity. It drove him and the world drove it.

At least he wasn’t going to have to make the trip on his own. He had suspected that he was being followed for the last two miles. Chances were that the same single horseman had been following him since he had left the stable in Lock. Fresnel stopped and turned his horse; it was time for a few introductions.

[ June 08, 2003, 05:00: Message edited by: Bluin_ ]

 

Rallymama, I read a Forum Adventure in which the party beat up a tree (it was asking for it) and your writing was a pleasure to read (Bluin bows most humbly). It is just crying out for a good plot to wrap itself around. I hope to see more of it soon.

 

Angels And Devils

As Fresnel approched the stranger she did not pay him any heed, she just continued travelling south along the road. Fresnel was still a hundred yards away but he could make out that it was definitely a she, a woman, little more than a girl to old Fresnel’s eyes. She had black hair and wore a kilt and the standard polished steel breastplate of the Priests of Dealle. She sat upright on a tall brown gelding. Fresnel guided his smaller horse past the girl and then circled around behind her. Intimidation wasn’t about size, it was about being subtly rude and daring the target to react, whilst knowing full well that without a clear and valid reason they either could not or would not.

‘Hello,’ said Fresnel as he took up a position alongside the stranger at the far edge of the wide stone-wall lined track, matching her speed and direction but always remaining at least ten feet away. The stranger threw a quick look in his direction, then looked straight ahead again and said ‘Hello’ without any hint of warmth.

‘Where are you headed?’ said Fresnel, ignoring the cold shoulder.

‘That’s really none of your concern, now is it?’ said the girl without looking round.

Fresnel probably could have been convinced that it wasn’t, but instinct told him it was. There were a hundred things that this girl could have said in order to politely tell him to get lost. Instead she had asked him a question. She was attempting to surreptitiously inveigle her way into Fresnel company whilst pretending to chase him away. Fresnel knew this even as the last syllable of her question still hung in the air.

‘Just making conversation,’ said Fresnel. The girl remained silent. She was good, very good thought Fresnel, she was playing out the line, letting him drop his guard, giving him time to make all the wrong assumptions and swallow the bait too far down to escape.

The silent standoff continued until the pair reached a wide crossroads. Just before Fresnel reached the junction he dismounted and sat on the grass covered bank separating the road from the adjacent field. The girl’s horse continued walking across the intersection and on down the road leading south. Fresnel waited until she was out of sight and then quickly climbed up onto his grey mare and galloped along the east road.

A mile further along an exhausted Fresnel slid off the sweating, panting mare and led it into the tree-lined entrance of someone’s grand estate. Sure enough a few minutes later the gelding came charging up the track with the priest of Dealle clinging to its coarse black mane. She reined-in the horse when she was twenty yards from where Fresnel was standing, pretending to be struggling to suppress the smile on his face.

‘Take a wrong turn back there?’ asked Fresnel.

‘Stop playing games,’ snapped the girl with obvious annoyance.

‘I will if you will,’ replied Fresnel, ‘why are you following me?’

‘The high Priest of Dealle has been made aware of your search for one of our missing sisters. I have been instructed by him to monitor your progress in the hope that your success will bring one of the True Believers back to the into the service of Dealle.’

‘And find out my real motives for trying to find her,’ thought Fresnel. This girl could even have been sent to bring Rinn back to face a murder charge for all he knew.

‘I thought the High Priest was away on a mission of mercy and was impossible to contact?’ said Fresnel.

‘He must have returned after you left,’ the girl replied.

The consummate ease with which priests lied had always fascinated Fresnel. On the one hand they went around telling people that they were going to burn in hell for their transgressions. On the other hand they told huge, whopping lies about how all-knowing, all-seeing and all-powerful their god was. Despite this Fresnel was a believer. Whenever the world deigned to throw mountains of crap in his direction he knew it was the gods’ fault. When this happened he took the time to make a special hand gesture and repeat his very own mantra, ‘Take an all-seeing look at this, you bastards.’

‘Why is the Order concerned about someone who disappeared almost fifteen years ago?’ asked Fresnel.

‘The Order has remained concerned for the past fifteen years. They didn’t stop looking until they ran out of places to look. Many of Dealle’s followers have fallen in the battle between all that is good and all that is evil, but no True Believer has ever been abandoned on the battlefield, not while there is still life in their body and a sister with the god-given determination to bring them home.’

‘Creeping around behind me is no way to ask for my help, you don’t trust me and I don’t trust you. Let’s say goodbye and no hard feelings, eh?’ said Fresnel.

The last thing he wanted was a puritanical zealot charging around and making all the sinners run away. Sinners were very useful people. Need to know what a person is really like? Ask a sinner for his opinion. Can’t afford a new coat? Ask a sinner to source a second-hand one for you, you’ll probably even have enough money left over to buy the slightly ripped shirt that came with it; and sinners were everywhere, throw a stone into a crowd and nine times out of ten you would hit one, although Fresnel had heard that there was a new god on the rise that objected to that sort of behaviour.

‘Watching someone is not a crime,’ replied the girl.

‘All right,’ said Fresnel, ‘you can watch me sitting here on the ground’.

He sat down on the gravel surface of the estate entrance. The leafy branches of the old sycamore trees on either side of the path joined about eighteen feet above his head forming a pleasantly cool, shaded tunnel whose floor was speckled with little leaf-sized patches of sunlight.

The girl got down off her horse and tied its reins to the stone pillar at the corner of the entrance. The horse moved closer to the bank and started tearing out mouthfuls of grass. The slightly-built priest sat down by Fresnel’s side. She turned her head and stared at the side of his face. Fresnel spent the next thirty seconds silently looking straight ahead at the far side of the road. The girl watched as a small smile forced its way across Fresnel’s lips; he turned his head away from her and then turned back to face her.

‘You cannot possibly conceive of the dangers I am going to face. I must crack open the very gates to the Underworld itself, annihilate the Gate Guardians and seal the exit behind me, before facing the tortured hordes, that will by then have flooded towards the light, in a frenzied attempt to break out of hell.’ Fresnel was going to do no such thing. ‘You cannot possibly follow, your flesh would be immediately torn from your bones by the clawing wind which howls between this world and the Pits of the Undead.’

The girl looked straight ahead and spoke.

‘Dealle protects me. His power flows through me. I am His servant, His weapon and His strength. When the time comes I will call to Him. He will hear me and He will answer. All the hosts of Heaven shall be dispatched to aid me. Every ascendant being that protects this world from Hell’s minions shall be summoned to fight by my side. Evil shall flee before His fury and hide from His retribution; and if I die, Dealle shall call me to His side, to serve Him as another Celestial Soldier in the ranks of the righteous.’

She could do no such thing, but she was not about to be sent packing by this old mage.

Fresnel got up and led his horse east along the road. The girl followed him. The translucent imagery of devils and devas locked in an eternal conflict seethed amongst the sun dappled trunks of the grove and then was gone.

[ June 09, 2003, 00:37: Message edited by: Bluin_ ]

 

To See The World In A Grain Of Sand

Travel broadens the mind and feeds the imagination. It also empties the purse. The key to safe, uneventful travel is to bring lots of money (and to keep it hidden). Fresnel was aware of this. He had hoped to be on his way to find Rinn by now, but as that was not the case, the travelling money he carried was being used to provide for his needs on this journey instead.

The young Priest was not in such a comfortable position. She had expected to be tailing Fresnel around Lock, maybe to a few of the outlying villages, but not this, not being dragged all the way across Tabarain, never knowing how much further there was to go. As Fresnel had hopped from town to town and then village to village she had followed. She had watched as Fresnel settled into a tavern every night and then she had walked back out into the street and started begging.

Charity was a big part of a priest’s life. It was their duty to remind people to show compassion and to help their fellow man. They collected funds so that Dealle’s Good Works could bring hope to the desperate and food to the starving. If every fallen brother they picked up would help his brother up also then the whole world would stand together, united against the tyranny of the selfish, united against evil, and united against all unnecessary suffering.

This time it felt different, she was begging for herself. Begging for food, begging for somewhere to stay, begging for someone, anyone to show a little kindness.

Fresnel kept moving on, never approaching a town that had an Order of Dealle presence. The girl felt sure he was stopping along the way, checking with the locals to confirm their absence. The people that he talked to had looked at the girl with disdain, and more than a little fear, before ducking out of sight or running away.

She had spent many nights in stables and in outbuildings. There had even been one night when she had joined her horse out on the village common and had huddled against a tree, wrapped in her cape, too afraid to go to sleep. The alternative would have been to spend the night in the one-roomed hovel of a filthy pig farmer with evasive eyes. He had been far too insistent that she stay over.

Maybe she had seen the worst in some people, but her hand-to-mouth existence had also brought out the best in others. She had met some good people. She had accepted their hospitality and had felt ashamed at exploiting their generosity, as her plight had been one of her own making.

There was also the pseudo-good. There was always the pseudo-good. The young priest was spending the afternoon begging on the streets of Kerna, a town on a major trade route to the gold-rich country of Marthan. A very overweight woman in a heavily adorned, flowing blue dress and a wide cream coloured wimple had approached her from the eastern end of the busy street. As the large lady came within eighty yards of the priest she started to call out ‘Yoo-hoo, Saeyan, Saaeyahann, over here dear, yoo-hoo, Saeyan.’ The lady kept coming; she raised her clasped right hand high above her head. ‘Saaeyahann.’ The closer she got, the louder she called.

Finally she reached the young priest and dropped a couple of coppers from her chubby hand, which had gone white from being held aloft for so long.

‘There you go dear, a friend told me you were here, my name’s Mrs Emesia Aldewen. We must do all we can to keep the poor off our streets; I almost can’t bear too look at them. You can include me in your prayers if you like, although I am sure Dealle will already have a placed reserved for me when I join him.’

‘I’m sure he is counting the minutes,’ thought Saeyan.

‘Its good to see that someone else is doing their little bit to sort out those pathetic wretches, they really are too much. I must be going now; my household simply falls to pieces if I am not there. I swear, I have to do everything myself, or as good as, because of my useless staff.’

Saeyan shook her head. Mrs Aldwen interpreted this as sympathy ‘Never mind,’ the big lady continued, ‘we fight the good fight for those too lazy to help themselves. Farewell, and don’t forget those prayers.’

Fresnel had been looking down on the street from the window of his room at the inn. He had heard the woman bellowing (who hadn’t ?) and now he knew the girl’s name. Priests of Dealle didn’t have more than one name (technically their second name was Dealle). He had not known her name before because the pair of travellers had not spoken since the first time they had met. And that was how it remained. Right up until the twelfth day of their peculiar association. It was close to midday and they were hundreds of miles away from Lock and four hours into a trek that had led them deep into a great forest of old birch trees, old beech trees, old oak trees and pretty much old every-other-sort-of-tree. The forest was close to the Tabarain border with Marthan, maybe a bit over the border, it was hard to tell and the few people who lived there didn’t care.

They had reached an old cottage with the tools and debris of the woodsman’s trade lying about outside it. A freshly dead rabbit hung from the eaves at one side of the house. That was another thing Fresnel could never understand. Fresnel didn’t eat rabbit unless he was very hungry and there was nothing else available. Yet there were some people who insisted on letting it hang for days so that its flavour would become more ‘gamey’. They might as well dine on the rabbit pellets to be found scattered all over the forest floor.

‘Are you coming,’ said Fresnel. Saeyan looked at the old mage. That had been almost the first time that he had acknowledged her presence, never mind asked her a question since they left the townland of Lock.

‘Aye,’ she said and slipped off her horse. She was relieved. It had been hard going but she had hung in there. Now she acted as if it had been nothing, a bit of quiet after a few hard words, soon forgotten.

Fresnel banged on the cottage door.

‘I’m out,’ said a voice from the edge of the clearing. Fresnel turned to see the familiar face of Aillion Gaill. Familiar because his face had not changed in twenty nine years. He was a black haired, narrow-eyed, smart-ass elf.

‘Hello Fresnel, has your hair gone grey yet?’ Fresnel wasn’t laughing.

Saeyan didn’t understand, but since this beautiful elf looked friendly she was smiling. Elven folk didn’t feel the need to call males handsome rather than beautiful; the word handsome doesn’t even exist in their language. There was definitely something male about his almond eyes and honey skin that made Saeyan want to take a bite, no-matter which word you used.

‘Can we talk inside,’ said Fresnel.

‘Indeed we can,’ said the elf. He walked up to the door and opened it; it wasn’t locked. Saeyan could see that Fresnel and the elf where approximately the same height. She had never actually seen an elf before as they had been chased out of Tabarain centuries ago. Fresnel walked inside and the elf held the door open for Saeyan. She wasn’t sure if that was what Fresnel had intended but she walked in anyway, the worst Fresnel could do was kick her back out.

‘I have a fresh loaf and some cheese if you’re hungry; and some goat’s milk too, or would you prefer a glass of wine?’ said Aillion as he brought the bread and cheese to the small table pushed against one wall.

‘Goat’s cheese?’ asked Fresnel, his nose wrinkling slightly at the very thought.

‘Yes, you haven’t lived till you’ve tried it.’

‘You probably wouldn’t want to live after you tried it,’ thought Fresnel.

Saeyan started nibbling away at a piece of plain bread and took the cup of milk from Aillion when he offered it to her. She didn’t really know where her next meal was coming from or how much further she was going to have to stretch out the few coppers that she had collected.

‘I need to talk to you in private,’ said Fresnel to Aillion.

‘Back to that old crap,’ thought Saeyan. There was nothing she could do about it so she sat down at the table and continued eating. Aillion led Fresnel into the adjacent bedroom and closed the door behind them.

After five minutes Saeyan put her ear to the door. She could not hear anything, not even a muted murmur. She tried the door handle. It was locked. She banged on the door and shouted.

‘Fresnel.’ There was no reply.

A sinking feeling began welling up inside the young priest. She tried to open the front door. It was locked as well. ‘Bastard,’ she hissed, while pushing open the window to the right of the door. Saeyan clambered out into the sunlight and raced over to the open bedroom window, there was no one in the bedroom.

She looked around her. The horses were still there; the old mage couldn’t have gone far.

‘Fresnel, Fresnel Dor, where the hell are you.’ Nothing. Not a single thing moved in the glade, other than the startled horses, which by now where watching her intently with a sideways stare. All around her she could see a myriad of trials leading into the forest and no evidence of which one Fresnel had taken. All she could do was wait by the horses until Fresnel returned. She crawled back inside, found a bottle of Aillion’s wine and brought it outside.

In the depths of the forest a wide slow river flowed gently south. It was a tributary of the mighty Shayal which travelled hundreds of miles south-west until it reached the sea at Amud. This particular stretch of water probably didn’t have a name, there was nobody here bothered enough to call it anything other than The River. Fresnel and Aillion followed an animal track along the bank of the river in the direction of its flow until the hiss of a waterfall could be heard in the woodland ahead. Aillion slapped Fresnel lightly on the shoulder and headed back towards the cottage. Fresnel kept walking onwards towards the noise. It became louder as he approached; the hiss became a continuos crashing, the crashing became a roar.

At the base of the fifty foot waterfall Fresnel pulled the hood of his cape over the top of his woollen hat and made his way into the small space behind the plunging torrent. He knelt down and crawled through a small, dark, damp tunnel at the bottom of the cliff. Its roof was often no more than four feet from the ground. The tunnel stretched for twenty feet, Fresnel could see an orange glow at the other end, which he made for as he pushed his way across the smooth tunnel floor.

A curtain of water streamed down over the tunnel exit in front of him. He crawled on through it. An almost perfectly circular cavern of enormous proportions lay before him, its sides bathed in the flickering light of a torch fixed high up on a pole in front of the tunnel.

Fresnel dusted himself off. He was standing in about three inches of water; his boots were good but he was starting to feel the damp soak through the leather. The impressive beauty of the cavern brought him back to another time, maybe a better time when every experience tasted fresher, crisper more real. As a young man he had studied the intricacies of this unique wonder, fascinated by the marvel that had been wrought by nature, hidden from almost everyone like a jewel that is never worn.

Thirty feet up inside the cavern was an overhang that stretched from one point on the cavern wall, right around the circumference and back to the original starting point. The overhang was directly below a ledge, which travelled back, away from the overhang until it reached the base of the domed cavern roof. The overall effect was as if the rock had formed around an enormous mushroom and then the fungus had rotted away to leave its imprint cast in the stone. It was the obvious place to find elves, Fresnel had thought, or was that fairies and toadstools, he could never remember.

Its size and shape were extraordinary but they were not the most awe-inspiring things about the cave. The limestone rock had been eroded away for thousands of years and countless stalactites hung from every part of the overhang’s lip. Stagnant water had dissolved a circular trench in the shelf behind the overhang. Then some how the river had broken back into the cavern, reclaiming its old route through the cliff. It had filled the circular trench and spilled over the edge of the overhang. River water streamed from the tip of every stalactite, creating a curtain of water around the cavern’s circumference.

A river above him, a curtain of water around him and water at his feet, this cavern may have been stunningly beautiful but it was still a prison, a guilded cage created by Mother Nature to protect one of her special children.

When Sosime Drumal was still young and her psychic power was still weak she had discovered that by putting her head under the bath water or by sitting out in the rain she could stop all the soundless noise that had irritated her for as long as she could remember. As she grew the emotional bombardment of the world around her got worse. It didn’t rain everyday and she could only hold her breath for so long. She went mad.

Her father was not a clever man but he understood the terrible gift that she had been burdened with because he was slightly gifted himself. He also knew how valuable such a gift would be to the powerful men who live in a world of lies and deceit. He secretly brought Sosime’s plight before the Lord of the area in which he lived.

The Lord on hearing how water absorbed and grounded people’s emotional emanations knew that the cavern would provide a possible sanctuary for the nine year old girl and it did. He gave sole possession of a vast swathe of the forest around the cavern to her and he evicted and excluded every single person from the woodland thereabouts.

There was a price. Sosime never said what the price had been and Fresnel never asked. Year on year the Lord rose in power and wealth. Sosime was fourteen when he died. The knowledge of his secret weapon, Sosime, died with him. His son never met Sosime. He just knew of her as one of his land-owning vassals who paid a tithe of several tons of timber every year.

Sosime’s father had asked for help from several mages to find a cure so that the girl would not have to spend the rest of her life in virtual isolation. Few mages would even talk with Sosime. The thought that someone could hold a mirror up to your soul, see your thoughts and know your mind was just too dangerous a risk to take.

There had been an old elven mage (really old, ‘You don’t see as many sabre-tooth tigers about these days,’ old) that had come to see her. She had reached out to touch his face so that she could make sure that he was real. It was though she was looking at a life-sized picture of the elf. She couldn’t pick up an emotional signal from him any more than she could a dog.

A cure hadn’t been found but at least she was no longer had to be alone. She opened her woodlands and her home to any persecuted elf that wished to stay with her. The elves that did settle these woods protected her as much as she protected them. If any human with evil aforethought came within five miles of the cavern, Sosime would know, even behind her liquid screen she could feel the itch of a nearby malevolent mind. Anyone one looking for trouble would soon find trouble shooting out of the trees at him.

The cavern floor had been cleared of all its stalagmites and a large stone, single-story house with a slate roof had been constructed in it centre. The house had been built on a platform resting on piles. Apart from the piles it looked like any other rural home. Candlelight shone from many of the windows. The need to create some sort of normality in Sosime’s life had spurred her elven friends to replace the shack she had lived in with this fine building. It had been no mean feat due to the difficulty of transporting materials through the entrance tunnel. It always looked wintry to Fresnel because of the stalactites hanging like icicles from the cavern wall behind it.

Sosime was standing at her font door, Fresnel was expected. Everyone who decided to call on Sosime was expected. Fresnel splashed over towards her.

‘Your friend is very angry with you,’ said Sosime.

‘She’s not my friend.’

‘Yes she is,’ said Sosime.

‘She’ll get over it.’

‘She’s becoming too sleepy to care, take off your boots and come inside.’ The slender middle aged woman walked back inside to fix Fresnel something to eat.

Fresnel couldn’t tell the time in the perpetual darkness of the cavern, but he was sure that it could only be a little after one o’clock, he had expected Saeyan to be climbing the walls not taking a nap.

The old mage walked into the living room. He could see Sosime busying herself in the kitchen. Her sandy blonde hair was no longer as extraordinarily long as it had been. She wore her hair straight, cut just below the shoulder and she was as attractive, if not more so, as she had been all those years ago.

‘Thankyou, you look great too,’ said Sosime, placing a large platter of meat and bread in front of Fresnel.

‘I’m not hungry,’ he said.

‘Yes you are.’

Fresnel had a think. Actually, he was a bit peckish. He had a bit to eat and a bit to drink. The noise of the falling water outside faded into the background as he became acclimatised to the cavern. He told Sosime the tale of the remarkable rise and fall of one Fresnel Dor, Lore Master of Sleakeep and mage extrordinaire. He had brought her some things from Lock, little things, nick-knacks for the house, but he had left them in his horse’s saddlebag. Aillion could fetch them later.

There wasn’t really much point in trying to bring Sosime anything that encapsulated the look or feel of the faraway place that you had just come from. She had seen Toluma through the eyes of a lover. She had seen Eregeth through the eyes of a murderer. She had swum in the seven oceans and drowned in every one. She had danced on the stage in Carena and on the gallows of Carbelsan.

Fresnel explained about Blackwing. He explained how Rinn, a powerful priest had known about Blackwing for the last fifteen years. If she was alive and had carried out any useful research based on the boy’s disfigurement, then maybe Blackwing wouldn’t have to wait around for another fifteen years while Fresnel wandered around in the dark trying to find the answers that had so far eluded him. Every now and then he reminded himself not to let his concerns weigh too heavily on his thoughts as every burden he allowed to settle upon his shoulders also fell upon those of Sosime.

‘You know what you ask of me Fresnel?’ asked Sosime.

A great Lord had paid a fortune for Sosime’s help. Fresnel had arrived with nothing. He had brought no gold, no silver, no promises of reward, not even the promise of his undying gratitude. Nothing. There was no need. Sosime could look inside Fresnel’s mind, to the place that humans called their heart. She could see Fresnel was begging for help for another of Mother Nature’s special children not for his own selfish ends. To be able to call such a man friend was reward enough for Sosime, but she didn’t want to make it too easy. She had not gone beyond the water’s screen in ten years. It took months to quite the screams, to let go of the pain.

‘If there were any other way to find Rinn I would have taken it,’ said Fresnel. ‘You helped me once and in return I have brought more suffering to your door, I am sorry. I have wasted my life and I have nothing to show for it, nothing to pay you with, but something made you help before, please try and remember what it was. Please’

‘You will pay me this time Fresnel.’

‘How?’

‘If I find Rinn you will send her to me. I would very much like to spend some time with her.’

‘Of course I will, I’ll get her here, even if I have to drag her behind my horse.’

The deal was struck. Just as the presence of the wicked and the hateful will torture an empathic mind, the presence off the good and the kind will hasten the healing of its wounds. Sosime wanted to meet the woman who would kill to protect someone so different from herself.

Sosime knew that Fresnel didn’t like elves much in general and that he didn’t like Aillion in particular. Fresnel hadn’t come quietly when Aillion had intercepted him on his first visit. In fact he had knocked Aillion about a bit, and Aillion had knocked Fresnel about a bit in return. She smiled to herself as she lifted Fresnel’s glass from the low table in the living room.

‘You haven’t met my daughters yet have you?’

‘Daughters?’ said Fresnel.

‘Yes, two of them and three sons, but they down south in the Orchards.’

By now Fresnel could hear someone splashing across the cavern floor. He opened the living room window and saw two people making their way towards the house. They climbed the steps up to the platform and removed their grey-green hooded capes, shaking the water from them, before stopping to look at the stranger. Fresnel watched them and Sosime watched Fresnel. He turned towards Sosime.

‘Aillion?’

‘Yes, they are very like their father. He thinks you are very pretty, girls,’ said Sosime.

‘No I was looking at myself in that mirror over there,’ lied Fresnel, badly.

The girls had Sosime’s hair and Aillion’s eyes. They looked about sixteen years of age. Any day now they would stop growing and just keep regenerating their skin and bones until something hit them very hard over the head.

‘May Aedruim forgive you,’ said Sosime.

Fresnel was really, really hoping Elven Gods didn’t exist, he had enough trouble as it was.

‘Don’t take your boots off girls, we are going to take a little walk outside,’ said Sosime, ‘and bring the Cradle.’

The girl’s foreheads wrinkled at this unusual request, and then they shrugged and said ‘All right’ in unison.

‘Twins?’ asked Fresnel.

Sosime nodded.

‘You have something for me?’ she asked.

Fresnel handed her a scrap of cloth. It was a piece of Rinn’s blanket that Blackwing was wrapped in on the journey to Chel’s house. Fresnel had heard of inanimate objects that held spirits within them, swords and the like, but he had no idea how this old scrap of cloth was going used by Sosime. He didn’t need to know. Not yet anyway.


A little while later the strange procession was crawling down the tunnel. The girls knew what to do. Their mother had told them many times before what was going to happen. Fresnel was overcome by a feeling of absolute weirdness, as if out of nowhere, he had been slapped in the mouth with a wet fish. He had just walked out of a lovely home with carpets and better furniture than he owned. Now he was scrabbling along a tunnel like an over-grown mole, with three other over-grown moles. He couldn’t shake the feeling that someone unpleasant was standing at the other end with a spade.

No one was there and there wasn’t a spade in sight. The old mage walked out into the sunlight. The two girls followed him and took off their cloaks and boots. Then they jumped into the wide pool directly below the waterfall. They treaded water and waited as a barefoot Sosime took off her cloak and stood shaking behind the waterfall. She took two steps backwards and then ran forwards, dived through the waterfall itself and into the pool beyond.

She fought to stay at the bottom of the pool but the natural buoyancy of the human body pulled her back to the surface. Her head and shoulders broke through the swirling water. She tucked her head down towards her chin and breathed in deeply; her head tilted back; and then all the way back and then she screamed, long, powerful and shrill, she screamed. She screamed like it was the cold embrace of death itself that was squeezing the air from her lungs.

In the cottage Aillion had been quietly tidying up the wreckage caused by the drunk and sleeping Saeyan. Sosime’s scream tore through the glade and he started running.

The screaming stopped. Sosime had passed out. One of her daughters cupped her hand under the unconscious woman’s chin and swam with her to the riverbank. The old mage helped pull her out. She still clasped the piece of blanket in one hand. Fresnel hadn’t expected this. He hadn’t wanted this. So much pain, why hadn’t she warned him? Why hadn’t she just refused to help? He was shaking. He was going to be sick. She had welcomed him and fed him, what sort of bastard was he to put her through this?

The girl’s carried the Sosime along the bank and back under the waterfall. They had left the Cradle there; it was little more than a wooden board with four wheels used to transport things back and forth in the tunnel. They placed Sosime on the Cradle and laid her cloak over her lifeless form. Her daughters began guiding the Cradle down the passage, one girl pulling on a rope at the front, the other pushing from behind. Fresnel followed, what else could he do?

They reached the far end. One of Sosime’s daughters shielded her face as they passed through the water curtain. Even in the poor light of the torch Fresnel could see Sosime was deathly pale. They pushed the cradle through the water on the cavern floor, heading for the house.

Aillion came bursting through the tunnel’s water curtain. He grabbed the old mage and spun him to the ground. Fresnel thrashed about as the disorientation and the water caused him to try to get to anywhere other than where he was right now.

‘Leave him alone.’ Sosime’s weak voice was barely audible, but it held Aillion like a ring in a bull’s nose.

‘I did this. I wanted this,’ said Sosime.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ There were tears in Aillion’s eyes and Fresnel couldn’t even bring himself look at anyone.

‘Because you would have tried to stop me.’

Aillion knelt down beside Sosime. He put his forehead against hers and shut his eyes. Sosime needed no psychic powers to know how he felt. It was in his every word and gesture.

One of Sosime’s daughters pulled Fresnel up out of the water. She led him over to the tunnel and said, ‘Mother will send word to you tomorrow. You are to wait in the cottage with your friend.’

Fresnel knew that those were Sosime’s instructions, he just didn’t know how they got into this strange little girl’s head. Now wasn’t the time to find out. He was going to go to the cottage, barricade the door and hope that Sosime kept working whatever mojo it was that kept Aillion under control.

[ June 11, 2003, 03:28: Message edited by: Bluin ]

 

The Enemy Within

Fresnel left the tunnel entrance and stood up behind the waterfall. He could hear horns. Each intricate solo was a little quieter, a little further away than the last. He walked around the side of the waterfall, out onto the riverbank and saw dozens of elves. Some wore leather armour, some had their armour still sitting at their feet, and some wore only the simple clothes of a woodsman.

Arrows sat on tensed strings, just waiting. Swords were clasped in whitening hands. Axes, still covered in sticky sap, threatened to cut and splinter bones. Behind Fresnel one of Sosime’s daughters emerged from the back-spray of the waterfall. She stretched out her arm in front of her with her palm held up to the assembled elves. She shook her head.

Bowstrings relaxed but the arrows stayed in place. Swords no longer pointed at Fresnel but remained unsheathed. The heads of the axes were rested on the ground, but one hand remained on each shaft, ready to swing the ash skyward if just given the excuse. Fresnel could see a lifetime of hurt on these people’s faces. All around him there was hate. In the eyes of the younger elves he could see the question ‘Why?’; in the expressions of those few elves that recognised him he could sense their feelings of betrayal.

One elf began to blow loudly on a short curved brass horn. He stared unflinchingly at Fresnel, giving sharp aggressive blasts on the instrument, regardless of what the signal may have meant.

Fresnel continued walking, his head was up, but he was unwilling to meet anyone’s gaze. He knew he was being watched as he walked all the way back to the cottage. He could hear armies of elves flooding into the area, their normally silent progress compromised by their large numbers and the haste with which they moved. Horns were sounding from every direction, some must have been miles away.

Sosime had not been idle since the death of her lord, Averan Codal II. She and the elves had used her lands to generate wealth. That wealth had been used to buy more of the surrounding forest, which had then been incorporated back into the business. The cycle continued. Every business transaction was conducted on her land, within three miles of the cavern. The small elven community wrung the best terms out of every deal, armed with no more than Sosime’s special insight. Deal-breakers and tricksters came with the intention of robbing these vulnerable elves of all they possessed. Some left empty handed, some never left at all.

Year-on-year Sosime’s power and wealth increased, and year-on-year more and more dispossessed elves flocked to her side. Soon the entire forest belonged to her. Her noble overlord, Averan Codal III, ruled his domain in name only. She paid her timber tithe to him; he sold the timber and passed the majority of the proceeds on to the Tabarain government. If the King had found out about the elves pivotal role in Averan’s affairs, the Lord would have been stripped of his position and Sosime’s elves would have been chased from the forest. A mutually beneficial compromise had been reached, in which the elves kept the Lord too powerful to be usurped and he reciprocated by turning a blind eye to the evictions, exclusions and true power that was growing deep in the woods.

The forest had no official name, lest it should appear in the records of some overly inquisitive bureaucratic troublemaker. It was known as ‘The Woodlandf o’ hif Lordfhip Jolan Cram’. This lord’s family line had died out centuries ago, with a little help from the present lord’s ancestors. Now whenever government agents from Tabarain or Marthan came to record the assets upon which tribute could be raised in times of war, the Tabarain-Marthan border jumped almost fifteen miles so that the forest appeared to be the property of another Kingdom and was excluded from their remit.

The lord did not pay for the maintenance of a Tabarain National Guard barracks in his fiefdom. The Marthanians never used his border to mount raids into Tabarain. They appeared to be very wary of his Lordship’s small but dedicated human malitia.

The King deployed the Guards that had been financed by Averan’s tribute to the other border outposts where his army was under constant Marthanian guerrilla attack. The attacks were carried out by the forces of so-called ‘renegade feudal lords’. These renegades were not above sending hordes of heavily armed, quasi-intelligent species such as orcs and goblins against the outposts in the hope that the Guard would be forced to give ground and abandon the verdant plain of Talaran (Marthanian name ~ Carasal). Parties of orc deserters scavenged in the Talaran countryside every night making it a very dangerous place to live.

The attacks were a minor irritation to the Tabar King. He had already dispatched word to the King of Marthan; ‘When you keep kicking someone in the ankle, you shouldn’t be surprised when they turn around and punch you in the mouth,’ except his message had been couched in words of a more diplomatic nature.

Sosime’s elves were inadvertently playing a part in the protection of Tabarain. This was a country in which you could kill and rob an elf in broad daylight, in the centre of a town, and suffer no consequences any worse than the disparaging comments of passers-by, for committing such a vulgar and obscene act in a public place.

On this overcast Spring afternoon elven horns echoed throughout Sosime’s forest. The woodsmen left their work and picked up their bows. In the southern orchards, elves pruning the Spring growth from apple, pear and plum trees took off their aprons and put on their armour. Fishermen, farmers and carpenters buckled on fine elven blades and closed the doors to their homes.

Tonight, rings of steel would surround Sosime as she slept. Even at the furthest borders of her land, the Far Marches, the fields would be filled with the low tones of elven horns. Any poacher or trespasser who was within earshot would either know that he had better take flight or he would be kneeling at the feet of Aedruim long before dawn broke over the eastern horizon.

Fresnel made it to the cottage unimpeded. He closed the door behind him and locked it. He shook Saeyan who was sleeping in the bedroom, but she was dead to the world. He ran around closing all the windows and pulling the grey-cloth curtains. Then he pushed the table up against the door. He sat down and waited, listening intently to the noises outside. He was beginning to understand.

Sosime’s mind was flailing about in a raging storm of confusion, trapped in a place where she was the murderer and the murdered, the torturer and the tortured, the selfish and the starving. Now she was going to have to make sense of it all, she would have to find a path through the torment by trying to catch hold of the tumbling fragments of love and kindness amongst the flying debris of a maelstrom created by the hateful and the wicked.

With Sosime in this state the elves had lost their only advantage against the human’s overwhelming numbers. While she remained blind to the world about her, the elves could be attacked from any direction at any time without the slightest warning. They would no longer be able to pre-empt every tactic employed by their enemy’s forces. They could not set effective traps or carry out devastating ambushes. They could not subject soldiers that invaded their lands to enough unrelenting harassment to cause them to flee.

Now an army could employ the same tactics that had worked over the length and breadth of Tabarain. Attackers could use speed, surprise and sheer weight of numbers to overrun their defences at one point in the woodlands. Then they would slaughter all the women and children they found in the centre of the forest. From there they would push out, driving scattered groups of elves before them until the survivors ran from the trees into the open fields. These poor souls, men, women and children would be cut down in successive merciless cavalry charges.

In a few days the Marthanian scouting parties that monitor that stretch of the border would have found out that they could approach the forest unseen and enter it unchallenged. To stop this from happening every able-bodied elven warrior had to answer the call to arms.

By nightfall over a thousand fighters, male and female, were camped within what approximated to a circle, with a six-mile radius, roughly centred on Sosime’s home. Hundreds of other women and children had walked in from their homes in the outlying woods seeking the relative safety of the overcrowded houses that were protected within the circle.

Nearly a hundred single archers were scattered throughout the woods beyond the circle, most at the very edge of the forest acting as scouts. Further on out beyond these scouts, small, highly trained units of professional warriors silently trekked in the darkness along the Far Marches, searching for any stray humans that might spread word of the absence of the devils that had haunted these woods for so long.

None of this was new to the Elven people; this was how it had been for the last four centuries. With Sosime as a guardian they had become used to living, instead of just surviving. Now they wore their previous role like a full suit of armour. They hated the weight, but they needed the protection. If it took months for Sosime to regain her Clear Sight, then they would live like this for months; it was a small price to pay for the freedom Sosime had given them.

If an army came, then here they would stand, here they would fight and here they would fall. Sosime could not leave, and this place had become their home. It had been taken from them and they had bought it back, there was no way in hell that it was going to be taken from them again. If the humans even tried, they would need every square inch of it to bury their dead.


In the cottage Fresnel sat on the floor with his head in his hands. His eyeballs had been jittering so much that he had had to keep his eyes shut. The enemy was nearby and he couldn’t escape, because today he was the enemy. Maybe it was going to be all right, maybe nothing would happen. Sosime must have thought so if she had agreed to help him.

Putting his personal grievances aside, Fresnel knew that the elves had courage, intelligence and skill. He also knew that that wasn’t enough. If they slew five thousand men this year then ten thousand would come the next, and then fifteen the year after that. Humans bred like rats in a grain store, consuming and destroying all they saw, as they filled every last corner of the world. If they couldn’t use an animal for food then they would kill it for sport. It was time that the Elven people realised that if they were going to have children less often than the Moon eclipsed the Sun, then they were on the way out, no matter what they did, or where they hid. Humans would bring about their demise without even getting out of bed.

The mage looked up; he could smell the goat’s cheese sitting by the sink. He thought of Aillion, and how Sosime and he had had five children already. Fresnel wondered why more elves hadn’t taken human wives to boost their numbers. Some women found their narrow eyes and pointy ears quite attractive. Then he looked through the open bedroom door at Saeyan. She was quietly snoring away and had a bit of spittle dribbling out of her mouth onto the pillow. Maybe they are just fussy, they’ll only commit to someone that has a spare hundred years or so to listen to one of their boring stories.

Fresnel got up and pulled the table away from the door. He unlocked it and crept outside. He could see the glow of campfires reflected off the leafy boughs of tall trees about a mile down the road. He couldn’t help but feel that hundreds of elves were working long into the night because of something he had done. Fresnel thought it was a pity that humans didn’t actually possess any humanity, because if they did none of this would be necessary.

He walked over to a small, wooden, three-sided structure with a sloped wooden roof. He sat over a large hole in the bench inside, and had a really good think. He had needed that, he felt much better. Aillion had taken the saddles off the horses. Fresnel brought his saddlebags inside the cottage. He locked the door and pushed the table back into position. It was pretty obvious that that everyone had been told to stay well clear of this area because of the lack of activity around the cottage.

Fresnel washed his hands and his face. He took a blanket from the chest at the end of Saeyan’s bed and went into the main room where he settled into a comfortable padded chair with the blanket over him. There was no way he could sleep. Not with everything that had happened that day still churning around in his mind. He got up, walked over to the sink and threw the goat’s cheese out the window at the back of the house. The old mage was totally drained. He settled down again to wait for morning.

[ June 11, 2003, 03:36: Message edited by: Bluin ]

 

Ever On

A knocking on the cottage door woke Fresnel. He could remember seeing the first rays of light filtering through the grey curtains this morning. He must have dropped off shortly after dawn. Saeyan had woken during the night. Fresnel had opened the door so that she could go outside. She had seen the campfires and heard the activity but she was in no fit state to ask questions and Fresnel wasn’t sure that he could give her any answers.

They had communicated with single words and had practically ignored each other. Saeyan had drunk several large cups of water. She had filled a final one, had brought it with her back into the bedroom and had gone back to sleep.

The knocking on the door started again. Fresnel went to the window. He could see one of Sosime’s daughters outside. The old man quickly and quietly pulled the table out off the way and pulled the thick wooden door open. He closed it behind him and led the girl a little way from the house, before speaking;

‘How is Sosime?’

‘She sleeps. Sometimes she wakes and cries out for help, screams at unseen attackers or claws at invisible ropes and chains, but mostly she sleeps.’ There was no anguish or sorrow in the girl’s tone or expression. It was though she had been nursing a stranger, and was now relaying news to the family.

‘I’ll wait here until she is well enough to talk. I really am so sorry. Please believe that I never expected any of this.’ Fresnel’s head was slightly bowed, he was wringing his hands and his eyebrows were pushed low over his eyes, as genuine concern, sympathy and guilt wracked his body, all at the same time.

‘Don’t be sorry, it only makes it harder for mother to find her way home. I have been with her. So has my sister. She is in a silvery-grey maze of thought right now. Its edges move and grow and disappear. We have shouted to her from the sides and she has shouted back. She will find her way out. It will take time, a long time, but she will come home. She has found the people you that you seek.’

The girl handed Fresnel the piece of blanket that he had given Sosime and continued to speak.

‘In the mountains of Ardra there is a place called the Archer’s Rock, two miles north of there, is a shepherd’s cabin. You will find the boy there. On the coast of the Hosna Sea, in the village of Iscere, the woman’s faith leads her people. Near the village of Sleakeep an old farmer is awaiting the return of his son.’

‘I am in her debt,’ said Fresnel.

‘You and your friend must leave. Leave right now. Your presence feeds the maze and blocks my mother’s path.’

‘Yes,’ said Fresnel, ‘right away, just stay there for one moment, all right?’

Fresnel ran into the cottage and kicked Saeyan’s bed. Then he grabbed the parcels out of the saddlebags and brought them back out to the young girl.

‘Give these to your mother for me, when she is a better. I think it might be wise to hide them from Aillion for the time being. I don’t think he would appreciate me leaving a reminder of my visit.’

The girl turned to leave. She had walked a little way down the path when Fresnel called after her.

‘Tell Aillion that it is your mother’s wish to have a priest of Dealle called Rinn visit her, and he should make sure that she can pass through the forest unharmed. And that her coming here has nothing to do with me.’

‘When?’ said the girl.

‘In about three weeks, maybe less.’

The girl nodded and then continued on down towards the river. Fresnel went back into the cottage and saw that Saeyan was up, splashing water on her face from a large bowl by the sink.

‘We have to leave and leave now!’ said an emphatic Fresnel.

After ten minutes they were both on the road travelling west, back out of the forest, under an overcast sky. The weak sun was still very low and it fired yellow shafts of light through gaps in the lowest cloud strata, far off on the eastern horizon. Where these shafts of light struck the base of the visible grey cloud cover above Fresnel they created unnatural golden crescents, which moved, flickered and were gone just as quickly. Fresnel estimated that he had slept for less than an hour.

On the main track through the woods they were passed at different times by running elven men. The elves were stripped to the waist and each one carried the small, plain, leather satchel of a messenger at his side, with its leather strap looped over his head to rest upon the opposite shoulder. The elves took no heed of the riders.

Saeyan sat slumped on her horse. Every now and then she would take a small piece of willow bark from her own satchel to chew on order to try and ease her pounding headache. Fresnel had black bags under his eyes from lack of sleep and he still had a sick feeling in his stomach from yesterday. As the pair reached a point about five miles from the cottage they could hear shouts and the ‘thack, thack, thack’ of axes chopping wood in the trees around them. The noise made Saeyan’s headache almost unbearable.

A mile further on they came to a palisade fence constructed from straight, slender eighteen foot tall tree trunks with the bark still on. The tops of the tree trunks had been sharpened to form a row of teeth-like points. This fence had not been there yesterday morning. Now it stretched into the forest for a forty yards on either side of the track and had folded back parallel with the road as the elves constructed the remaining three sides of the fortification.

The road led on down to a similarly constructed, wide gate in the fence. This gate was open and Fresnel could see that the trees from which the palisade had been made had been taken from the area directly in front of the fence. There was a clearing filled with tree stumps stretching for some thirty yards beyond the gate. The lower boughs of the trees behind the palisade had been stripped away and rough archer platforms had been constructed in the higher branches.

As Fresnel and Saeyan passed through the gate they saw dozens of elves cutting away at the remaining trees in front of the palisade. The road was littered with bits of branches, lumps of wood, tools, ropes and leaves. Some elves were felling new trees, some were stripping branches from trees already on the ground and others were sharpening the ends of trunks into points. Horses were dragging naked tree trunks over the brambled undergrowth of the forest floor and out onto the road.

All the while Saeyan was aware of the angry stares of those around her. At first she had thought Fresnel had said something to the elves to make them despise her, but then she noticed Fresnel was getting the same hate-filled looks as well.

The pair moved on down the road. Eventually the woods around them became quieter and took on an altogether more sinister feel. Fresnel knew he was being watched. There was no way anyone would be allowed to travel along this road without being shadowed. He saw no one, no warriors, no lookouts, no one, yet all the while he could feel elven stares boring into the back of his head.

‘Are you going to tell me what’s going on or am I going to have to wait here for the next three weeks until Rinn arrives?’ asked a totally fed-up Saeyan. She had heard the mage shouting after Sosime’s daughter.

‘I am going to find Rinn now, she won’t be coming here unless I ask her to. You can either shut-up and tag along, or get lost.’ Fresnel knew Saeyan didn’t deserve to be treated like this. Sosime had given the girl her seal of approval. Sleep deprivation had made him extremely irritable, far too irritable to apologise.

The mountains of Ardra were almost seventy miles to the north, and that was as the crow flies. Iscere was a small harbour village twenty miles northwest of Volach. Fresnel hadn’t ask Sosime were Blackwing was. He had just assumed the boy would come back when he was ready. He was going to have to go to Ardra first; otherwise he would have to cross Tabarain to get to Iscere, then once more to get to Ardra and once again to get back to Sleakeep.

Fresnel felt tired. The old saying that ‘A man can go a long way after he becomes weary’ pushed him on. He was tapping into that little pocket of strength that everyone has. This was the little reserve of energy that allowed farmers to work non-stop when an autumn rainstorm threatened to ruin the harvest. It allowed out-numbered and exhausted castle garrisons to fight on until the enemy gave up and retreated. It was the difference between ‘I almost did something once,’ and ‘I did something once.’ Fresnel was using this reserve to push himself on, long after his eyes had forced themselves closed. Saeyan led his horse slowly down the forest road.

 

Little Pleasures

The Ardra Mountains was a string of peaks that ran from north to south about fifty miles inside the borders of Tabarain. Archers Rock was on the western slopes of a peak near the middle of the mountain range. Fresnel had found this out by casually slipping the question into a late night tavern conversation with a man that originally came from the area. He had asked Fresnel where did it all go wrong.

‘One minute you’re gamblin’ frew the Ardra high-meadows, playin’ up at oul Archers Rock w’ the whole worl at yur feet. An’ the next,’ the man shook his head, ‘the next, every day you have te’ go te’ work in the bloody abattoir, an’ come home to a screamin’ woman, an’ screamin’ kids.’ His lips closed tightly as the sides of his mouth dropped and he clenched his teeth as his chin began to wobble uncontrollably.

Fresnel had reassured him that it was still too early for him too go home, (it had only just passed midnight), and that he should have a drink to settle his nerves, which where obviously completely shot to pieces by him having to suffer a persecution far beyond the endurance of any brave man.

Saeyan continued to beg in the streets, but Fresnel covered the remainder of the price of a meal and a bed for her if she came up short. Fresnel hadn’t told her where Rinn was. He couldn’t risk Saeyan dashing off to Iscere and leading Rinn away before he had a chance to talk to her. Other than her annoyance at this, the enmity that there had been between them was put aside, and for the most part they looked-out for each other.

The pair pushed north day after day through sun, wind and rain until they arrived at a village close to the mountainside on which Archers Rock was located. Archers rock was apparently a beautiful place to have a picnic on a Summer’s day. It was late so they stayed at the village inn.

The following day dawn broke, except that it didn’t. The sky was thick with blue-black storm clouds, the higher ones barely moving, the lower ones racing southeast through the sky.

The pair of travellers were in the stables at the side of the inn. Fresnel stood at the doorway watching the sky. The girl lifted her saddle off the top of the gelding’s stall-partition.

‘Don’t bother,’ said Fresnel.

‘Why not?’ asked the Saeyan.

‘Can’t you taste it?’

‘Taste what?’

‘The metallic tang in the air.’

From where Saeyan was standing all she could smell was dried horse sweat, horse muck and horse piss. She would have had to put the gelding’s bit between her own teeth to taste a ‘metallic tang’.

‘So what?’ She slung the saddle back over the partition and walked over to stand beside Fresnel at the door. She could see that the clouds were below the summit of the mountain, completely obscuring it from view.

‘Lightning’s on the way and I am not standing out on that mountain like, like… like someone who wants to get hit by lightning. I’m going back inside, take care of Domir.’ Fresnel left.

Saeyan fetched a bucket of water and a grooming brush. She had been taking care of Fresnel’s horse, Domir for the last four days, ever since they had left that forest. He paid her almost as much as he would have paid a groom to do the same job. She liked grooming Domir. This docile mare had a much nicer personality than Fresnel did.

Her own horse, Calif, was much more highly strung, but he was fast. Sitting on his back when he was galloping flat-out made her feel powerful, so much power on the cusp of danger ; Where she was going didn’t matter, life itself didn’t matter, she just wanted to push on and on until her knees could grip the saddle no longer. When she eventually did rein-in Calif and dropped of his back, she could see it in his eyes, in the way he threw his head up and down, up and down, that this was what he had been created for, he had been born with speed, control and a reckless disregard for anything that got in his way.

Fresnel had insisted that the horses should travel at no more than a walking pace. There were miles to go and if his mare came up lame that would be disastrous. Calif could have made this trip in a day. In less than a day if Saeyan had flayed his rump and drove him on until he dropped from exhaustion. She couldn’t do that. If she ever did treat him that way, she would feel every strike of the whip herself.

The storm that Fresnel had predicted raged for most of the day. Rain battered the roof. A lot of soaking wet people from the village came into the small tavern attached to the inn. They were mostly farmers who could not work in the fields in such atrocious weather. There may have been some indoor work that they could have been getting on with but they had shrewdly guessed how their like-minded friends might have reacted to the storm, and had made their way to the tavern. It was simply a good reason to squeeze a little pleasure out of life.

They came to sit around the tavern’s fire, with a mug of ale and a pipe-full of weed. They lied to each other about how hard life was and how desperately low the selling price for their crops had become. After each stroke of lighting illuminated the walls of the tavern with a stark white flash, the tavern noise dropped to a murmur as the seconds were counted to see if the hits were getting closer or further away. After each rumble of thunder the conversation would be resumed, often by one farmer reassuring his friend that his friend’s farm was now a pile of smoking ashes.

Some of them came over to talk to Fresnel. He had sat himself down on a bench along the back wall furthest away from the inn door; to do so was an unconscious reflex, he always liked to have people where he could see them. He had his cloak slung over one shoulder, like the fashionable people of Lock were doing with their fancy, short, half-round cloaks (some absolute posers even wore quarter round cloaks that wouldn’t have kept your hair dry if you put them over your head). The clasp on his cloak was still visible and the people who recognised him as a mage could not resist the temptation of soliciting a bit of free advice. Fresnel let them know that only bad advice was free advice, but that he would happily help them out for a very small fee.

Most people like to drop strangers into pigeonholes. For some reason the thought that another person can have one profession and also be fully competent to carry out another, and also be skilled in several different trades, all at the same time cannot be easily accepted. Possibly Fresnel being a mage and a lore master, was perfectly understandable, the lines between the two were very blurred. It was when Fresnel told them how to deal with the pests that plagued their crops and how to dig ditches to effectively drain their land that they found it so difficult to believe him. Often they thought he was just having a joke.

Predictably enough, the tavern patrons asked Fresnel about magic. He especially liked answering the commonly asked one that went;

‘An oul hag up the road from me keeps putting curses on me, making me clumsy and forgetful, and ruining every thing I do, and she’s stopping me from getting any sleep. What can I do about her? The village council don’t understand and they won’t burn her. What do you think?’

The answer to this question was simple and to Fresnel’s own amazement it worked. In fact, it worked like the charm that it was.

‘You take a large bottle for which you have a cork, the cork is very important mind,’ said Fresnel, ‘and you piss in it. It has to be your piss, no taking the piss out of anyone else.’ Fresnel couldn’t resist that wisecrack, it often went straight over peoples heads. ‘Then you re-cork the bottle and bury it within one of the walls of your house. Sometimes just putting it under the floor boards works just as well. The next time you are in the house and a witch sends magic your way it will be absorbed by the bottle of piss, not you. And it will keep on working for as long as you live there. You must never dig it back out again.’

Most of his clients would nod sagely at this point. Fresnel would lean in a little closer and continue to speak in very hushed tones;

‘If you gather up about twenty small iron nails, thin ones, about three-quarters of an inch long, and you bend them, and you put them into the bottle as well, then, as sure as the witch is taking your skill, intelligence and peace of mind from you, she will take the bent nails surrounded by piss back into herself. Every time she visits the outhouse she will feel like she is passing molten lead. She will be in too much pain to bother with you any more.’

This always brought a smile to his client’s face. And sure enough come the next morning there would be some nasty old crone struggling along the road towards the nearest temple to pay for her sins with the gold that her restoration would cost.

By dusk the storm had blown itself out. It was too late to go up the mountain. Fresnel and Saeyan went for a walk around the village. There was something fresh and clean about the air that made Fresnel reluctant to return to the stuffiness of the inn too soon. The sound of water dripping from the eaves was all around them. The wet ground glistened in the light cast from the windows of the village houses. Fresnel and his father had often gone for a ‘dander’ of an evening though the Bluin countryside. Those were good times. These days he always felt as if everything he did had to have a reason, every walk he took had to have a destination. Tonight was no different.

He pushed open the door of the village shop and walked in. He stopped the draught from blowing the door back in Saeyan’s face, which was as close as he personally wanted to get to chivalrous behaviour.

He had gone to the shop as a distraction, with the intention of spending a few of the coppers he had gleaned from the tavern patrons.

The blonde-haired, male owner of the shop was collecting up the unsold loaves of bread, the little urns of milk and cuts of meat that would be beyond use by tomorrow. They would make a good slop for his pigs. He had been doing this job for the last fifty years, and he started speaking whilst continuing to work with clinical efficiency.

‘What can I do for you good people?’ He asked, while looking only at Saeyan, as Fresnel was looking about in a preoccupied manner.

‘We're really just out for a walk and we thought we would stop in to see if you stocked anything that we needed,’ said Saeyan.

‘This is the crappiest, filthiest, most pitiful excuse for a back-end of nowhere toilet that I have ever seen.’ Fresnel turned and walked out.

‘We’re closed.’ said the shopkeeper. Saeyan shrugged apologetically and walked out after Fresnel.

Sometimes it does you good to take the time to make the most of life’s little pleasures wherever you may find them.

[ June 18, 2003, 01:13: Message edited by: Bluin ]

 

Nowhere

The tired and emotional man that Fresnel had spoken to three days ago on his way to the Ardra mountains had been right. It was a slightly overcast Spring morning, grey clouds hid the mountaintop above him, but the view from Archers Rock was breathtaking. It really was almost as though he had the ‘whole world at his feet’. Just below the trees on the lower slopes of the mountain, the Kutumree Plain stretched out westwards before him, interrupted only by the low hills on the far horizon.

An oval boulder, taller than it was wide stood isolated on the outcrop. There was a small bulge on its western side that could, if the imagination was stretched to its limits, have possibly have been considered to be bow-like in shape, if viewed from the side, in very bad light, whilst on a galloping horse.

Fresnel’s horse wasn’t galloping. In fact Saeyan and he were on foot leading their animals north very gingerly along a barely visible track in the slippery, close-cropped grass. They could see small flocks of sheep up on the mountainside. They appeared to be no more than specks of white amongst the grey-green heather from such a long distance away.

Fresnel had told Saeyan that he knew that Rinn was definitely alive and that he was going to see someone who knew Rinn’s exact whereabouts. She had dutifully followed behind him, pretending to be annoyed at his deliberately vague explanations, but secretly enjoying the trek through such a stark and beautiful landscape.

They eventually came to an old ramshackle cabin. Every thing had been as Sosime had said it would be. Fresnel and Saeyan tied the horses to the branches attached to an old felled tree-trunk which had been sitting in front of the cabin for so long that Nature’s army of scavengers, the fungi, mosses and insects had begun the inexorable process of returning it to the soil.

Fresnel knocked on the door. It was opened by Blackwing. He hadn’t got his cloak on. Saeyan tripped over herself in an effort to get away and fell backwards on the ground.

‘What in hell is that?’ shouted Saeyan.

‘Correct. This is the gate to Hell I was telling you about. Its more of a side door really,’ admitted Fresnel, ‘and this is the Gate Guardian,’ he said pointing to Blackwing, who by now was laughing at the prostrate and startled priest.

Fresnel looked up at the sky. ‘I expect all the hosts of Heaven are due any time now,’ he said without looking down.

Saeyan’s shock was disappearing fast, and it was being replaced by red, misty, too-far-over-the-edge, anger.

An aura of white light flashed around the priest as protection spells spilled forth from her mouth. Fresnel sprang on top of her, placing his hand in her mouth in an effort to literally hold her tongue, but it was too late. The grass a little way to the left of the cabin swelled and tore as the skeleton of some unfortunate shepherd dug its way free from the earth. Saeyan bit down hard on Fresnel’s hand as the skeleton stood up and shook the sods of clay from out of its joints and from between its yellowy-brown bones. It stooped to pick up the remaining metal hook of its crook from the shallow grave and then crashed backwards as the force of Blackwing’s charge threw both of them to the ground.

‘Stop it, stop it, please,’ shouted Fresnel as he gripped Saeyan’s throat in an effort to prevent her enunciating any more of the Old Tongue tracts that she was using. Blackwing was trying to tear apart the limbs of the skeleton, but he couldn’t, they were held together by an unseen mystic sinew that allowed them to bend in every direction and then whip back up to strike him about the head like a boney mace.

Saeyan’s own mace was in her hand, one of the four sharp steel fins on its head was ready to smash into Fresnel’s temple. As Blackwing started snapping bones in an effort to disable the murderous shepherd, Fresnel released Saeyan’s throat and held his hands in the air.

‘Please,’ he said. Saeyan didn’t speak; she lay under Fresnel, staring into his eyes. Fresnel stood up and backed away, his hands still in the air. Saeyan sat upright. Blackwing was still locked in the shepherd’s boney embrace, but he was gaining the upper hand, and snapping it off.

‘This is all wrong, its a mistake, its my fault, please stop it, please.’ Fresnel was begging.

A word from Saeyan and the skeleton dropped from around Blackwing and became a pile of old bones once more. But Fresnel wasn’t just talking about the skeleton. He didn’t want to fight, what was the point, and he didn’t want her to leave, he could see that now. She had helped him in so many little ways since they had left Lock and he had shown her nothing but scorn. He was going to have to work very had to gain her forgiveness. Saeyan could see in his eyes that right here, right now he was willing to start that work.

On a slightly overcast Spring afternoon, the sheep up on the mountainside could see a small group of humans and horses heading down towards the trees. They appeared to be no more than specks of colour amongst the grey-green heather from such a long distance away.

[ June 15, 2003, 04:56: Message edited by: Bluin ]

 

Lost? I'm not lost, it's the map that's lost, not me!

[ June 20, 2003, 00:51: Message edited by: Bluin ]

 

More roses by the roadside.

[ June 16, 2003, 06:55: Message edited by: Bluin_ ]

 

No Sticks, No Stones, No Harmful Words

An old piebald horse trudged wearily westwards. Its thick, hairy fetlocks sank deep into the mud of the track. As each hoof extricated itself from the sucking morass, it flicked mud up at its brown and white belly. Atop its unsaddled, slightly bowed back was a farm-boy in a dark-grey cloak. He sat upright on his wide seat and held the twine reins attached to his stallion’s rope-bridle. By his side rode an old man in a long black cloak, on a little grey mare, and a priest high atop a muscular brown gelding.

On the way to Iscere the three travellers talked. Mainly it was Saeyan and Blackwing who spoke in the ‘Who are you? Where do you come from? What exactly are you?’ fashion that strangers do, when they find themselves journeying together. Fresnel didn’t say much. He had secretly told Blackwing about Sosime, and how he was now going to find Rinn in Iscere.

He told Saeyan that someone in the forest had directed him to the Volach region and he should be able to find Rinn by asking around when they got there. The old mage would have liked to have told her the truth, but the risk of scores of priests of Dealle descending on Sosime’s home to get ‘Just a little bit of help’ was too great. He didn’t pry into Blackwing’s motives for leaving or speak about the destruction of the Bluin Forest.

Fresnel could just-about understand why Blackwing wanted to go directly to Iscere instead of taking a sixty-mile detour to Sleakeep. The once proud Lord Of Bluin may now be no better than a humble farm-boy, but it wasn’t all just about the money. Blackwing had never employed teams of woodsmen to exploit the Bluin Forest. He had left it undisturbed, just as his ancestors had done, in an effort to maintain his safe, peaceful, beautiful, isolated retreat from the world.

As the latent threat of the next Black Dragon of Bluin taking his rightful place in the Bluin Sky still tortured his mind, the boy had broken out of his old existence, trying to destroy every last trace of his past, and at the same time hit back at the dragon, that mockery of his father’s essence, who would eventually take his old sanctuary from him. But he couldn’t shake off the past, Blackwing was Blackwing, no matter how far away from Bluin he ran. He had endured a miserable stay in Ardra, but at least there had been no dragons in those mountains, there had been no temptation to strike out at the creatures that had given him this demonic form and condemned him to an ‘almost life-like existence’.

The old mage had prepared Blackwing for the eventuality that this whole trip may come to nothing, in order to prevent history repeating itself, but he knew that Blackwing still felt some hope. The boy had been glad, in a slightly ashamed way, that Fresnel had come to bring him home; but he had not wanted to return to Sleakeep while a sliver of hope still existed that someone might know how to allow him to become a man, just an ordinary two armed man. If he could be transformed then he could return to Sleakeep as an all-conquering hero, and his recent past could be consigned to history’s rubbish tip for insignificant details.


Why were there no dragons in Ardra? A person must simply consider the wisdom of a particular folk-tale and use the guidance of their own common sense to answer that question. Please listen a moment while I explain;

There is an old tale for children about a starving, penniless man who walked into a village full of selfish people. He filled a large pot in the centre of the village with water from the river. He also plucked a smooth round stone from the river while he was there. The pauper collected some dead branches from the woods nearby and used them to light a fire under the pot in the village square. The village people came out to watch him.

They asked him what he was doing. He told the he was preparing the most exquisitely delicious soup in the world, and they really shouldn’t be bothering him, as its preparation required his full attention.

The villagers looked into the pot and asked, ‘How can you make soup with just water?’

‘With this,’ he replied, and pulled the river stone from his pocket. He dropped the stone into the boiling water and said,

‘In three hours this magical Soup Stone will have produced the most filling, most flavoursome, and most delightful soup in the world. But please, you must leave me to my preparations. Now clear off.’

After the pot had been boiling for ten minutes a man from the village came out and said,

‘I would like to taste some of this wonderful soup, here are a few carrots that you can add to it in return for a bowl full, that’s fair, isn’t it?’

The pauper reluctantly accepted the carrots and added them to the boiling water. As time went on more of the villagers came out with vegetables of every kind and gave them to the stranger, in order that they too may have some of this wonderful soup. Three hours later the aroma from the boiling pot filled the square.

Each villager had some of the soup, and they all agreed it was the finest that they had ever tasted. The stranger filled five jars with the soup that remained in the pot and took them off to sell in the next town. Then there was an earthquake and they all died. Well, it was a children’s story after all.


The fact was that the people throughout Galamir, from lowly peasants to high kings chose to ignore the fact that dragons were just Soup Stones. They flew into an area and claimed lordship over it, bringing nothing with them other than their strength and their sorcerer's magic. Who had the might to oppose them? Who even had the will to oppose a creature which would aid in the fight against their enemies, asking almost nothing in return, other than the minor Dragongeld tax and the loss of an old milkless cow now and then. Village militias would spring up in order to help the dragon protect their homes from invaders. These militias would become so strong and effective that the dragon would rarely (if ever) have to fight. The Soup Stone would work its magic and a peaceful, profitable life would be enjoyed by all (until the earthquake).

Dragons did not sit on huge piles of gold; they sat on huge swathes of land, which gave them everything they needed, sometimes delivering it to them in a wrapped parcel with a thankyou note attached.

King Hulderech of Tabarain had the might to take on and destroy a dragon. If he ever did, and word got out, then every Black Dragon within three days flight of Galamir would descend upon the Tabar army and decimate it; thereby opening the path for King Alachan of Marthan to walk into Tabarain and claim the throne by Right of ‘Beating Hulderech to a Pulp’.

King Hulderech left the dragons alone. The Dragongeld was a paltry sum compared to the taxes he extracted from his subjects; and, as the dragons preferred to live in a peaceful feudal fiefdom, the internal stability they brought to his kingdom was worth every penny. In fact, if the people ever got rid of dragons, where would it end? After all, wasn’t King Hulderech the biggest Soup Stone in the land?

Blackwing had chosen the Ardra mountains because no dragon roosted there. As the Tabarain-Marthan border had moved back and forth over the Ardra mountains during centuries of war, successive invading armies had encamped in the foothills. In such a state of flux a dragon would have had to behave like a wyrm, always sneaking and stealing through necessity, living each day from talon to mouth.

A few soldiers would satisfy a dragon’s hunger, sure enough, but then he would have had to kill all the soldiers’ vengeful friends too; and then all their friends, and on and on until there was a very good chance the besieged creature would come to a sticky end. It’s all very well knowing that if a dragon was slain by government forces, retribution would be swift and disproportionately viscous, but, understandably enough, no Black Dragon had any wish to be the creature that does the dying. So dragons stayed clear of, or were chased out of, troubled areas like Ardra.

The fugitive’s far-flung choice of sanctuary had meant that the party had to re-cross almost the entire breadth of Tabarain, so Fresnel had stumped-up the few silver bits that it had cost for Blackwing’s new mount. Fresnel could have afforded a better horse, it would have been hard to find a worse one, but he reckoned if this fine steed taught the young hot-head a few lesson in patience and humility, (and also that you don’t flog to death a perfectly good animal that you didn’t even pay for), then it would be a bargain.

In a town eighty miles northeast of Sleakeep Fresnel gave a letter for Chel Geran, to a messenger heading towards Lock. The letter was to be delivered ‘care of’ Mr Ern Solin, a merchant in Lock. This man made weekly trips to the little village to pass on the mail, to buy and to sell whatever he could and to visit his relatives.

The little band of travellers made good time, and by the eleventh day they were almost at Volach travelling on a road parallel to the Torsen-Volach route that Blackwing, Fresnel and Micha had taken seven weeks ago. It was a completely different road to the one they took before, all the way over on the other side of a small mountain; but the sense of familiarity caused Fresnel to continuously look over his shoulder for Tuneve’s spies and to silently rehearse what he intended to say to Rinn, all to ensure that this trip went a little better, a little more smoothly, than the last one.

They stayed in the comfortable well-appointed inn at Volach. A lot of Volach’s money came from metal-ore mines in the nearby mountains. The mine proprietors and managers tended to spend a lot of time and money in the town. The mining ‘villages’ were filthy rats-nests of impoverished and dangerous men, and old, ugly shameless harlots. Men lived and died in the mines, and some of the wealth they created made its circuitous way to Lord Tuneve.

All that suffering was a world away from the opulence of the Volach Inn, and the group went to bed early. They planned to rise before dawn and try to make the fishing village of Iscere by early afternoon.

[ June 15, 2003, 07:04: Message edited by: Bluin ]