Pathfinder Tales Webfiction Will Return Next Week

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

With our industrious Fiction Editor out sick this week and then whisking his way off to Ohio for the weekend to talk up Pathfinder Tales and Planet Stories at World Fantasy Con, we've decided to postpone posting the opening installment of Richard Lee Byers' awesome new novella, "Lord of Penance," until next Wednesday. I know, I know... it's a downer for all the folks who anxiously wait for the week to roll around to get a new, free slice of Golarion, and I promise you we'll serve you up some Pathfinder Tales next Wednesday.

But there is a silver lining: You can now spend the next week catching up on or delving back into the webfiction we've already published, compliments of the brand-new ebook compilations we've recently made available on both the Paizo webstore and Apple's iBookstore (or just browse through the stories in the Pathfinder Tales archives ).

Cover illustration by Eric Belisle	Cover illustrations by KyuShik Shin			Cover illustration by Gerald Lee

Christopher Carey
Editor

The Secret of the Rose and Glove

by Kevin Andrew Murphy

Chapter Four: The Silver Maiden's Key

The wheel of the year had begun again and with it the month of Abadius. Abadar, Master of the First Vault, did as he had always done, and politely but firmly informed the spirits of the dead the Night of the Pale was over.

In other lands and other times, New Year's Day was an occasion for market fairs and festivals, but in Galt forty years after the Red Revolution, the holiday was more often a time for cleaning, putting things in order, and general tidying.

Norret Gantier kept this custom better than he ever had, bandaging his injured hand, decanting the will-o'-wisp's luminous ichor into pre-revolutionary champagne magnums, preserving the strange sponge-like body for future study, writing notes about the curious behavior of the lightning in the elevator cage, and telling the other inhabitants of the Liberty Hostel repeatedly that he was as mystified as they were at the miraculous restoration of the unicorn-and-cockatrice statue in the reflecting pool, the sudden appearance of the siren in the dolphin fountain, the reappearance of all the frescoes about the Liberty Hostel, and whatever that glowing mess was in the elevator.

Flauric called a mandatory household meeting for all the guests to discuss these issues—which is to say, when he served up the New Year's luncheon of Liberty Cabbage, the goose confit and sauerkraut he had left simmering since the night before, he sprang it on everyone.

Of course, those gathered in the banquet hall were already discussing it, starting with the fresco that now adorned that chamber, something between a royal wedding feast and a menagerie. Here was the duke, there was the duchess, there was Crapaudine the giant toad dressed like an old witch with a lace collar and a pointed beaver hat festooned with ribbons, alongside her horrid son, Coco the cockatrice. Further along, standing on his hind legs and dressed as a court fop, was Patapouf the unicorn, flirting with a camelopard dressed as a houri from Katapesh. The chamber depicted the alchemical process of Dissolution, not just because the wedding reception looked like a remarkably genteel afternoon tea in honor of the Mother of Monsters, but because at one end of the table sat the Green Dragon with his ward, the Green Lion, in the process of eating one of the solid gold wedding plates, the allegory for royal water dissolving gold. Not that Norret was explaining this.

There was particular consternation about the fresco in the front hall, as the image of Liberty had lost her liberty cap and the banner of the revolution but otherwise remained untouched, making her look much more like Duchess Devore—especially since her husband had appeared on the wall opposite. Norret privately surmised this was because Tintinetto had sealed his works with an alchemical overglaze derived from copal that allowed objects to resist the passage of time, and the patriotic overpainter had not been privy to this trade secret. Thus, when the fog containing the last of Norret's universal solvent had drifted through, it stripped the additions but left the originals intact.

Nowhere was this more apparent than the grand ballroom, where three and a half stories of whitewash had vanished overnight, replaced with Tintinetto's masterpiece, a glorious mural of the Mountain of the Alchemists with the Tree of Knowledge at the summit.

All the wedding guests were there, garbed as the various planetary emissaries and ambassadors of the elements, from the six-year-old Rhodel with her hobby horse to the duke and duchess representing the Sun and the Moon, wearing planetary symbols on their bodies and not much else. The Tree of Knowledge was a great ash, with silver branches, golden leaves, and every symbol from the requisite mole nibbling the deepest roots to the poetic birds of Katapeshi alchemy nestling in philosophic eggs where the uppermost twigs extended into the lunette at the top.

There were two main schools of thought among the inhabitants of the Liberty Hostel as to what to make of all this. The majority, led by Joringel, the gardener, who had spent the Night of the Pale at the Tabernacle of Shelyn along with most of the village, were of the opinion that the sudden appearance of so much beautiful artwork featuring so many lovely roses could only be a sign of Shelyn's divine favor—and the weird kinky stuff was probably just a peace offering from the Eternal Rose to her misguided brother, Zon-Kuthon. Indeed, Joringel explained excitedly, she had wept tears of joy to see so much beauty, and at this point began to spout utter gibberish. Older inhabitants of the Liberty Hostel explained that he was speaking in tongues, specifically the celestial language of the angels, as Joringel went to the elevator cage and began to ecstatically smear himself with glowing will-o'-wisp ichor, gesturing for others to join him. Some did.

The minority opinion, led by Flauric—which Norret found himself expected to go along with, as he also claimed to have spent the entire night drunk at the Transfixed Chanticleer and no one had contradicted him yet—was that since the Liberty Hostel reeked of vinegar, this could only be a sign of Cayden Cailean's divine displeasure, in no way related to the fact that Flauric had possibly overcooked the sauerkraut, or maybe confitted enchanted geese (even if this would also explain the smell of goose grease and garlic in the ballroom). Besides which, his sauerkraut had been nowhere near the tavern when Coco the cockatrice's statue had come to life and everyone had chased the monster out into the snow—even Lutin, the blessed tavern cat, who had come back two hours later, bedraggled and cold. But as everyone could see now, the brave cat had chased the monster all the way back to the Liberty Hostel, where it hopped back onto the unicorn's head—because as everyone knows, water is the one thing even the bravest cat will not touch.

Tantif the falconer, the household's sole worshiper of Erastil, usually stayed in the mews but had spent the Night of the Pale in Old Deadeye's lonely shrine—a folly in the shape of a hunter's hut at the edge of the snow-filled gardens. She suggested that the two interpretations were not mutually exclusive: Perhaps the Accidental Hero had helped the cat chase the metal cockatrice back onto the unicorn's head, and then the Eternal Rose had decided that since one bit of pretty artwork had been restored, she might as well restore the rest of it. Maybe the time had come for the art to be seen again, for what could the grand mural be but the Liberty Tree itself? Indeed, there was now even a liberty cap atop it!

There was indeed a liberty cap atop the Liberty Tree, or at least Norret's cap caught in the chandelier nearest the mural of the Tree of Life where it had landed when the grenade exploded. Tantif sent her favorite falcon up, and it returned a moment later with the cap, looking at her disappointedly as if it had expected a dead rabbit. She rewarded it regardless, then shared a significant look with Norret.

He tried to work out whether the reflecting pool was visible from the garden folly, but it didn't matter. The road certainly was, and a man with a crutch made a distinctive silhouette and track.

Dissembling quickly, Norret claimed that when he was at the tavern, he threw his cap at the cockatrice, and it stuck on the horn coming out of the monster's chest. He then collected it from Tantif, showing the hole conveniently made by the falcon's claws, and opined that perhaps the vinegar smell was from Cayden's displeasure at Coco as the god's blessed cat chased the cockatrice around the Liberty Hostel?

Everyone looked like they bought this except Tantif, but she held her tongue. Norret put his cap back on.

The birds in the top of the tree then began to sing:

The summit of our mount have ye
Yet what to choose now from the tree?

Everyone looked at the painted birds, then Norret, then back as the birds continued in order.

The phoenix: Eternal Youth?

A pelican pecking blood from her breast: Unending Health?

A clever-looking raven: Infernal Wit?

A halcyon floating atop a sea of mercury: Undying Wealth?

A cockatrice: The Baleful Sting of Poison's Feast?

Finally, a griffin: Or Every Strength of Every Beast?

It was the riddle of the alchemists: what to choose once the great work was complete, for while there were six known prizes at the end of the alchemist's quest, an individual could pick only one. Or at most two, if united in an alchymical wedding.

Or one could die en route, as had Arjan, or get distracted by petty things like revolutions, like Anais. Or...

Norret wasn't certain what the "or" was for him, but suspected it might end with his head meeting a Final Blade like his brother and father, despite the fact that he was currently a slight favorite of the village council, his fireworks having lined their coffers nicely last All Kings Day.

Someone then remarked how strange this was, for earlier that day they had played a game in the billiards room and the great shark that had appeared on the wall had spoken a rhyme as well. Others then revealed similar experiences, and it was put to the test by Norret being asked to doff his cap and put it back on again. Norret did, and again the birds sang their rhyme.

Most were mystified, but a few posited that this was some arcane wizardry or fey sorcery, like the talking mirrors and snuffboxes in the bards' tales—illusion rather than necromancy.

Norret took out his formulary, opened to a completely blank page, and wrote down the rhyme, then asked the others what the frescoes had said in the other chambers and what the good citizens of the Liberty Hostel had been doing just before they did.

This explained everything except why Coco's statue was still wearing his own liberty cap.

Tantif then remarked that if a metal cockatrice was smart enough to remember that cats hate water, he was probably smart enough to keep his liberty cap on, given the opinion of crowns in Galt.

Everybody laughed, although Norret's was forced.

The citizens then agreed, by unanimous vote, that as this was the Liberty Hostel, the mural must now officially be the Liberty Tree, for it would be seditious to call it anything else, and all the other artwork might be similarly patriotic with just a little imagination. Indeed, there was even a portrait of the Gray Gardeners in the crypt, and the unseen armonica often played the Litranaise as well. If that wasn't patriotic, what was?

Norret bit his tongue. After reading The Alchymical Wedding, he knew that the Litranaise was just a slowed reprise of the Silver Maiden's song, the girlish minuet the accursed armonica also played at times.

Rhodel was also right. Darl Jubannich was a hack. In the libretto, under the title of the Silver Maiden's song, was a note: Sung to the tune of "The Seven Merry Maids of Westcrown."

Regardless, everyone thanked Tantif for imparting Erastil's wisdom, some more than most.

As part of the celebration of New Year's Day, local custom was to sort through the unwanted clutter from one's life and give away what one could not use. Norret offered Tantif all of Rhodel's old clothes, which he thought she might get some use out of, and in the middle of the bundle was the pouch with Rhodel's savings, which she certainly could.

Tantif smiled and thanked him.

Over the course of the next few days, Norret set about gathering the rest of the rhymes and triggering actions, recording the various mathematical patterns of the dancing lights, as well as scavenging ingredients to concoct more of the universal solvent so he could properly clean the changing maiden.

As a rule, alchemists did not trust wizardry. Not because it was not efficacious, but because it was not efficacious enough. If one wished to hide something from divination, for example, a wizard would cast various abjurations and illusions that were neither foolproof nor permanent, and even if made permanent, could still be suppressed or dispelled. An alchemist faced with the same task would rely on natural magic, specifically the fact that lead was the metal symbolic of Eox, the dead planet, and deadened divinatory magic accordingly. Thus, all that was necessary was a thin sheet of the metal and a thinner application of sovereign glue.

Norret had composed his latest solvent from the various citrus oils used in Dabril's perfumes, primarily bergamot and neroli, fresh from the orangery, and as he applied it, the lead sheeting peeled back like the rind of a bitter orange.

Soon Madame Devore's changing maiden stood there in all her silvery glory. Where there was once plain lead with poor silvering, she was now a masterpiece of occult engraving over purest mithral, the wondrously light planetary metal symbolic of Liavara, the Dreamer. The mirror's back was cut into the diamond quadrants of a horoscope, the tray into a horary circle, the table was a map of the constellations, and even the maiden's head was now no mere stand for hat or wig but a phrenological head with the face marked with the signs of astrological physiognomy: on the chin, the Hammer; by the right side of the mouth, the Key; on the left of the nose, the eight-pointed Star of Wisdom; on the right cheek, the Shield; by the left eye, the Book; and on the brow, the mark of the constellation the Revolution had rechristened the Liberty Cap, but properly known as the Crown.

Norret was out of fern seed, so mixed another of Citizen Cedrine's signature extracts, a tincture of pimpernel to clear the eyes, plus two drops of eyebright to sharpen them. He applied this prescription to his good eye and blinked twice, but only once he looked under the table did he see the secret drawer. The central pillar appeared affixed by a knob, but his preternatural acuity showed this to be false. Around it were three bands marked with the sigils for the sun, the moon, and the constellations. Norret then found that the maiden's arms were now free. Moving the mirror moved the moon's dial. Moving the tray, the sun's. The constellations were fixed in their zodiacal houses.

Norret tried a number of combinations to no avail. Norret whispered a prayer to Abadar, Master of Keys, then looked to the wall of his room and noticed the lunar and solar patches on the faces of Anais and Arjan Devore, then back to the map of physiognomy on the face of the mithral maiden.

Norret moved the moon and sun to one position, then another, the horoscopes of Anais and Arjan. Nothing happened. Then his good eye came to rest on The Alchymical Wedding. Norret opened it, and after a moment's calculation added a third date.

The drawer dropped open.

Norret used tongs to retrieve a cylindrical leaden casket, a final protection against divination. He placed it on the table, then put on the mask he wore when dealing with toxic fumes. There were none, and when he opened the casket, the ivory leather inside tested negative for contact poison.

He unrolled it, revealing a glove of fine kidskin. Then he realized it was something far finer: unicornskin, for the cuff was fringed with silken beard below the palm and snowy forelock at the top, and the back was set with nothing less than the Carbuncle itself, a ruby cabochon lobed like a heraldic rose or the base of a unicorn's horn. Once he had taken off his mask in wonder, he noticed the whole was softly perfumed: Duchess Devore, the rose of mystery. It was the glove the elderly Arjan wore here, perfumed with his wife's signature scent.

Norret unwound the bandage from his left hand. His scars now had more scars, but the wounds were mostly healed. He pulled the old duke's glove over his hand. The duke had been a smaller man, but the glove expanded to fit. This was magic, and not just the natural magic of alchemy, but a product of wizardry or sorcery. The Carbuncle shone on the back of his hand, glowing softly with an inner light which grew brighter and began to pulse with the beat of his heart.

He remembered something from a tale Melzec told once after a battle, of a gloved assassin who had but to snap his fingers to have a flask of poison appear. Norret had thought this exceptionally silly, and said as much, since poison could be hidden in anything from rings to fan mounts with no magic required. Even so....

Norret snapped his fingers. A book appeared in his hand, and from the stains and scorches, Norret knew exactly what he was holding: the formulary of Anais or Arjan Devore.

He opened it and began to page through. This was Arjan's, but with copious notes and annotations in a ladylike hand. This was the backup Anais left when she fled the Revolution.

It was a treasure for any alchemist, but especially for Norret. There were formulae for powders and tinctures, dust and unguents, alchemically infused bath bombs and clever methods of reducing potions so they could be used as patches and beauty marks. Yet most important of all, there were formulae for extracts, the prescriptions an alchemist mixed to take advantage of his own natural magic, far cheaper than potions and able to be prepared on the fly. As one might expect of an old man, Arjan D'Ivore's formulary included healing balms of all different strengths and purposes, swabs to mend a deaf ear, drops to clear a clouded eye....

The tinctures of pimpernel and eyebright were already to hand, so Norret healed his eye first, almost throwing the patch away in delight, then on second thought, simply left it flipped up, still attached by a bit of spirit gum.

His ear was next, and with a brief popping sound, the volume of the music drifting down the hall doubled. It was the accursed armonica playing the Litranaise again, but for once, no sound could be more welcome.

Last came the healing balm. Norret composed it as ointment, smearing down his left side where the bomb went off almost a year ago. It sank in and soothed, then all at once began to itch terribly. Norret scratched and clawed at himself, then gazed in wonderment as sheets of dead skin fell away, leaving fresh pink flesh and the ability to feel once again.

Norret closed the formulary and would have kissed it, save that he would not even do that with his own given the number of powders and tinctures it had absorbed over the years. Instead, he removed the unicornskin glove and applied the last of the healing balm to his scarred hand. The formula worked as it was meant to, scarred skin flaking away like winter's snow, and he then replaced the glove and set to perusing the rest of the formulary.

There were a dozen recipes he wished to try, and a dozen more he knew he would, but soon he found the information he both suspected and sought: the glove was the key he needed, but only half. The other half was still locked beneath Dabril's snows.

Norret then glanced up and blessed old Rhodel. She may have been a slattern and dollymop, but she was a true daughter of Dabril. Rhodel had gathered the flowers from the Liberty Hostel's gardens and dried them herself, blending her own sachets and potpourri, and as any child of Dabril would, she had kept the varieties separate for when she chose to blend more.

Norret fished through the jar until he found a bloom that was still intact, if dried, then said the word written in the formulary: "Anais."

The duchess's rose shrank away to nothing, vanishing from sight, but Norret knew it was still there.

He gathered up the formularies and stowed them in his pack along with The Alchymical Wedding, added the glowing bottles of will-o'-wisp ichor, kicked the scraps of lead under the bed, then took a few minutes to figure out how to release the catches to disassemble the changing maiden. It came apart, a marvel of engineering, able to be reconfigured to anything from an astrolabe to a spinning jenny according to the instructions in the formulary, even an armonica using a series of nested crystal bowls stored inside the skull, though Norret was more interested in configuring it as a portable alchemy lab. All the components stowed save the tabletop, which he wrapped with his grenadier's blanket to give the appearance of a round shield.

Norret then flipped down his unnecessary eyepatch and picked up his unneeded crutch. Unnecessary and unneeded did not mean they were no longer useful, and even the scabbed bandage still served a purpose, disguising the duke's glove and the Carbuncle.

Norret proceeded to the pump room, hurrying a bit at the end because his two good ears now heard the finale of Jubannich's masque, and to operate the water clock, it was necessary to start at the beginning.

In what he had formerly thought of as the blessed silence between performances, Norret reset all the baths and fountains and even the heating ducts for the various floors, allowing the pressure in the spring to build until he heard the first haunting sounds of the glass armonica drifting down the stairs with the opening notes of the prelude.

It was more tedious than difficult: this valve turned here, that pipe diverted there, a bath drained, a fountain filled, and patience. He heard the sounds of the chateau shifting, the siren lowering and raising, the geyser shooting out of the reflecting pool, a dozen small bits of choreography that would have been observed by the masquers as they went about grounds while the inventor—perhaps Alysande Benedict herself—stayed here behind the scenes with perhaps her greatest invention, the steam-powered waterworks of the Devore residence.

At last it was done and Norret proceeded to the ballroom.

It was a while before he could get it to himself, as Joringel had taken it as a divine mission from Shelyn to repair the beautiful things that had been broken, and so was enlisting folk to help rehang the fallen chandelier, repair the floor, and possibly use the smashed casks and bottles in the winecellars as materials to mend the shattered doors. Norret was exactly the man that he'd been wanting to speak to, especially since the alchemist had been doing such a fine job repairing the fountains. No one had ever seen the geyser before!

Norret talked pleasantly about the chandelier, trying to figure out how to rehang it while time was wasting, as the window of opportunity was only so long. But then Flauric came in to announce that his famous cassoulet that had been simmering since Crystalhue was at last done!

Norret silently blessed Flauric. His cassoulet was even more effective than the Night of the Pale for clearing the ballroom. Norret told Joringel to run on ahead and save a seat for him; he would be along momentarily.

Norret entered the elevator car, the will-o'-wisp's ichor now dried to an irridescent shimmer. He shut the door, then looked about until he found the ormolu flames in the shape of a hand. In the middle was a raised design in the shape of a rose. Norret unwound the bandage and placed the glove over the flaming hand, then with his free hand, pushed the control lever down.

The mechanism engaged and the elevator began its descent, at first into darkness lit only by the warm glow of the Carbuncle but then into brilliant illumination.

The alchemical laboratories Norret was used to were grubby affairs, at best back rooms of former apothecary shops with dusty stuffed crocodiles or house drakes dangling from the rafters. This was bright as day, with clean white marble and the cold light of a hundred ensorcelled flambeaux set in untarnished alchemical silver sconces never looted by the Revolution.

There were apothecary cabinets on the walls, drawers clearly and neatly labeled, cabinets full of tinctures and reagents, bottles of acid and jars of mineral salts, and specimens preserved in oil, wine, or the fluids of Osirian alchemy. In the middle of all this was a great table stacked with a veritable mountain of alchemical glassware: alembics, retorts, cucurbits, crucibles, pelicans, and even a philosophic egg in the center.

Some grand experiment had been left to run while the duchess had fled, but now the burners beneath the crucibles had gone out, the fluids in the pelicans had clouded or sedimented, and in the philosophic egg, rather than the snowy white of albification or the beauteous iridescence of the stage of the great work known as the peacock's tail, all that was left was an ugly charred lump that looked like a black rock.

Norret looked again.

In all of the illustrations, the philosopher's stone was shown as a gleaming golden nugget shining forth with radiance and power, with all the figures seeing it being awed by its majesty or capering about in attitudes of joy. Certainly that's how the grand finale of Darl Jubannich's masque The Alchymical Wedding had ended.

The reality was somewhat less and ever so much more. Just as silver tarnished, so did the stone.

Norret took his mineral hammer out of his pack, delicately cracking the philosophic egg until the charred black lump fell out the hole at the bottom.

He then began to tap at the stone itself until a piece cracked off. It was like a geode, but instead of being filled with jewels or mineral crystals, in the hollow all that could be seen was a bit of shimmering mercury. The mercury of the philosophers.

Norret's breath stilled. This was a treasure beyond price. Not because it could be used to purify base lead into gold, or even iron into silver for that matter, but because it had a higher use, one Norret had not even thought to hope for. Yet it was still incomplete.

Norret blessed a third person that day, Anais Devore, the duchess of Dabril, for she had left her secret laboratory in a state of organization only a woman could. Even Citizen Cedrine would have approved. In the first drawer of the apothecary cabinet, alphabetically, was A for alicorn.

Inside was not a full horn, but a silver nutmeg grater, like a noblewoman would use to spice her food, or carry on her chatelaine as she had for her portrait. Inside were fragments of horn, ground down to little ivory nuts. Alicorn was unequaled for healing, and Norret would need nothing more than this.

That said, creating the potion still took hours, and there was only so long after being exposed to air before the philosophic mercury spoiled. Yet at last, it was done and the two were mixed. A golden oil formed in the flask, glowing with a soft radiance.

Norret stoppered it and gathered up his things, then stepped back into the elevator and ascended. It was night, so he was not troubled as he left the chateau, and while the gravedigger may have seen the will-o'-wisp glow from Norret's bottles or the rosy light of the Carbuncle, he was too fearful or knew better than to trouble with such lights.

Orlin's grave was undisturbed, but only for the moment. Norret took off his glove and put it in his pocket, then mixed tincture of tulip with lupin, creating a mutagenic tonic which gave him the strength and claws of a wolf. The ground was frozen, but at last his nails rasped on rotten wood.

Much has been written about the alchemical stage of putrefaction, but even winter's cold and Dabril's perfumes could only mask so much. Once the body was out of the coffin and resting on the snow, Norret shook off the wolfen mutagen and held the perfumed glove to his nose as he slit the winding sheet.

He did not want to look at the corruption, the worms, the decay, but he did. Then he unstoppered the flask and shook the liquid over the skeleton, starting with the worm-eaten husk that had once been his brother's heart.

	"Every alchemist must decide for himself what great end he strives for. I've already found mine."

The wheel of the year ran in reverse, but only for this part. The heart healed, skin knit over bones, the bloom of mold melted away like frost on windowpanes, after a moment leaving nothing but the body of a child. A golden glow spread from Orlin's healed heart, and he slowly opened his eyes and sat up, looking about himself, Then his gaze rose.

"Norret?" he asked. "Ye—ye got old...."

"Just twenty summers." Norret smiled. "Hardly anything. But I'm back, and so are you."

"I's cold."

"It's winter is all." Norret took his cloak and wrapped it around the boy, helping him to stand, then cut a bit of the winding sheet, wrapping and knotting it about Orlin's feet. He tossed the rest down into the grave along with his eyepatch, then took his hated crutch and used it to shovel in dirt before tossing it in and kicking in the last soil with his boots.

Orlin watched him in shocked wonderment.

"Here," said Norret. "Let me show you a trick. Something Powerdermaster Davin taught us to cover our tracks." He took a snuffbox out of his bandolier and tossed a pinch of dust on the grave.

The ground smoothed over, then the snow reappeared. As a final touch, the grave marker collapsed and decayed. The grave looked as if it had been neglected ten more years than it had existed.

"'Tis magic..." Orlin breathed.

"No," Norret corrected. "Alchemy." He grinned. "What do you say to visiting Isarn? I have friends there."

Orlin looked confused, but nodded.

Norret hugged his brother. They could not stay in Dabril, but it did not matter. He had already claimed its greatest treasure.

Coming Next Week: The subtle relationship between religion and organized crime on Absalom's Avenue of the Hopeful, laid bare in the first chapter of Richard Lee Byers's "Lord of Penance."

Kevin Andrew Murphy is the author of numerous stories, poems, and novels, as well as a writer for Wild Cards, George R. R. Martin's shared-world anthology line, with his next contribution coming in 2011 with Fort Freak. His most recent short stories include "Tea for Hecate" in the upcoming anthology Fangs for the Mammaries and "The Fifth River Freedom," the fourth chapter of Prodigal Sons in the Kingmaker Pathfinder's Journal. For more information, visit his website.

Art by KyuShik Shin

The Secret of the Rose and Glove

by Kevin Andrew Murphy

Chapter Three: The Feaster in the Dark

The wheel of the year had given a quarter turn and reached its end, the final day of Kuthona, the last month, ruled by the twisted god Zon-Kuthon. Winter, the Season of the Black Dragoness, the watery drake who embodied the phlegmatic humor, had begun but nine days before with the solstice, which the Midnight Lord's sister Shelyn, in her infinite kindness, had declared Crystalhue. The Eternal Rose's warm heart warded the days and nights afterwards and they were filled with feasting and merriment—all save the last. Once the sun had set on the final day, the Dark Prince flung open the gates to Pharasma's Boneyard and reminded the people of all they had lost. The Night of the Pale had begun.

This night was not named for the Pallid Princess, Urgathoa, although it was said that she relished it. Nor was it so named for the fearful faces of the living who huddled indoors and made a show of merriment, lest they encounter the spirits of the previous year's dead. Rather it was named for a simple thing, the pole or piling which marked the boundary of a temple yard. For on this night only a fool or one with some fell errand would venture beyond the pale.

Norret was not certain which applied to him—probably both—but he had left the outmost gatepost of the beer garden of the Transfixed Chanticleer half a mile behind, stumping along with his crutch through the snow, having committed he didn't know how many sacrileges against the tavern's patron god, Cayden Cailean.

The first had been staying sober. The third had been volunteering to tend bar, and in the guise of getting a bottle of rare liqueur from the top shelf, taking down the shining ormolu form of Coco the cockatrice and slipping it into his soldier's pack. The second? Lutin, the tavern cat, was also fond of the top shelf, sleeping in front of the cross-stitch sampler that composed the Accidental God's shrine. Norret had sprinkled an alchemical preparation of powdered herring scales over him, camouflaging the cat as Coco.

Norret hoped that Lutin would continue to sleep, or at least that the devotees of the Drunken Hero would write off the sight of an impaled gilded meowing cockatrice as an ecstatic vision from the god himself.

The Night of the Pale was clear and freezing, lit only by the stars and Norret's bullseye lantern. He quaffed an extract of coltsfoot, giving himself the endurance of a horse and some of its surefootedness to offset his limping, and at last arrived back at the Liberty Hostel.

Sulfurous steam curled from the unfrozen end of reflecting pool as Patapouf the unicorn stood over its wellspring, glaring at Norret accusingly as if he were the one responsible for the creature's missing horn.

Norret sighed, leaned his crutch against the carriage porch, and unlaced his boots. If the worst horror the Night of the Pale held was wet feet, he would be a lucky man.

He unstopped a flask, applying a drop of viscous golden fluid to the thick end of the alicorn, taking a moment to open another phial and slick the stopper with an unguent of goose grease and eel liver before replacing it. He had heard the Katapeshi alchemists used the peels of some yellow Mwangi fruit to the same effect with a more pleasant scent, but an alchemist in Galt couldn't hope for imports.

Norret then stepped into the pool. The water barely covered his calves but the warmth made his half-frozen feet feel like knives were being applied. It had been years since he had done this, a frightened boy with a rose and a simple wish, whereas he was now a crippled man with a complicated one. Yet like a rose, the complications were simple when you thought of them: After a great deal of research and revelation, Norret had realized that the interconnected baths and fountains of the Liberty Hostel formed a giant water clock, and while it might be possible to jury-rig some means to open any hidden chambers, that would be like sticking a fork in a broken Brastlewark timepiece hoping the bat would fly out the belfry while the little wooden devils came out to do the dance of the hours. But if one could obtain the original parts....

Before the glue set, Norret lifted Coco the cockatrice—who the sculptor had actually skewered above tail, not beneath, though with the way it twisted around the spiraled unicorn horn, this was not immediately obvious—and fit Patapouf's horn back into its empty socket.

The unicorn said nothing. No thanks for the return of his alicorn or complaints about the still missing carbuncle.

Norret stood there for a long minute, freezing and frozen, looking at the statue, repaired but useless.

Then Coco's beak opened:

No chicken laid this royal egg.
What hand shall hatch it now, I beg?

Norret stood stock still for another minute, unmoving, as if the cockatrice had petrified him. Coco repeated his rhyme. Norret nodded, then hobbled his way back to the icy lip of the reflecting pool. He took out his formulary and used a lead stylus to write down Coco's verse, then got his feet out of the pool, slipping and rolling through a snowdrift until he collected his crutch and his boots, stuffing his wet feet inside before they could freeze to the ice. Teeth chattering, he gathered his lantern and staggered inside the Liberty Hostel. The sad fact was that he feared his own countrymen more than he feared the unknown horrors of the Night of the Pale, and this was the only night he was likely to have the chateau to himself.

Despite its haunted reputation—the lights in the corridors, the whispers from inside the walls, the unfortunate deaths and unexplained disappearances—the duchess's former chateau had a number of permanent residents, and Norret was only one. Another had been Rhodel.

As was the custom, any room was free to any guest to stay in as long as he liked so long as he worked for the good of the household. Rhodel had chosen the duchess's boudoir, and since no one else had stepped forward to claim it after the old dollymop's flamboyant death, it was now Norret's.

So were its heated floors, and as much as his countrymen might decry the late duke's extravagant remodeling, at the moment Norret thought the geothermal piping beneath the tiles was worth every last copper. He stripped off his damp boots and snow-dusted clothes and left them steaming on the floor.

As for the rest of the chamber, Rhodel had turned it into a fantastic magpie's nest of oddments scavenged from about the chateau: here a scrap of tapestry, there a swag of lace. A mangy hobby horse sized for a halfling or a human child lay propped in one corner, button eyes staring sadly, and beside that stood a changing maiden, a curious appurtenance that resembled a mad wizard's golem more than a furnishing one might expect to see in a noblewoman's dressing room. On the bottom was an unremarkable three-legged round table, but a pillar spiraled from the center with two arms, one holding a mirror, the other a tray, and at the top was the head of a beautiful, if bald, woman.

This one appeared to be ebonized wood, but appearances could be deceiving. Norret had quickly recognized the black as silver sulfide—or more prosaically, tarnish. Of course, if it were pure silver, the maiden would have been smelted for coins years ago, but scratches in the wash revealed the galena gray of poor-quality pewter. Like the pinchbeck and paste jewels once favored by the nobility when traveling, the odd vanity-cum-wig-stand was nothing more than gaudy trash meant to be stolen by highwaymen or dim-witted monsters.

Even so, she still proved useful. The maiden's tray worked as a fireproof stand for Norret's lantern while her mirror acted as an excellent reflector, providing both light and additional heat, for the Night of the Pale was as dark and cold as Zon-Kuthon's heart.

Far more valuable than the maiden but even less saleable in current-day Galt was the grand bed where Norret now crawled between the worn duvets and decaying featherbeds. Carved of costly Qadiran rosewood, the decorations depicted some unfamiliar eastern legend involving courtiers and concubines with pipes chasing a gold dragon through fields filled with poppies, at last coming to a poppy-themed palace where they smoked more pipes as the good dragon imparted his wisdom. Norret's only dealings with dragons to date, thankfully, had been the draconic system of alchemy favored by Powdermaster Davin. While that dealt with the cruel chromatic dragons, it only did so in the metaphorical and symbolic sense, and there mostly only with the four—the green, the red, the blue, and the black—that corresponded with the four elements, the four humors, and the four seasons. The white was reserved for the quintessence. Metallic dragons were more of a mystery, and while Norret suspected the bed's carvings depicted some alchemical metaphor from Tian Xia, it could just as easily be a historical record of the great gold dragon Mengkare and the founding of the fabled nation of Hermea.

Regardless, it was also the place where Rhodel had plied her trade for the past forty years. Norret had of course rummaged beneath the mattress for anything of value, finding a small stash of silver and a large cache of negligees, but after imbibing Cedrine's decoction of fern seeds, his attention had focused on the carvings. One of the pipes in a courtier's hand could be pushed in like a peg. One of the concubine's bound feet could be twisted like a knob. And once Norret had moved both of those, he impulsively tweaked the sun disk at the tip of the dragon's tail.

Like a gnome puzzle box, the hidden panel in the headboard slid aside, revealing its treasure: a book.

	"It seems that Rhodel was telling the truth all along."

It had not been, as he had hoped, Duchess Devore's alchemical formulary, or even that of her late husband, but it was something hidden since the Revolution, and a final present from old Rhodel.

Norret opened the panel again on this, the coldest and darkest of nights, retrieving the book, and reread the title: The Alchymical Wedding: A Masque of Allegory. And below that, in grandiose script: By Darl Jubannich.

The Revolution's poet and co-instigator had even signed the manuscript with a signature even larger and more vainglorious than the typeface, and added a personal dedication: For Rhodel, our little Horse.

Norret had read it cover to cover. It was a masque of the sort no longer seen in Galt but still beloved by Shelyn, a grand flowering of art and science, artifice and architecture, and no little wit. It was also a piece of contraband which could send anyone to the guillotine, for rather than the chromatic dragons favored by Powdermaster Davin, or the poetic tree of birds of Katapeshi alchemy, or the mountain of the philosophers or whatever exotic metaphor the alchemists used in Tian Xia, the manuscript referred to the philosopher's quest and the alchemist's great work by means of the worst possible metaphor in post-revolutionary Galt: a royal wedding.

The masque's plot was relatively simple: The youngest daughter of the King of the Moon—symbolic of silver and womanhood and played by Anais Peperelle-née-Devore—had come to wed the Golden Youth, the son of the Golden Sovereign, the Sun King, both symbolic of gold and manhood and both played by the elderly Duke Arjan Devore, using a magic hat to make the former role credible. Assorted ambassadors and emissaries of the planets and elements arrive, bringing with them nuptial gifts of alchemical significance, each more fantastic and valuable than the last, until at last the Silver Maiden and Golden Youth exchange betrothal gifts, the Carbuncle and the Crapaudine, the fabled ruby and diamond periapts of House Devore—the Carbuncle returning after centuries as part of Anais's dowry, as the Peperelles were not old nobility but a family of wealthy spice merchants who had managed to obtain the stone in Taldor, using it as the sovereign glue to cement a splendid match for their brilliant young daughter.

Just when the treasures could not get more ostentatious, the Golden Sovereign reveals his own gift for the happy couple: the philosopher's stone, the jewel in the crown of the royal art and the substance which could not only transmute lead to gold and resurrect the dead, but could also restore the aged to youth.

At this point the Golden Youth removes his disguise, revealing that he and the Golden Sovereign are one and the same, and confessing the other sad fact: his philosopher's stone is broken and useless without the Silver Maiden's aid.

Here alchemical metaphor began to cross into alchemical fact, for as amazing as the fabled artifact was, it shared the flaw of the least extract of the alchemist's art: when exposed to air, the philosophic mercury in its center quickly decayed, and quickly tarnished into uselessness. This had occurred with the Golden Sovereign's broken stone.

However, useless does not mean worthless, and an artifact is not so easily destroyed. Just as tarnish can be turned back into silver with the application of a bath of soda ash and foil of a lesser metal—the alchemical reaction to remove sulfur from silver—Duke Arjan Devore hoped, with the help of his clever young bride and the purifying radiance of the toad stone and the unicorn's jewel, to discover a process to separate the philosophic mercury from the philosophic sulfur, thus recreating the White and Red Elixirs, the penultimate stages of the great work.

At this point alchemical theory moved back to poetic metaphor and the conventions of the theater: The White Queen and the Red King combined, singing a particularly passionate duet, then merged into the Divine Hermaphrodite and gave birth to their magical child, the Golden Heir. For the masque's finale, all the wedding guests reappeared, ascending the mount of the alchemists to attend the christening, singing the praises of the heir who was one and the same with the philosopher's stone, and also praising the proud parents, the King and Queen, not only separate once again but both now blessed with the glory of eternal youth for achieving the alchemist's quest, and even the birds in the tree of knowledge at the summit joined in the song.

That was the theory, at least. In reality, Duke Arjan died of old age and his bride ended up fleeing a revolution.

Of course, very few lives go according to plan. Norret paged back through the book to the part where Aballon, the Horse, fastest of the planets and symbolic of quicksilver, sends the youngest filly from his herd as both herald and wedding gift, there to act as page and messenger in the happy couple's hall. Rather than being played by the child of some nobleman or other powerful friend, this part was given to the daughter of the duke's stable master, a remarkably pretty child with her hair braided with ribbons, a happy smile on her face, a hobby horse in one hand, and dreams of one day being a great bard or entertainer.

It had taken Norret almost a minute of staring at the hand-tinted etching to realize he was looking at Rhodel, ten years before the Revolution. Ten years before she had slept with the revolutionaries who came for her former mistress and every soldier since, taking up a rather different form of entertainment than she had originally planned, successfully saving her neck, if not her dignity.

Norret closed the book. Rhodel had taken that dignity back at the end. Say what you would about the old slattern, but despite madness, drunkenness, disease, and desperation, she had not chosen a coward's fate and would face the Lady of Graves with her head held high.

That said, the credits and thank-you notes of Darl Jubannich's masque explained a great deal more. Formerly, all Norret had known about the Liberty Hostel's design was that Duke Arjan Devore had bankrupted the village creating ostentatious expansions to his ancestral manse and redecorating to please his vain young bride. The text of masque did not dispute that, but explained that the entire chateau was not only rigged up like an immense steam-driven musical waterclock, the baths and fountains forming the mechanism, but was also an alchemical allegory on a grand scale, each and every chamber symbolizing a different stage of the great work, like interconnected vessels in an alchemist's laboratory.

Tintinetto, the famous halfling muralist, had painted frescoes. A wizard had then placed magic upon the figures' mouths, creating as he called them "philosophic eggs"—a pun on the actual egg of the philosophers, an ovoid glass vessel—such that they would speak when certain actions were taken or certain words said, but it was up to the wedding guests to divine what triggered each, and there would be a prize for the one who discovered the most!

This amusing party game explained why the chateau was now haunted by indistinct mumblings, since when the Revolution came to Dabril, the priestess of Shelyn, faced with the displeasure of her goddess if she allowed the destruction of priceless works of art and the even greater displeasure of the Red Council if she did not, was inspired to a divine solution. Specifically, a solution of slake lime and water, commonly known as whitewash.

Of course, Norret had his own solution: concentrated champagne vinegar mixed with his last drops of the universal solvent. He got out of the bed and got his clothes back on, now mostly dry. The Liberty Hostel was abandoned by every resident save himself, and if he wanted to hear what the frescoes were muttering about beneath the whitewash, the Night of the Pale was the safest night for it, ironic as that might be.

Norret moved the changing maiden's mirror so that his lantern illuminated the blank wall of the boudoir, then picked up one of the duchess's perfume atomizers that had somehow survived the years. He squeezed the bulb.

The slake lime hissed and bubbled away, revealing Anais dressed as a royal bride facing a regal young man. In her right hand she bore a spiraled ivory horn, but was using it like a fencing foil, spearing the youth through the back of his left hand and causing a gout of blood to well up like a jewel on the white glove he wore. To be fair, he had already unlaced the front of her gown, but instead of grabbing a bit of flesh like any normal groom, he was instead holding up a large toad to nurse. Either milk or poison flew from the suckling toad, spattering the back of the green glove his bride wore on her left hand, glittering like a crazed diamond.

It was an allegorical illustration of the exchange of the Carbuncle for the Crapaudine, but Norret was certain the priestess of Shelyn had understood none of that, only that it appeared monstrous, perhaps related to Lamashtu. As such, she would have had no qualms about covering any of it up.

A few more spritzes revealed an old king pointing at the younger man's back, his left hand wearing a white glove fringed with unicorn mane, the back adorned with a ruby cabochon—clearly the Carbuncle again. Norret was certain he was looking at Duke Arjan Devore.

Norret took the perfume atomizer and set it deliberately on the maiden's tray. The figure then spoke:

Though I seem age and he seems youth
Both he and I are one in truth.

A nice reminder from an old duke to his young bride, but as Norret knew from reading the masque, it possessed a great deal more significance.

Norret recorded the rhyme and confirmation of its trigger in his formulary, then picked up the atomizer and hung his lantern from its belt clip. A soldier was nothing without gear fasteners, and an alchemist doubly so. Being lame made the necessity triple.

He opened the door of his room and glanced out. The hall was deserted save for a magical light drifting lazily along to the tune of the phantom minstrels. So far, the Night of the Pale was turning out somewhat less than horrifying. While a ball of blue witchfire might frighten some, Norret had read Jubannich's masque and so knew that a long-forgotten illusionist had placed dancing lights in the gallery—lights which would be less frightening if there were actual dancers—and occasionally one spun off and went drifting down the corridors, presumably to illuminate portraits that no longer hung there.

Norret, however, had only so much solution, so it would be best to start with the most promising chambers first. Lame as he was, he decided to go with Powdermaster Davin's advice: Begin at the bottom.

Norret avoided the various wine cellars for the moment, as they were a sea of broken bottles and smashed casks, their noble vintages long since drunk by reveling revolutionaries. The pump room he would save for last. Yet soon the open drawers of the Devore family crypt gaped before him like empty sockets in a toothless skull, the coffins removed long ago to fuel pyres or resurrections, and even the coins from the corpses' eyes were now likely in some soldier's pocket or harlot's purse.

He turned to the whitewashed wall opposite the shattered sepulchers and, as the strains of the spectral armonica drifted down the stairs, applied his solution, watching as streaks of charcoal and drops of blood began to appear. The bard who had enchanted the chateau with the phantom minstrels had cued them to play various songs at different intervals so as to not become tiresome, but Norret was already quite tired of the Litranaise, the familiar lyrics clear in his head: O royal guards on your patrols / Each of your crimes we will repay / We whippoorwills will catch your souls / We are the Gardeners in Gray....

The familiar masks of Galt's executioners appeared on the wall, the Gray Gardeners holding the duchess's mysterious red-and-white rose to their lips with skeletal hands like angels of silence or hooded wraiths. Of course, having read the masque's libretto, Norret knew the Gardeners' leitmotif properly belonged to the shades of the frost, allegorical figures of putrefaction, come for the rose of mystery, another symbol of the great work given form by a literal-minded druid: We come to blight the blooming rose / We shades of frost, we fateful fey / We mourning doves, we hoodie crows / We are the gardeners in gray....

Doves and crows were common alchemical symbols, the colors of their feathers corresponding to the hues seen within the philosophic egg, but whippoorwills were little mottled brown soul-stealing nightjars favored by necromancers who liked cute familiars, and the colors of their plumage would only indicate that the alchemist had screwed up.

Screw, however, was the operative phrase. When Norret had asked about the Liberty Hostel for phrases the inhabitants had heard from the ghosts in the walls or actions that might disturb the spirits, Flauric had cautioned him to never drink in the crypt, for doing so incurred the horrible, disapproving whispers of teetotaling spinster ghosts!

Norret was a soldier, however, and knew that libations for the dead were an ancient sacrifice. He uncorked a bottle of claret he had requisitioned from the Transfixed Chanticleer and compounded his sins against the Accidental God by pouring the first taste on the floor.

The shades whispered in chorus:

Divine the figures of death's dance.
Unlock the secrets of our manse.

Norret wrote the rhyme in his formulary, considering, then recorked the bottle and made his way back upstairs.

The ceiling of the grand ballroom rose three and a half stories with two galleries. Two ormolu chandeliers still hung in the vault while the third had crashed through the parquet floor. All had been stripped of their ensorcelled flambeaux and most of their crystals, but Norret still had his lantern. There were also magical lights in the uppermost gallery, currently moving through the figures of a sprightly gavotte. He quirked a smile as he recognized the tune: "The Caged Phoenix," the aria sung by Pharadae, ambassador of the salamanders, as she presents her nuptial gift.

Norret was not a phoenix, but he was not going to climb two flights of stairs with a crutch when the original phoenix's cage was still there, its ormolu bars cast in the form of a nest of Osirian palm fronds and flames. And moreover, he had repaired the mechanism.

The elevator door clanged shut, cables and counterweights engaged, the whole powered by the ancient hydraulic technology sometimes called the Azlanti Screw. Norret ascended, feeling not so much like a phoenix arising from his pyre as a crippled alchemist about to make a crucial discovery.

A walkway bridged the vault, opposite the largest, whitest wall in the chateau—and likely the greatest mural—but what Norret was interested in at the moment was the dancing lights. They moved like lanterns carried by capering ghosts, in and out the patterns of a figure, multiplied by the mirrors of the gallery into a sea of constellations.

Norret shuttered his own lantern so he could observe them more clearly. Thankfully, he was tall and so could look down on them slightly, seeing the shapes they traced in the darkness repeated to infinity in the mirrors, slightly angled, like bones landing in a spiral. The patterns were not just choreography, but mathematical figures, combinations spun clockwise and widdershins.

The wheels of the valves in the pump room formed a similar line, and Norret realized that, just as the dances of the masque ran in sequence, so could the valves be turned in the same pattern.

There was one troublesome light, however. One that moved through the constellations like a wandering star or bobbed at the corner of the set like a wallflower at a dance. Norret looked at it in the darkness a long while, pondering its meaning, before at last speaking aloud. "What are you doing here?"

"I could ask the same," said the light. It was an inhuman voice, like the voice of the armonica, its tone too pure, too clear, too cold. "Why is there no terror?"

Norret recognized it. A will-o'-wisp, one of the death-fires that followed armies, feeding on the fear of dying soldiers.

"Everyone I loved is dead. I've no time for terror."

"How tragic," the corpse light said, and vanished, swallowed up by the darkness. "Perhaps now? I can see you but you cannot see me...."

There was a virtue to being blind in one eye: Despite being half deaf as well, Norret had learned to use his hearing that much more, and could sense vaguely where the voice had drifted, near one of the dead chandeliers. He reached to his bandolier, retrieving a small metal tube like a child's tin whistle. He raised it to his lips and blew a blast, but instead of sound, what issued from the end was shimmering glitter.

Twinkling, it dusted down, a preparation of powdered mica, luminescent phosphorus, and crushed moon moth wings.

The will-o'-wisp reappeared, now glowing a ghastly greenish-white rather than witchy blue like the rest of the lights. The chandelier's remaining crystals winked and glittered with the illumination and a faint odor of garlic filled the air, a curious property of phosphorus.

The corpse light screamed, an unearthly howl like all of an armonica's crystal bowls touched at once, and launched itself at Norret.

Norret held up a hand to ward it off, his numb hand, still clutching the duchess's perfume atomizer. A bolt of pure voltaic energy sparked from the will-o'-wisp, but glass was an insulator, proof against any and all galvanic power. Unfortunately, brass and silver were not, and the fittings drew the electricity inside, bottling the lightning and volatilizing the mixture of acids.

The atomizer atomized.

Norret felt the pressure rather than pain as the explosion drove splinters of glass through his gauntlet into his hand and slammed him back into the railing. The garlic scent of phosphorus was replaced by that of vinegar—searing, eye-watering, and caustic. Vinegar was said to be the sign of Cayden Cailean's displeasure, but the god of Accidents and Ale was either sending mixed messages or else equally displeased at everyone, for the expanding force of the acid gas also flung the death-fire back into the elevator car.

Norret held his breath. If the will-o'-wisp had wanted fear, it had done the wrong thing, for he was a soldier, and beyond panic lay the battle calm. He took stock of the angles, the placement, the lines of railings and chandelier, then lobbed a bomb, a soft underhanded toss with a short fuse.

The concussive grenade exploded, loud and deafening, but this time Norret was prepared for it. He grabbed the ormolu railing with both hands, the brass strong beneath the gold as the blast knocked his cap and crutch flying. Like frames in a zoetrope, crystals shattered in slow motion, and he saw rather than heard the glittering golden door of the elevator slam shut, the latch close.

With all his might, he hurled a tanglefoot bag directly at that latch, falling to the walkway and taking deep ragged lungfuls of the clean winter air that had replaced the vaporized vinegar and solvent.

A surge of electrical energy flew from the wisp but arced back from the bars, bouncing about inside the cage with a brilliant blue-white light. Again the creature launched lightning and again the bars caged it. Then again.

Norret was intrigued. An alchemical property of ormolu? Some elemental abjuration on the phoenix's cage? Outright divine intervention?

It made no matter. The tanglefoot glue was smoking. Norret hauled himself up by the railing, using it to limp along.

"You wanted terror." He pulled a flask from his bandolier. "Have some!"

Norret hurled it over the railing, his aim precise. The flask burst, the goose-and-eel-liver salve coating the cables and over-greasing the gears. The next moment, they slipped, the elevator plummeting to the floor with the will-o'-wisp inside.

One fall was not sufficient to kill the monster, but five were. Once Norret hobbled down the stairs and collected his crutch, he jiggered the mechanism and smashed Pharadae's cage up and down until at last luminous ichor of the sort wizards use to pen secret missives leaked between the gilded bars.

With the will-o'-wisp's death, a last crackle of galvanism crept up the cables, arcing back and forth between them in the phenomenon known as Sarenrae's Ladder. Between that and the alchemical lubricant, another mechanism activated.

Norret heard a beautiful sound outside, like a siren singing, which was not surprising given that such was exactly what was rising from the dolphin fountain. Astride another fearsome dolphin, green with verdigris, sat the shining ormolu figure of the siren of the philosophers, diadem of stars upon her brow, milk or possibly coffee spurting from her breasts.

The fountain had not been cleaned since All Kings Day.

As soon as Norret approached, the statue paused her wordless song for spoken rhyme:

If you would solve my mystery
The silver maiden holds the key.

Norret knew exactly the maiden of which she spoke.

Coming Next Week: The astounding final chapter of "The Secret of the Rose and Glove."

Kevin Andrew Murphy is the author of numerous stories, poems, and novels, as well as a writer for Wild Cards, George R. R. Martin's shared-world anthology line, with his next contribution coming in 2011 with Fort Freak. His most recent short stories include "Tea for Hecate" in the upcoming anthology Fangs for the Mammaries and "The Fifth River Freedom," the fourth chapter of Prodigal Sons in the Kingmaker Pathfinder's Journal. For more information, visit his website.

Art by KyuShik Shin

The Secret of the Rose and Glove

by Kevin Andrew Murphy

Chapter Two: The Torching of the Traitoresses

Half the wheel of the year had turned since Norret's return to Dabril. The ruddy firedrake who ruled summer, salamanders, fire mephits, and tinderbox imps had at last spent his rash choler and ceded his place to autumn, the Season of the Blue Dragoness, the earthen drake who embodied the melancholy humor and was thus honored by carbuncles, gnomes, jewelers, and those who harvest the fruits of the earth. It was also the Fifth of Neth, fortieth anniversary of Galt's independence. In Dabril, that also meant time for the Torching of the Traitoresses.

When he was nine, Norret remembered Mad Maudine, who swore that she had uncovered a nest of nobles who had secretly drowned themselves to escape the justice of the Final Blades and were then reincarnated by a royalist druid. Dabril's council was less than pleased to find that the purported nobles were now a flock of wild geese, and were even less amused when Maudine referred to a particularly pretty and friendly goose she had tamed as 'Lady Gemerel,' especially since it was well accepted that the infamously empty-headed ingénue still had her soul residing in Bloody Jaine.

The geese were beheaded with normal blades and roasted, and Maudine's fate was somewhat similar. Dabril was too small to warrant a permanent guillotine, so rather than transporting her down the Sellen to Jaine—inviting questions from the Woodsedgeans as to what constituted a felony in Dabril and jokes about foolish provincials—Dabril's council declared Maudine's crime a misdemeanor. Thus she would suffer the same fate as scolds, gossips, innwives who watered their wine, and those who consorted with monsters or gave birth to them. She was placed in a farthingale woven from osiers, covered with a gown of straw, and had her head locked into a gossip's mask, a monstrous piece of ironwork inspired by Lamashtu with the ears of foolish donkey, the snout of a truffle-hunting pig, and the voice of a silly goose. This last was created by means of a razor-edged kazoo forced down the condemned's throat so that she gurgled blood and made absurd sounds as she begged for mercy.

Of course, it was a mercy. Once she was placed on a raft packed with stakes, a few fellow traitoresses, a lit torch, and a hayrick, Maudine's foolish soul was free to journey to the Boneyard and whatever fate the Lady of Graves decreed thereafter.

Norret still did not know what crimes his father or Ceron had committed to warrant a Final Blade, but knew better than to ask.

Thankfully, this year Dabril's traitoresses were mere wicker and straw, effigies of the hag Traxyla and her cronies who had once disastrously usurped the Revolutionary Council, packed with fireworks so they would burn more brilliantly. Those who wished forgiveness for small transgressions, wished to appear patriotic, or just liked to blow things up could purchase a council-approved firework to add to the pyre. As an alchemist and former apprentice to Powdermaster Davin, Norret had found gainful employment.

The boy clutched a coin purse, his fingers pink in the crisp autumn air, and eyed Norret's tray greedily. The formula for thunderstones, when cut, yielded pouches of popping pebbles. Sunrod amalgam, instead of tipping iron crows, could also be applied to thin wire to create sparklers. The receipt which created smokesticks sufficient to fog a battlefield could be diluted and adulterated with salts and essential oils so as to create wands of incense which left trails of pleasantly colored smoke, the most popular being the patriotic punks Norret had triple-dipped such that first they would release blue smoke scented with heliotrope, then white scented with jessamine, and finally red perfumed with Dabril's own roses. Similarly, the formulae used for creating alchemist's fire and explosive petards could be used to create what Powdermaster Davin had termed "the fires of joy"—hop-frogs, dragonfly rockets, crackers, squibs, a pretty wheel called Shelyn's Rose, goblin brands, siren fountains, and witch's candles.

"Why they be called 'witch candles'?" asked the boy. "'ese cast hexes?"

"They burn blue and scream when you light them."

"Ma granmere's a witch. Candles only burn blue when she cackles." The boy looked to the hop-frogs, which Norret had given scintillating incense pastilles for the jewels in their foreheads rather than the fuming arsenide pills he would use for venomous toads, adding, "Knows a hex that kin make toads hop outta yer mouth too." He paused. "Only uses it on those the Council marks, mind ye."

"Do the toads make noise when they hop, then explode into swarms of fireflies?"

"No," the boy admitted dubiously. "What sorta hex be that?"

"No hexery," Norret corrected. "Alchemy. Natural magic, the art of the philosophers."

The boy was suitably impressed, emptying the purse of coppers and even a few well-worn silvers for an assortment of hop-frogs, rockets, sparklers, squibs and small fountains. Norret added a witch's candle as lagniappe, and the boy smiled and took it. "Gonna slip this inna granmere's hex bag when she ain't lookin'...."

Norret was deaf in one ear and could pretend he had missed that. "Thank you for your patriotism, citizen." He watched as the boy ran down the stairs to the dock and proceeded to stuff rockets up the wicker witches' skirts. "Joyous independence!"

The gardens of the Liberty Hostel were filled with colored smoke, pops and whistles, and sparkling flashes from those who could not wait for nightfall. The chateau itself might be haunted, plagued with inexplicable lights in the corridors, mysterious whisperings from the walls, ghostly music in the grand ballroom, and the occasional unfortunate death or disappearance of those who went poking about too deeply for undiscovered treasures, but the grottos and garden follies, and indeed the rest of the grounds, were blissfully unaffected and treated as the people's park.

A few intrepid souls who were not desperate or brave enough to live there already snuck up onto the dolphin terrace and stole a glance through the shattered panes of the ballroom doors, shivering with delight at their daring since the music sounded like no earthly instrument save the accursed armonica, the glass organ so much in fashion with the nobility before the Revolution. Created by the Andoran inventrix Alysande Benedict, its rotating bowls were tuned to the resonant frequencies of the celestial spheres, said to mimic the voices of angels, the wails of the damned, and all spirits in between, and performances of the infernal device could induce madness or even death. Even so, some declared the unseen minstrels to be the ghosts of patriots since the tune of the spectral armonica at times sounded like the Litraniase, the Chant of the Gray Gardeners.

Norret didn't know about the madness or death, but considerable annoyance was possible. He also personally thought the invisible armonica players were counter-revolutionaries, since half the time he had heard the revolutionary march echoing down the halls, it was played up-tempo, turning the tune into a mocking minuet. He could even hear a slight echo of it now, the merry timing completely at odds with the lyrics: Cruel tyrants, hear the widows weep! / The beggars howl like starving trolls! / Galt's children in the Boneyard sleep / But Mercy's Blade will hold your souls!

Still, the terrace commanded the best view of the river, and there was a comfortable bench by the fountain where, thanks to Norret's handiwork, the dire dolphins were spouting and gargling for the first time since the Revolution.

It had not been intentional.

Like many guests of the Liberty Hostel, Norret had gone exploring, discovering garrets and wine cellars, attics and crypts, parlors, pantries, the buttery, the scullery, and even a still room presided over by a fresco of Patapouf the unicorn in a field of flowers. There, where the duchess and her servants had once prepared the simples, preserves, medicaments, soaps, and of course perfumes a large household required, Norret had unslung his bedroll and now used the old marble mortars and tables to compound fireworks.

That said, while the duchess's still room was the most lavish work area Norret had ever had the privilege to use, the alembics he had cobbled together from jam jars and jelly pots were a far cry from the grand alchemical laboratory a duke and duchess obsessed with alchemy must have had. Flauric, the gnomish chef who made the kitchens his personal domain, claimed in a rare bout of sobriety that the stench of sulfur beneath the chateau came not from the magical dungheap of a cockatrice-hatching toad but from a great lake of brimstone where the duke and duchess stewed to this day, for the duke's laboratory was in Hell itself!

Norret personally doubted this. Not the bit about the ultimate fate of Arjan Devore's soul, but the idea that Anais Devore had already joined him and that the chateau's cellars contained a portal to the underworld. However, the laboratory had to be somewhere, and forty years of propaganda could easily confuse a secret alchemical workshop with Hell itself.

Consequently, Norret had compounded one of Cedrine's formulae—a vegetative extract composed of fern, the puckish herb even illiterate witches knew could grant both invisibility and the ability to sense the hidden—and an exploration of the cellars led him to the pump room, a tangled mass of broken pipes and frozen valves, rusted gears and corroded machinery.

Fortunately what man and time could break, alchemy and art could repair. Unfortunately, when he managed to turn a series of valves he was certain would open a passage to a secret laboratory—or at least a lost ducal treasury—Norret instead diverted the hot springs to the dolphin fountain which had long ago been planted with sugar beets, causing an eruption of molten mud and molasses on the back terrace.

Norret was reeking of sulfur like a parboiled steam mephit when he was brought before Dabril's council. It did not help that rumors were circulating that he was the lost heir of Duchess Devore, here to reclaim his mother's legacy.

Men had been sent to the final blades for less. However, Norret made a pitiable sight and pled his case: His real mother had disowned him, the rest of his family was dead save for one sister, and despite his father and brother's crimes against the state, he was a child of Dabril and patriot of Galt, a decorated veteran with an honorable discharge. Also, while hot mud baths were said to be therapeutic, he had just been trying to open a pipe to one of the Liberty Hostel's other baths so he could soothe his war injuries. As for brimstone, while he could not summon fiends with it, he did know how to turn it into fireworks.

The truths were true and the lies and fabrications were relatively slight, so aside from making fireworks for the council to sell for All Kings Day, Norret was tasked with cleaning out the fountain and then using his alchemical arts to tint the waters red, for this was the Red Revolution's Ruby Anniversary and the council thought it would be festive.

Norret accomplished this by installing a mercury drip in the pump room. Combined with the sulfur already present in the water, and adjustments so as to not create metacinnabar, the rarer black form of mercuric sulfide, this precipitated cinnabar's beautiful red form, vermilion, also known as the limner's pigment Tien red.

Norret thought the water looked like fine claret and was quite proud of himself until one of the older citizens of Dabril came to purchase fireworks and took a moment to praise his verisimilitude, saying the fountain looked just like it had when Bloody Jaine stood on the bench where Norret now sat.

The old timer regaled him with memories of that great day, how the stone basin had caught the spurting blood and the fantastically fanged maws of the dire dolphins had spat it back just as the basket caught the heads! Just imagine—the line of the condemned had stretched all the way down the wide marble stairs to the boathouse which had once housed the vain duchess's swan boats but was now filled with the council of Dabril, currently judging the knitting contest for Coco the cockatrice's new liberty cap.

Norret dully tallied up the old man's purchases and smiled as best he could as he received the council's money along with the man's praise of how patriotic he was to restore such a fine reminder of Dabril's glorious past!

Norret sat there for a long while, listening to the gurgling of the fountain and the ghostly armonica echoing from the ballroom until they were drowned out by another tune, a woman's voice singing: "There was an inn, oh long ago. Its cockerel would crow and crow. Now comes the time ye all should know"—the singer sustained the note masterfully, a rich dramatic contralto, before concluding the verse—"the Tale of the Cockerel...."

This was followed by hacking and sputtering and a loud slurp. "Pfah, thish izh rosewater," slurred the same voice next to him, no longer singing. Norret looked.

A woman, laced into a gown that would have been more becoming when it was fifty years less moth-eaten but still displaying an attractive figure, had come out of the chateau in her salvaged finery and now leaned over the bloody red water, cup in one hand.

The council had also asked him to do something about the fountain's scent, but had thankfully made no preference beyond that. Attar of roses was common in Dabril, one of the few perfumes strong enough to mask brimstone, and Norret had just thought it would be nice. "You were hoping for some other flavor?" he asked querulously.

"Was hopin' fer a tipple fer me gout," the woman confessed. "Looksh like wine...." From the aroma of anise and alcohol wafting from her, Norret assumed she had already tippled quite a bit, anisette being a potent if poor imitation of elven absinthe.

Healing elixirs were not Norret's strong suit either, more the pity, but he knew from the doctrine of signatures that the shape of a plant indicated the malady it treated. "'The bulb of an autumn crocus resembles a gouty toe,'" Norret quoted, retreating to pedantry. "If you could find one, I could attempt a stronger tonic than... mineral water."

	"Rhodel may not be the prettiest doxy in town, but she's by far the bravest."

"'s'not gout," the woman admitted, staggering, then turned and abruptly sat down on the edge of the fountain. Norret realized with some horror that the owner of the attractive figure, impressive singing voice, and salvaged pre-Revolutionary gown was Dabril's oldest piece of laced mutton, Rhodel, her weathered breasts corseted high. "Got anythin' fer hag pox?"

She used the vulgar term rather than the seditious "Galtan pox" or the flowery elven "syphilis," which sounded more like some frolicking shepherd from a pastoral lay than a malady that resembled a hag's curse, able to take a hundred evil forms, from sores to deformity to outright madness, and thus utterly defeat the doctrine of signatures.

Fortunately that doctrine was subset to the law of sympathy and names still held power. "Wild pansies," Norret declared. "Halflings call them 'heartsease' and the elves call them 'love-in-idleness.'"

"D'they work?"

"Citizen Cedrine swore by them, but only shared her formula to turn them into a love philtre." Norret shrugged. "I haven't any sure healing receipt save thieves' vinegar, and that's just an antiplague, not a panacea."

Rhodel leered at him, taking in his crippled form slumped on a bench with a tray of fireworks in his lap and his crutch at his side until a smile came over her scab-encrusted lips. "An' if ye had one a those, ye'd have already taken it...."

Norret nodded. "I can't even compound a decent mithridate. Powerdermaster Davin commended the curative properties of pure mercury, but he took that with mithridate to belay the poison. The best I can concoct is antitoxin."

"Fewmets..." Rhodel swore. "Fine sort of alchemist ye are!" She reached into her ample cleavage and produced a flask from the depths of her bodice. "Ye're sure no duchess!"

"What do you mean?"

"Back when the duchess threw a ball, she really threw a ball! She tossed a bash bomb big as a pomander into thish fountain 'n' all at once the water started frothin' 'n' bubblin'." Rhodel uncorked the flask and took a swig, the air filling with the odor of badly aged anisette. "When it cleared, it were filled wid champagne cold as a midwinter mornin' and nicer t'an anythin' ye're likely ta taste in yer lifetime—an' it could cure ev'ry ill, even ma turned ankle!"

"'Bash bomb'?" echoed Norret. "What's that? A concussive grenade?"

"No, I shed 'bash bomb,'" Rhodel corrected. "Like the duchess used ta take a bath." She pointed to the fountain. "She had a pink one 'at made healin' champagne ' an' a white one 'at made a beauty bath a' ass's milk." She took another drink and looked at the bottle, then at Norret. "Y'know this was when I were a parlor slave here an' the wicked duchess weren't beatin' me wid 'er ridin' crop while kickin' da turnspit dogs wid 'er fancy boots. Because, y'know, she did."

"Of course," said Norret.

Rhodel looked back. "Eh, I know men, an' I know ye know that last were a crock." She took another swig of anisette. "Care for a nip?"

Norret looked at her poxy lips. "No, thank you."

Rhodel took another swig of liquid courage, stowed the flask in her cleavage, and seemed to come to a decision. "Let me help ye wid dat," she breathed, reeking of anise, alcohol, and decay, like Urgathoa on a bender. Norret recoiled in horror as the harlot leaned over and expertly unlaced the fireworks tray from his waist, then took it and put it on herself.

"I've already said too much, might as well say a bit more," she declared. She stood, witch's candles and siren fountains bowing away from her bosom. "Follow me, Young Norret."

Norret got to his feet and grabbed his crutch, but it was a sad testament to his state that an aged drunken dollymop driven mad by hag pox still moved faster than he did, staggering down the steps and continuing her song, skipping a few verses along: "Down in the dung there lived a crone! A warty toad with a precious stone! Upon her brow, a diamond shone!"

Rhodel stopped and sustained the note, having found the spot on the landing where the belvedere of the chateau behind her and the hills of Kyonin before combined to amplify her already impressive pipes. Norret had almost caught up when she concluded the phrase: "The Cap of Crapaudine!" drawing applause and causing the revelers on the stairs to part for her as she flounced down with all the joie de vivre of a maiden who has made up her mind.

By the time Norret got down to the dock, Rhodel had climbed atop the dais and lit a goblin brand. It fired shells with a series of loud reports: blue, white, and red flew into the air, the colors of Galt, followed by green, gold, and rose, the colors of Dabril. "Now that I have yer attention," Rhodel declared, "I would like ta address this meetin' a the Council a Dabril!"

There were murmurs in the crowd and words like "mad" and "drunk."

"Thatsh right," Rhodel agreed. "I may be mad, I may be drunk, but I'm the one with the bombs, so ye all get ta listen ta me fer a change!" She held the smoldering remains of the goblin brand over her tray. A few of the wiser and faster ran in terror, but others, underestimating the explosive capacity, foolishly thinking that the fires of joy could only be used for joy, or just as trapped as Norret was by his crutch and the press of the crowd, simply stayed, petrified as if by a cockatrice's touch.

"This is our independenshe!" declared Rhodel. "Independenshe from what? Truth? Common sense? Fear? Well I'm dyin' so I'm done wid the last, so I'll tell ya a few things the old don't wanna admit an' the young only suspect. Our duchess? She were a good duchess! An' she worked her ass harder'n I ever worked mine on these streets! Ye all think perfume 'n' gloves sell themselves? She pimped 'em hard at court, an' our guilds got rich. An' if she took some fer herself, so what? She earned it! An' her husband, old Arjan, the 'bad' duke? He were a scared old man too busy snorting mercury 'n' tryin' ta make the elixir of youth ta have time ta whip peasants! Yeah, he taxed us an' spent too much on his weddin'. Boo hoo. We still got taxes! And death too, an' a lot more o' that! An' shpeakin' a death, maybe the duchess poisoned old Arjan and bribed the priests ta say he weren't comin' back, or maybe he just were too old like she said. Who cares? That be the truth!"

Rhodel was just getting wound up. "Want another bit a truth? Half a ye are are smugglers selling perfume 'n' brandy ta the elves so we kin have food, an' half are spies fer the Gray Gardeners, an' that be a joke right there because ye know yer Litranaise? Yer 'March a' the Revolution'? Darl Jubannich were a hack! He recycled shtuff from his operas! That started as the 'Silver Maidens' Song' he wrote fer the masque fer our duchess's weddin', an' I know 'cause I were only six but I got ta play the Horse! Then Jubannich reused it for his 'Tales of— Oh bugger..." Rhodel trailed off, looking down at her tray where a stray spark from her goblin brand had ignited several fuses. "I was gonna shay more...."

Whatever she was going to add was silenced by the witch's candles, which began to scream, and the siren fountains, which sang like sopranos at the top of their range, their blue flames and waterfall of sparks setting fire to the shreds of Rhodel's tattered gown.

Corsetry, however, is a form of armor, and with icy dignity the old slattern marched forward, hop-frogs hopping from her tray and scintillating as she stepped onto the raft tied at the end of the dock. She embraced the effigies of Traxyla and her cronies like sisters, setting fire to the Shelyn's roses on their breasts which began to twirl like red windmills as she cast off, the raft drifting into the Sellen as the blaze began in earnest.

Then a voice rose up, defiantly echoing off the hills of Kyonin: "But up in the air flew King Coco! The unicorn's horn, where could it go? Then Patapouf found a hole below...." Rhodel sustained the note, harmonizing with the siren fountains until at last concluding with a flourish, "The tail of the cockatrice!"

With that, the dragonfly rockets Norret had bound to Traxyla's broomstick went off in sequence as he had hoped, bearing her effigy high over the river before exploding in a brilliant blue flash of witchfire and brimstone.

He had not thought she would have a passenger.

Coming Next Week: Mysterious clues and the dark clouds of suspicion in the third chapter of "The Secret of the Rose and Glove."

Kevin Andrew Murphy is the author of numerous stories, poems, and novels, as well as a writer for Wild Cards, George R. R. Martin's shared-world anthology line, with his next contribution coming in 2011 with Fort Freak. His most recent short stories include "Tea for Hecate" in the upcoming anthology Fangs for the Mammaries and "The Fifth River Freedom," the fourth chapter of Prodigal Sons in the Kingmaker Pathfinder's Journal. For more information, visit his website.

Art by KyuShik Shin

The Secret of the Rose and Glove

by Kevin Andrew Murphy

Chapter One: The Roses of Dabril

It was spring like the day he had left, the Season of the Green Dragon, the aerial drake who embodied the sanguine humor and led his retinue of floral fey in a gay procession. Hyacinths and narcissi dotted the meadows where they had passed, the blossoms' soft perfume filling the cool air, and then a breeze came up from the river, bringing with it an indescribable fragrance, something Norret Gantier had taken for granted all the days of his boyhood and had only smelled traces of since, on musty scent bottles and moldering boudoirs from before the Red Revolution: the wonderful bouquet of the rose fields of Dabril.

He took a moment to breathe it all in, closing both eyes even though only the right still functioned, the left hidden beneath a patch. The wars had also cost him an ear, an arm and a leg. They were still there, after a fashion, as was he, a mixture of pain and numbness, courtesy of a concussive grenade. His grenade? Another's? Did it matter? No. At the end of the day, all that mattered was that a half-blind, half-deaf lame alchemist was as good as dead and so, to save the Red Grenadiers of Galt the expense of a funeral and a bereavement purse, it was judged cheaper to simply send him home with a few trinkets of gilded tin, some snippets of ribbon, and a pretty piece of paper.

He had had to pay for the crutch himself.

	"Every soldier leaves a part of himself behind on the battlefield. Sometimes several."

The road meandered down to the village at the river's bend. Across the water to the west lay Kyonin, its meadows bright with elven starlilies, while to the north the bogs and fens of the Sellen's many tributaries were held by the River Kingdoms.

Norret limped down the dusty lane, past the ancient rows of roses which still bore the names of noblewomen and beauties of ages past: Lady Gemerel, a pretty pink cabbage rose, simple but sweet and a once great favorite at court; Viscountess Vavarin, a ruby damask temptress, rich with intoxicating musk; and Duchess Devore, an unassuming apothecary rose of great strength and subtlety that he smelled before he saw. A light blush tinted the arsenic-pale petals like a touch of rouge across a noblewoman's cheeks and led to a drop of blood at her center like the infamous moue of Anais Devore's carmine lips. Tales were told of her pomading them with everything from love philters to the water of death, but as with everything from before the Revolution, Norret was certain the legends were half fabrications and half wishful thinking. Poisoning her aged husband, the legendarily cruel Duke Arjan who had taxed Dabril into penury redecorating his ancestral home to suit his wife's extravagant taste? Conspiring to become the royal mistress? Seducing the Chelish ambassador, conceiving his love child, and then aborting the devilspawn abomination with a solution of pennyroyal and alkanet?

It was possible, certainly. Every alchemist favored a different starting point, or "first matter," for use in his or her formulations. Some, particularly dwarves like Powdermaster Davin, preferred mineral compounds, such as arsenic and antimony. Others went the bloody route of animal tinctures, from as common as doe's heartblood to as rare as the teeth of winter wolves. Still others like Citizen Cedrine, former confectioner to a disappeared lord, favored vegetative matter, and could in one moment concoct an aniseed comfit to soothe a wounded soldier and in the next use a violet pastille to blow off an enemy's head. If Anais Devore had used herbs in her alchemical dabblings, she would hardly be the first.

Poisons were not Norret's strong suit, let alone selective banes that could slay one creature while leaving another unscathed, but like tansy and rue, pennyroyal and alkanet were classic abortifacients, and catalyzed by the royal art...?

Norret bit his tongue mentally. In Galt, such thoughts could get you killed. Alchemy was still welcome after the Revolution, its bombs having played a rather large part, but solely as the philosopher's craft. Royal water, the acid that dissolved gold, was now euphemistically termed "the blood of the green lion," and even pennyroyal was too monarchist. A careful speaker referred to the herb as flea mint.

Nor did it do to remind folk that the acme of the alchemist's quest, the great work, allowed the seeker to perfect himself and thereby bring about many wonders, one of them being the philosopher's stone, an artifact which could transmute base metal to gold or resurrect the dead. With the so-called "Revenant Princes" in the River Kingdoms currently resurrecting every noble corpse that might support their mad plan to retake their former Galtan holdings, such an artifact was about the last thing the Revolutionary Council wanted to exist.

Yet as for the roses, keeping the old names was less seditious than it might seem: Like the beauties for which they were named, the roses of Dabril all lost their heads. Snip, Lady Gemerel! Snap, Viscountess Vavarin! Here's a basket to catch you!

Of course, the metaphor broke down in the case of Duchess Devore. Unlike the flower bearing her name, the crafty duchess had evaded the Gray Gardeners and their Final Blades.

Madame Devore—duchess no longer—was still a person of interest forty years hence. Norret shook his head. That was twice as many years as he himself had been alive, and the broadsides were still using a woodblock that had been ten years out of date when the Red Revolution began. Unless Anais Devore, born Anais Peperelle, had achieved the pinnacle of the metaphorical mountain of the alchemists and elected to taste the elixir of eternal youth, she was unlikely to resemble the coy coquette in her wanted poster. Norret had better things to do with his shattered life than accuse random beldames of being Dabril's former duchess.

Tattered bunting straggled over the city gates: blue for fidelity, white for virtue, red for the blood of patriots—and everyone else, for that matter. Below the dusty blue, dirty gray, and faded rose madder lay another rose, this one carved in bas relief, held by a stone glove, the combined signs of the Perfumers and Glovers Guilds, together the arms of Dabril.

When the Revolution came, there had been an unfortunate dilemma: The Revolutionary Council demanded that all noble crests and related imagery be destroyed, whereas Shelyn, goddess of beauty and Dabril's patron, forbade the destruction of any beautiful thing unless it were replaced by even greater loveliness. Accordingly the crown that had once surmounted the town's shield had been chiseled out, replaced with a liberty cap that everyone agreed was far prettier. Publicly. Privately, Norret thought the shapeless pit resembled a puckered wound.

He adjusted his own cap, the same style that the twisted forest gnomes sometimes dyed with the blood of their victims. Norret had achieved the proper red via an admixture of sulfur and mercury, creating vermilion, also known as cinnabar—a formula taught by Powdermaster Davin. The answer to the seditious question of why the Revolution had adopted a style of hat most popular among bloodthirsty and toadstool-addled fey was taught by painful experience: If you were going to be lobbing bombs, it paid to wear a high hat with a curved point and no projecting brim.

A tricorne, on the other hand, was a hat almost perfectly designed to catch bombs.

Norret was a casualty of poor uniform design. He limped along painfully with his crutch. Oh well. Everyone was a casualty of something, and the fool who had thought he was giving the grenadiers nice new hats had made a date with Madame Margaery, the Final Blade of Isarn.

Norret had left Dabril at thirteen, conscripted with no protest from his parents lest they appear unpatriotic. He'd left no bride behind to widow, and if he could have left orphans, the earliest would have been at a farm west of Edme a couple years later. But Dabril still had her roses, and nothing could compare to their scent, except maybe the scent of a woman, his nose to her neck in the morning after making love, both still grateful to still be alive.

It would be a while before he enjoyed that again.

Grisettes and dollymops were still willing, of course, but not for what little coin he had left, and the ones in Dabril looked even older and more haggard than he remembered them. Well, all save for one who had always looked that way. "Rhodel, isn't it?"

The woman looked, then after a moment exclaimed, "Young Norret, hardly recognized ye! Ye sound like a citizen a' Isarn. Ye lost yer Dabrilaise!"

"Along with a few other things," he admitted wryly, touching his gloved hand to his patched eye.

"Eh, time be not kind ta any of us." She smiled up at him, showing the remnants of three teeth just below an unpatched sore. Once, vain noblewomen and foppish men had covered such blemishes with artfully cut bits of black taffeta, but since the Revolution, such beauty marks were considered unpatriotic in Dabril, and bards now extolled the fresh, unpainted Galtan beauty such as Rhodel displayed. In theory.

At least patches were still allowed for soldiers' eyes.

The old dollymop's lashes fluttered like tattered butterflies. "Always knew ye'd end up taller than yer da." Her scabbed lips drew over her gums then and she looked about warily.

Norret knew the look. "When?"

"Five years last autumn," she said softly. "Sent to Woodsedge t'meet Jaine."

She left off the "Bloody" that usually described the guillotine that still awaited Darl Jubannich, former poet of the Revolution. "Best I don't know." Norret sighed. "My mother?"

"Married t'Baker Gentz." The old slattern looked him up appraisingly. "Know I'm not what ye're lookin' fer nowabouts, but ye were a fine lookin' boy and ye're still half a fine lookin' man, 'n' comfort is comfort...."

"I'm down to my last copper."

"I'm a patriot." She gave a rotten-toothed grin. "Soldiers get one free. Always have."

"I'm not a soldier anymore."

"Eh, my rules. Vet'rans count too, 'n' honest men more so. My bed's open whene'er ye want, fer mem'ry's sake if naught else."

It was a kindness, and another that she didn't press. She just laid a gentle hand on his arm. "Let me show ye ta yer ma's...."

Norret scarcely recognized the woman who opened the door. She was smaller than he remembered, and fatter, and had one fussing baby held in one arm and another peering out from behind her skirts. Norret would have knelt down if he still could, if his legs and the crutch would allow it, but he looked at his mother's face to see if she still recognized him. She did, but what he could see even more clearly was that she recognized that he was not the bereavement purse her new family could have used.

Norret barely remembered the grenade that burst, robbing him of half his hearing, half his sight, and the use of a whole body. He knew he would never remember all of that conversation with his mother, either, but it cost him half his heart.

He remembered some. Raw fragments: His younger brother, Orlin, dead. A fever six summers past. His only sister, Kerril? Married to a charcoal burner somewhere. Three years since anyone had seen either.

When he asked of Ceron, his older brother, his mother pronounced a single syllable: "Jaine." Then she shut the door.

Norret was not told his half-siblings' names or even number.

He somehow found his way to the village cemetery. The gravedigger eventually decided Norret was not some shambling ghoul or other undead staggering around dazed in the noonday sun and at last took pity on him.

The gravemarker had fallen over, eaten by worms at the base, but once righted, the name was still legible: Orlin Gantier. Crude scratches were twined around, meant to represent the blooms of Shelyn, the Eternal Rose, guardian of the innocent.

Norret could not mourn Ceron or his father, their bodies burnt to ash and cast to the four winds, their souls trapped in Jaine's bloody steel, but at least Orlin's soul was free and his body here. The grave of a child was something even the poorest necromancer would not bother with, and so its desecration had been relegated to the lowliest fiend, Neglect.

Norret tended the grave as best he could. He trimmed the grass with his belt knife, heaved himself back up with his crutch, and gathered Shelyn's wild roses from the graveyard fence, fashioning a garland. The thorns pricked his fingers, but at least his left hand could not feel pain. He made what prayers he could and watered the grave with his tears.

It was near nightfall when the gravedigger fetched him, offering to show him the way to the Liberty Hostel, the place the village council had set aside for the homeless and itinerant. Norret had slept by roadsides and in battlefield trenches and would have slept by his brother's grave, but one did not question the decrees of any authority in Galt if one valued one's life.

Even so, when he saw the building, he could not help but let out a dark laugh. Cayden Cailean, God of Accidents and Ale, had played his finest jest. The hostel was none other than the former duchess's chateau.

Norret turned and asked bluntly, "Is it still haunted?"

The gravedigger's pale face told Norret that yes indeed, it still was, but he was a man who buried corpses for a living. "I'll accompany ye as far as the front hall."

The carriage porch, where nobles would have once alit, lay shadowed save for the moonlight illuminating the statue of the old ducal arms. Its inverse shimmered in the chateau's reflecting pool. Melzec, the fife and tabor player of Norret's old company, had taught him that, in blazon, the language of heraldry, the arms of the late Duke of Dabril were properly termed vert, a cockatrice in his majesty displayed and inverted tergant regardant or issuant a fountain and transfixed by a unicorn incensant argent. Or, more prosaically: a green field with a crowned golden cockatrice flying out of a pool, only to get stabbed in the back by an angry white unicorn.

Of course, the cockatrice was not actual gold but alchemically gilded bronze, was informally known as Coco, and had long ago been removed along with the alchemically silvered steel horn to become the mascot of Dabril's tavern, known variously as the Transfixed Chanticleer, the Goosed Goose, or the Chicken-on-a-Stick. The unicorn horn—properly termed an alicorn and exceedingly useful for healing physics—was lovingly polished, as were Coco's gilded bat wings and serpent's tail, usually while singing "The Tale of the Cockerel," a bawdy and increasingly improbable Dabrilaise song Norret had learned as a boy. He'd taught all his fellow soldiers, singing of how Coco's father was a cockerel who, after a night of debauchery with a cross-dressing peacock (likely the Mother of Monsters disguised), laid an egg that he hid in a dunghill. It was there adopted by the lady toad Crapaudine, who fancied herself royalty as she was crowned with a diamond periapt of the same name, an actual magic gem commonly referred to as toadstone, and a natural mithridate. The toad queen's monstrous son then hatched bearing a crown of his own—though unless the singers were exceptionally drunk, this was changed to "liberty cap," which neither rhymed nor scanned—and every All Kings Day there was a contest among the village women to celebrate Galt's glorious independence by knitting a new cap to cover the crown worn by Coco's gilded effigy.

After kissing his mother goodbye and subsequently turning her to stone, the song went, Coco flew off to seek a bride, only to instead find Patapouf, a bumbling unicorn looking for a pure-hearted virgin's lap in which to lay his horn, but who instead sticks it up Coco's bung. After a verse about the alicorn itself and how it sprung from another wondrous jewel, the legendary carbuncle—not the enigmatic lizard which wears a ruby in its forehead like one of the fabled houris of Katapesh, but a blood red cabochon on the unicorn's brow akin to the bud of a stag's antler—Crapaudine's dungheap somehow becomes a well. The petrified Patapouf then falls in, the screeching Coco still buggered on his horn, all of which explained why to this day the waters of the village still reeked like the bad egg while possessing the alicorn's healthful purity.

Less romantically, a sulfur spring flowed beneath the chateau, feeding the baths and fountains, and as every alchemist knew, the mineral possessed properties both baleful and beneficent without additional assistance from dead monsters and lost jewels.

Bereft of his horn, the statue of Patapouf looked like an angry white marble horse with a goatee, but instead of a gem, the hole in his head held a single wilting red rose. Norret grinned wryly. There was a village superstition that if a pure-hearted virgin waded across the pool and brought a replacement for his lost carbuncle, the unicorn would grant a wish.

Then again, it was also said that Patapouf did this about as well as he'd slain the cockatrice. Norret sighed and shook his head; he could not complain. After all, he had lived to return to Dabril and seen his family again. Half a wish was better than some of his comrades' fates.

He touched his cap in respect to the statue, then looked to the frightened gravedigger.

The great doors to the Liberty Hostel were unlocked and opened easily. Once there would have once been beeswax tapers, if not flambeaux ensorcelled with cold flame, but now the foyer was lit by a single rushlight unable to produce more than shadows and greasy smoke.

That said, even a crippled alchemist was not without his resources. Norret took a snuff mull out of his bandolier, uncapped the little horn, and sprinkled a pinch of one of Powdermaster Davin's formulations onto the tallow-soaked rush. The stench of sulfur did nothing to improve the smell of rancid mutton fat, but the luminosity increased a hundredfold, the dip burning with the brilliant blue-white radiance of a magnesium torch.

Cracked and blotched mirrors sprang alight, still able to catch the illumination and send it back, and chandeliers hanging askew and missing half their crystals multiplied it further, spawning rainbows. The humble rushlight shone brighter than day and illumed the life-size fresco of a woman, a black patch in the shape of a crescent moon by her left eye, one in the shape of the sun on her right cheek. Her overskirt was beribboned with a thousand ivory rosettes, a single garnet bead studded into the center of each, and on her left hand she wore an ornate, lace-cuffed green glove with a diamond cabochon set in the back, its fingers holding a single white rose with a red heart surrounded by rays like the sun. Around her waist she wore a golden chatelaine from which depended all the accoutrements of the alchemist's trade—phials and vinaigrettes, ampoules and flaskets, snuffboxes and comfit cases, touchstone, quizzing glass, bodkin, powder horn, miniature mortar and pestle, patch box, cricket cage, a pair of gilded scissors in the shape of a stork, and more. Above, her elaborate coiffure had been ridiculously covered by a crude liberty cap, and her opposite hand, instead of being open in a gesture of welcome, now awkwardly held the banner of the Revolution.

One mindful of his words would say that this was an image of Liberty leading Her people, but anyone with half a sense of history would know that this was Anais Devore, the Dowager Duchess of Dabril, in the full flower of her youth. There was no mistaking that arsenic-powdered face, those dainty painted lips or their artful pout.

Then they spoke:

Who stands before I do not care.
My secret's gold awaits my heir.

Norret would have listened more except his shock and amazement were interrupted by the shrieks of the gravedigger, who ran from the hall as if Urgathoa and all her ghoulish minions were after him.

He looked back, only to see Duchess Devore's mouth once again forming its infamous moue, looking coquettishly down at him as if they both shared a secret.

Coming Next Week: Blasts from the past and a grisly celebration of Galtan independence in the second installment of "The Secret of the Rose and Glove."

Kevin Andrew Murphy is the author of numerous stories, poems, and novels, as well as a writer for Wild Cards, George R. R. Martin's shared-world anthology line, with his next contribution coming in 2011 with Fort Freak. His most recent short stories include "Tea for Hecate" in the upcoming anthology Fangs for the Mammaries and "The Fifth River Freedom," the fourth chapter of Prodigal Sons in the Kingmaker Pathfinder's Journal. For more information, visit his website.

Art by KyuShik Shin

The Swamp Warden

by Amber E. Scott

Chapter Two: Fear the Scaled Ones

The oar cut into the water and pulled back, leaving swirling eddies of silt in its wake. Rhyn rowed with purpose, sliding the skiff around the boles of giant trees lifting out of the muck. The insects were no worse and no better. Frogs sang creaky songs in the darkness.

Within an hour he'd reached the site of the strange fetish. It still hung, awkward and grim, from the tree branch. Rhyn tied the skiff to a stump and tried to climb to reach the thing. The slick trunk coated with moss and slime afforded no purchase to the hard soles of his boots. He pulled them off and tried again, barefoot, toes slipping through the sludge to catch on the rough bark. His outstretched fingers brushed against the fetish. He grabbed and tore it down.

A convulsive shiver seized him, and he almost lost his grip on the tree. The lattice of twigs felt wet and clammy in his hand, like the acid-softened fingerbones of the hands in the gator's stomach. A cold lump formed in his throat and a sudden rush of blood laughed in his ears. Rhyn shrugged off the creeps and slid back down the tree.

Once back in the boat he examined the fetish more closely. The twigs were only twigs. The bundles of herbs were made of milkweed and lobelia.

The eggs were alligator eggs.

Rhyn knew by the texture and the size. The eggs were empty, blown clean, and the runes on the sides were daubed in blood. He turned each egg carefully, examining the runes. Overall they made no sense, but the occasional rune reminded him strongly of the marks swamp-dwellers used to blaze trails and communicate danger or good fishing spots. These ones looked like marks of haven: a safe, protected area.

Rhyn dumped the fetish in the bottom of the skiff and rowed on.

He covered a widening path as he headed deeper into the swamp, into territory unused by the Crossfen fishermen and largely unexplored. Another fetish hung high in the branches and Rhyn felt a surge of adrenaline at the progress. He nosed the skiff in the new direction and picked up speed.

Two more fetishes marked his way. An hour passed and the trees grew so thick and the water so shallow that he had to abandon the skiff. He left it tied to a tree and progressed on foot. The knife hung from his belt, at the ready. In one hand he carried his sword, in the other, the half-shuttered lantern.

Fog rose from the knee-deep water as Rhyn sloshed ahead, his boots sinking into soft muck. The water was chill against his skin and the air colder still. He noticed a smell, rank and putrid, something beyond the natural stink of the swamp. Rhyn slowed, listening. All he heard was his own breathing and an overwhelming drone of bugs. The frogs had stopped singing.

A breeze rose up, rippling the water and blowing the fog aside. Rhyn let out an involuntary cry.

Wooden poles fanned in a half-circle from the base of a tree, fencing in a portion of swamp like a cove. Decayed bodies lay within, bulging with gas, flesh sloughing off to form a vomitous soup. Insects hung in a visible cloud over the morass. Beneath them, a creature feasted on the dead, stripping away handfuls of skin and sticky fat and cramming them into its mouth.

Rhyn had an impression of slick skin, long arms, and yellow eyes before the thing launched itself at him. He lifted his sword reflexively and crouched back, twisting as the creature leaped past him. It landed with a growl in the water and wrenched itself around. A thick tail lashed the muck and it came at Rhyn with black-clawed hands.

	"There are men, and there are the lizards—and then there’s this thing."

Rhyn's conscious mind was still in shock over the horrific scene and the unknown monstrosity, but years of battles with swamp creatures had gifted him with instinctive defenses. He snapped his arm out in a series of quick slashes as he retreated. The creature lunged again and caught itself on the blade. Rhyn took a step back, absorbing the impact of the blow, and then pressed forward with a downward stroke.

The creature lunged just as Rhyn did and they came together with a sick crash. Claws scrabbled against his chest, digging in past the leather breastplate he wore and tearing into skin. Rhyn's blade chopped down through the thing's shoulder and well into its torso. It let out a hoarse growl. The acrid stink from its flesh surrounded them, making Rhyn's eyes water. He smashed the lantern against the creature's face and kicked it in the gut.

It staggered back and fell into the swamp with a splash. Rhyn stood, staring wide-eyed. His breath came painfully. The creature's body floated for a minute and then began to sink. Quickly, Rhyn stepped forward and hauled the carcass onto a hassock.

The lantern's shutters were dented, but it still shone. In the pale light, Rhyn examined the monster. It was thinner and smaller than it had seemed during the battle. Its bones were brittle; Rhyn had broken its cheekbone with the lantern and his sword had carved right through its clavicle. Pale, slimy skin like a frog's belly covered its body. A curving tail, muscled and rigid like an alligator's, hung from its spine. Its hairless head was misshapen, its oval mouth full of curved teeth. This was no lizard. Rhyn had never seen anything like it.

Two of its claws had broken off in the fight. Rhyn looked down and saw one still embedded in his chest. He pulled it free with an oath and flung it into the swamp.

After a moment to prepare himself, Rhyn moved to the fence of stakes. He used his sword's tip to poke into the disgusting mass within, just long enough to confirm what he'd suspected.

None of the corpses in the soup had hands.

∗ ∗ ∗

Now the runes appeared carved into tree trunks, daubed with white clay that reflected the battered lantern's glow. Rhyn followed their trail for an interminable time, breathing hard. His chest ached where the monster had clawed him. The wounds were cold, as if rimed with ice. The splash of water against the mud sounded like hissing laughter, and Rhyn had to fight every instinct to whirl around and challenge the darkness.

His boots were stiff and wet, caked with mud. Lantern light shuddered over the path as he forged onward.

The water grew more shallow. It lapped around his calves and then his ankles. Rhyn pushed through the deepening thicket, out of the water now, onto a mossy hillock. The trees thinned enough for pale moonlight to reflect on the fog and lighten the area. A narrow path trailed up the hill. Human hands lined the edge of the path, five in all, skeletal left hands reaching from the ground like obscene flowers.

Rhyn knelt by the hands. Shreds of muscle and skin, dried and withered, still clung to the bones. These had been stripped, he saw, and knife marks in the bone showed precision and ritual. He stood again and took a better grip on the hilt of his sword. Slowly, carefully, Rhyn followed the path around a copse of thin young trees.

A small hut squatted atop the hillock, draped with vines and caked with white clay. Standing before the hut, waiting for him, was a woman.

Her skirts hung heavy with streaks of mud and moss, dragging on the marshy ground. Over her shoulders she wore a short cape covered with the feathers of a dozen swamp birds, all gray and dreary. She held a staff in one hand. A curtain of knotted hair covered her face.

Rhyn stopped and angled his sword defensively across his body.

"So you're the one. Setting your pet on innocent travelers? Stealing their hands? I suppose you summoned that creature in the fen. What for?"

The witch lifted a hand and pushed her hair back from her face. Rhyn did not move, did not speak. The lantern light, the insect hum, the whisper of wind on the waters behind him—all dimmed, leaving him momentarily in a world of black.

Then his voice returned, hoarse and small, enough to gasp, "Cara?"

"It's good to see you again." Her voice was just as he remembered, low and soft with a hint of the northern drawl common in Nirmathas. "I've been dreaming of you."

"How did you survive?" His voice came out strained, aghast. "After the storm let up we took boats out. We searched for hours. Two more trees came down on us. I kept going back." His throat closed up and he had to force the words out. "I went back every day."

"The swamp witch saved me," Cara said. "She brought the storm and then plucked me out of the water. She was very old, and it took most of her strength to conjure a storm so large." She let one eyelid droop, a grotesque wink on her drawn, mud-streaked face. "She used the rest of it training me. Now I live here, carrying on her work."

"Why didn't you come back?" The claw marks in his chest pulsed with pain.

"My mistress taught me that the swamp is our true home. Others, like you—" She waved a hand and took a step forward, and Rhyn shrank back. "—you preach the Green Faith, but you don't understand the swamp. Life stirs in the dark and you hide from it and shine lights from your windows." Cara lowered her hand. Her face shone with a fevered sweat. "This is the true faith. Reverence for the life born from these waters. It is our duty to embrace it and protect it."

"What did she do to you?" he whispered.

Cara's eyes narrowed. "I sent the alligator out to fetch you. You who have styled yourself protector of the town, that interloper in the wild. The swamp cannot be tamed. It cannot be civilized. Abandon it. My mistress spent her life researching a way to bring a true guardian forth, a new type of creature born of the swamp and dedicated to preserving it."

"I saw it. I killed it."

"What you killed was a failure. It was weak and small compared to the potential of a true guardian. But now—now I know where I went wrong. I can summon it anew, properly."

"You need more hands for that, I guess. That's what they were for, right? This ritual?"

"In a way. They served as a foundation, a base of power from which to conduct my trials. Now the ritual is much simpler. If you helped me..." She gazed into his eyes. "You could join me. Drive the others off. Let the swamp claim their buildings. Live in harmony with all that exists here in the dark."

"If you knew me at all, you'd know better than to ask me that."

She shrugged, a slight motion, but one filled with danger as she lifted her staff just off the ground. "Then you may assist me in death."

Rhyn only got a step forward before the ground erupted with writhing tentacles of vine. They lashed around his calves, almost toppling him. He grunted a curse and tried to wrench his feet free. Cara laughed and chanted strange, sibilant words as Rhyn hacked at the vines with his blade, stumbling sideways as they loosened.

Cara's chant reached a fever pitch. The ground shuddered and then erupted beneath Rhyn in a torrent of crawling insects. They scrambled and undulated as they clawed up his boots. Rhyn gave a repulsed cry and lurched forward, shaking his legs in an effort to dislodge the swarm. As he moved he hurled the lantern, half by instinct, toward Cara. He heard the shutters rattle and Cara cried out, her chant stuttering into silence.

He raced to close the distance between them, sweeping his sword down. The mud streaked on Cara's skin and clothes hardened into bark, and Rhyn's blade sliced down through wood, not flesh. He flinched from the shower of splinters.

The swarm of insects followed, and Cara scrambled back from them. Rhyn tackled her and they slammed into the mud together. He scraped painfully over a root as he slid forward. Cara scrambled for purchase in the mud, trying to rise, and Rhyn grabbed at her ankle as the insects flowed over them. She fell, kicking, and caught him in the jaw with one foot. They rolled apart, crushing bugs into the muck. Their tiny bodies sank back into the ground as the swarm dissipated.

Rhyn slid his hands through the muck, looking for his sword. Nothing but silky mud met his desperate grasp. Cara snatched up her staff and slammed it into Rhyn's side with a triumphant yell. He rolled with the blow and abandoned the hunt for the sword, hauling himself up to his feet instead.

A cold wind rushed across the hillock, bending the trees and whipping Cara's hair against her face. She raised her hands above her head, her fingertips glowing a sickly yellow. Her words were garbled, a shriek of some sibilant language and snatches of prayers to her twisted faith, reverence of scales and swamps and darkness. Rhyn charged, slick fingers finding the hilt of the fillet knife in his belt. Cara brought her hands down on Rhyn's shoulders just as he drove his blade into her gut.

They stood locked together for an instant. The yellow light sank into Rhyn's skin and nausea rolled through him. He broke out in a cold sweat, and that roaring laughter echoed once more in his ears. Then he steadied himself and shook off his fear, though he still felt weak and sickened. Cara hung on his knife like a fish on a hook. She had cupped his chin in her hands, and her sharp nails had torn the skin so that his blood dripped down her fingers.

He let her slide to the ground. She gasped and curled her hands convulsively over her chest.

"I'm sorry I stepped on your feet," he said.

"It's alright." Her eyes closed. "Leave me in the swamp."

Then she died. Rhyn knelt by her body for several minutes, dizzy, shattered. He stood and wiped clumsily at his face.

He kicked down the hut and tossed his lantern atop it. It took time to catch fire and burned slowly, with a green flame from the wet wood and vines. He sheathed his sword and knife and picked up Cara's body.

A few steps past the shore he paused, knee-high in the swamp. His dim reflection twisted in the ripples, shadowed by the distant fire behind him and the moon above. Cara's hair trailed in the water. He bent his knees and eased her into the murk.

A few drops of blood fell from the scratches on his face, mixing with Cara's as her body sank. The wounds in his chest flared with sharp pain. Rhyn doubled over. His gut churned, and the terrible weakness swept through him once more. He tried to stand but his knees gave out, plunging him into the water.

He flailed his arms, struggling to find something solid with which to pull himself up. The pain in his chest spread to his limbs, suffusing his body with unbearable pain. He screamed and choked as swamp water washed into his mouth. His fingers grasped something—Cara's hair. The tangled strands bobbed and twisted away from him as he floundered.

All vision fled. In the blackness of his mind he saw an image, a snake splitting into three parts with a man's head atop each branch. Cara's voice whispered in his ear.

Now—now I know where I went wrong. I can summon it anew, properly. Now the ritual is much simpler.

More water flooded his mouth and he inhaled, sputtering, but did not choke. The water flowed into his lungs like air. The swamp around him was brightening, coming into focus, as if lit from within. He lifted a hand to his face and saw pale, frog-belly skin and long black claws.

When he tried to scream again, all that emerged was a rasping growl, like the roar of an alligator.

∗ ∗ ∗

"I saw it!" A child ran up the pier, stumbling over his own feet in his haste. "It's out there again! I saw it!"

Mart hustled over, one hand on the knife at his belt. He put his other hand on the child's shoulder. "You sure?"

"Sure!" The child pointed into the darkness. "Out there!"

Mart stared for a time, but it was hard to see beyond the lantern-light. The ripples could be a skulking beast—or a leaping frog. The glow of yellow could be a baleful eye or an errant firefly, the hiss a sound of hunger from a gator-toothed maw or the movement of wind through branches.

"What is it?" the child whispered. "What does it want?"

Mart shook his head. "No way to know," he said. "The things out there—they're not like us." He turned them back toward the warm light and safety of town. "Fear the scaled ones."

Coming Next Week: Kevin Andrew Murphy offers some alchemical insight in the nation of Galt in the first chapter of "The Secret of the Rose and Glove."

Amber Scott is the author of several chapters in the Pathfinder's Journal, as well as numerous Paizo RPG products, including recent releases such as Heart of the Jungle and Halflings of Golarion. She writes from her home in Canada, where she lives with her husband, Jason, and her two cats, Dabu and ZugZug.

Art by KyuShik Shin

The Swamp Warden

by Amber E. Scott

Chapter One: Ripples in the Fen

Fear the scaled ones. Rhyn had heard the expression from his parents and the other elders in the village his whole life, and they had heard the expression from their parents, and back farther than anyone could remember. No one knew who had first coined the phrase, but Rhyn knew whoever did had lived in a swamp, this one or another, for he had learned the lesson that the villagers of Crossfen now taught their youth.

Fear the scaled ones.

An alligator had attacked two fishermen, out in the swamp on the sodden edge of the river that flowed toward Lake Encarthan. Crossfen children gathered on the pier to watch Rhyn prepare for the hunt. He coiled fishing line, checked that the fillet knife in its leather sheath was sharp, set a heavy club and a fishing pole in the skiff, and filled a bucket with fathead minnows. They quivered, too weak and thickly packed to flop, their flesh the dull silver of a tarnished fishhook in the lantern light.

"Scaled ones aren't like us," Rhyn said. "I don't mean lizards, the ones that walk on two legs and hunt with spears. They're more like you and me. I'm talking about animals—gators, eels, fish. They live in the muck, breathing in silty water. They're always cold, right down to their skinny bones. Their eyes are always open, always watching. We can never understand them, and that's what makes them dangerous."

"Eels don't have scales," one boy said. He had a sullen mouth, and bits of dried porridge clung to his face. "And they aren't dangerous anyway."

Rhyn stared until the boy shuffled one foot behind the other and looked down. "Some eels don't have scales, that's true. But don't ever think something in the water isn't dangerous." He put down the lantern and rolled up one sleeve. A puckered, hairless divot in his flesh caught the light. "Capsized once and an eel bit me there while I was in the water. All the filth and rotten fish bits in its teeth set the wound festering. Had to cut a chunk out lest I lose my arm."

"How did you capsize?"

Rhyn cursed silently. "It was a storm. I know, we don't get storms here. But it happened. Two years ago, out there." He gestured to the blackness. "Brought a rotten tree down on my skiff and capsized us. I was lucky to live through it."

The children maintained a solemn silence. Rhyn finished loading the skiff and stepped lightly aboard. He settled into place and untied the line. As he pushed off, he looked up at the children. "Fear the scaled ones. They're not like us."

"Fear the scaled ones," the children chorused. Rhyn floated away from the pier and into the swamp, until the lights of Crossfen hovered like fireflies in the distance.

∗ ∗ ∗

The skiff slipped in near-silence through the murky waters. The lantern hung from a pole curving off the bow, its light catching on the ripples that spread out from the boat.

Rhyn shuttered the lantern, leaving only cracks of light spilling out from the metal plates. He fixed a minnow to the line and trailed it behind the skiff as he drifted, quiet and dark.

Sheets of yellow-green scum broke apart as the skiff sliced through them and bobbed away in wrinkled patches. Long loops of vine brushed Rhyn's shoulders. A hum of insects hovered around the skiff. Gnats landed on his face and hands, tried in vain to puncture the tough skin there, and flew on. The throaty cry of a whippoorwill drifted through the trees.

An hour passed, then two. Rhyn shifted position to keep his legs from growing numb. He reeled in the line and replaced the minnow with a fresh one. His thoughts drifted back to the children on the pier, watching him, growing smaller as he slid into the dark.

He thought of Cara.

His mind wandered that well-worn trail, favorite moments from childhood, secrets whispered in the dark, fishing together on the pier. He remembered them dancing in the Bent Reed while Mart played the fiddle. Rhyn had stepped on Cara's feet one too many times, and she'd laughingly refused to dance with him anymore. "Not until you apologize," she'd said. He'd grinned and refused and tried to catch her in a dance the rest of the night, but she always spun away.

That had been a week before the last trip into the swamp. Rhyn stopped the memories there. Better to focus on the here and now.

He stretched and looked up, into the tangle of tree branches thick with moss that hid the sky and cast the swamp into perpetual gloomy darkness. Something hung from a branch, a lattice of twigs strung with eggshells and bundles of herbs. Paint daubed on the shells traced runes that Rhyn couldn't interpret. He frowned at the fetish and thought briefly of bringing it down for a better look.

Then the line bobbed sharply. Rhyn wrapped both hands around the fishing pole but didn't start fighting right away. He fed some line first and let it draw into the water for moment after moment before setting his legs under the bench and hauling on the pole.

A spray of water exploded twenty feet away. Strips of jagged light from the shuttered lamp slashed across the gator's belly as it thrashed in the water. Sweat poured from Rhyn's body and gnats descended on his hands and neck in a rush. The skiff rocked, but Rhyn held his spot, keeping his weight in the center of the bench. Bit by bit he took the line in, bringing the gator and skiff closer together by inches.

"Don't break," he muttered. The line was spider-silk thread from the giant spiders in the Fangwood, spun with catgut and double-waxed for strength. But this gator was big.

The muscles in Rhyn's arms stung. A yellow eye glared briefly from the churning water and disappeared under the surface again. The rigid green-black hide, rough as cordwood, surged toward the skiff. The gator's tail lashed the water, drenching Rhyn in a spray of stinking murk. All at once he let go of the fishing pole and snatched up the club.

	"Aye, there are creatures in the swamp that will hunt a man. And the best protection is to hunt them first."

The club was slick with swamp water and Rhyn clenched both fists around it. The gator rammed into the skiff and Rhyn almost slid off the bench as it rocked. The lantern bobbed wildly. A wave of water rolled back as the gator opened its mouth and readied to take a bite out of the side of the skiff. Rhyn brought the club down on the gator's head, two-handed, with all his strength.

The beast stilled momentarily, its great mouth open, rows of yellow teeth curving over the gunwale of the boat. Rhyn swung again, slamming the gator's skull with brutal force. Its eyes went dim and flat.

While the gator was stunned, Rhyn snatched up the fillet knife and drove it deep into those yellow eyes, first one and then the other.

∗ ∗ ∗

He sat quietly in the boat for a spell after he killed the gator, breathing deeply and absently swatting at insects. When his heart was back to its proper rhythm, he tied the gator up and let it drag behind the skiff.

The energy of the battle still hummed around him like an insect cloud. He felt recharged, purposeful, invincible. This was why he'd chosen to stay in Crossfen even after Cara had died. Why he'd taken on the mantle of protector though none of the townsfolk had asked him directly. Because he could, and because they needed him, and because it felt right. He imagined this was what it was like to be the Forest Marshal, a leader and protector.

When Rhyn pulled the skiff up to the pier, the children were still hanging about. They ran off the minute they saw him, and by the time he'd tied off the boat, climbed out, and dragged the gator's body onto the boards, a group of townsfolk had clustered. They murmured with fear and admiration as he rolled the gator on its side.

"Not too big," Mart said.

"Not too big," Rhyn agreed. He fished his knife out from the skiff. "What do you think, seven feet, nose to tip? Still bigger than most."

"Usually five to six is what I see," one of the fishermen said. He scratched his ear. "That looks like the fella that hit us last week. Don't get 'em this far up, and so big either."

"And they don't attack men," said Mart. "Strange all around."

"What's this?" Rhyn fingered an old scar on the gator's cream-colored underside. "Almost a pattern." The scar reminded him of the runes on the fetish hanging from the tree, and the skin on his back crinkled in gooseflesh.

"No idea," Mart said.

Rhyn lined the knife up on the gator's belly. Gators could and would eat just about anything, and it was always worth checking their stomachs. The gator's fleshy belly was thick, but not tough like the rest of its hide. The gathered women shooed the children off and headed back to their homes. The fishermen who remained gathered close around to watch. Rhyn slid the knife in and worked it back toward the tail, letting the oily blood drip down through the boards of the pier.

It was the work of a few minutes to find the stomach and slice it open. Rhyn reached in cautiously with gloved hand. He wrinkled his nose at the acrid stench of bile and groped through the mush of the gator's insides.

Almost instantly he felt it: a tangle of firm but yielding objects, like a mass of twigs. He grabbed one and pulled. With a wet squish, he withdrew his arm and displayed a human hand, flesh dripping off the bones, green with slime and severed at the wrist.

The fishermen recoiled with a collective groan. Rhyn dropped the hand and it splatted on the pier. "Guess he had himself a meal not long ago," Mart said.

"Guess so." Rhyn gingerly slid his hand back into the stomach, breathing shallowly through his mouth. The stink of rotting flesh, heavy and thick as marsh gas, hovered around him. He grabbed at the tangle again and pulled.

A second hand slopped onto the boards to lay beside the first. The fishermen muttered and shook their heads. Rhyn stared at the hands, brow furrowed. Soft bones, half-eaten by the gator's stomach juices, shone wetly through the strips of flesh. Mart came to squat next to him.

"Poor soul," he muttered. "Strange how they look almost cut, isn't it? Suppose there's more of him in there?"

"Don't know," Rhyn said. He took one of the severed hands between thumb and finger and flipped it over. "They do look cut. Mart, tell me something."

"Yep?"

"These both look like right hands to you?"

Everyone stared at the hands for a good long minute.

"Fear the scaled ones," Rhyn whispered.

∗ ∗ ∗

He pulled five right hands from the gator's stomach and nothing else. Within an hour he had cleaned and sharpened his knife and restocked the skiff. Mart stood on the pier and watched the preparations.

"Why you gotta go right now?"

Rhyn paused in the act of coiling a rope. "I saw something right before the gator surfaced. Some kind of charm hanging from the trees."

"You think maybe a lizard put it up there?"

"Maybe. I don't know. But the gator sure as hell didn't tie it to the branch, and it didn't bite off five people's hands just for fun. Someone's behind this, and once they realize their pet is dead, they'll haul off. Find a new hole to squat in."

"But Rhyn..." Mart rubbed his chin. "You'll be out there at night."

"Got no choice. I'm the one who keeps you all safe. Can't always wait for the right time to do that." Rhyn tossed the rope into the skiff and set his longsword on top of it.

"You got plenty of choice. You took up this job on your own and we were happy to let you, 'cause you're good at it. But you can stop whenever you want. You've paid your debts and then some." He paused. "It wasn't your fault."

Rhyn stared out into the black of the swamp. "I'm gonna head out. I'll come back when it's safe."

Mart shook his head but said no more.

Coming Next Week: Creatures of the deep marshes and old wounds torn wide in the second half of "The Swamp Warden."

Amber Scott is the author of several chapters in the Pathfinder's Journal, as well as numerous Paizo RPG products, including recent releases such as Heart of the Jungle and Halflings of Golarion. She writes from her home in Canada, where she lives with her husband, Jason, and her two cats, Dabu and ZugZug.

Art by KyuShik Shin

Certainty

by Liane Merciel

Chapter Four: The Stone

"Jelani, Adrun, with me," I said. "The rest of you, keep going." Whatever the scout had found had terrified the man, and I didn't want his panic spreading to the others.

"Found tracks," the scout said when we were out of the others' earshot. "Followed them." He thrust a hand forward, jerkily, as if to hurl the memory away.

I was about to ask how he had spotted tracks on the tundra when I saw them myself: a line of booted prints sunk deep into the ground, as though it were summer's soggy marshland instead of the rock-hard terrain of late fall. The earth was slimy and discolored in those prints; the very dirt and ice seemed to have rotted at the touch of whoever had passed there.

"Seen that kind of thing around the Worldwound," the scout said. "Never on this side."

The bootprints tattooed a dark line back to the wardstone. Nearer us, they went over a low, rocky rise and into a shallow cleft. I followed, uneasy. Adrun and Jelani were watchful at my sides; the scout lagged fearful behind.

In the cleft we found the man who had made those prints. He'd died badly. Deep gouges tore through the back of his sheepskin coat. Green-black rivulets leaked from the wounds; the stench of sickness pervaded the area despite the wind and chill. I could see brown bone under the flapping tatters of the man's coat; the skin and muscle was rotted away entirely.

He'd survived his poisoned wounds long enough to get this far, though, and I didn't think they'd killed him. Blisters covered his mouth in a frozen pink froth. His throat had collapsed, eaten away from the inside; its long red track vanished into his sternum. The soft part of his jaw was gone, too, and a shaggy beard of red ice spilled across his chest.

An empty waterskin lay near his hand. It bore the same mark as the ones we'd received in Kenabres.

"Holy water," Jelani said, reaching the same realization that I had. "He was already dead—or rather, undead. He killed himself by drinking holy water."

"Maybe he thought it could flush out the poison from whatever got him in the back," Adrun said. "Maybe it would have, if the poison hadn't spread."

I left them to their speculations and rummaged through the dead man's kit. He didn't have much. A few blankets, some lamp oil, a good sheepskin hat. Most of it was standard-issue, like ours. He'd been a soldier, or stolen from one—and, like many crusaders, he had a sizable collection of warding amulets. I picked them up as an afterthought. They didn't take much space, and he might have a sweetheart or an orphan back in Kenabres who'd want them.

We returned to the company in silence. The others watched us apprehensively, aware that something had gone wrong without knowing what. A gloomy mood fell over the camp, and it deepened when the other scout failed to come back. No one mentioned it, but I knew no one expected to see him again.

That night, as the others talked or slept, Jelani scratched furrows in the frozen ground and filled them from one of our blessed waterskins.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Making spears," she said.

"Of ice? They'll shatter."

She only smiled. In the firelight, that smile was a mystery. "I have seen storms that sent twigs through solid walls. My spears will have their use."

She would tell me no more than that, and I went to my bedroll puzzled.

Morning did nothing to lift our spirits. The tundra stretched on, frozen and lifeless; the wardstone waited, leaning against a stricken sky. Soon after we broke camp, the wind turned, bringing a charnel house stench that defied the cold.

"It's not from the Worldwound," Jelani said, prying sticks of ice up from her furrows. "Wind's blowing the wrong way."

"Weapons ready," I ordered, drawing my own sword. I could hear bones popping and teeth gnashing on the wind. It might have been miles away; I wasn't used to judging how the tundra played with noise. But if it wasn't, I wanted to be armed.

I was right to be cautious. As we crested the next rise, we saw our foes.

They were eating our scout. Eight of them crouched around his corpse, hissing and snapping at one another over the meat. They wore the tatters of soldiers' clothes, but they weren't human anymore.

"Ghouls," Adrun whispered.

"Not quite," I said. They were ghouls—I recognized their quick, jerky movements, the high-pitched feral snarling, the carrion reek of guts rotting in their bloated bellies—but something else blighted them too. Their veins bulged with the same greenish-black filth that had corrupted the dead soldier's wounds. Oozing sores covered their tongues and spotted their backs, dripping the same putrescence.

"Close enough," the priest said. "I'll keep them from noticing us immediately. You've a few minutes before my spell fails."

"Let me," Jelani said, touching her quiver of dirty icicles.

	"Even outside of the desert, Jelani is a formidable ally."

I saw nothing but calm confidence on her bronze face. I nodded, stepping aside.

Jelani laid her ice spears on the barren crest, angling them toward the ghouls. They never looked up. She stripped off her mittens and began a chant, her fingers dancing through the spell's gestures.

A gust of wind circled around the woman, gathering intensity until it whipped her black hair free of its scarf and forced Jelani to squeeze her eyes shut in the cyclone. Then, abruptly, it howled away, hurling the icy lances into the ghouls with spell-driven force.

The spears shattered as they plunged into undead flesh, but the wind-whipped shards were just as deadly. Ice ripped the ghouls' hides apart and pinned their limbs to their bodies. The stink from their ruptured stomachs was overwhelming; two of my men doubled over, vomiting.

Some of the ghouls fell. The survivors' heads snapped up. One's left eye was gone, replaced by a thick splinter of ice; another had two feet of ice through its gut. But the attack had broken Adrun's spell, and the ghouls had seen Jelani. Howling, they rushed at her.

She didn't flinch. Holding her hands out, Jelani called another invocation. Sunlight twinkled on her gold and bronze rings, then ignited in her cupped palms. She threw it, and the spark swelled into a fireball as it flew. It exploded over the ghouls in a rush of translucent, blue-edged flame. They shrieked as they burned—and then they collapsed, spasming, as the ice lances melted in the fireball's heat and spilled holy water through their innards like lye.

"Finish them," I shouted, leading my soldiers into the fray.

Even dying, the ghouls fought viciously. They writhed on the ground, covering it with their own deliquescing corruption, and pulled down soldiers who slipped on the slime. Those who fell were doomed. The Kellid woman lost her footing when she swung too vigorously at a fallen ghoul; she crushed her victim's skull, but went to a knee as she did. Instantly two of them were on her, and by the time we battered them away, nothing was left but the bear claws of her necklace, scattered among red rags of skin and bone.

Another crippled ghoul bit its own arm, filling its mouth with poison, then sank its teeth into Adrun's calf when he ventured into the melee to heal a wounded soldier. The priest screamed, hitting it with his holy symbol in a fist. White light flared, consuming the creature; its skull dropped lifeless onto a bed of ash. But the damage was done. Adrun staggered away, clutching his leg as sickly discoloration seeped through his skin. Two steps from the battle, he fell.

We destroyed the rest.

I took stock of the casualties as Jelani cauterized the survivors' wounds with enchanted flame. The Kellid was dead, as was one of the Mendevians. Adrun was badly injured, but if we could get him to a healer before the ghoul's poison took hold, he might live. I wasn't optimistic, but I was willing to take the chance. If it came to the worst, I'd give him mercy myself.

I touched Jelani's shoulder. "These ghouls carried crusaders' tokens. I think they were the last company of soldiers sent to Valas's Gift. If the wardstone has failed that badly, I don't want to risk the others—but you and I should examine it."

She paled, but she put her mittens back on. "As you will."

I hadn't realized how huge the wardstone was until we reached its foot. Even with its wind-pushed lean, it towered thirty feet above us and measured ten feet across its base.

Chunks of the lichen-stained stone were missing, rupturing the wardstone's rings of runes and leaving a gap large enough for a man to walk through. Peering into the breach, I saw that the wardstone was hollow at its core. Hard-packed silvery dust filled it, or had. The dust had been scraped out as far as a tall man could reach. Where the wardstone had been hollowed, its runes were black and oozing, weeping like cuts in a pine tree's trunk. The ground was spongy with decay where that ichor trickled, as it had been in the dying soldier's bootprints.

"They took the nexavar," Jelani breathed, tracing the ruined sigils. She was careful to avoid their dripping ink. "That's why the wardstone's failing, and why those soldiers turned to ghouls. They were mining out the nexavar. They took too much, though, and they couldn't have known what these runes said, or they wouldn't have broken through this section. They ruptured the ward, and the backlash killed them."

"Why would they take nexavar from a wardstone?" I asked.

She gave me a skeptical look, then laughed. "I forgot. You don't have time for superstitions like the rest of us. You've seen those warding amulets people wear to fend off demons."

"Yes."

"The ones that work use nexavar. It's weak magic, but real. People around the Worldwound will pay a lot of money for that—even, or especially, the crusaders themselves. If you care more about lining your own pockets than protecting the border, a wardstone's better than a diamond mine."

I scowled. If Jelani was right, the dead men had paid for their selfishness, but their deaths didn't end the danger. "Can you fix it?"

Jelani paced around the wardstone, examining its broken runes and hollow core. At length she stepped back, shaking her head. "I'd need enough nexavar to replace what was taken. Without it, my spells would fade in hours, if I even had the strength to hold them that long."

My heart sank. It could take months to requisition that much nexavar and bring it back to the wardstone... or longer, with winter hard upon us. I'd heard the nexavar trade depended on river traffic. If that was true, and the supply was locked on frozen boats, we might have to wait until spring. All the while, the Worldwound's poison would seep through the crack in the wards. I hadn't felt so hopeless since Iomedae turned from me.

And yet that desolation might hold the answer to this one.

I knelt by the ruined wardstone, just beyond the reach of its spoiled earth. I'd come to Mendev expecting a clear-cut war of good men against evil demons. I'd found selfishness, greed, fanaticism, and bitter grief. And grace, sometimes, though it was fragile and fleeting.

But no certainty, not until now. Only now, as I clasped my sword between both hands to hold it up as Iomedae's symbol, did I know with absolute, soul-deep clarity that I was acting on behalf of something right. Healing the wardstone was an absolute good. The people of Mendev weren't saints; neither were the unwilling exiles who had joined their war. But they had the potential for virtue amidst their flaws, and sheltering that potential was an unalloyed good. Valas had seen the same before me, and his gift was proof that the gods agreed.

Iomedae, I prayed, hear me. Grant your unworthy servant this boon. Hold the wardstone's magic a little longer. Protect the people of Mendev from the Worldwound. I ask this for them, not for myself. I will give my life for this, if you ask. I will give my soul. But shield them, I beg you.

I waited, kneeling, for some sign. Light, song, agony. Anything.

Nothing came. The wind wailed on. My knees ached. I heard Jelani pacing back and forth behind me, trying to keep warm as she waited.

Finally, despairing, I opened my eyes.

The ground before me was laced with frost—bright, clean frost, with no sign of the previous decay. The rift in the wardstone's side remained, but a shimmering lattice filled the gap, like a tapestry of starlight stretched over black night. The runes at the base had stopped dripping; the poisoned ichor might have been an ugly dream.

"You did it," Jelani said in wonder. "I don't know what you did, but you did it."

"How long will the magic last?" I asked.

"I don't know. It's... not the magic I know. This is holy work." She raised her eyebrows. "I thought you weren't a paladin."

"I'm not." I'd had so little faith that I hadn't believed Iomedae heard me without a sign.

"Then what—"

"We have a reprieve. The chance to do good. But only a chance."

"Ah." She smiled wearily. "Well, a chance is more than we had before."

"It is," I agreed, and we walked back to our war.

Coming Next Week: Death in the bog in the first chapter of Amber Scott's "Swamp Warden."

Liane Merciel is the author of The River Kings' Road: A Novel of Ithelas, available now from Gallery. For more information on her writing, visit lianemerciel.com.

Art by KyuShik Shin.

Certainty

by Liane Merciel

Chapter Three: Justice

The first of the Burner's prisoners was a pregnant woman, though I would have thought her long past her childbearing years. She wasn't a day under fifty, and might easily have been ten years older.

Those years were heavy on her, and the short, dirty shift she wore did nothing to conceal them. Her shoulders were soft and spotted brown; her legs were puffed and lumpy as badly kneaded dough. The weight of a lifetime's grief dragged down her mouth. I couldn't imagine her as a young woman, or a smiling one.

She hardly looked like a threat, but that only made me warier. Fiends loved to prey on the vulnerable. Children and dotards were easily deceived, and strong men often hesitated before striking such helpless-seeming foes—a fatal mistake against the possessed.

This woman didn't seem possessed, but without Iomedae's magic I couldn't be sure. The Burner regarded her as if she was, or worse. Naked hatred contorted his face; his lips skinned back in an unconscious snarl.

"A fortnight ago," he said, "this woman ran from the village. We found her lying by the wardstone, naked and covered in blood. There was a dead boar with her, painted with sigils in ash. She'd rutted with it and cut its throat, sacrificing to the demon lords so they'd give her a child. A fortnight ago she was a barren widow. Now she's fat with hellspawn. For the sake of us all, you must give her to the flames."

"Do you have a name?" I asked her.

She looked up slowly. The emptiness in her face receded, and a semblance of life returned—but it was a halting, blasted kind of life. I no longer doubted that she'd seen demons; the question now was why.

"Ledsa," she croaked.

"Ledsa. Why were you out by the wardstone?"

"Have you children?"

"No."

"Then you cannot understand." Pain gave her voice a ragged edge. "Demons took my Yulin. She was six. They took my husbands, too, one by one over the years, but no man's death ever grieved me like my daughter's. I was old when I had her, and too old to bear another when she died. Too old to do anything but mourn.

"I prayed to Iomedae for a crusader to bring her back. When that failed I prayed to Pharasma to show me that her soul was at peace. The gods wouldn't answer. I knew they didn't care. I knew my daughter was in torment.

"I went to the wardstone." A flash of defiance crossed her face under the disheveled gray hair. "Yes, I went. I heard the demons singing. They crooned to me. They said they had her soul... but they could give it back. Bear a child for them, they said, and it would be my daughter clothed in new flesh. Yulin, alive again."

"She admits her guilt!" the Burner said triumphantly. "Put her to the stake."

"Is that necessary?" Adrun asked. "She has admitted to a grievous wrong, and the fiend-blooded are bent toward evil. But I have known some who rose above their blood, and if this woman acted out of love... might she not be able to guide her own child toward goodness? I'm sure the demons' promises were lies; if they had the power to rebirth a human soul, which I doubt, it would have been as a twisted and broken thing. Still... that only proves she was blinded by love. Can we not show mercy?"

The Burner bristled at Adrun. "You're a traitor to your Queen and cause."

"Speak out of turn again and I'll have you whipped," I said. The Burner subsided, and I turned back to Ledsa. "You wanted a child, and you were too old to bear one, that I understand. But why not take in an orphan?" Kenabres had few children, but many of those had lost their parents to the Worldwound's war. Valas's Gift likely had orphans too. Even if it didn't, Kenabres was only a few days away. A woman determined enough to sacrifice to demons could surely have made that journey for a child.

She recoiled as if I'd suggested taking a serpent to her breast. "Why would I want them?"

A short silence fell. Then Adrun sighed. "Why, indeed."

"Hang her," I told the soldiers. "Burn the body."

"I should have known better than to think someone who would risk all Mendev for her grief could be saved," Adrun murmured after the soldiers had gone. "There was no love left in that woman's heart. Only poison. I'm sorry I asked."

"Never be sorry you asked," I said. "If the gods grant you the luxury of time to make sure, take it. Always take it. The grave is in no hurry."

Adrun looked at me strangely, but before he could say whatever was on his mind, the soldiers returned with the next prisoner.

He was mad. Every prisoner brought in after that was mad; Ledsa was the only one who still had her wits. The others giggled, or warbled nonsense songs, or shrieked at monsters only they could see. The village headman, a gaunt-cheeked and humorless old man, patted and cooed to our boots as if they were kittens. His wife plucked the hairs from her head one by one, put them to her lips, and puffed them at each of us with a cackle of delight.

They were all peaceful, even merry. That surprised me until the Burner explained that the prisoners we saw were only a fraction of those afflicted. He'd already burned the violent ones.

"They had succumbed to demons," he said. "It had to be done."

	"There are no easy answers. I know this better than most."

I would have burned him too for that, but I didn't know if he was wrong. None of the afflicted souls could tell us what had befallen them. Adrun and Jelani examined them, and I did the same, but we found no answers. Several were feverish, and some trembled with palsy, but others were cool and steady. The only unifying sign was that all were pained by light. They cringed from the smoky torches indoors; the weak daylight outside made them cover their heads and weep in agony.

"It's the wrong season for accidental poisoning," Adrun said after the last prisoner had been examined. "In spring people might pick devilweed or mitepurse by accident; the plants can be easy to mistake when they're young. But never this late in the year. Anyway, if that were the cause, I'd expect to see people struck down after eating from the same pot. These victims came from all across the village. Some were afflicted in houses where other people were spared."

"I won't say it wasn't demons' work," Jelani said, "but it isn't a spell. There's no enchantment on any of these people."

The mystery was not to be solved that night. I posted a guard to ensure the prisoners didn't hurt themselves or each other, then went out to stand first watch. I walked the walls of Valas's Gift, but other than Jelani, who shared my watch, I saw no one abroad.

The aurora was gone with summer from the Crown of the World, but there was no tranquility in Mendev's night. Past the wardstones, the sky flickered red; lightning stabbed up from the Worldwound into the clouds, as if it meant to attack the heavens as well as us earthbound mortals.

Perhaps it did. I watched it, thinking about human frailty and human folly, until the midnight bell ended my shift. I found no answers in my thoughts.

In the morning, however, we learned the cause.

"It's the grain," Persil told us, red-cheeked from the cold. He'd gone out early to requisition some of the village's wheat for our porridge, hoping to save our own stores for later. While picking through the grain to get rid of loose stones, he saw that several of the kernels were bloated and split, with purplish fungus inside.

He held them out in a trembling palm. "It's gone rotten. Same as the ones I brewed up by accident—the ones that killed all those people back home. I'll never forget it."

"Did those victims show the same symptoms?" Adrun asked.

Persil shrugged uncomfortably. "Might've. I thought they were just silly drunk. Then they started dying, and I got hauled off to the dungeon. Never saw what became of the others."

"There shouldn't be any blight here." Adrun frowned. "Valas's Gift prevents it."

"Maybe not, if the wardstone is failing," I said.

"This village has been blessed since the Second Crusade."

"Blessed or not, its granary has been blighted. Can you purify the grain?"

"Some," Adrun admitted. "I'd have to spend a fortnight to do it all. My prayers are limited, and there's a lot of grain."

"We can't spare you that long." Nor could I leave the granaries to be purified upon our return, since I didn't know if we would return. If we all died out by the Worldwound, the villagers might decide madness was preferable to starvation and eat the rotten grain—or sell it to unsuspecting travelers and use the money to buy themselves safe food. Men, even good men, could easily do such things rather than watch their families starve.

"What about you?" I asked the Burner.

He cast his eyes down uncomfortably. "I have not the privilege of... of magic."

I grunted, unsurprised. There had been a true priest in Valas's Gift, but the other villagers told me that she was among the first victims sent to the Burner's stake. She'd been violently deranged by the poisoned grain, they all agreed, but I wondered whether the Burner hadn't also wanted, in some small corner of his soul, to get rid of the only voice that might have countered his fanaticism. Men's motives were often shaded by such thoughts.

That didn't answer the problem of the grain, though. If neither Adrun nor the Burner could cleanse it, I saw only one solution.

"Burn it," I said. "Adrun, cleanse what you can. We'll fire the rest when we go."

"My lord, are you sure?"

"Yes," I lied.

It was an ugly choice. Valas's Gift was a breadbasket for Kenabres and other settlements, which needed its blessed fertility to make up their own shortfalls. Without it, all those towns would depend entirely on what Queen Galfrey could spare—and, after a hundred years of war with no victory in sight, that wasn't much.

Burning the grain would force the people of Valas's Gift to winter as paupers in Kenabres, where they'd likely be resented for causing the hunger they couldn't help. Still, I saw no better choice. The villagers would have a hard winter, but life by the Worldwound was always hard. They would survive, and in the spring the fields and the blessed font would be waiting for their return.

So I hoped. But I was only human, and fallible. My doubts stayed with me as we marched from the village, a pillar of smoke at our backs.

We traveled without a guide. Past the tree line, northern Mendev was a vast and featureless land, deceptive in its emptiness; a man could easily wander a hundred miles wide of his mark and never realize it until he was dying on the tundra, days from the nearest living person.

But the wardstone of Valas's Gift was its own landmark, and from the moment we left the taiga we could see it stark on the horizon. It slanted slightly; despite the magics that anchored it and its own considerable weight, the constant wind on the tundra had pushed it to one side. In another hundred years, if the war for the Worldwound still wore on, it might topple on its own.

Ten miles from the wardstone, I sent out scouts. Whatever had damaged the wardstone might have left some clues behind, and I wanted to find them before we stumbled blind into danger. Jelani enspelled the scouts to resist the chill, laughing into her scarf as she did.

"I learned this spell for the desert," she said. "Never thought to use it in the cold."

"I don't think any of us ever thought to be here," one of the scouts replied. He shouldered a lighter pack, leaving the bulk of his equipment with us, and trotted off to the west. A moment later, the other split east. The rest of us continued toward the wardstone.

We had scarcely gone two miles before the first scout returned. His eyes were wild with terror above his scarf.

"Come," he said. "I've found something."

Coming Next Week: First steps on the long road to faith in the final chapter of Liane Merciel's "Certainty."

Liane Merciel is the author of The River Kings' Road: A Novel of Ithelas, available now from Gallery. For more information on her writing, visit lianemerciel.com.

Art by KyuShik Shin.

Certainty

by Liane Merciel

Chapter Two: Valas’s Gift

A grim silence settled over the recruits after that welcome. When another soldier came to lead them to the armory, they followed quietly, their heads lowered like those of condemned men marching to the gallows.

I rose to go with them, but the scarred soldier waved me down. After the others had gone, and the banners on the walls had stopped flapping in their wake, he leaned back, watching me. "Do you know why they have me greet the new ones?"

"I presume because you can read but can't fight," I said, looking pointedly at the empty sleeve pinned over his shoulder.

The soldier nodded, unoffended by my bluntness. "That's part. The other part's that I look so pretty." He traced his thumb along one ruined cheek, following its acid-eaten sag. His empty eye socket stared at me, a wet red pit. "Shocks 'em. Terrifies 'em. That's good. They need to know what'll happen if they get lazy or drop their guard.

"Every now and then, though... every now and then, we get one who doesn't flinch. One who's seen worse. Dealt worse, maybe." He fixed his good eye on me again. "Like you. Who were you before?"

"No one," I said. My throat felt tight and raspy.

He snorted. "I lost an eye and an arm, not my brain. Don't want to tell me, fine. But you're no novice to command, any idiot can see that. That bedraggled bunch of cast-offs you brought me was already yours, even though you didn't know half their names. Men want to follow you. That's good. We'll use it."

That I could bear. I hadn't come to be questioned, but I had come to serve. "What would you have of me?"

"You'll lead a company up to Valas's Gift tomorrow. I'll give you some new recruits, but most will be Mendevians. They know the lay of the land."

"They'll follow me?"

The soldier's scars twitched as he tried to raise a long-gone eyebrow. The other side of his face stayed immobile, a mask of dead flesh. "They're used to following new blood. Sudden changes of command aren't exactly a novelty around the Worldwound."

"Fair enough. What's in Valas's Gift?"

"That's what you'll be finding out. We don't know. The wardstone nearest the village has been damaged, according to our scryers, but we don't know exactly how. It's bad enough that the Worldwound's taint is interfering with their spells, though, and that means it's bad enough for us to send a scouting party."

I smiled sourly. It was just like every assignment I'd ever been given back in Cheliax: uncertain troops, scant information, and the blithe certainty of my commanding officers that I'd solve the problem or die trying.

Except Iomedae was no longer with me, and that changed everything.

"Who are you?" I asked the scarred man, to distract myself from the fatigue of failure. "You're no simple soldier yourself. Not if you're giving orders so easily."

"We're all soldiers here," he said. "But, as it happens, my name is Colum Norsellen. First Adjutant to General Dyre. Now, it's getting late and you don't want to be a stranger abroad in Kenabres after dark. Best rejoin the others. Unless, of course, you'd care to tell me about that winged shield you're carrying."

"No," I said.

∗ ∗ ∗

Ten of us went to Valas's Gift: six Mendevians, the Kellid woman from the previous night, Jelani, Persil, and myself. I was surprised that Colum assigned Persil to the scouting company, since the youth scarcely knew how to set up a tent, but the adjutant insisted it was no mistake.

"He'll learn by doing," Colum said. "You're going out to scout, not fight. You can keep him safe."

I thought it more likely that the boy would end up as deadweight, if not simply dead, but he was so bright-eyed at the prospect of adventure that I hadn't the heart to say so.

We traveled on foot; the weather was too harsh for horses, and Kenabres had none to spare. Our only beast of burden was the shaggy brown mule carrying our supplies. We said a last prayer with the priest from the walls, swearing our crusaders' oaths and accepting Iomedae's blessing from his palsied hands. Then the gates closed.

That morning was beautiful. There was no snow in the air, only the glassy brightness of new winter. The sun spilled gold over the wardstones, lighting the poisoned sky so that, for a while, I could almost believe that the red clouds were stained only by the sunrise.

But as the day wore on, the illusory promise of dawn faded back into the churning gloom of the storm over the Worldwound. It seemed all the crueler for the change. After that I turned my eyes from the sky and only watched the road.

Three days later we reached Valas's Gift. Fields of frost-kissed stubble ringed its walls, indicating a richer harvest than I would have thought this frigid land could give. I even saw small orchards—stunted by the wind, and bare-branched on winter's eve, but orchards nonetheless.

One of the Mendevians, a cheerful young priest named Adrun, caught me marveling and laughed. "It's blessed soil."

"What?"

He swept a mittened hand out. "It's Valas's blessing that lets anything worth harvesting grow here. Surprised you don't know the story. With that shield, I had you figured for a paladin myself."

"I'm not a paladin." It sounded less bitter than it felt.

"Suppose that's no surprise. We're dreadful short on holiness here. Valas was one of the old breed, and one of the last. He fought in the Second Crusade, the heroes who beat back the Worldwound's demons long enough for casters to build the wardstones that shield us now. They hurt him viciously, but Valas didn't fall until the wardstones were safe. By then he was dying. His squire pulled him back to this little village, where some kind soul gave him water to ease his last moments. In gratitude, Valas blessed the village spring as he died.

"That spring runs red as blood now. It looks frightful, but it keeps this village alive. Fields watered from it are more fertile than they've any right to be. Wounds washed in it don't sicken. The water loses its magic if you try to carry it off, but even so it's precious. Valas's Gift helps put bread on every table in Kenabres."

I nodded, squinting at the village through the lowering dusk.

Valas's Gift looked strangely sunken behind its hard-packed walls. As we drew nearer, I understood why. Most of its sod-roofed homes and granaries slanted into the earth, burying themselves for warmth and to escape the wind. A pall of peat smoke lingered in the dips between them, mingling with the same white incense that flowed from the walls of Kenabres.

Sheep wandered among the buildings, cropping at the withered grass that clung to the rooftop sod. Slatted pens held woolly, dark-faced pigs twice the size of any I'd seen before. We saw no people, however, until we were almost to the gates. Then a lone man scurried out to greet us, his breath puffing white around his shaved head.

He was not an impressive figure, despite the wooden symbol of Iomedae that bounced on his chest. His eyes bulged, and his nose and mouth drooped downward, accentuating the weakness of his chin. Although he wore an ascetic's tonsure, he had not kept it clean; stubble flecked his scalp. Blinking at us, he resembled a surprised and irresolute tadpole.

I thought he looked harmless, if foolish. My companions did not. The Mendevians drew back as if confronted by a spitting cobra; the Kellid woman growled.

"What's wrong?" I asked Adrun.

"He's one of Hulrun's," came the muttered answer. "Look at his symbol."

It was Iomedae's radiant sword... but different from the one I'd worn as her champion. Painted flames licked at the blade's tip, evoking a fresh-lit pyre around a stake.

The village priest's chasuble was unusual as well. Instead of a golden border about the edges, as most of Iomedae's faithful preferred, his was trimmed in fiery orange.

He's a Burner, I thought, so startled that I nearly blurted it aloud. I had heard of the Burners, of course—all Iomedaeans had, usually in tones of stark disapproval—but I had never expected to meet one, even though I knew full well that Kenabres was the center of their heresy.

	"The Burners are a heresy, but understandably popular in a land at war with the Abyss itself."

Following the teachings of Elder Prelate Hulrun, the Burners made it their mission to extirpate any hint of demonic taint, usually by burning the accused at the stake. (Should the victim turn out to actually be a demon, as evidenced by its resistance to flame, additional methods were employed.) I envied their certainty at times, even as I wondered whether such fanaticism could ever truly serve Iomedae's principles. Rumor had it that they were none too scrupulous about verifying accusations of demon-worship, nor about using torture to wrest the truths they wanted to hear from the mouths of the condemned.

They called themselves Inquisitors. Everyone else knew them as Burners. In Cheliax, they were considered heretics and a disgrace to the Inheritor's name. Here, however, they held considerable power. It was because of the Burners that Kenabres had no cats and was filled with rat-traps. The people weren't starving, as I had first assumed. The Burners, claiming demons would spy on them through the eyes of verminous familiars, had killed all the animals they could catch.

They'd kill people just as readily, given provocation.

"What—who are you?" The priest glanced from each of us to the next, rubbing his holy symbol. "What brings you here?"

"My name is Ederras," I said. "I have come on General Dyre's orders to investigate your wardstone. We heard it might be failing."

The priest nodded vigorously. "It is so. The Worldwound's chaos has crept into Valas's Gift. Many of our people have already given in to the demons' lies. They must be purified by flame."

"Naturally," Jelani muttered. "It's always about the burning, isn't it?" The priest, thankfully, didn't hear.

"I will pass judgment on them, not you," I said, drawing on all my Chelish hauteur. If I had still been in Iomedae's graces, I would have outranked this village priest; as it was, I had no real authority over him. I didn't know whether General Dyre held rank over Hulrun, either. If not, I had no right to interfere with the Burner's justice.

But the bluff, and the nine well-armed soldiers behind me, seemed to work. The priest stepped back, clutching at his symbol. "Of course, my lord. I would never stand in the way of the law. Never. But you will see, they are tainted. They have lain with demons and given up their souls, and there is no question what must be done with them. They must go to the flames."

Coming Next Week: Hard choices and cold comfort in Chapter Three of Liane Merciel's "Certainty."

Liane Merciel is the author of The River Kings' Road: A Novel of Ithelas, available now from Gallery. For more information on her writing, visit lianemerciel.com.

Art by KyuShik Shin.

Blood Crimes

by J. C. Hay

Chapter One: No Good Deed

The paladin's spittle hit me full in the cheek, and began a slow crawl toward my chin. His aim impressed me—it's not easy to hit a small target in a crowd, especially when bound and being dragged to the executioner's platform. I cut the cords on the purse of the merchant in front of me and secreted it into a sleeve as I passed in the condemned man's wake. Paladins were a rarity on the platform, and this one had brought a good crowd. I felt something crush and slip under my boot and hoped it was simply a rotten vegetable—some of the townsfolk threw offal, and I hated trying to scrub that out of the leather.

The guards hauled him up onto the platform and kicked his feet out from under him. As soon as he hit the ground the executioner stepped forward to pronounce sentence. "Evaniel, Chosen of Iomedae, you have been found guilty of the murder of a nobleman."

At that, the paladin started screaming again, the hysteria that tinged his voice doing little to convince me that his faith in his goddess's protection was entirely certain. "Has everyone gone mad? He was a vampire!"

I smiled and cut another purse. Of course he was a vampire. Most of the nobility of Mechitar are dead. Doesn't mean they don't have as many rights as me, or the paladin.

Well, probably more than the paladin now. The new purse felt hefty. I quickly distributed its contents around my person, then discarded it and smiled at my unintentional benefactor. After all, if not for the paladin's foolishness, I'd never have a crowd this good.

The executioner hadn't bothered to stop talking. "—in accordance with the wishes of the family, you are to be bled from the neck until dead, so that by your death you may in some way repay them for their loss." One of the guards maneuvered a hefty iron bowl under the paladin's face, while the other fastened his ankles to a hook. They'd hang him to drain after the initial bleed—the best way to get the most out of the body. They'd been at this for centuries, and if there were tricks to maximizing a body's production, the government of Mechitar had learned them all. For a moment, I thought I saw a glint on the massive black pyramid that dominated the city's skyline. If I were prone to imagination, I'd tell myself that Geb himself was watching the proceedings—but that was ridiculous. Us common folk didn't get to see our ruler's ghost.

A stinking weight slammed into me from behind and I felt my limbs begin to go numb before I could regain control. Even before I heard his wheedling voice, I knew who owned the bulk.

"Omaire! You've got to help me!" His whine added an extra syllable to my name—Oh-MAY-yuh. I turned to face him and immediately wished I hadn't.

Arduga had been feeding recently, and most of his meal was slathered all over his chin and the moth-eaten finery that passed as his standard dress. The ghoul liked to tell people he'd been nobility before he'd chewed his way out of the grave, but I didn't believe him. His manners were terrible, and he lied constantly.

	Arduga never fails to make a bad situation worse. No wonder he's dead.

He seemed earnest enough now, however. His rubbery skin, stretched around his mouth and eyes, would look comical on anyone else. On Arduga, it wavered between pathetic and disgusting. He wrapped his fingers around my shoulders and clung to me, his fetid breath assaulting my nostrils. "They're gonna kill me!" He shot a glance over his shoulder, which I followed. A pair of well-sized ruffians pushed purposefully through the crowd, looking left and right.

"And you led them straight to me. Brilliant." I cuffed the ghoul in the ear.

Arduga let out a startled shriek, and both of the thugs looked right at me. One of them gave birth to a cruel smile, pulled a dagger from his belt, and started toward us. The other shouted and pointed, probably to additional pursuers that I hadn't noticed.

So much for having a decent day's haul picking pockets.

The paladin's screams hit a fever pitch and then cut off, replaced by the roar of the crowd as they surged forward. Perfect timing. The goons got tangled in the crush of bodies wanting to witness the bloodletting up close. I shoved Arduga off of me and dove down low, charging between and around the forest of legs as I rushed to get away. If he were smart, Arduga would be hot on my heels. I didn't have to look back—the ghoul had the survival instincts of a cat. I'd be lucky if he didn't pass me before I reached the edge of the crowd.

I emerged from the cheering mob not far from the alleyway I'd traveled to get here. No way I'd reenter that, though. The last thing I needed was to lead these idiots back to where I lived. A shout to my left got me started running again as a third yokel, working the edge of the crowd no doubt, spotted Arduga and me. I shoved the ghoul ahead of me, away from the alley. "Don't wait! Run!"

He charged forward, dropping to all fours so he could use his long arms to propel himself even faster. I ran too, feeling the air burn in my lungs. He skidded under a heavy wooden cart, spooking the horse. I had to vault over, rather than risk being crushed by the wheels. A shout from behind us announced that our new friends were still in hot pursuit.

Arduga cut into another alleyway and I fell in after him, hoping he didn't plan to escape into the sewers. As I'd feared, he was searching for any entrance into the reeking waste-river, but fortunately there wasn't one here. I grabbed him before he could bolt again. "What did you do?"

He screeched at the anger in my voice and tried to shove himself away, but I held fast.

"Nothin'! I swear! He was dead when I found him. No harm in a man having a snack, is there?" He sounded like he believed the story, but given that I'd helped him run grift on unsuspecting merchants before, that hardly counted as a suggestion of honesty.

I shoved him back. "You're hardly a man, and they're not after you for nothing. If you didn't kill him, what did you take?"

Before he could answer me, the three thugs rounded the corner of the alley. The smiles they wore promised enjoyment for only half the people here. Only now did I realize they wore identical cloak pins—a gang. And I thought this couldn't get worse.

I narrowed my eyes at the ghoul. "If we live through this, you're dead."

Arduga grinned, bits of rotting meat between his jagged teeth. "Too late."

The gangsters charged us. I ducked under a swing from one with a pustulant rash creeping out of his collar. A dagger dropped into my hand, but he turned before I could get a better target than a glancing shot to his thigh. His friend, the one with the nasty smile, came up behind me. I fought to get my back to the wall—the last thing I wanted was to get caught between them.

Then the zombie attacked.

I hadn't even noticed him, honestly. The mindless dead are commonplace in Mechitar, doing the filthiest tasks that no living person would contemplate. Smiles seemed as startled as everyone else by the sudden change in demeanor, and by the zombie's particular speed and skill. While he tried to make sense of the new condition, I charged in and cut a second smile for him, just below his chin. He dropped, fingers clenched around his throat.

Arduga, coward that he was, was running toward the dead-end back of the alley. Unless ghouls had learned to dig through brick, I doubted that would help him much. Neck-Rash realized that he was alone with two opponents and made a break for it. The zombie tried to trip him, but the gangster offered an impressive vault and fled for safer environs.

The ghoul shrieked again, and I dashed back to help him. The last gangster had him cornered, but had foolishly stopped watching his back. I gently introduced my dagger to some of his choicer organs, before Arduga, ever heroic, leapt forward and took a bite out of the already dying man.

My stomach clenched. I'd seen him feed before, but I hoped I never got used to it. The zombie walked up, took one look, and blanched. It's that horrifying.

Then I realized the zombie had shown a response. It smiled at me and spoke.

"They'll be back, and no mistake. Come quick. I know a safe place."

I didn't move.

It sighed and rubbed at the flaking skin on its cheek. The rot fell away, showing healthy skin beneath. "It's a disguise. Now come quick. We've little time!"

∗ ∗ ∗

His 'safe place' turned out to be a firetrap packed floor to ceiling with books, two alleys over from where we had been. He opened the door and gestured us inside, and I had to hurry to get out of Arduga's path. Once the door had closed behind us, he called out. "Jaros, you wily fox. Where are you?"

A face so ancient that I first thought him to be a lich peered around a stack of books that I had to work to recognize as a desk. "I thought you'd finally gotten the smell right, Elias. Turns out you've started hanging out with ghouls."

Arduga had the grace to look offended, but I shot him a look that kept him from speaking up. I realized he'd brought the thug's hand with him, jammed in his belt as a snack for later. The zombie—Elias—was staring in a piece of silvered glass, reapplying rotting flesh over the area he'd cleaned. "I had to give them safe refuge, Jaros. Fen's boys were after them."

"Corus Fen? That bastard never did know his place. But why's he chasing ghouls and girls?" I glanced down, making certain that I was still dressed as androgynously as possible. The old man had a sharper eye than I'd given him credit for.

I looked over at the ghoul, who wore a look that said at any moment he might loose his recently devoured meal. "Yes, Arduga. Why don't you tell us what they're looking for?"

If the ghoul could have burrowed through the floor, he would have. I casually pulled a dagger and used it to clean my nails.

He took the hint. "I weren't doin' nothing wrong. The body was lying in the alley. No claim on it or nothin'. I just had a little snack, and it sort of fell into my pouch. Then they started chasin' me."

The bookmaster narrowed his eyes. "What fell into your pouch, gravemouth?" Perceptive or not, I already liked the old man.

Arduga pulled out a small, clear flask with a black liquid sloshing inside. Elias took it from the ghoul and offered it up to the bookkeeper. "Fen's a clever bastard, and if he wants this, like as not he's got a good reason."

The false-zombie leaned closer, as did I. "What is it?" we asked in near-unison.

"No clue," the old man said. "This seal though," he pointed to a mark in the wax stopper. "That's Grayearth's symbol. A chattel farm west of the city. It serves several of the nobles too minor to afford their own farms. You'll want to wear sturdy-soled boots." He looked directly at me as he said this last.

"Why's that?"

The old man tugged open a drawer, removed a purse, and dropped it onto the table. It sounded heavy. "Because I want to know what old Fen's up to. And you're going to find out for me."

I glanced at the purse, calculated its volume and likely contents. Too perceptive by half—the old coot knew just how to hook me.

Coming Next Week: A visit to a chattel farm, where humans provide an important part of a balanced Gebbite diet, in the second chapter of J. C. Hay's "Blood Crimes."

J. C. Hay is the author of numerous short stories and poems for such anthologies as Book of All Flesh (Eden Press), Up Jumped the Devil (PS Publishing), and Dark Faith (Apex Book Company), as well as a chapter in the Prodigal Sons Pathfinder's Journal in Pathfinder Adventure Path #33. For more information, visit his website at jchay.com.

Art by KyuShik Shin

Noble Sacrifice

by Richard Ford

Chapter Three: Holding Ground

The narrow mountain trail was treacherous, more of a goat trail than a discernible pathway, but Tiberion moved with all haste, seemingly heedless of the danger. Kal was hard pressed to keep up with the hulking warrior as he almost sprinted down the face of the cliff. They had long since lost sight of the goblinoid army, but that did nothing to diminish the pressing urgency of their mission. Unless Wolfpoint were warned, the garrison would never have a chance. The goblins would use the cover of darkness to attack, descending on the garrison in the dead of night, moving silently to overwhelm the meager defense before they had a chance to raise the alarm. It was a tactic they had used all across Isger, and Kal was determined not to let it happen at Wolfpoint.

As the sloping path began to level out into the bottom of a steep-walled cut, Tiberion slowed his descent. Kal stopped behind him, watching as Tiberion narrowed his eyes, glancing up at the rocky promontory that surrounded them.

The Hellknight reached for his sword, and something slashed the air, missing his head by inches.

Then the air was suddenly alive with black-shafted arrows.

Tiberion ducked low and moved ahead, with Kal close on his heels. Now they could hear the high-pitched shouts as the goblin attackers whipped themselves into a frenzy. Kal pulled an arrow from his quiver and nocked it to his bow, but the deluge of missiles that continued to rain down on them was such that he dared not lift his head to take aim.

Two grizzled hobgoblins leapt down from the rocks above, longswords gripped in clawed fists, eyes keen and wide with the prospect of murder. Where goblins cut your throat with bits of sharpened trash, hobgoblins were another story entirely. Here were the true soldiers behind the horde's rush. Tiberion turned to meet them, but Kal placed a firm hand on his back.

"There's no time!" he shouted, above the roar of enemy voices.

"Then go." Tiberion pushed Kal toward where the path continued downward out of the gully.

Kal thought about it for a second, considered leaving the Hellknight to his fate—damn him, if he wanted to stay and face certain death, let him! But something inside disagreed, and instead he raised his bow and fired back into the storm of arrows.

Tiberion awaited the hobgoblins, allowing them to charge as he calmly took up a defensive stance. These monsters didn't howl, but rather moved with a quiet economy not so different from the Hellknight's own. Their swords rose in unison, and then Tiberion was moving, ducking under the left one's blade and letting their combined momentum carry his own sword point-first through the hobgoblin's chest. Blood sprayed, and the Hellknight spun on his heel, hauling the black sword free with the rasp of steel on bone.

The second hobgoblin swung its own blade, but Tiberion was no longer in its path, moving to the creature's flank. The creature barely had time to register its mistake before the Hellknight countered, lopping the sword arm from its shoulder. The goblinoid staggered back with a piercing, strangled cry, only to have it immediately cut short by Tiberion's reverse stroke.

Kal loosed another arrow, doing his best to pin down the cowardly goblin archers beyond the ridge. "We need to go!" he cried. "Now!"

Tiberion didn't argue, leading the way once more down the rocky path.

They ran, almost bounding down the mountainside, but the sounds of pursuit dogged them at every step. The goblins whooped and screamed as they gave chase, loosing their arrows wildly. The missiles smashed against the rocks behind and to either side—the two humans were barely managing to keep just beyond the effective range of the goblins' patchwork bows—but for every second that passed, the goblins' aim seemed to improve.

Something suddenly bit Kal in the back of his left thigh, cutting the leg out from under him. He fell hard, grunting in pain as his forearms met the rocky ground, barely protecting his face. Behind him, the screaming of the enemy rose to a crescendo, trumpeting their victory.

Kal tried to stand, but the wound pinned him to the ground as though the weight of the mountain itself were holding him down.

Iron fists dragged him to his feet. Clenching his jaw against the pain, he put a hand to the gauntleted fist on his shoulder to steady himself and began to move. He would show the Hellknight that the grit of the Steel Falcons was in every way equal to that of the Chelish devil-callers.

Kal limped several yards down the path, half pulled along by Tiberion, before the Hellknight bundled him in behind a huge fallen rock. In its lee, Tiberion examined Kal's wound, both men assessing it with a practiced eye. The arrow had pierced full through the thigh, its red and dripping head now protruding from the front of his leg. Tiberion said nothing, but merely grasped the pointed steel and snapped it off.

Kal screamed in pain, and Tiberion slammed a gauntleted hand into his mouth before grasping the fletching at the back of Kal's leg and swiftly pulling out the arrow. Kal screamed again, feeling as though his whole leg were being sawed off, as Tiberion tore a strip from his black cloak and tightly bound the wound.

"Are you ready?" the Hellknight asked.

Kal wanted to say yes, to carry on their flight down the mountainside, but already he could feel his strength leaking out through that oozing bandage. Pain lanced through him as he attempted to flex the knee.

"We both know I can't run on this leg," he answered. "But I can buy you time."

Tiberion leveled another of those piercing stares. When he spoke, his voice was calm, collected. "We can beat them."

"There's no time. Wolfpoint has to be warned."

The Hellknight nodded, but still didn't rise from his hunkered position. Kal pulled himself up as straight as he could against the stone, throwing back his shoulders as if on parade.

"Sacrifice. That's what you said, right?" He pulled his bow into his lap.

Tiberion said nothing, but Kal thought he saw something flicker in those eyes. Then, still without a word, Tiberion turned and sprinted down the path and out of sight.

Kal was alone. He could hear the enemy drawing closer, their incessant howling revealing their positions up in the rocks. Checking his quiver, he saw he still had four arrows left. He would have to make each one count.

The sound of pounding feet echoed down the narrow pass, and Kal nocked the first arrow, leaning out in time to see a hobgoblin warrior charging toward him. He let fly, taking the warrior high in the chest and knocking him off his feet, then pulled back behind the rock as arrows clattered to the stone where he'd just been.

He waited for two breaths, then leaned out again and loosed a second arrow, pulling back before he could see whether or not he hit. Not that it mattered at this point.

Two left.

The enemy had grown quiet now, no doubt moving forward on his position, ready to make a final rush. He nocked his third arrow.

"Human!" The deep voice rang out from farther up the path, its accent thick and guttural. "I know you are alone. Your coward friend has left you to die. I will do better. Come out and face me, and I will allow you to die a warrior's death, not cowering in the shadows like a worm."

Kal heard the words, and knew it was undoubtedly some kind of trap. Why the hobgoblin didn't just throw goblins at him until he ran out of arrows was beyond Kal, but maybe the leader was running low. And Kal was almost out of arrows. With a sword in hand, he might well have a chance of taking out this band's leader.

More likely, he would die. But at the very least, he might buy Tiberion some more time. Success now was measured in minutes, not arrows.

Kal leaned his bow and quiver against the rock and drew his rapier. Using his free arm to pull himself upright, he stepped carefully out from behind the rock, doing his best to not to limp.

The Eagle Knight half expected to be met by a hail of black arrows, but they never came. Instead, a little way up the path stood a powerful-looking hobgoblin, his face marred by a bestial grin full of pointed, yellow teeth.

"I am Kerschak," said the hobgoblin. "Chief of the Red Tongues. And you will have the honor of dying by my blade."

Too weary to make a proper reply, Kal settled for shooting him a rude gesture some of the enlisted men favored. It wasn't elegant, but it got the point across.

	"Kerschak of the Red Tongues has a high opinion of himself."

With a barking laugh, Kerschak ran forward, blade raised high. Kal tried to duck, thrusting forward, but he had no power in his back leg and only managed a weak stab, which the hobgoblin easily batted aside. As Kerschak attacked, Kal was forced backward away from his supporting rock, limping heavily, his rapier barely coming up in time to stop each blow. The hobgoblin chief was relentless, and clearly enjoying this. Again and again his sword hacked down, and where before Kal might have easily countered and impaled his foe, with his wounded leg he could barely parry the ferocious attacks.

Finally, with a mighty sweep of his blade, Kerschak knocked the rapier from Kal's grip, smashing his fist into Kal's face and knocking him to the ground.

Kal lay on his back as the hobgoblin stood over him, victorious. It leered down, and Kal suddenly understood, in a way he'd only imagined before, what the Isgeri farmers must have felt in their last minutes. Yet thinking of them, he suddenly felt himself suffused with a warm glow. He wasn't ready to die—not really—but an Eagle Knight wasn't meant to die in a bed. Kal's only hope as the hobgoblin raised its blade was that his delay had given Tiberion enough time to reach Wolfpoint before the rest of the horde.

"Enough!"

The hobgoblin spun to face the speaker, and Kal looked past him to see Tiberion standing a little way up the path, sword drawn and expression grim.

Kerschak glanced around wide-eyed, shouting in the goblinoid tongue.

Nothing happened.

"You have no archers left, Kerschak of the Red Tongues." Tiberion turned his black sword so the hobgoblin could see the fresh rivulets of blood that ran from it to pool on the stony ground.

Kerschak looked toward the cliffs once more, then seemed to take the Hellknight's word. With a roar, he bolted back up the path toward the Hellknight, powerful legs churning the ground between them.

Tiberion watched him approach, making no move until the last possible second. When his blade hummed through the air, taking off the warchieftain's head, it was in an almost surgical manner, his feet never shifting in the dust. The hobgoblin's body pitched forward, landing in a crumpled heap as his head spun off to roll wetly down the cliff.

Kal pulled himself back upright, leaning against the rock wall as Tiberion approached. The Hellknight wiped the blood from his blade with the corner of his black cloak.

"What happened to sacrifice?" Kal asked, and though he strove for reproach, his tone was grateful.

"I considered you more suitable as a diversion," Tiberion replied. "Come. We've wasted enough time." He gestured down the mountain path.

"In case you've forgotten, there's still this." Kal touched his bad leg carefully. "I'll only slow us down."

With one fluid movement, Tiberion grasped Kal around the waist and slung him over his armored shoulder. Even as his leg screamed at the abuse, Kal was amazed at how easily the big man took his weight.

"Then it is lucky for you, Kal Berne, that I am strong enough for both of us."

And once more they made their way down the mountain, toward Wolfpoint.

Coming Next Week: J. C. Hay gives us an inside look at life in the undead gutters of Mechitar in the first chapter of “Blood Crimes.”

Richard Ford has written short fiction for Games Workshop's Black Library and the British Fantasy Society's acclaimed journal, Dark Horizons, as well as the novel The Dragons of Lencia.

Art by KyuShik Shin

Noble Sacrifice

by Richard Ford

Chapter Two: Notions of Peace

"For Andoran and liberty!" screamed Kal, as above them a dozen figures moved, loosing their arrows as one.

Kal braced himself for the inevitable deluge that would pierce his flesh and leave him bleeding like a stuck pig... but it never came.

Guttural cries of pain pealed out from over the lip of the rock wall, and shouts of anger joined them—not the foul speech of the goblins, but human voices.

From down the passage came the first of the hobgoblin berserkers, and Tiberion took a step forward, ready to cut them down as they charged. But before he had a chance, missiles suddenly rained down from above, piercing the foremost goblinoid's body. It fell with three arrows protruding from its chest as the rest ran into a solid volley, falling and shrieking. Kal loosed his bow into the fray, taking one of the hobgoblins in the throat. Altogether, it was enough for the others to halt their advance, and as the hum of bowstrings announced a second storm, the remaining hobgoblins in view turned and fled back the way they had come.

Silence fell over the dark gully as Kal looked around frantically, trying to spy who had come to their aid, though he could see little in the waning light. Before he could call out, a rope was suddenly dropped down from above.

"You'd best move quick," came a disembodied voice. "They won't stay gone forever."

Kal needed no further encouragement, and he shouldered his bow, then grasped the rope and pulled himself up the rock face. Tiberion was quick to follow, easily scaling the sheer surface despite his heavy armor.

When he reached the summit, Kal was helped up by strong hands. He saw that several disheveled figures hunkered in the dark, their bows drawn against any further danger. On the ground lay several goblin archers, arrows still protruding from their filthy, twisted corpses.

"Thank you," said Kal to the bearded man who had helped him up. "For a second there I thought we were going to end our days with our guts splayed to the winds."

"There'll be time for thanks later," came the reply. "And likely time for the rest as well. For now we have to move."

"And the horses?" Kal looked back over the gully, but could no longer see where they'd dismounted.

"Eaten."

With that, the grim figure and his grubby cohorts began to slink off into the dark. Kal and Tiberion followed across the sloping rocks, trailing their sure-footed guides over the uneven ground. How these new men managed not to slip in the dark, Kal didn't know, but several times he found himself losing his balance and falling to his knees, only to be grabbed and pulled to his feet by one of their rescuers. They carried on silently for more than an hour, winding their way further up toward the mountain peaks as the night wind began to whip through the gullies, threatening to fling them into oblivion at any moment. It was to his great relief that Kal eventually spied a campfire in the distance, and as they climbed closer, the welcome smell of cooking food reached his nostrils.

The camp was small, and situated in a narrow gully. Within was packed a motley band of men, women and children huddled together for warmth and safety from the elements. The men that had guided them were greeted with warm embraces and heartfelt blessings, but as Tiberion strode into the firelight, the camp fell silent.

Kal felt the discomfort keenly, and as Tiberion's albeit unwilling companion, found himself obliged to make the introductions.

	"A Hellknight's idea of freedom is a strange thing."

"I am Kal Berne of the Steel Falcons," he said, his stomach knotting as all eyes turned his way. "And this is Tiberion. We are part of an allied contingent, sent to root out the remaining invaders in these lands."

"We know what you are," said the bearded man who appeared to be their leader. "I am Ursul, and this," he indicated the camp with a grand sweep of his arm, "is all that remains of Isger's settlements for ten leagues of here."

There were pitifully few for all that, but Kal believed the man. "How did you come to be here?" he asked.

"This was the only place we could run to when the hordes came. Tribe after tribe of goblins swept across our lands, leaving nothing but cinders and corpses. Some fled north, but not quick enough to avoid the slaughter. We ran south, and hid here. And lucky for you we did." Ursul took a seat beside the fire as one of the women handed him a bowl and spooned him some thick broth from a bubbling pot. "You'd best sit, unless you're too good for the likes of us?"

"Of course not," Kal replied taking a seat. He gratefully accepted a bowl of the thick stew, and the smell of it made his stomach gurgle in anticipation.

Tiberion remained in the shadows, seemingly vigilant for any sign of attack. Kal was happy to let him remain aloof, if such was his inclination.

The ragtag band of refugees was keen for news of the world beyond the mountaintops, and Kal was happy to report the progress of the allied forces—how they had pushed back the goblin tribes to the Chitterwood, and how they were optimistic the conflict would be over by winter. This news was greeted with relief by Ursul and his band, and Kal surmised they had doubts as to whether they would survive winter snows up in the unforgiving slopes of the Aspodell Mountains.

As the night wore on, Kal began to feel comfortable among these refugees, and his sympathy for their plight began to grow. It must have been difficult for them, surviving for so long in such treacherous conditions, but their spirits seemed high. So caught up was he with their revels that he almost forgot his mission. It was when he glanced back and saw the stern figure of Tiberion gazing off into the distance that the gravity of his situation suddenly began to weigh on him.

He stood and walked to where Tiberion was perched, staring beyond the thick veil of darkness.

"Anything to report?" he asked.

Tiberion glanced at Kal without bothering to return the Andoren's smile. "Somewhere beyond those peaks stands Citadel Dinyar; fortress of the Order of the God Claw."

"Is that where you come from?" asked Kal, his interest piqued by Tiberion's uncharacteristic spark of conversation.

"No. I was raised in Citadel Vraid, near Korvosa."

That was more than five hundred miles northwest. "You're a long way from home."

"The Order of the Nail goes where it's needed."

"But not necessarily where it's wanted." It was a flippant comment, and one Kal instantly regretted, but Tiberion did not seem to take offense.

"The world is a dangerous place. The Hellknights enforce order and law, and put fallen men back on the path of righteousness. Even when those men are unwilling to walk it."

"Some might call that tyranny." Kal felt himself beginning to flush at the Hellknight's easy arrogance. It was an outlook the Chelaxians were famous for: the sense that they should impose their will on the world, even if that meant enslaving those nations that resisted their ideologies.

"Are you so different in Andoran? Do you not punish the wicked and protect the innocent?"

"Of course we do. But our country has its independence. Its people are free."

"What use is freedom without peace? When the wicked are free to prey upon the innocent?" Tiberion shook his head. "No, only strict application of law can bring true peace. Your freedoms only hinder that."

"At least we're not slaves."

"You are all slaves. You just don't know it."

Kal gritted his teeth against a scathing retort. "So the Order of the Nail only wants peace—is that right? And what then? When you've made your peace, destroyed the last vestige of chaos—or freedom—where does that leave you?"

Tiberion stared at Kal as though searching for something. Locked in that gaze, Kal suddenly felt naked, vulnerable.

"If I live to see that day," Tiberion said solemnly, "I will gladly lay down my arms and live the life of a peaceful man."

"And until then you'll continue to kill. For peace."

"Yes."

"Even it means giving your own life?" But Kal already knew the answer.

"Mine, yours, and the those of every one of these people, if necessary." The corners of Tiberion's lips twitched upward slightly. "It is a small enough price to pay."

Kal had heard enough. With a shake of his head, he left the brooding Hellknight and returned to the warmth of the campfire.

Before sleep finally claimed him, he spent the rest of the night among the refugees, much preferring their stubborn optimism to Tiberion's uncompromising edge, but still he couldn't get their conversation out of his head. He knew there was no arguing with such belief, but part of him couldn't help but admire the steel of the Hellknight's conviction.

As the light of the morning sun gradually crept over the encroaching mountain peaks, Kal was awakened by a sudden commotion within the camp. Ursul was on his feet, talking in hushed tones to a younger member of his contingent. When the youth had finished his report, Ursul approached Kal, also beckoning Tiberion forward.

"There's something you should see," he said, and led them off toward one of the mountain trails that wound up from the camp, higher into the peaks. They eventually reached a high plateau, and Kal could see it looked out onto miles of open country, its vista including the vast Chitterwood and the blue-white serpent of the River Keld.

"There." Ursul pointed downward toward the foot of the Aspodells.

Kal craned forward, at first not seeing anything. Then, as he strained his eyes in the waxing light, he saw them—hundreds of them—moving like an army of insects in the distance and making their way northeast from the Chitterwood.

Tiberion gazed gravely toward the goblinoid war-host. "The horde is on the move."

"And it's headed straight for the reserve garrison at Wolfpoint," said Kal. "The fort's been behind the front lines for a month—they can't be expecting them to swing back down this side. They'll be totally unprepared!"

"Not if we warn them," Tiberion replied. The Hellknight was already moving back toward the camp.

Kal was quick to follow, with Ursul on his heels. They swiftly gathered their equipment, sharing a solemn glance as they realized the gravity of the task ahead. Wolfpoint was miles distant, and they no longer had horses.

"Take the north path," said Ursul, pointing the way from the camp. "It's narrow, but it'll take you straight to the foot of the range, shorter than the goblins' route, and the garrison's only a mile further on. May Old Deadeye speed your flight."

Kal gave a nod of thanks, and Tiberion led the way. Within minutes they had left the camp far behind them as they navigated the perilous track downward in their race to Wolfpoint.

Kal said a silent prayer. He'd seen goblins move before, and he knew Tiberion had as well. Even if their path was shorter, as Ursul claimed, it would still be a close thing. And if they didn't manage to beat the horde, it was likely there would be no one left at Wolfpoint to warn...

Coming Next Week: A desperate race and a comrade left behind in the final chapter of "Noble Sacrifice."

Richard Ford has written short fiction for Games Workshop's Black Library and the British Fantasy Society's acclaimed journal, Dark Horizons, as well as the novel The Dragons of Lencia.

Art by KyuShik Shin

Noble Sacrifice

by Richard Ford

Chapter One: Enemy Territory

Isger, 4701 AR

They rode their horses far from the well-trodden roads of the Conerica Straits. The ancient trade routes were no longer safe, even for seasoned warriors, and the pair stuck to the labyrinthine hill paths that intersected the foot of the Aspodells' northern peaks.

Kal Berne led the way, looking for any sign of the enemy's passing. The allied forces had managed to push the goblinoid insurgents back to the Chitterwood, but there were still isolated bands roaming the hills and mountains, ready to strike at the few towns and villages left standing. Their mission was part of the allied attempt to eradicate the goblinoid threat from Isger once and for all, and Kal relished the challenge. He had been a scout in the Steel Falcons for two years, and his tracking skills were as highly prized as his knack with a bow. With any luck, it wouldn't be long before he could challenge for the rank of lance corporal, and the success of this mission would certainly do his chances no harm.

His companion guarded the rear, though this did little to alleviate Kal's nerves. Truth be told, the warrior at his back made him more uneasy than the prospect of stumbling on a band of brigands or a goblin warhost. Kal glanced back, seeing the dark, brooding warrior atop his black destrier, gazing forward with barely disguised contempt. He was tall, his dark hair falling about his armored shoulders. On his breastplate was fashioned the face of a hideous demon, and at his back hung a wicked black sword.

A Hellknight!

What was General Marusek thinking, pairing him with such a... Kal couldn't think of the word; the warrior was hardly a man, after all. Men showed emotion, mercy, empathy. Whereas the armored fiend that accompanied him was like a block of cold granite.

They had been introduced at the allied base in Elidir. Tiberion was the Chelaxian's name, and he had ignored Kal's attempts at small talk. It quickly became clear that Tiberion was not one for conversation.

Their orders were clear—to scout out the hills east of the Chitterwood and report back any sign of the enemy. Simple. Or it would have been had Kal not had to ride with a devil-worshiping brute. Nevertheless, he had accepted his orders without complaint, and as they made their way along the treacherous goat tracks and shaded vales he focused on the mission.

For almost two days they had seen no sign of the enemy as they made their way toward the mountains, and as he sat atop his dappled mare, Kal was beginning to wonder if this was a fool's errand.

Then he saw it, almost imperceptible on the uneven ground. He quickly slipped from his mount, crouching beside the track and running a hand through his short, dark hair. It was barely half a print, but it was there, plain as day in the sodden earth, showing where a clawed foot had crossed their path.

"I have sign, headed south," Kal said, not expecting an answer.

"How old?"

Talmandor's wing—it speaks! thought Kal, though he didn't dare say it out loud.

"An hour, maybe less. On foot. If we're quick we may be able to catch them before night."

Kal glanced up with an eager smile, but instantly felt foolish as he was met with Tiberion's usual stolid expression. Kal leapt back onto his horse and reined it south, diverting from the path and moving higher over the lip of the valley. Tiberion moved up beside him as they mounted the rise, and the clawing peaks of the Aspodell Mountains rose before them.

Kal glanced up at the overcast sky. "We have maybe an hour of light."

"Then we had best make haste," said Tiberion, sticking his spurs to the black warhorse beneath him and galloping down the other side of the rise. Kal spurred his own mount, and followed behind.

They rode hard, navigating the narrow gullies and paths, rising higher into the foothills. Below them the ground gradually became firmer, as rolling hills made way for sloping mountains. With every step a darkening veil of shadow gradually enveloped them, and Kal began to think they might have lost their quarry, but as the moon began to rise he caught sight of a stooped and fast-moving figure up ahead. From such a distance he couldn't make out any detail, but from the loping gait it could only be one thing.

"Goblin." Kal pointed at their quarry as it fled toward a narrow ravine several hundred yards ahead. "If we're quick we can catch him before he loses us in the mountains."

He spurred his steed once more, urging it up the scree toward the slim opening. Their horses slipped and stumbled up the slope, and by the time they reached the summit the diminutive figure had disappeared from view, but Kal was not about to be beaten. He leapt down from his mare, unsheathed his bow from the saddle, and moved forward.

"Wait!" barked Tiberion, but Kal was in no mood to be ordered around by his stern companion. His target was close—he could smell it. The foul thing had most likely set villages aflame and slaughtered innocents, and Kal was determined he would not escape the justice of the Steel Falcons.

	"A Steel Falcon lives by his ideals— and dies by them."

He ran into the ravine, twisting his body to slip through the narrow entrance. Once inside, the sheer wall of rock created a narrow passage, and he followed on the goblin's trail. Behind he could hear Tiberion dogging his path, sword ringing from its scabbard and armor eerily quiet as he moved with a grace that belied his bulk.

Kal followed the twisting passage, surefooted on the treacherous rock. He nocked an arrow as he moved, his eyes straining through the darkness for any sign of the goblin.

Suddenly, the passage opened out, and he ran into a wide gully, the cliff face reaching up to a lip twenty yards above. Several paths led away from the rock, and Kal cursed his ill luck, for there was little detritus on the ground that would give him a clue as to where his quarry had fled.

Tiberion entered the clearing behind him, and as Kal turned he saw the Hellknight was clearly displeased.

"Idiot!" snapped Tiberion. "Are you trying to get us killed?"

"I'm trying to track our quarry. We have orders—"

"Those orders are to observe and report, not to hunt down every solitary scout we come across."

Kal squared up to the Hellknight, despite the latter's imposing frame. "And what? We're supposed to just let him run?"

"Yes," Tiberion rumbled. "Because now you've most likely led us straight into a—"

Tiberion didn't finish, but instead pushed Kal hard in the chest. The young scout fell back, fury rising at the Hellknight's assault, just as a black-shafted arrow streaked in front of his face and clattered against the rocky ground.

Kal landed hard on his backside, instinctively bringing his bow up to aim at where the arrow had come from, but there was no sign of the archer.

"Move!" yelled Tiberion, grabbing Kal by the epaulet of his jacket and hauling him to his feet.

As they ran toward the nearest passage from the gully, a deluge of arrows began to fall, whipping past them and clanking against the rock face. One of the deadly shafts hit Tiberion's shoulder, but the pauldron of that fearsome armor turned its flight.

They sprinted out of the gully, hearing the screeching curses of goblin attackers in their wake. It was dark now, difficult to see in the tight corridor of rock, and Kal concentrated on staying close to Tiberion, whose dark cloak gave him the appearance of a shadowy specter in the night.

The passage twisted left and right, wending its way through the mountain until it let out mercifully into another gully. Tiberion ducked—and it was the only warning Kal got as they were suddenly ambushed by a mob of dark attackers.

A wickedly hooked axe swept through where Tiberion's head had been a second before. The Hellknight spun on his heel, sweeping his greatsword around and hacking into his assailant's abdomen. Kal barely had time to register the howl of pain and the stream of flying gore before one of the creatures was on him. Its gray-skinned face was a mask of fury, crooked teeth twisted in malice—the feral features of a hobgoblin!

Kal brought his bow up, drawing back the string and loosing an arrow before he had time to think. The arrow pierced his attacker's eye, puncturing the hobgoblin's brain. It stood transfixed for a second, the fletching quivering, then fell back dead.

In the following moments Kal was frozen, watching the Hellknight at work. Tiberion was truly an exemplar of his craft, and all the contempt Kal had felt for him was quickly washed away by stunned awe. The Hellknight was assaulted by half a dozen of the screaming, clamoring monstrosities, but he parried their blows with precision, countering with his own evil-looking blade. His movements were economical, with not a breath or motion wasted as one by one he eviscerated his foes.

By the time Kal managed to steel himself and nock another arrow, Tiberion was surrounded by corpses, his stance ready for the next comer, his breathing even and calm.

There came a sudden bellowing howl from the passage down which they had fled. An arrow whistled past his ear, and Kal looked up to see more diminutive, snarling figures above. He swept his bow around and loosed in one fluid motion, seeing his arrow fly straight and true. A grim satisfaction warmed him as he heard the gurgling cry of the goblin as it fell back from view. Before he could congratulate himself, Tiberion grasped his arm and pulled him along.

"We'll be shot like fish in a barrel if we stay here," he said.

Kal could only agree, moving after him as they heard footsteps echoing down the passage at their rear.

They plunged ahead once more, their way lit only by the moon. There was a howling clangor all around them now as their goblinoid foes whipped themselves into a frenzy, spurred on by the thought of the knights' imminent demise. Kal felt fear welling up inside him. He had seen what these animals had done to their captives in a dozen settlements across Isger. Torture and mutilation was common—the lucky ones died quickly. Kal could only guess that such a prize as two knights would be too good to waste with a quick death.

Well, Kal Berne wouldn't be taken alive, only to die later on the end of a goblin's dogslicer. He would go down fighting with the blood of his enemies on his hands and blade.

Tiberion scrambled to a halt, and Kal heard him curse, spitting the words in a guttural tongue he didn't recognize. Before them rose a solid curtain of rock.

"Like fish in a barrel," Kal said.

Tiberion turned back toward the direction they had fled, raising his sword in a defensive posture. Kal nocked another arrow, aiming it high, waiting for the next shadowy goblin archer to show its misshapen silhouette above the rocky parapet.

The howling grew louder, and above them came the sound of scrabbling bodies moving into position. It was too dark to see them now, but Kal knew they were there. Down the passage came the sound of the approaching horde.

Kal glanced at Tiberion. "You know they'll kill us slow, don't you?"

Tiberion nodded without turning his gaze from the corridor, sword still held aloft and steady, as solid as the rock enclosure in which they stood.

Then came the roar, and the enemy charged from the dark.

"For Andoran and liberty!" screamed Kal, as above them a dozen figures moved, loosing their arrows as one...

Coming Next Week: The price of freedom and weight of responsibility in Chapter Two of "Noble Sacrifice."

Richard Ford has written short fiction for Games Workshop's Black Library and the British Fantasy Society's acclaimed journal, Dark Horizons, as well as the novel The Dragons of Lencia.

Art by KyuShik Shin

Oh yeah! Adventure Paths!

Friday, February 12, 2010

Huh. It's been a while since I've talked about an Adventure Path in the blog, I just realized. Looking back, seems the last time we talked about an Adventure Path at all was on January 6th, in fact. AIEEE!

Now... sometime soon I wanna share with you some excerpts from Merisiel's journal that have come into my possession... excerpts that catalog her joys and frustrations over the foundation of her new nation in the northeastern River Kingdoms... but I'm still deep in the process of translating it to English from Elven and excising all the racy parts that the MAN won't let me put on the blog.

So, since I don't have the time yet to post that preview of the kingdom-building rules that'll be appearing in Pathfinder Adventure Path #32, why don't I show off some of the art from the first Kingmaker adventure instead? Let's see... how about pictures of two of the more ferocious war chieftains your PCs will be dealing with during the course of "Stolen Land?" Names withheld to prevent the not-so-innocent...

And I promise to make public Merisiel's journal soon! Stay tuned!

	Illustration by Kyushik Shin
Illustration by Eric Belisle	Illustration by Scott Purdy

PS: Yes... the third picture is of a carbuncle. For real.

James Jacobs
Creative Director

In with the New

Friday, January 22, 2010

I recently had the "opportunity" to run into yoda8myhead, extra pervasive poster on these boards and mastermind behind the Pathfinder Wiki. Besieged with the usual onslaught of questions and accusations also came a request for a few more pieces of art previewing some of our upcoming products (and perhaps in some cases "past-viewing" some recent releases). Ask and ye shall receive… ya harpy. :P

Wes Schneider
Managing Editor

From Classic Horrors Revisited	From Cities of Golarion	From NPC Guide
Illustration by Tyler Walpole	Illustration by Craig J. Spearing	Illustration by Kyushik Shin