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"He speaks truth," Halla concurs. "We have not come to test your hospitality. We are still seeking the children stolen from our village on Jól, however long ago that may have been for you, and followed the orks into this place. Help us retrieve our children, and you will be swiftly rid of us."
"You seem hale," Halla comments to Rys, "after your encounter with the winter-child. Has it been long for you since then?" (A question which would seem nonsensical in ordinary circumstances.)
Halla gives the bramble-curtain a long, narrow-eyed stare as she continues through.
"Ní dhéanann sé cuimhin leat, Maeve," Halla smirks at her companion before bowing an acknowledgement to the elf-goði. Varisian: He doesn't remember you, Maeve.
"Come, now. Rys will be most interested to see you all." Halla tears her eyes away from the tree long enough to share a smirk with Maeve. "'Spéis,'" she remarks quietly. "Is é sin an focal taidhleoireachta." Varisian: 'Interested.' That is a diplomatic word.'
"She is Varisian," Halla replies, trying to decide if she should reserve her glare for Kló or for Maeve. "She was stolen as a girl by raiders and brought back to Hofn as a thrall. She isn't over it yet."
Halla stares blankly at the elf. "I don't understand you. What powers?" The interaction with the new woman, though, draws his attention. ”There has been a separate spirit inside you? And what is her name?” "It's ... Maeve," Halla almost whispers, visibly drawing into herself. Having her constant secret companion suddenly, irrevocably shared with others makes her feel naked and vulnerable. Maeve, on the other hand, unable to understand any of the others but the Varisian-speaking Cai, looks around with unabashed curiosity. Both women share a small but unmissable glowing mark on their foreheads, which look something like a butterfly, but Maeve is shorter and darker, both due to a swarthier skin and to a certain shadowy obscurity which makes her look less than totally substantial.
Cai slides off his horse and approaches Halla and the new woman cautiously, speaking to them in the same tongue. "Níl a fhios ... agam. Is é seo mo.... Tá sé seo Maeve." Varisian:
I ... don't know. This is my.... This is Maeve." Mav claps her hands together. "Now then! What is going on with our little thorned rose, here!" she says, looking towards Halla. "Níl a fhios agam," she repeats. "I don't know what happened. The raven tried to take her away." She waves her hand half-heartedly in the direction of the newcomer and the graveyard.
Halla claps a hand to her forehead.
Halla raises a finger to point at a glowing rune on the other's temple. "Tá tú ...." Varisian: You have a ....
Halla slides heavily off of the mule as the numbness in her extremities begins to ebb and stares at the other entity. "Cheap mé go raibh tú níos áille." Varisian: I thought you were prettier.
Halla manages weakly to wriggle upright and seat herself in the saddle of the mule.
"Uimh! Saoire a n-aonar!" Halla manages shakily, getting to her feet with an effort and stepping next to the spirit-woman. "Ní bheidh tú ar leith dúinn!" Varisian:
No! Leave her alone! You won't separate us!
GM: Maeve... don't go.... I'm sorry I ate the stew.... You didn't tell me not to....
"...Ingrid. Ingrid Alfsdóttir," Halla manages. She sways a little on her feet, and her face is flushed.
"Halla," Halla replies, "daughter of no one."
Halla falls heavily off of the mule onto the road, harder now that it is autumn than when it was blanketed with snow a moment earlier. Grumpily, she takes the time to remove Signy's furs and stow them in the saddlebags before climbing up again, inexpertly.
"When mortals die here, it is often difficult for their souls to leave this place and reach their proper judgment. The fey spirits themselves were not overly troubled by stray ghosts, but the goddess of death was. Some years ago she dispatched one of her servants to collect stray ghosts that were lost in the First World. This servant is called Tash, and this is his, or her, or its traveling cemetery-- the only cemetery that I know of, in the First World." "We should search it," Halla says suddenly, "for the children. If their ghosts are there, we will know we have failed."
Mav, however, looks up languidly from her perusal of her old book, and smiles at Halla. "Have your dreams held power before?" "My dreams have been strange since Jól," she answers shortly. "Whether there is any 'power' in that, I wouldn't know." Mav or Sense Motive DC 16:
Halla's tone indicates she thinks that Mav, in particular, might be to blame for her strange dreams. "I think there's much we need to learn from the elves of how to set up a camp here before we set out to find the children." "Aye, why not stay here half a lifetime, like him," she jerks her chin toward Kló, "and then hope the orks have been in as little hurry to harm the children as we have been to retrieve them?" She gets to her feet before anyone can answer and moves away toward the mules, clearly agitated.
Halla didn't sleep well. She has felt unsettled since eating the drake-heart stew last night; angrily, and unreasonably, she blames the other Hofnites' scruples for upsetting her stomach. Something is different with Maeve, as well: she is there but distant, preoccupied, unresponsive to Halla's mental questioning. It takes her twice as long to concentrate her mind as it usually does, and when she joins the others at the fire, she is sulky and irritable. Lydd turns the fish again and says, "Dreams here may be true and may be false. Pay attention to them, but do not destroy yourself for what may be a fancy of the lantern." "And if I dreamed of Rys?" she asks shortly, her eyes cutting toward Mav. "What would you advise me then?"
Halla settles into her bedroll, thinking of the giants' bridge in Varisia she has never seen. If we could walk over that and come out in Varisia! Maeve remarks with enthusiasm. Better than Hofn, Halla returns. What if we can only get out of here by wanting to be someplace else badly enough ... and we are stranded here forever because I don't really want to go back to Hofn? This place is no worse than many others, Maeve replies with a shrug. It gives me a headache, Halla complains. Everything changing the way it does, time rushing and stretching the way it does. Nothing here is solid. She goes to sleep thinking that one needn't cross a bridge if one can swim....
Maeve's excitement dims a little as Halla rephrases the question in Skald. "You have seen this giants' bridge?" "If bridges in this place are as much symbol as object. Then with enough power maybe we can make a bridge take us to cut off the path of the orks, no? All we'd need to know is where they go and how to gain the right amount of power." "If she cannot do it, what chance have we?" Halla shrugs fatalistically. "But the elves come every Jól. Perhaps Rys has the power to build these bridges. When they left Hofn, we did not follow the elves' tracks to that cave, only the orks'. They must know another way."
"You ask me if it is symbol, or power: that is a false line, here. The symbol is the power, in the First World. All around you is symbol. This bridge, here: it is just a little footbridge, over a stream? If you like. It is also every bridge, from great dwarf-spans over chasms to the living wooden branches that exist in far-off Kyonin," (she indicates Tassidar with a wave of one hand when saying this) "to the great bridge they call the Irespan, built by giants, in a land called Varisia... The name catches Maeve's attention. "Varisia? Tá tú ann?" she asks Mav. Varisian: You've been there?
The stew smells warm and delicious. I heard a story around the campfire about a girl taken inside the mountain, Maeve warns. When her mother came for her, she had eaten only the seeds of a pomegranate, but eating their food meant she could never return to the outside world. Then we are all already imprisoned, Halla reasons. We ate berries and at the market. There is no call to starve with the harm already done. What is a pomegranate? A red fruit, Maeve answers testily. A dragon's flesh is different. They are magical creatures. It may ... change you. I am already changed. Halla accepts the mug of stew with an apologetic shrug to Rikka. "Do you eat ham?" GM:
Halla reacts warily to Mav's suggestion. She is tired and overwhelmed and has already lost track of who might owe a favor to whom. Does the very fact that the elves are taking them to their home count as a favor? If so, does the Hofnites' assistance in fighting the lizardmen count as repayment, or do the elves merely consider that they would not have been on the road to be attacked if not for the humans? "You have already given us gifts enough, surely," she replies politely but guardedly, "merely by helping us find our children."
Halla drops clumsily off of Bim, dispirited. Another night on the road, another day of the children getting farther away from them with every step. How far is it to the elves' home? And even if they can provide help, how long will it take them to trek all the way back to pick up an even colder trail? Were they foolish to trust the elves in the first place? Perhaps their only intention is to delay the rescue party until it is too late; the ork-head said they were taking orders from an elf, after all.
Halla has suspicions ... but they make little sense, even to her. She shakes her head.
Halla tends to both Knute and Rikka's wounds. She evinces no expectation that she should share in the spoils, but she tentatively approaches Kló as he begins to flay the fallen linnorm-thing. "If there is enough... do you think I might have one of the scales? For Ingrid ... one of the children ... if we find her."
Standing by the dead drake, Halla glances down among the trees and sees Kló covered with blood and being tended to by the pale elf and the butcher's son. She turns to Rikka. "The linnorm's bile: it burned you. How badly? Let me see."
In the sudden reprieve after the battle has ended, Halla edges up the path toward the downed linnorm-thing, eying it with both curiosity and wariness, lest it only be playing dead. Mav's unconcerned approach reassures her enough that her knuckles gripping the crossbow in readiness grow less white. The blue scales glisten against the blood-stained snow. Ingrid Alfsdóttir, if you could see this....
Relieved to see the blue linnorm plummet from the sky, Halla moves up next to Rikka, loading another bolt into her crossbow.
Halla moves forward onto the path and takes aim at the linnorm-thing again.
Halla scampers back to where she dropped her crossbow and picks it up, brushing snow out of the mechanism.
Halla continues to try to cleanse the burning fluid from Rikka's skin.
Seeing the blue linnorm-thing withdrawing, Halla drops her crossbow in the snow and runs forward to Rikka. She has no waterskin, but perhaps snow can help free the seithrwoman.
Halla's heart rises to her throat. Is it a linnorm? Do linnorms have wings? Surely they're larger than this...? She raises her totally-inadequate-feeling crossbow and fires, fumbling another bolt into the mechanism as soon as the previous projectile has flown.
"Kló!" Halla calls in alarm. "It breathes fire!"
Halla waits for the others to move out, then cautiously follows, keeping a healthy distance from the front lines.
He calls to the others back at the group, "There are lizardlike humanoids waiting in ambush. One, at least, wearing bone trinkets and marked with the blue of the Wyrm. On the second switchback." "Is that not what we already knew?" Halla inquires of no one, taking care to keep her voice pitched low enough that it doesn't carry to Knute. Unlike the rat, who can be insulted with impunity, the butcher's son can understand her words. She loads one of her newly-purchased bolts into the battered crossbow she took from Old Palli's longhouse what seems like months ago.
"Send him off alone, we're likely to have seen the last of him," Halla warns sourly, "... not that that might not be a welcome event."
With a slow blink, Halla envisions a purple cat flying to the top of the hill with an Ulfen warrior and a rat pirate on its back. Five Solomon should be here. What is Jól to this? "Do not expect too much of the rat," she cautions. "We defeated him; his combat prowess cannot be all that he boasts, and he is as likely to sneak away to return to his crew as to put himself in danger on our account."
Halla keeps quiet. All she knows of raiders is to stay behind the warriors and try to keep them on their feet.
Looking at the snowy cliff, Halla remembers her sliding tumble off the ice bridge. "Perhaps I should stay with the animals," she suggests, "and stand ready to heal those who may be injured."
Mav chuckles softly. "Sent hither and yon, like a leaf blown about by the breeze," she says in response to Halla's words. "Poor child. But did you ever think that your little errand of mercy should take to to the back of the north wind itself?" "It is farther than I ever expected to go in my lifetime," Halla replies simply and truthfully. He makes his way towards Halla and Klo, and says, "It's so strange to travel with the elves, to be reminded they exist 364 days of the year besides Jól..." He thinks for a bit, then asks, "Why don't we trade with them any other time? Do you think the passage between our home and Álfheimr is only open for a short period around then?" "We are unwelcome here," Halla shrugs. "And perhaps their welcome in Hofn would grow thin if they came more than once a year. Time flows differently here," she glances at Kló. "Perhaps our Jól comes once a month from their perspective. We wouldn't make a day's journey through the winter and back more than once in a month. When would the work get done?"
"I remember from our last conversation, daughter of your people: you are a thrall, they call it? You have a master, then. Is it one of these companions of yours?" She shakes her head. "No. I am apprenticed to the healer, but he is an old man and had many wounded villagers to keep him busy back in Hofn. I was sent with the war band to tend to any injuries they might suffer fighting the orks, but most stayed behind to fight in the cave to let a smaller group try to find the children; and once again, I was sent in case any of the children should be hurt when we found them."
Halla replies to Mav's questions politely. She seems the only one of the elves not physically pained by our presence ... though she is likely only better at hiding her discomfort than the others. How different they are when they are the ones in our home rather than we in theirs!
Halla manages a ghost of a smile in return. "I suppose our presence here will inspire him to greater heights of disapproval." Her smile fades as she turns her eyes to the completion of the task. "The girl with me, the one you gave the leather ball to ... she was one of the children taken."
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