| Charles Evans 25 |
The Lay of Avsilar (Translation of ms hastily copied by Barglas the Swift)
The dwarves knew darkness walked the night.
Not one in chains, but far worse still,
The Shadow of the Ancient Light;
Once gifted, what once stolen was,
To make an evil far from right,
An end to all was purposed till,
The mirror threw back stolen might.
But though the war was won before,
One last great star could score the skies,
And though the seven Unchained might be,
The Eldest Dwarven Lord was wise;
They might be gods- and terrors all-
But as a number, fixed in size,
Whilst she had kin and, though ‘but fiend’,
Unbound by any power’s premise.
The dwarves of Avsilar made war,
Against the foe they could not beat,
The finest blades their forges turned,
Availed naught in battle’s heat;
Too late by far the wisdom gained,
Of how the deadly foe to meet,
The plans undone, last battle gone,
The struggle lost in doomed defeat.
Now since the fall of Avsilar,
Too many folk have saught redress,
Ten score of score, and countless more,
Who ever on would vainly press,
To seek a foe they would not seek,
If offered choice by lucky guess,
To stay at home with kith and kin,
Or fall away in death’s caress.
The Shadow Walks the Darkness Still,
Her kindred in this distant age,
Their strength unchanged, whilst others’ waned,
In fire and ash, in blood and rage,
Infernal lights that go not out,
Yet hide their thoughts from all most sage,
Each Dire fiends that walk at will,
With little fear of any gauge.
Translation Notes:
The use of ‘infernal’ is entirely poetic, and not meant to be literal. There is no indication as to the position with regard to law and chaos. Any other technical terms which may have specific meanings in other fields should not be taken as being used in that sense in this (poetic) translation.
Again, here and there, due to the imperfect process of translation, are discrepancies in the syllable counts of each line. For recitation purposes, the very first line (9 syllables) should have the word ‘hammer’ hurried through, and the third line of the second verse (9 syllables) should have ‘seven’ hurried through.
Likewise, the third line of the last verse presented here only comes to 7 syllables, and the recommendation is a stretching of others’, to ‘oth-ers-is’ representing a partial extension and materialisation of the ‘invisible’ ‘s’ after the apostrophe, for poetic purposes.
Some confusion exists as to the order of the last two verses presented here, other translations placing them the other way around. It is also possible that there may exist in the complete lay one or more additional not transcribed by the original lore-collector; indeed some scholars suggest that the 4th verse, as presented here, may be an addition by a later writer, summarising the contents of many of these ‘missing’ verses.
Finally, regarding the mythic dwarven realm of Avsilar (pronounced Av-sill-ar, although there appear to be a shortage of dwarves available with both knowledge regarding this topic and the inclination to discuss it with non-dwarves):
Beyond vague hints of a cataclysmic war made in this lay, it is difficult to be certain just what end is supposed to have met this mythic realm. Sometimes references to ‘Bane of Avsilar’ are found in other sources, although it is difficult to be certain if it is supposed to imply an event, individual, or organisation. Whilst there are frequent references or allegories to ‘darkness’ in the original ancient dwarven version, and hints of some sort of sentient or malevolent force of darkness- which is paradoxically light at the same time- no creature of power is known to which the cryptic descriptions could be applied with any degree of certainty. Less skilled scholars frequently fall into the error of leaping to the conclusion that the root for the ancient dwarven word for darkness evolved into the modern common term ‘succubus’ (plural succubi), but both in modern dwarven and its ancient dwarven forefather, succubi are consistently and clearly identified with an entirely separate term which translates literally as ‘lesser evils’, and displays the dwarven contempt for these least combat-orientated of demonic foes.
What happened to Avsilar (indeed if such a trealm ever existed, or the fate was known) remains a mystery, hinted at by the lay.
| Charles Evans 25 |
Excerpt from the journal of Her Serene Highness, Princess of the Third March, Lady Warden of the Umbral Ports, Grand-protectoress & heir apparent of the Parabarony of Echelhurst, Alyssa thân Agrochal Esmerelda Thrune
Today I present the results of our initial foray onto Perciwick Island in search of the fort and treasure of the wizard Soldor, as we had agreed to assist the captain of the Osirion privateer vessel, Nefetiti, with in exchange for passage on his ship.
Overnight we had anchored off Perciwick, some distance remote from the shore for fear of uncharted reefs or other hazards that the map stolen from the Qadirans might not show. By daylight the island could be clearly seen, a series of forested ridges and deep valleys orientated approximately east-west and with a group of stone towers possible to discern rising above the trees on the end of the nearest ridge. About half a mile from the towers a long jetty projected into the sea.
We weighed anchor and under light sail, with a lookout at the bows taking frequent soundings, we began to cautiously approach the jetty. As we drew nearer obstructions could be seen in the waters about the jetty, resembling spars and masts – Methrir made some comment at this point about these likely being the remains of the ships of the soldiers the church of Aroden had sent after Soldor a century earlier, just before reports of Soldor’s activities ceased. It would have been helpful if he had mentioned this particular snippet of information before we left Sargava – I would like to think that if the subject of a missing previous expedition had been on the table back then, that someone would have had the sense to raise the possibility that they might be ‘missing as in dead as in now-their-unquiet-spirits-haunt-the-places-where-they-fell’ and we could have made purchases accordingly.
Anyway, the captain deemed it too hazardous to go closer to shore without proper charts or to further approach the jetty, so we dropped anchor again and an exploration party was rowed ashore in relays in the ship’s jolly boat. The party consisted of:
Myself, Princess Alyssa thân Agrochal Esmerelda Thrune, pathfinder.
Methrir Elrose, pathfinder.
Sonia Dauviloff, elf. Sonia left her pet giant bumblebee on board for reasons that would later become apparent.
Ship’s lieutenant Mustafa Khan. A pompous idiot, but one with an enchanted cutlass.
Mas’ukah, the assistant of the ship’s cleric.
Eight others drawn from the Nefetiti’s crew, only one of whom possessed any enchanted weapon.
On shore we found an old trail near the jetty, the winding course of which we followed up through the surrounding trees to the gates of the fortress. The remains of some sort of enchantments appeared to have kept the trail clear of the worst of the sub-tropical undergrowth and predators.
The thirty foot wide crater in front of the fortress gates, which exposed the bedrock ten feet down, provoked some debate. The fortress itself was in a state of apparent dilapidation, what remained of the gates hanging loosely from their pins, two of the towers having partially collapsed, and absent slates forming impromptu skylights into many upper rooms. The castle itself was curiously free of any plant growth however, other than a couple of vines that Sonia identified as being of abyssal origin – in another context we might have taken that to be a sign of something odd; as it was we assumed it to be the result of more magic by the original occupier and – despite Sonia’s reservations – entered.
Inside the castle courtyard the distinctive fracture patterns in some of the stonework and the rusted metal scraps scattered here and there were suggestive of some bygone battle, although any mortal remains had long since decayed or been picked away by scavengers. The corners of a cynical smile twitched at Sonia’s lips and both Methrir and I felt the sense of being watched by unquiet spirits and called things to a halt whilst we insisted Mas’ukah do what he could to bless the site and members of the party before continuing.
The unease I experienced continued however, as we proceeded into the ruins proper to search rooms where threads that might once have been sumptuous tapestries dangled rotting from the walls, and decayed furnishings littered the corridors and chambers. Smashing open what was left of chests and doors, more than one of the sailors discovered traps rendered decrepit by time and climate, but little harm was taken or loot discovered.
Due to collapsed stairwells the higher chambers of several towers proved impossible to get to, but we otherwise thoroughly explored the upper reaches of the castle before turning our attentions to the levels below the ground – at which point, we finally ran into undead. Perhaps they didn’t like the daylight up above, but in the weird angles of the basement – the original architect of the subterranean levels seemed to have had a fetish for geometry that made the eyes water – the shades of the dead attacked us, billowing out of walls, floors, and ceilings into the pale light of our sunrods and lanterns.
Methrir fell back on that ridiculous repeating hand crossbow of his, given the uncertainties of employing his whip against things with no physical substance. His toy either works better in a warm climate, or he has had it completely rebuilt since I last saw him use it, as I observed it jam only three times in total during the series of skirmishes that followed and the volleys of force-bolts certainly proved efficacious. Sonia flourished her rapier with her usual panache and skill, deadly even to the echoes of men and women in the fashion of templars of a past century. Lacking Sonia’s nimbleness of hand and foot I was obliged to draw my Thrune blade and employ a defensive technique against the threat of soul-freezing contact from those bodiless shades. The two members of the ship’s crew present with enchanted weapons did their best to contribute, whilst the others huddled together useless for any purpose other than holding lights aloft for those of us without elven sight. Mas’ukah was the worst of the lot: a supposed initiate of the sea goddess, one would have expected him to be good for blasting the undead with waves of holy power, but he just gibbered in a corner in terror.
After what seemed to be the last of the ghosts were vanquished, a fresh menace presented itself, a pair of vaguely humanoid creatures with bulbous dark eyes bounding seemingly from the very angles of the corridors. They raked their gazes over us, and a number of the sailors cried out as deep gashes ripped open in their arms and faces. Sonia snorted, muttered something that sounded like ‘bloody hounds of Tindalos’, and stepped forwards, cloak billowing for a moment like great wings, to confront them. Her mere boldness arrested their advance and as she stood her ground, glowering at them, their confidence seemed to slowly ebb away. At last, howling miserably, they turned and slunk away back into whatever dimension they had crawled forth from.
We eventually found a large stone door covered with complicated carvings and indentations, which one of the crew members insisted upon dealing with, claiming to be an expert in locks and puzzles. Whilst Methrir and I left the amateur to mumble things to himself as he fiddled with the locks, occasionally glancing at a scrap of parchment we had not seen before, Sonia smiled brightly at the crew and launched into an intriguing tale wherein the members of a ship’s crew had marooned a druid on an island a number of years earlier, but neglected to put ashore the druid’s animal companion – whereupon the seemingly harmless hedgehog proceeded to wreak terror aboard the ship.
Little by little it dawned on me that there may have been some plan to abandon Methrir, Sonia, and myself upon this island, once our usefulness was at an end, and a quick probe of the thoughts of the sailors now listening in horrible fascination to Sonia’s tale confirmed that such ideas had indeed been uppermost in their minds – although their imaginations were now busily supplying much more pressing details of the vengeance Sonia’s pet giant bumblebee might wreak if its mistress failed to return to the ship.
By the time that the crewman at the door (who had been listening too) finished with his work, any notions of marooning us on Perciwick had well and truly dissipated.
We proceeded past the door into what looked to have once been a treasury. Most of the contents appeared to have been ransacked years earlier, although some large, cumbersome, items of interest had been left behind. We conveyed a couple of large ornate pieces of carved ivory back to the shore and from thence to the ship, where an irate discussion with much furious gesticulation took place between the captain and Mustafa. The captain had not been expecting to see myself, Methrir, and Sonia back aboard, but – since we were – apparently now felt compelled by his code of honor to actually see us safe to Magnimar.
| Charles Evans 25 |
Hunting Swans (should have been my entry to the recent PC contest but due to tiredness I misread the word count and the prelude had to go as the only adjustment I had the time left to make)
“I admit that that is impressive.”, Prince Muzulir said, calmly studying the chess board. Outside the tent a storm of swans raged, honking and hooting through the camp, pecking at guards and servants and battering with wings as they wheeled, climbed, and dived. “Quite futile though, magician. My life is charmed, vouchsafed by an angel of the Dawnflower. You can butcher my servants all that you wish, but replacements are cheap and easy to find. Wild beasts cannot harm me nor even the tame pets of a petty conjurer.”
The prince moved a piece on the board then turned the hourglass. The sand began to run the opposite way.
“Check, and mate in two. Your position really is quite hopeless, you know.”
“Perhaps, your highness.”, his opponent, a man of greying hair who was dressed in the simple dark robes of a desert bedouin appeared to be studying the board, deep in thought.
“So, you will lose, and will summon the devil Arth’Raxerium for me, to barter your own life for a further three hundred years extension for my own?”
“Your highness has dwelt in luxury for many decades, maintaining the vigour of youth, wearing the finest silks, tutored by the noblest sages, and with assassins or mercenaries striking down those whom you perceived to threaten your path. You have forced deals from all manner of otherworldly creatures, to live this life in such security and power for so long. Has it never occurred to your highness that so many enemies in the outer spheres have you made that they might unite against you to bring you down?”
Outside the tent, the sounds of the struggles of the prince’s retainers were dying away to croaks and death-rattles, as the music of the triumph of the whirling swans filled the air.
“I have powerful allies amongst daemonkind.”, the prince amiably replied. “I do not doubt that they view me as a servant or slave, and one to be sacrificed at some point if I get too full of myself, but for now they disrupt any such coalitions against me.”
The magician moved a piece, and flipped the hourglass back over.
“You really intend to make me play this out to the end?” the prince quirked an eyebrow.
“Of course your highness; as you have taken the liberty of frequently pointing out during the three and a half hours since that most excellent lunch which you were kind enough to share with me, my very life is at stake here…”
Outside it was silent now, save for the sound of the swans, and in ones and twos occasional birds were starting to flutter into the tent. They perched seemingly at random, though kept their distance from the prince, almost as if warded away by an unseen barrier. The beaks and feathers of many were splashed with blood, though there was little indication that any of it might be theirs.
“Very well then.”, the prince pushed a piece forward, and turned the hourglass over again. “Whatever your next move is, you cannot now escape mate the turn after.”
The magician studied the board.
“I must admit that there appears to be some element of truth in your highness’ words. However, it is some time since anyone has beaten me at chess, and I believe that your highness has overlooked one possibility. What if my next move is to cheat?”
And he waved his hand, and with the exception of the king, every piece left on the board on his side was suddenly a queen, pinning the prince’s king in the midst of a web of death.
“You lose, your highness.” the magician rose to his feet and set the hourglass on its side. And suddenly, they were not swans in the tent, but beautiful women, their white robes smeared with blood and shining silver swords in their hands.
“Who? What? How?” Horror was written across the prince’s face as his doom gathered all about him. “Oh, wait? You? But you’re a legend, a fairy-story. You died centuries ago.”
“True, I stepped back from meddling in the affairs of the world for a while, to spare myself being bothered by the unworthy and to have a little breathing space to enjoy the view. But you have sufficiently irked my Lady Salmutha to merit my personal attention, and sadly the pact you exacted from Sarenrae’s servant will not protect you from my retinue. Within days those who arrive to investigate your absence from court will be writing stories and speculations about this occasion which will be retold and rewritten for centuries. Welcome to history, your highness.” He gestured to the women. “Finish him.”
The prince’s scream echoed through the camp, the sound a man whose life is ending in mortal terror of the damnation to which he is being unexpectedly sent to face; then there was only the laughter of women ringing in the baking heat of the late desert afternoon.
Hunting Swans: Absalom, 4635 AR
The sound of metal ringing on metal resounded as the pathfinder Venduras Kline took apart one of the Grand Lodge’s training golems with a flurry of hammer blows. His dark hair damp with sweat he stood back, and leant on the sledgehammer, catching his breath as the animated suit of armour reassembled itself, before flexing his muscles and launching into it again with another series of furious attacks.
“Bad day, huh?”, the blonde-haired, willowy, Daisy Fufflehorn looked in through the arched entry to the room.
“Bad does not even begin to cover it.” Venduras smashed the golem apart yet again, then put the hammer down and turned to face his fellow Pathfinder. “A stupid, obstinate, woman – a mere apothecary at a backstreet store with less real lore at her fingertips than a novice Pathfinder – is getting in my way.”
“The last I heard, you were headed out into the wilds of Varisia to look for one of those weird card-readers.”, Daisy said, coming in and sitting down on one of the room’s marble benches. She made a patting motion on the bench, hinting she expected Venduras to come and sit beside her. He remained standing though.
“Oh her, yes: I found her. She was very cooperative and anxious to see me on my way. Pretty daughter, too – couldn’t have been long a woman, though you wouldn’t have known it from the outrageous way she flirted. Anyway: the harrow-reader told me she couldn’t find the elf, master Sterfoel – not surprising he’s so hard to track down by magic, given what he’s reputed to know about a cabal of assassin-wizards – but that a woman in a theatrical venue in Whitethrone might know more about him. So off I toddled into the freezing north, and eventually tracked down the artiste the harrow-reader had talked about. She wasn’t bad looking, either – looked to have more than a touch of fey blood, which wasn’t surprising given she claimed that Sterfoel is her half-brother. She played all coy, and gave me a piece of paper with symbols on that she said indicated Sterfoel’s location, and that he was holed up in a rural inn, somewhere, and needed a physician for the woman he’d run off with and got in a family way. And she said that there was only one physician that would do, and she lived in Absalom, and could read where the symbols said to go. Well I couldn’t make anything of the symbols, so back down here I trotted, post-haste, to find the woman she’d indicated, and I finally ran her down this noon. Only I’m not interested in whatever stupid games and indiscretions Sterfoel has going on, so I told this herbalist that the paper was part of a wager from a fellow Pathfinder, and I would pay a hundred gold to anyone who could decipher what was on it. I just want to get to Sterfoel after all to find out what he knows about the cabal. And this infuriating apothecary”, he slammed a fist against the wall in frustration, “told me that if that was all that I had to say on the matter, she wasn’t going to spoil somebody else’s fun. Then she pulled a crossbow out and invited me to leave when I tried to get more forceful in my line of questioning.” He sagged now. “I’d borrowed a pair of enchanted lenses, and was trying like crazy to charm the woman into being more reasonable, but she must have clients in the aristocracy or underworld who pay for her to be protected, because as far as I could tell my efforts were sliding off her like cord off a greased pig.”
At last he slumped, and sat on the bench next to Daisy, head clutched in his hands.
“What do I do, Daisy? I’ve analysed those symbols supposed to say where to find Sterfoel for magical writings and invisible inks, but discovered nothing. I called in a favour from a high ranking priest of Nethys, but for all his chants and prayers all he could tell me about them was ‘a mystery of the night shrouded in secrets’. I’ve checked with the lodge’s cipher and language experts, and they’re all stumped. Is this all just a joke being played on me by a group of women in conspiracy with one another, or do an exotic actress in Whitethrone and a herbalist on the back streets of Absalom know a code which baffles the Society’s finest? And how am I supposed to find Sterfoel now?”
“Can I have a look at those signs?” Daisy asked.
Venduras nodded, fumbled in his clothes, and passed over a crumpled piece of parchment.
“Here, keep it if it’s any use, it’s a copy. The original’s somewhere safe.”
Daisy looked at the symbols on it for some time, turning the piece of parchment occasionally as if in hope that viewed from a different angle it might make more sense.
At last she patted Venduras on the back.
“I haven’t the faintest idea what they mean or say either, but I’ll see what I can find out.”
Making enquiries, it took Daisy very little time to locate the herbalist’s shop where Venduras had been so vexed. A signboard ‘Kathy’s Herbs’ announced the name of the business over the shop front, and a dark haired woman was outside, fixing up the shutters as evening drew in.
“Hello there. I’m a Pathfinder, Daisy Fufflehorn, and perhaps you spoke to one of my colleagues earlier. He may have been a bit ungracious.”, Daisy introduced herself. “I’d like to apologise on behalf of my colleague, and hoped that I might be able to explain things to the person whom he offended.”
“Hah!”, the dark-haired woman gave a short laugh. “I have met very few people in my life who could actually explain something which they had claimed that they could. Fortunately, if your colleague was the big fellow with dark hair, stubble, and mysterious wager then he saw reason in the tip of a crossbow bolt, and left before he could do anything I might have regarded as giving serious offence.”
She fitted up another shutter.
“No, I can explain. I mean his brusque behaviour, and why he’s so desperate.”, Daisy persisted. “You see years ago his sister Aramintha vanished, and he’s never been able to find out for certain what happened to her. Lately he’s come to believe a cabal of wizard-assassins called ‘the swan hunters’ were in some way involved – they kill people with specially trained birds and have a weird obsession with the story of the magician who beat Prince Muzulir at chess with the aid of a flock of swans. Anyway, at about the time she disappeared there was a note left at Aramintha’s house quoting a line from an old play about the Swan Lord that these swan-hunters supposedly all love – and he’s trying to find an elf who he thinks knows more about these wizard-assassins. It certainly sounds crazy I know – my colleague may be a little bit deranged himself after more than a dozen years spent seeking answers. But he’s so desperate to find his sister, or what happened to her. Priests and oracles have never been able to give him any satisfactory reports, so he just keeps on chasing the mystery, unable to let go.”
“If priests and oracles have never been able to give him any answers over a period of years, it says to me that either something so ghastly happened that they don’t want to tell him or that she was made to vanish by something so powerful that all the prayers and spells of the casters of this age won’t bring her back.”, the dark-haired woman snorted, putting up the last shutter. She turned to look Daisy in the face. “You care for him, this pathfinder colleague of yours?”
Daisy mutely nodded.
“Pshw.”, the dark-haired woman said, turning away. “Come inside and tell me what you know of what he really came this noon with those symbols about? That story about a wager was utter garbage.”
Inside the shop, by the light of a flickering oil-lamp, Daisy produced the scrap of parchment and laid it on the counter, as if in the hope of getting a further explanation of what was on it. The dark-haired woman had locked the street door, and now stood the other side of the counter from Daisy, ignoring the parchment however. They stood in silence for a while, looking at one another – each willing the other to explain more – before Daisy caved in first.
“That’s a copy. He didn’t go into details. He said an actress or singer or something in Whitethrone gave the original to him. She said her half-brother, who’s this elf, Sterfoel, he’s so desperate to find, had eloped with a human girl and gotten her with child, and for some reason this girl needs you as a physician. She thinks that you will understand from those sigils where the elf and his lady-friend are. It’s all rather confusing, and not much of it makes sense to me.”
There was a further long silence.
“I am not some errand girl, even for the likes of her in Whitethrone or her half-brother.”, the dark haired woman said at last, her emerald eyes gleaming for a moment.
“Oh, you do know what’s going on then? It makes sense to you?”, Daisy asked.
“The one your Pathfinder friend is looking for should have known better than to run off with a mortal woman like that.”, the dark-haired woman said. “That ‘elf’ clearly has little between his ears but air. No wonder his half-sister thinks only I will do.”
“So, err, you’ll help them?”, Daisy asked.
“No.”, the woman flatly replied. “I help only a very few friends. I handle small commissions and trades otherwise, from those who ask me face to face. I will not go to them. I will not help them. Nor, given this afternoon’s deceits, am I minded to tell you or your friend where the elf and his woman are. Your friend lied to me, tried to bewitch me, and finally assayed to threaten me. On point of principle I will not reward such abominable lack of etiquette with any assistance.”
“Isn’t there anything which I could do to make you change your mind?”, Daisy asked. “I know my colleague’s behaved badly towards you, but I haven’t and I’m a Pathfinder too; I know things, I can find things out, I can do things or call in favours and get other people to do things for me. Aren’t there rare flowers or orchids which you need which I could perhaps get for you?”
There was another silence whilst the herbalist considered. At last she answered.
“Understand that I do not cast spells, so if I play this game, then magical transport of some kind will need to be arranged to speed at least your colleague and myself to the location where this elf and his lady-love are currently camped out. I suspect that if your colleague is to present himself, he will be in a much better position to do so in my company and the sooner the better, since that will maximise his chance to look like a godsend to the elf he desires to talk with. I shall negotiate my own fee for my services from the elf, but conditional to my even going there, in your friend’s company, are that before we depart your friend will apologise to me for his behaviour of earlier this day, that you will do certain very specific things which I will assist you in, and that you will persuade your friend to hand over to you his Pathfinder pin ‘for safekeeping’ before he leaves for any subsequent stage to his travels. Finally, if as I suspect from what you have told me the Swan Lord of old tales is a model to the wizards your friend believes are associated with his sister’s disappearance I would caution him that I once heard something perhaps not known in Pathfinder Society circles: That, in the days before the Earthfall shook the world and many things changed or disappeared forever, a female demon lord named Salmutha had a fondness for swans.”
“I’ve never head of any Salmutha, but I’ll try to remember to pass that on.” Daisy promised. “Now what about those specific things you want me to do?”
The dark-haired woman told her, and Daisy looked bewildered.
“I don’t understand.”, Daisy said.
“I have played enough chess – seen sufficient of life – to anticipate that if your colleague follows this through that the end he finds will be bitter indeed. If you truly love him – are desperate enough that you will offer me anything to try to win my aid on his behalf – then this is something you should do as much for your sake as his. I don’t care what, if anything, you tell him about this agreement if you wish to go through with it. Those are my terms to you, and they are non-negotiable.”
Galt
Several days later, in an inn in a rural backwater where the herbalist was now ensconced with Sterfoel and his wife, Venduras and Daisy were saying their final parting over the breakfast table.
“I still can’t believe that she caved in like that. All it took was a few words from me, to smooth things over. I knew I was charming, and a smooth talker, but I didn’t realise that I was that smooth.”, Venduras said.
“Venduras.”, Daisy said, whose heart now hid a number of secrets from him. “Be careful, please. For me.”
“I’ll be worried enough on account of my own skin, but you needn’t fear that I won’t occasionally keep you in my thoughts, my Daisy Boo. By the sound of it Sterfoel smashed most of the cabal anyway – he must be a terrific fighter, though no wonder he’s in hiding – but he thinks there’s an old temple or shrine somewhere he never tracked down that the grand-wizard of the order lived in. The elf’s not sure if he got the grand-wizard or not in his attacks on the Swan Hunters, but he’s given me the details of their lairs he did find and some clues as to where the grand-wizard’s home might be located. I’ll have to go and see what I can find.” He made a face. “It’s too much to hope I’ll discover anything conclusive about Aramintha myself, but maybe once I’ve put these places on a map and checked that they’re safe some Society casters can go out and work their divinations from inside any mystic shields protecting the locations; then maybe I’ll finally get my answers.”
Somewhere in Northern Garund
The massive red sandstone columns of the front of the temple supported a pediment carved in relief with a scene of what looked to be a dance of swans. Venduras, swathed in protective enchantments against the heat and glare of the desert sun, had distinguished increasing details of it as he approached the temple. Between glances at the temple he had constantly scanned the surrounding expanse of rocks and pebbles for any signs of an ambush on this final approach to the mountainside holy-place – or even that other people had been this way recently.
He had seen nothing. In three months of travels since he left Galt, he had found occasional dead bodies in places Sterfoel had said he had been and signs of looting and destruction, but little else. Maybe the elf had utterly destroyed the cabal.
At last he passed into the shade of the temple, and paused between two columns to admire the workmanship, and to try to hazard a guess at their age. There was more than a hint of magic in the air, and despite their seemingly unweathered state they might have stood here for any length of time. There were thousands of words carved upon them in languages he did not know, though he could recognise that many were inscribed in the runes of Thassilon or in letters in the mode of ancient Azlant.
Something about the timeless grandeur and elegance of this place recalled to his mind the fateful message on the scroll in his sister’s dwelling. ‘What if you could be beautiful and live for as long as you wished?’ A line from an ancient play which had set him on the long trail that had led him here. Having seen some of their places of work he was starting to belatedly doubt why the wizard-assassins would have left a note like that if they had made off with his sister? True, he had seen plenty of evidence that they killed people and abducted victims for experiments and sacrifices – they also clearly were obsessed with one particular Qadiran fable – but leaving it as a deliberate clue or taunt to their activities didn’t fit what he now thought of as their modus operandi. But, despite these late doubts, his Pathfinder gut said he had finally come to a place where his search for the truth about Aramintha’s fate would end.
He headed further into the temple, bringing out a sunrod to provide illumination as he paced across the rough red floor – sandstone like the pillars and roof above. It seemed almost icy cool in here, out of the sun, and he thought if he paused and listened hard enough, he could hear the splash of water from somewhere much deeper within. He pressed on, out of the main entry hall and down a series of corridors, through rooms now no longer constructed of shaped stone, but subterranean ways hued from the rock of the mountain.
He descended a stair, and entered what seemed to be a shrine room, with a broad altar overlooked by a huge statue which seemed to be part naked woman, part swan. The white quartzite of the statue stood in stark contrast to the red rock otherwise all around.
And the scene subtly shifted, and the air shimmered for a moment as if with a mirage, and then a bearded man stood there in white robes, his face and hands tanned by the desert sun, and a long twisting rod of crystal in his right hand, easily three feet long, carved in the shape of very many swans. Though his hair was grey, he otherwise seemed in the prime of his life.
“Greetings, traveller. You have come a good many years and miles, crossing and recrossing two continents, to be at this place, in this time. Do you have any word of warding or of greeting to give to me?”
He spoke to Venduras in Taldane, but with an oddly archaic accent.
“I am Venduras Kline, Pathfinder.”, Venduras said, and a feeling of unease seasoned with just a little fear trickled down his spine like cold water. “I greet you in the name of the Ten.”
“Ah, the Pathfinders and the Decemvirate.”, the man laughed. “You little dabblers of lore, running round gathering items and facts to please your ten masked masters – never stopping to ask why you’re doing it, or what their ends might be? Perhaps that’s just as well. Anyhow, what you have spent a good deal of time asking – time which might have been spent more productively looking to your own needs I must say – is about what happened to your sister? Don’t worry. I forgive you the cult. They were misguided anyway – they never truly understood myself or the goddess – and you weren’t the one to actually kill them. They thought of themselves as my servants, and I probably should be angry about their deaths, but I’m not – or at least not at present with you. Still, you have drawn more attention than was strictly desirable with your endless pokings and questions during the years, even if it was other minds that saw things and did the actual damage.” From out of the air, like ghosts materialising into corporeality, swans were descending now, one after another to land on the stone and gather around the man.
And Venduras belatedly realised just who and what he might be in the presence of…
“You’re the wizard of the legend, who beat Prince Muzulir at chess.”
“Quite so”, the man made a brief and mocking bow. “You have found me out. Only the stories which they tell these days aren’t quite accurate. They make too much of the chess game, and speak of my handmaids as mere wild birds who distracted the prince at a crucial moment, not as living vassals of the goddess whose involvement was rather bloodier than even the most learned historian imagines. Oh. I have someone I believe you’d like to meet.” He reached out and tapped one of his swans on the head imperially with his rod, and she honked in reply, then began to change, shooting upwards and shifting, until it was a woman dressed in white robes, with a sword sheathed at her belt, who looked back at Venduras. In shape and form, there was much about her that recalled to the Pathfinder his sister, a woman as young and vibrantly beautiful as she had been when he had last seen her so many years before, but there was something in her eyes which had changed and which was terrible for him to behold.
“Hello, Vendy, you silly old thing.” The voice was hers, but mockery laced it. She was Aramintha, but she was become a beauteous monster, wild and dangerous.
“What in Desna’s name have you done to her?”, Venduras turned on the wizard – the Swan Lord – and for the first time since his sister had vanished the name of the goddess he had used to follow passed his lips.
“Desna won’t help you now or here, my lad.”, the magician simply ignored the question. “This is a place of power dedicated to Lady Salmutha. But you won’t have heard of her, I expect. Even the Pathfinders with all their books and troves don’t know her anymore, or not as she was.”
“Salmutha of the Swans? The demon lord?”, Venduras tried to rally in the face of overwhelming catastrophe. “There’s a herbalist of Absalom who knows about her.”
“What? Who?” The man’s composure suddenly cracked, and his voice shook with fury. The swans honked and hooted and clustered around him, and Aramintha looked bewildered. “Describe her to me.”
Venduras described the dark-haired herbalist, whom he had last seen in the inn in Galt, and racked his mind for anything else he had heard from Daisy or otherwise learned of her.
“Her?”, the ancient magician raged. “She should be long dead by now. How is She still alive?”
“Well she is.”, Venduras said. The lunatic who must have taken and corrupted his sister into the awful thing which stood there was fantastically old, fantastically powerful, a thing of stories, and one of the first things a Pathfinder learned was that you never argued with legends which turned out to be real without a lot of preparation and backup. Venduras hadn’t a hope of killing him. But the man was in turmoil, and just the right word here and there and maybe Venduras could escape, report back, and rally the Society to hunt down and stamp out this monster or at least drive him somewhere a long way from the Inner Sea. “She’s still alive and playing chess.”
The moment the words passed his lips, Venduras knew that they had been the wrong thing to say. The Swan Lord turned towards him, and Venduras saw in his face that whomever he thought the herbalist was, she had not just beaten Venduras, but utterly humiliated him in every last chess game that they had ever played. The ancient wizard lifted his rod, and thrust it in fury at Venduras, and as white feathered death (and Aramintha) stormed towards him in a whirl of wings one consolation did occur to the Pathfinder: Somehow, he had hurt the wizard in his pride more soundly than any blade or spell which he could have brought to bear would have done. It would be a long time before his enemy could forget him – could forget this moment.
It wasn’t much consolation, but if it was all that was there to be had it was what he would take, and Venduras Kline went down with a deliberately mocking smile on his lips.
Epilogue: Absalom
Daisy woke up from her afternoon nap, and found that she had been crying in her sleep, and somehow she knew that Venduras was dead. She sat up and her glance went to the bedside table, where his Pathfinder pin lay, whilst her hands went to the as yet slight swell of her stomach. She didn’t know if the dark-haired herbalist had been cruel or kind. Venduras was dead, and she was left with his pin and as a mother-to-be of his child…
| Charles Evans 25 |
Absolute War (written for Wayfinder #5 but adjudged to sail too close to the wind of canon)
The armies of the Shining Crusade broke. We scarcely even wavered before dissolving into chaos. The Tyrant did not immediately pursue, pausing to pick that catastrophic field clean of what corpses he found usable to fill out his ranks, before coming on apace with our abandoned standards and fallen men paraded in his forward ranks as trophies and grisly promises of what would soon befall us.
At Fort Lorrin a Chelish noblewoman who used her own cloak on a halberd for a banner managed to check the flight of a few hundred of us. She wanted to delay the oncoming Tyrant in the hope of buying the fleeing armies of the Crusade a chance to regroup and deny the Tyrant the opprtunity to simply sweep them into Lake Encarthan. She marched us back to Vaishali Pass to meet the oncoming hosts. There were stories that she had fought single-handed against witches and gargoyles in Garund, and emerged unscathed and victorious, but as a day dawned in which the enemy came into view we could see in the grim lines of her face that we were all doomed, and she knew it. Against the torrent of foes streaming up the valley towards us there was no hope of victory, and to be taken alive in battle to be kept as pets or hostages the lesser evil – for death would offer us no release from the clutches of the necromancer whose armies now bore down. Nevertheless, we were proud men and women of Cheliax, and having resolved to stand and fight, we would buy the rest what time we could. We would not run again.
The first charge by the horrors and abominations in the Tyrant’s vanguard slew fully half our number, and when the enemy fell back at last there were far too few gaps in their own line in exchange for the casualties they had inflicted. Some troll-like beast had lost an arm; a couple of fiends lay twitching and slowly melting away in sulphurous smoke. One tentacled thing was unmoving in a pool of its own foul smelling liquids. And that was it.
Our enemy seemed surprised that we still stood, but of a mind, since we did so, to torment and toy with us. He called off his elite shock troops and seemed content, as the afternoon shadows lengthened and the evening drew on, to send instead wave after wave of his orcs and undead things to slowly whittle us down. He did not even seem concerned to use his magic – of which he evidenced all too much readied with the ease with which he reanimated the fresh fallen – directly against us.
“He’s using us as a training exercise for his grunts.”, one veteran spat in disgust, as we spent a few minutes recovering as best we could in the wake of one attack.
The captain’s face grew haggard with every passing assault. We could see her wondering what fate might await her? There were stories that it pleased the Tyrant to have spread about the uses he found for officers – particularly female ones.
The night closed in, and what mages and priests we had surviving created lights behind us, so we could see the enemy. It meant the enemy could see us all the more clearly, but sufficient of them, whether orc, beast, horror, fiend or grave-thing, were unbothered by mere darkness for us to put ourselves at a greater still disadvantage by fighting with no light. The conditions would not have been good for any archery upon our own part, but we had long since parted with every quarrel, arrow, dart or pellet that we might have had between us. The best we could hope for now were rocks for slings, but there were precious few to hand rounded enough for such use. We were reduced to fighting hand-to-hand, meeting each attack with naked steel, whilst the enemy, when inclined, had arrows to use aplenty.
And with night, of course, came the vampires.
By whatever dark art, the Whispering Tyrant was able to keep some of these officers and lieutenants active even during the day, albeit with tremendously reduced powers. Now that the sun was down, they came fully into their own. All the wit and cunning of mortal men and women, allied with unholy strength and powers and a fearful resistance to blows. The Tyrant sent some of them in to play with us and by the time the survivors drew off they had done all too bloody work. We had given as good an account of ourselves as we got, but there were barely three score of us left standing, and the Tyrant had tens of thousands of his rank and file troops left, to say nothing of his elite forces. This was the end. Even the captain’s cloak on its halberd hung limply in abject defeat.
Had we made a difference? It was hard, in the face of the things we could see growing stronger and more confident with every passing moment, to imagine how the fleeing rabble that was left of the Shining Crusade could rally sufficiently to meet with success against this host with the mere few hours we had bought them. In that dark moment not even the stars shone upon us. We were alone, abandoned by our fellow men, failed by our gods, with nothing left to do except fall.
And then the captain stirred, an instant of horror and alarm written upon her face. She looked up in disgust and terror, and a moment later the rest of us felt it and followed suit. And then we cowered on the ground, or clenched our shields and huddled, as with a rush of noisome air it swept overhead. I am a scholar of ancient languages and it snarled and roared in the tongue of the ancient Azlanti as it thundered past:
“Do not call up that which you cannot put down, wizard.” – But all its awful anger was roused not against us, but directed with singular malevolence against the undead wizard and his armies which stood before us.
Then, in a blast of fire mingled with lightning that it spewed forth in a cone of murderous destruction from its jaws, it was upon the enemy – a dragon vast beyond belief, armoured in scales of midnight dark blue.
Like a thunderbolt it ripped through the air above their ranks, reaching down with claws the size of houses to snatch and toss and rake as it wheeled and turned and swooped above them. I think the Whispering Tyrant tried to fight it. Certainly spells rose into the night sky to meet it for a short while, but with arcane syllables that shook the skies, it lashed back, and presently the spells ceased. The arrows that rose to meet it seemed to do it little enough harm.
Eventually, we sixty odd, we settled down to rest our weary limbs and watch the carnage that it wrought, a dragon of unsurpassed might. We had no idea what was going on, but were relieved that this dragon’s argument was with the enemy and not with us.
“I pray that this is a miracle sent by Aroden to be our salvation, following a time of hard testing.”, the captain said, lifting her head from her hands at one point.
We were too numb to rejoice as the undead and other monsters wilted before the onslaught. The dragon’s might and terror drove the enemy ranks apart, sending monsters scudding before it like fallen leaves before an autumn gale. They were too numerous for even it to entirely destroy in one battle, but we watched it chase and hunt them back down the valley. We doubted it would keep up such frenzied activity for long. Soon, exhausted, it would retire to whatever hoard awaited it to sleep – to slumber for perhaps decades. But now there were two different sets of armies running in different directions through these lands, and the campaign might be determined by who could rally first…