The Silver Stag

Men and women screamed around him struck down in mid flight by a storm of crackling thunderbolts. A naked Golvi man child tugged on his sleeve. “Master,” the boy said before he disappeared in a flash of blue-white light and wave of heat.

Eldrick sat up in bed slick with sweat, panting like a dying dog. Elanari stirred beside him but did not wake. Eldrick knew better than to try to return to sleep. The dream would come again waking him in a confused terror. He lay back against the damp blankets staring at the sharply slanted ceiling of the Silver Stag. He should be dead. Kona was an accomplished swordsman, his aim was true, his thrust, deadly.

It was the wolves that had roused him finally. Half-frozen, weaponless, he would have made an easy meal for the hungry pack. But they too, it seemed, were unable or unwilling to end his life. How they had howled that night! Eldrick could still hear them calling to one another across the wild. Elanari had not questioned him on the matter of her rescue and Eldrick, for his part, made no attempt to try to explain what he himself did not understand.

It had to be the rubbing. The one from the stone he had found in the Murkwater. But what exactly had he done when he spoke the runes? Eldrick cursed himself silently for not paying more attention during his lessons in the Blackspire. The very powers of heaven and earth lay written upon the stones. Powerful casters had lost limbs, gone blind or been reduced to gibbering fools for misreading a single rune. He had been lucky so far. He was still alive and if not wholly sane then at least not mad. Not yet.

Faces flashed through his mind and he pressed his palms against his eyes trying to shut them out. They haunted him, the eyes of dead Golvi men, women and children struck down by the Primal Spark, burned to ash by the arrows of the Maker. He did not know that he was capable of such destruction, such power. The Spark had grown with his malice until it consumed him. How many had he murdered that night? How many orphans did he leave for the wolves? How many mothers wept for their husbands, their children? There were none to speak the death rites over, none to commend to eternity, only dust, dust and ashes. He turned and brushed Elanari’s hair from a gracefully pointed ear. But for her, for her, he would challenge the Hero himself. He would destroy a hundred such villages if it meant her safety.

Rough laughter and shouting filtered up from the common room. Eldrick slid quietly from the bed and dressed in the darkness. The common room was half-empty when he dropped onto a stool at a small corner table but the half that had stayed into the small hours of the morning more than made up for their numbers with their voices. The Silver Stag, while grand in name, was in fact as well known for its patrons as it was for the quality of its liquor, a homebrew known locally as “snakebite”. Both “snakebite” and the regulars at the Silver Stag had a reputation for being foul-smelling, volatile and of low quality.

“The Learned are all in knot. It seems some free caster is running about stirring up the Golvi. They say he burnt down ten villages, killed their chief too.” A Midlander dressed in clothes more patches than fabric lifted and lowered his cup wiping the foam from his mustached lip.

“They should all hang. Free casters, humph, murderers is what they are, murderers and thieves. If they was any kind of honest they’d be at the Blackspire or else up north studying the stones.” A tired looking woman sat across from the Midlander sipping at a mug of wine. She might have been pretty once, perhaps even beautiful, but deep lines etched into her haggard face had stolen her youth. The way her full bosom spilled from her unlaced bodice and the way her eyes lingered hungrily over the Midlander’s purse told Eldrick of a hard life, a life that had taken far more than it had given.

“Remember boy, a woman that works on her back works doubly hard a woman that works on her feet so show a kindness,” his father had told him. Adultery was unheard of among the Skarnish. The penalty for taking another man’s wife was death. Though, during the battle season, it was considered a warrior’s right to take a “comforter” to him if he was in the field for more than a year. Children born to these women were considered the same as if they had been born by the warrior’s own wife. In truth, Eldrick’s birth mother had been a comforter and he was raised among his brothers as a true heir to his father's house.

A blast of icy wind announced new comers to the Silver Stag. Eldrick looked up from the couple across from him and struggled to keep his face smooth. Purgers, those Learned charged with the task of finding those who violate the Blackspire’s laws and bringing them to justice, death to any free caster. The Eye and Hammer emblazoned on their thick cloaks screamed at Eldrick to run, to escape and hide, but he fought down the urge to rise and pulled his pipe from his belt instead. He packed it with the last of his cloud leaf and held a candle to the bowl before puffing a few circles into the already smoke-filled air.

The Will of the Wolf Father II

Lightning stabbed down from the night sky drenching the village in a fiery rain. Men were burned to cinders before they could scream. Yurts erupted in balls of flame, the roar of the blaze drowning out the cries of the dying.

Kona ran from his yurt clad in his loin cloth, sword in hand. A tall figure stood before him seemingly oblivious to the destruction around him. Lightning crackled from the shadow man’s finger tips, snaking up his left arm, momentarily illuminating his face. Kona’s frightened cry was cut short by a deafening crack and a blinding flash of light. Charred earth smoked where the Golvi once stood.

The dark figure advanced through the chaos. Half-clothed men and women holding swords and clutching children streamed past him into the darkness risking the dangers of the freezing snow fields rather than the certain death that had fallen suddenly on their village. The dark figure stopped at Kona’s yurt and stepped through the camel hair doorway. The small room stank of sweat and horse flesh. Slight movement beneath a pile of furs betrayed the presence of another. The dark figure crouched and pulled the furs aside.

“Elanari.” At her name the lightning stopped. She was bruised, her naked body a broken testament to the beatings she had received. He gathered her in furs and lifted her gently in his arms. She smiled beautifully through split lips and a swollen right eye. He smiled back, unshed tears shining in his eyes. Outside, the yurts still blazed bathing the night sky in a fiery glow. Linu stood in the shadow of his collapsed yurt and watched the dark figure escape with his prize. The Wolf Father had revealed his champion. The time of the Golvi had come at last.

The Will of the Wolf Father

Eldrick’s head throbbed with each step he took. Elanari, still chained, led him gently down the worn track of the South Road. Eldrick would have laughed if the pain had allowed him to. Led like a child by his own slave. “Fenric is about”, that’s what his father would have said. “The Great Wolf is sowing mischief in the world.” And he would have hung a juniper branch over the door to fend off the wickedness of Fenric the Deceiver.

They had thrown him out of the Hind’s Heart like a common criminal. Someone had taken his crossbow in the scuffle and it was all he could do to hold onto Elanari and his cloak before they tossed him into the street. The inn keep, a fat Midlander, had taken his purse for “room repairs”. It seems the incident with the rubbing had started a small fire. Eldrick tried to explain that he had fallen asleep in bed with his pipe lit. He was not sure they had believed him but he left before they could call the constable and put him to the question.

His vision was beginning to clear but a mist clung to the corners of his eyes and he blinked rapidly trying to clear it away. The flash had burned his eyebrows and some of his hair had been singed but he could walk and it seemed that there would be no lasting damage. The land around him looked much the same as it had earlier in the journey though the thickets were growing farther and farther apart giving way to more grassland as they continued south. He missed the forests of his birth and despite his beleaguered state the thought that he was headed toward the tall pines and deep, cold lakes of his homeland cheered him.

A horse whickered nearby and Eldrick turned toward the sound. A dozen Golvi tribesmen sat astride their shaggy ponies fifty paces from where he stood. Horse bows decorated each saddle and long, curved, swords hung from every hip. The wind whipped up a skiff of snow and Elanari shivered next to him. As if her movement were a signal the riders advanced, kicking their ponies into a slow trot. They knew there was no hurry.

Eldrick cursed himself under his breath. He should have been more wary. There was no chance of escape now. The nearest thicket was nearly seventy paces off to his right, too far to outrun mounted archers. He doubted he could have made thirty paces in his condition and so he held his ground. They were close now. Leather and chain peaked from the folds of richly embroidered coats and dark eyes stared from below the rims of thickly furred hats. Twenty paces from where he stood they stopped a ragged line of men and horse flesh drawn across the South Road.

Two riders cantered to within ten paces of Eldrick and dismounted. They were of similar height, a hand shorter than Eldrick, and smelled strongly of smoke and horse. One man continued forward. Hard eyes regarded Eldrick from beneath the fur trimmed rim of his cap and his hand rested lightly on the pommel of his sword. Eldrick ventured a glance at Elanari standing next to him, fists on hips, chains gleaming dully under the muted suns, a shackled goddess waiting to pronounce judgment on the world.

The approaching rider stopped a spear’s length from Eldrick and smoothed his drooping mustaches before bending at the waist in a shallow bow. “I am Linu. I greet you in the name of the suns and the moon.” Eldrick bowed his head slightly and eased his footman’s hammer in its hanger. Linu waited expectantly for a reply and when he realized that none was forthcoming he nodded to himself and continued. “My brother Kona wishes to buy your woman.” Linu gestured to the Golvi standing behind him holding the ponies’ reins. “He wishes to know what you will take in trade.”

“Tell him she’s not for sale,” Eldrick tried to sound confident but anxiety strained his voice.

Linu turned to Kona and shouted a short phrase in Golvi. Kona spat back a word and Linu shrugged and turned to Eldrick. “He will fight you for her then.” Kona pulled a steel buckler from his back, lashed it securely to his forearm and drew his sword.

“Tell him that I do not wish to fight,” Eldrick said quickly not sure whether to draw his hammer or not. He settled by resting his palm on the cold, steel head.

Linu barked a laugh, turned and walked toward his mount. “Then he will kill you,” he called over his shoulder.

“A’ti’larili,” Eldrick whispered to Elanari, “Go from this place.” Eldrick dropped the chains that held her. Elanari backed away slowly, eyes flicking between the two combatants and the mounted Golvi which had moved in to form a wide circle around the two men.

Eldrick pulled the footman’s hammer free from its hanger and readied himself. The weapon had been his brother Caen’s. Eldrick had taken it up when Caen had been killed fighting for their lord, Collin Kingshammer, in the mountains east of Modara. It had been Eldrick’s twelfth summer, his last summer of boyhood. The ash haft was worn smooth from use and the head forged from good Skarnish steel still bore the craftsman’s engraving, a winter scene of a tiger standing over a freshly killed stag.

Kona circled warily, buckler at the ready, sword held high. Eldrick squinted in the gray light and shuffled in a slow circle trying to keep the dark-eyed swordsman in front of him. His head felt like a smith’s anvil on shoeing day and it took all of his concentration to focus on his opponent. Eldrick stumbled over a rut in the road and Kona wasted no time darting in with a deadly thrust. The armored swordsman skewered Eldrick cleanly through the chest. Eldrick's eyes widened in shock. He stiffened for a moment on the end of the sword before his body went limp. Kona heaved, pulling his blade freem, and Eldrick slid silently from the Golvi’s sword collapsing on the snowy ground in a heap. Elanari screamed, throwing herself at Kona, kicking him hard in the groin. Kona barely had time to groan before Elanari brought her knee up into his face as he doubled over. The others laughed as Kona wiped the blood from his broken nose and lashed out with his buckler smashing Elanari to the ground beside Eldrick’s motionless body. She lay stunned for a moment staring into Eldrick’s glassy eyes before Kona dragged her to her feet, wrapping the chains tightly around her shaking form.

Linu dismounted and handed Kona a handful of silver coins. Kona grunted and motioned to Eldrick’s body. Linu knelt and stood hefting the masterwork hammer in his gloved hands. It was a marvelous weapon. Linu spoke the Death Rites over Eldrick’s still form bidding the moon take his soul to its place of rest where Shan’Lak would welcome the fallen to his Garden and assign him his eternal task according to his deeds in life.

A wolf howled nearby. Linu mounted and fell into line behind his brothers as they journeyed home. He had done what he could for the dead warrior’s soul. His body would be left as a gift to the Wolf Father.

Dark Magic

The last letter of the rubbing was the key. Eldrick bent over the runes carefully holding the candle away from the waxy parchment. Elanari sat cross-legged on the straw stuffed mattress behind him singing softly. The Hind’s Heart was a clean establishment if modest in its accommodations and Elanari’s melodic whisper echoed off the bare walls filling the small room with the rhythm of her homeland. She seemed unconcerned with Eldrick’s chanting and scribbling. Strange words tumbled from his mouth as he worked, his failure to decipher the final rune punctuated with a mumbled curse.

The first five letters had come easily enough. He had recognized a form of them from other stones he had studied in his travels. But the last, Isis entwined with Sol and his brother sun over a wave tossed sea, he had never seen. His tongue fumbled at his lips as he twined the ancient words for the suns, moon and sea in his mind changing their order, rearranging the words, splitting them, splicing pieces of one rune into another searching for meaning.

Edmund Renot’s face appeared in his mind. The sour faced Seeker had taught him to read the Binding Stones in the depths of the Blackspire when he was a child. Edmund had a sharp tongue and a stout staff and his lessons were not easily forgotten. Neither were his beatings. Eldrick smiled at the memory of the day he had called the Spark for the first time and set the hollow cheeked Seeker’s staff aflame. He had known long before that moment that the Learned Way was not his destiny and that day, the day before his fifteenth summer, he had turned Free Caster and began a life of constant wandering.

Solaris-te-Neder-to-Isis-Nauticalias-Exto-Trinitarus. The words leapt from Eldrick’s tongue and a blinding light filled the room. Elanari screamed as the pungent smell of burning parchment choked the air. Eldrick’s still open eyes faded to blackness. He felt himself falling through the air. In the Lady’s name, he mused, I think I’ve killed myself. Then there was nothing.

The Lonely Horseman

The Season of Lights had officially begun at the Lonely Horseman less than an hour ago, with the advent of the Messenger in the tavern doorway. The dancing and singing had begun before the man had closed the door behind him, leaving naught but the smell glowing fires from the town squares in the common room. And although men - even men in these parts - seldom started drinking this early in the morning, they would make exceptions for the Season of Light, and so drinking had started by many in the room at the same time as dancing had for others. Not to be outdone, Gauthier had already been drinking for hours.

To say he was drunk would not have been altogether a true statement. It took a lot to get a dwarf drunk, especially on this watered-down, human ale; especially when they were a dwarf of his stature; and most especially when that dwarf was Gauthier.

In fact, most in the room would probably have never guessed he was a dwarf. Most humans had no idea what a Valenci looked like. All they knew of dwarves were from paintings of small, brutish, unshaven pigmies that looked more like a rotund children dressed up in some mummer’s farce, than an actual dwarf. And although he would consider his mountain-dwelling kin brutish, and unshaven, he thought the representation to be a bit harsh, if somewhat comical. And, now that he thought about it, a fat child may in fact be the closest thing that he knew of to one of them. Maybe the human’s had something there, at least when it came to other dwarves.

But he didn’t totally blame them, most humans just had no dealings with dwarves these days, and his kind least of all. The Sky Dwarves they called them. That was unimaginative, at best. Couldn't they have put a little thought into it. Come up with something grand and beatiful. Probably not, now that he thought about it. In fact, he would not be surprised if the whole lot of them considered him just a myth, a silly child’s story. Everyone knew that Dwarves didn’t fly, even if they did have magical boats. Dwarves lived underground, barely smart enough to clean their own drools out of their long, scraggly beards.

But, he wouldn’t hold it against them. These humans weren’t too bad of a sort. They were hospitable enough, smelled decent, and most paid their bar tabs. That was a good combination in his book. So he drank with them, laughed with them, and mostly enjoyed being around them.

Although he did stuck out like an Adria at court in this Tavern. Not only was he over a full head shorter than any other man in the room - tall for a dwarf to be sure, even for a Valenci, but still short enough to be noticed, even at a distance - but his clothing looked outlandish compared to the dull, southern garb surrounding him. Over a white tunic, he wore a clean gray doublet with his family's sigil emblazoned in a bright blue that matched the traveler’s cape covering one of his shoulders, somewhat modest black riding pants and gray boots turned up at the top. A rather unremarkable outfit back home – his shirt hardly even had any ruffles in it – but around here enough to mark him as a stand out from the masses of stained grays and browns at a hundred paces.

But he was not about to lower his standards, just to appease a few humans. Let people stare, he would take it as a compliment, and go on his merry way, knowing he was better dressed than them, and probably had a more pleasant personality, too.

However, here at the drinking table, all were equal. He looked across at the two southerners that he had been drinking with so far this morning. He didn’t know if they were Lodrians or Adria – mostly all humans looked the same to him – but wherever they were from, they made decent drinking companions, at least as far as human’s go.

No, Gauthier was not drunk, just enjoying himself; taking life slowly and easily in a town, and on a day, where you could celebrate by drinking to your heart’s content. And that, was good enough for him.