And part three!
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Metamor Keep: Heading to All Tomorrows
by Charles Matthias
He wasn't quite sure how long he'd been walking
when he reached the bridge across the river, but
it was in the middle of the day, and all
suggestion of rain had long passed. The air was
warm but not humid, with a crisp scent from the
river, as well as the pungent offal of a human
village with livestock milling wherever they so
chose. A forest had once lined the river, this
the eastern arm of the Marchbourne that fed Lake
Bozojo, but they had all been cut down centuries
ago to make way for pastures and farms.
And also a garrison. This stood on a rise
overlooking the river and the wide bridge that
crossed it, and from its towers snapped the flags
of Bozojo and Salinon. From the ramparts archers
could decimate any army attempting to seize the
bridge, though on that day, with the warmth
making the air shimmer as he glided along the
winding road with its close fitting stones, they
stood at their posts with as much animation as
the gargoyles decorating the walls of Midlander castles and cathedrals.
The village was nestled behind another ring of
walls. These at times seemed to be fashioned from
stone, and others from wood, and this moved back
and forth so smoothly, that Andares wasn't sure
if he was gazing at a moment in the present, or
one from the distant past when the humans had
first settled this favorable bend in the river.
Even his feet seemed to float above the road,
rising up higher and higher as he neared the bridge.
He could hear others speaking to him, and words
seemed to pass from his lips though he couldn't
remember them once they left his tongue. The
strangers around him, some travelers, some
villagers, and some soldiers stationed to keep
watch over the road and the river, were all
unfamiliar with a blend of faces that resolved
into only the most general of human countenances.
They were neither short nor tall, fat nor thin,
with neither blond hair nor black hair, blue eyes
or brown eyes. They were all these things and none of them at the same time.
Andares skipped through the air, born aloft on
the bright blue sky, settling back to earth only
when he'd finally left the lands of Bozojo
behind, his boots touching down in Linduin. And
the rest of that bright day was a smear of light, field, and forest.
----------
April 4, 708 CR
In the week since Andares and Anefistar had
decided to journey together beneath the willow's
sheltering boughs, they'd met with good weather
along the road with bright sunny days and warm
breezes that suggested Summer without bringing
it. Despite the scholar's age, he had no trouble
in keeping pace with the Åelf, and so after two
days of walking they crossed the bridge over the
Marchbourne and were soon in the country of Linduin.
While the soldiers bearing the fish heraldry of
Bozojo were left behind at the bridge, they still
saw a large number of soldiers stationed in each
village they passed. But the villagers themselves
were always friendly and willing to put them up
for the night once the sun had set. They were
greeted each night by good food, warm blankets,
and a soft if lumpy pillow. With the dawn they
would set out again, and while Andares would
wonder at his dreams which seemed unusual in both
their clarity and their disjointedness. These he
kept to himself, but during their day's walk he
and Anefistar would share stories of their
journeys, the gods, and also thoughts on the
precarious state of many of the kingdoms of man.
To Andares's relief, Anefistar, as asked, never
brought up the situation in Dûn Fennas that he
had once asked the Åelf to intervene in. The
scholar seemed resigned to the fact that Andares
would be parting ways with him once they reached
the fork in another few days, and while there
were moments when they were lost in their own
thoughts that the human began to brood with heavy
brows and darkened countenance, those fears never spilled over his tongue.
But after a week of journeying together, never
had they seen anything that stilled their tongues
completely until that day. The road took a turn
toward the southeast, but for a moment as they
came around the bend, the hills flattened out and
in the distance to the northeast they could see a
long gray line that bled over the horizon.
Nothing else stood at the periphery of the
forest, all was blighted for a mile around as if
life itself refused to prosper in the shadow of that ancient and dark wood.
Anefistar stopped in his tracks, eyes wide and
one hand lifted to ward off evil. Andares also
paused in his steps, eyes narrowed, one hand
resting upon the ivory pommel of his sword. He
couldn't even hear any birds singing as they
struggled to make their feet take that next step.
The road continued down into a slight depression
where a line of hills would shield them from
sight of that cursed place, but it would take
them a minute to reach that seeming safety.
This was not the only place along the
northernmost road through Marigund country that
one could see Elderwood; in fact, there were
other places where the road came much closer to
the baleful woods. And never before in his
journeys had Andares felt such a peculiar
sensation, an inkling that brushed up across his
back and through his long, black hair like the
curling tendrils of smoldering myrrh. This was no
mere pious caution in the face of an evil
imprisoned, for such an evil could never strike
beyond the reach of its chain, or from beyond the borders of its cage.
Andares stared at the Elderwood as if somebody
had unlocked its chain and unbarred its cage.
The air, for a moment as still as they, turned
against them, bringing a chill that lanced
through their traveling cloaks, as well as the
festering scent of mushrooms and choked foliage.
Anefistar finally lifted one hand to brush across
his nose and he stumbled a pace backward.
That one motion broke the Åelf's paralysis. He
swept his free arm out and grasped the scholar by
the shoulder, steadying him. It is best to move
quickly here. Something is not right. Keep close to me.
Anefistar nodded, and the two of them walked
stiffly down the bend in the road. Andares kept
his free hand on the hilt of his blade as step by
step the Elderwood passed out of sight. He
listened intently but the only thing he could
hear was the nervous breathing of his companion
and his clumsy footfalls. The air felt crisp,
with the sweet scent of blossom and new grass
fading beneath a veneer of empty wind. Even the
sky, so bright a blue, seemed somehow utterly
remote as if that vibrant color had been bleached
onto the heavens instead of born there.
They kept close together for several minutes,
their anxiety pulsing in their hearts with each
step they took. The road kept behind a line of
hills for several miles so that they could not
see the edge of the Elderwood as it lurked off to
their left. The sun shone bright on their right
but did not seem to warm them any. The wind tried
to resume a gentle breeze but failed ere it had
begun, leaving all a calm that came not from
peace but from patience, as of a watcher waiting
to see what would come to pass.
Into that world of muted sense a sudden grumbling
like two stones rubbing against one another
erupting from the stones behind them made Andares
draw his blade. The hiss of steel seemed a
beast's reply to the threat, of a snake rising up
to strike back at the one who'd nearly trod upon
him. Both Anefistar and Andares spun on their
heels to see what threat had begun to follow
them, but the road was empty and the hills barren
of all but grass, scrub, and a few miserly trees.
They waited a moment in that place, but the sound
never returned, and once their hearts slowed
enough that they could breath normally, they
resumed their quick pace along the road. Andares
did not sheathe his sword for several minutes,
but eventually he did, and while he kept his hand
upon the pommel, for several hours he had no
reason to draw it. The sound did not return in
all that time as they moved across the miles. At
a few junctures the road lifted along the hills
until they could see the Elderwood again
stretching across the northwest, but the sense of
dread it had instilled in them at their first
sight now became muted, as if whatever beast had
been prowling in that cage had gone to lie down,
convinced that its bars truly did confine it.
By the time the sun was nearing the horizon,
their road began to descend further toward a wide
valley in which a narrow river coursed and along
whose banks a village clustered. Fields were
given to pastureland on the western bank, while
the eastern was divided into several small farms.
The road passed through the valley lengthwise,
but first it diverted around several piles of
rock upthrust from the ground in an earlier age.
The sides of the rock had been gouged by weapons
of some sort; the marks were regularly spaced in
sets of three on the northern flank, a curious
fact that gave Andares, exhausted by their hearty pace that day, some pause.
Bless be the gods! Anefistar exclaimed, the
first words either had spoken since they'd first
seen the cursed woods. A village! I am all for
staying in a good tavern tonight, with fresh ale
and some stew to fill my belly.
As am I, Andares admitted, his tongue moving
only to form the words, which escaped his lips in a sibilant whisper.
They lost sight of the village as they began to
move around the cairn. The northern hills also
flattened out so that they had one last view of
the Elderwood. Though still lurking on the
horizon, the trees appeared taller, their line
shifting like a wave at sea, pulsing as of a
giant's breath, while the ground between them
seemed to teem with a million ants. Andares
stopped and stared in both wonder and horror, but
whatever those ants were, they all seemed to flee
the blighted lands to vanish back beneath the
doomed boughs like children scurrying beneath the hem of their mother's dress.
Just as the last of those little dots
disappeared, the groaning rumble they had heard
once before sounded again. Only this time it did
not follow them like a jackal pursuing a rabbit
on the Steppe; this time it challenged them from along the road ahead of them.
Anefistar who had been standing at Andares's side
as they watched the strange dark shapes flee into
the forest, now gasped in fright, coughing and
clutching his throat as his eyes bulged from his
face. Andares drew his blade and turned back down
the road, tensing as some dark shadow slipped out
from behind the cairn before them.
The creature was nothing that Andared has ever
seen before. It possessed a bulky mass with no
discernible head but four arms radiating out at
equal intervals from its bulbous main body. Each
arm ended in a paw with three long claws like the
talons of a hawk. It strode upon four legs
splayed out beneath its arms, each one striking
the ground with a crunch of stone. The skin, now
that it was visible in the last rays of the sun,
was leathery in texture, covered in a blend of
scales and patches of a dark downy fur. It was
not completely black in hue, for the scales
themselves had a deep green luster that shimmered
as it moved. The main body had between each set
of arms what could only be a mouth, with broad
flat teeth that ground together like a mill crushing flour.
Go back to the shadows! Andares declared in a
powerful voice as he raised his bright, silver
blade, etched with runes that glimmered with
power. Anna-ithil-årda trained upon the beast,
and though it had no eyes they could see, a pair
of arms turned toward them, and one of the mouths
opened in hunger. You do not belong here!
The four-legged, four-armed, and four-mouthed
beast did not seem to agree as it began to lumber
toward them both, long arms stretching outward,
sickle-like claws waving up and down. Andares
pushed Anefistar behind him with one hand, and
with the other turned the blade to one side and
then slashed across at the nearest arm. The flesh
parted easily and the grinding sound intensified
as the flat teeth pressed deeply against one
another. The end of the monster's hand dangled
limply, held to the arm by only a shred of skin and sinew.
Anefistar stumbled back several more paces, while
Andares held his ground. He felt an intense
urging to turn and follow the human in retreat,
but he marshaled his heart with the quiet reserve
that the patience of long years had built in him.
He slashed a second time, the bright silver of
his blade nearly severing a second arm. The
creature wailed with its ponderous voice as it
flailed its two wounded arms back and forth.
It lunged one more time at Andares, but this time
he nicked it along the side of its bulbous form
between two of the mouths. A foul smelling
ichorous pus oozed from the wound, and with a
scream that sounded like sheet rock sliding
across each other, the beast turned back to the
north and retreated through the hillocks. Andares
brandished Anna-ithil-årda over his head,
catching the last of the sun's gleam as he dared
the creature to come for him one more time. But
its flight was true and it made with great haste
for the sheltering canopy of the Elderwood in the distance.
Is it gone? Anefistar asked as he came back
around the side of the cairn, his breath ragged
in his chest, one hand clutching the end of his
beard as if it were a startled dog trying to scramble into his arms.
Aye, it is gone, Andares sheathed his blade and
glanced at his attire, but saw no stain of that
ichor. Little piles of it had been left where the
creature ran off. The grass shriveled beneath it.
But it is not dead. We had best move quickly.
In silence they proceeded at a brisk pace down
into the valley where the high hills shielded
them from the sight of the Elderwood. The village
nestled along a small river and they had erected
wooden stakes all along the hillside to the
north, as well as a dozen watchtowers in roughly
equal sections. Similar fortifications graced the
southern hills, but these were not nearly as extensive.
They passed by several young men with spears,
bows, and swords as the road wound down between
the first set of buildings; these were fashioned
with stone foundations and wooden upper floors
with high windows to give them a good view of the
valley entrance. The young soldiers accosted them
briefly and listened with grim faces as Andares
described the beast that they fought only minutes before.
We've seen three of those things in the last two
weeks, the eldest of the soldiers admitted. He
spat on the ground and nodded his head with a
heavy sigh. Thank you, Velelya, for your assistance.
Have you seen them before? Anefistar asked.
Not in my lifetime, but there are stories of
them. And other things... two of the other
soldiers made signs to ward off evil.
What other things? Andares asked.
Nothing we've seen yet, the soldier replied
with a sudden firm set to his lips. His eyes
narrowed and he cast a quick glance to the north.
We can handle these four-armed things. But if
anything else comes... He turned back to the two
travelers and gestured over his shoulder with a
thumb. Best you Velelya be finding a place to
sleep for the night. The Inn's a dancing deer. You'll see it.
Thank you, maethor, Anefistar bobbed his head
to them, before stumbling along at Andares's side
down the road between the homes and shops. Few
townsfolk were about that evening, and what few
that did walk the streets moved quickly and paid
them little heed if any heed at all. A brief
glance at most before they rushed along.
They're frightened, Andares noted with a heavy
sigh. It ached his heart to see the people so
distraught. The few times before he had passed
through this village it had been a bright place
full of laughter and... children. He saw no
children on those streets, only grown men and a few women escorted by men.
Three of those things in two weeks? And nary a
foul thing for years before, they have cause to
be frightened. What could have led those beasts
to leave the forest and attack these simple folk?
The Åelf shook his head, and then drawing his
cowl more firmly over his raven-black hair and
pointed ears. I do not know what it could be, but it cannot be left alone.
And why only these few soldiers? Do not the
princes of Dûn Fennas know what transpires on their most treacherous border?
Andares's frown deepened, but he said nothing.
Nor did Anefistar press his questions further.
Together they brooded as they walked down the
street to find the Dancing Deer Inn, where they
both expected to sleep lightly and without any peace.
----------
May He bless you and keep you in His grace and love,
Charles Matthias
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