by Mark Barber
“Unless you hear this story told by elves,” Hayden smiled as he lit a long pipe of tobacco, “as funnily enough, their history of events claims the elves were favored…”
“Regardless!” Constance laughed. “Mantica prospered for years, centuries, ages. At the center of the world was the Grand Republic of Primovantor, entrusted with the Tome of Judgment to cast fair and proper verdict over all men. Harrett was Primovantor’s greatest king, for it was under Harrett’s rule that the people were first given the right to choose their representation, and the foundations of our Duma were established. Harrett had ten sons, and his first and greatest was Okestes. Okestes second son, Marcon, was made the Tribune of Esk, and under his leadership and the paternal love he held over his people, the city of Esk saw its most golden and prosperous years.”
“There was the slight matter of his choices during the Great Flood of the West, but let us not besmirch the noble soul’s honor,” Hayden winked as he puffed a rich, aromatic smoke from his long pipe.
“After many years, Marcon left the care of Esk to his first son, Jarek,” Constance ignored Hayden and the smirk of the regulars at his well-practiced interruption to continue, “and left his lands to visit the elven city of Therennia Adar, accompanied by his three daughters. His youngest daughter was Elinathora, famed across all of Primovantor as the most beautiful woman of her age, wise beyond her years, possessing a heart filled with virtue and a mind able to judge the good or evil in a man’s soul with but a single glance.
“Elinathora caught the eye of the mighty elven sorcerer Calisor Fenulian, vain and ambitious. Calisor pursued Elinathora, his unwelcome advances firmly but politely rebuked for forty days and forty nights. Unable to accede this rejection, Calisor fled Therennia Adar in a fit of rage.”
“Again,” Hayden mused, “when I’ve heard elves tell this story, it does take a slightly different trajectory at this point. Predominantly over the issue of Elinathora’s virtue and wisdom.”
“Calisor fled to the Groves of Adar!” Constance leaned forward, injecting more of a theatrical tone into her voice in an attempt to override Hayden’s latest interjection. “And it was here, under a full moon, that he entering a clearing in the great forest and chanced upon Oskan, the most fickle of all Celestians. Oskan listened to Calisor’s story of woe, but whether it was sympathy or a want to meddle that saw the Celestian’s interjection into mortal affairs will forever remain unknown. Oskan plotted with Calisor under that full moon in the forest clearing! Together, they hatched a plan to use the full force of Calisor’s magic to craft an artifact of great power, a mirror that would show any who gazed into it the future, or at least a possible version of the future. A future that showed Calisor without flaw or vice, so that any who gazed into it would see an ideal, an impossibility, and would love him.”
Constance paused, letting the words sink in. Her audience leaned in, hanging on her every word. She saw the same spark in their eyes that she no doubt had when her father told her the tale, even though they knew the story and its ending well – just as she had.
“Calisor Fenulian traveled the length and breadth of the world for a full year to gather the components he needed to craft his mirror. Then, a year to the very night and in the very same forest clearing, Calisor brought the Fenulian Mirror to Oskan. It was under a full moon that Oskan completed the sorcery required for the mirror; the light of the Star of Heaven itself. He left Calisor with one final warning. ‘When the golden bird sings, look into the mirror no more.’ Again, for forty days and forty nights Calisor begged to see Elinathora, but on the eve of the Feast of All Souls, her pity won over her wisdom, and she met him in the Gardens of Auroaya. Calisor, driven by obsession, tricked fair Elinathora into looking into the cursed mirror.
“Elinathora saw a world where Calisor was dedicated, virtuous, loyal, and devoted. She saw a world where they fell in love and were married, and where they lived happily and raised many sons and daughters side-by-side, happy and devoted to each other. Her heart thawed as she was deceived by the cruel trick, and she fell in love with the elven mage. Calisor watched in awe and delight as his trick worked and the object of his obsession was bent to his twisted will. He forgot Oskan’s words. He did not heed the song of the golden bird. Elinathora’s smile slowly faded as the images in the mirror continued, showing her death and Calisor descend into the depths of inconsolable sadness. She saw her son raise an army and go to war against Calisor, and she saw her husband slay their own son before taking his own life when he realized what he had done.
“In a fit of desperation, Elinathora flung the mirror against the wall, crying out in desolation as she tried to blind herself to the images she had seen. But the cursed Fenulian Mirror contained within it the light of the Star of Heaven, and with it, the very power of the Celestians themselves. At that moment, at the very instance the mirror shattered, the heavens and everything below them was changed forever. Many immortal Celestians were slain, consumed by the power that escaped from the accursed artifact as it was destroyed in a great wave of darkness. Those Celestians who remained were torn asunder, ripped in two, and separated into both the purest and the vilest aspects of their very being. In one mortal act, the Shining Ones and Wicked Ones were born, conflicting aspects each born of the same being, who watch us from the very heavens and from the depths of the Abyss to this very day.”
***
The monotonous scraping of metal on metal broke through the crackling of the campfires and the conversations from the groups of soldiers around the camps. The night was mild, even for this time of year, but Orion knew from experience that it would soon change with the onset of the fall and the harsher climates ahead. The metallic scraping continued as Orion’s squire carried on in his clumsy attempts to sharpen his swords from where he sat on the other side of the small campfire. Orion truly despaired of Kell. The boy had been a squire for years and still showed no real promise, no advancement, no potential for greater things. There was a very real chance that Orion would have to end Kell’s career before it had even truly begun.
“Angle the stone, boy!” Orion bellowed across the orange flames. “How many times have I told you?”
The paladin looked down at the letter in his hands. A courier had caught up with the detachment a few hours previously, and a handful of letters had been distributed among those wealthy enough to possess friends and family who could read and write. His heart thumping in his chest, Orion broke the wax seal of the letter and unrolled the scroll.
“Dear Son…”
Orion skipped ahead to the very end and saw his mother’s signature, eliciting mixed feelings. Of course he was always glad to hear from his mother, but with every letter that arrived highlighted the lack of communication from the rest of his family. As the youngest of three sons, he was little in his father’s eyes. Leoni was the heir to the family estate, and from what Orion had heard, his oldest brother did a grand job of the day-to-day management. Godfrey had already been given his own chapel in the capital, so his career in the priesthood was assured of success. But Orion, in his father’s eyes at least, was not even the spare in case anything befell Leoni. He was the spare to the spare. Perhaps he should consider himself lucky that his father had deemed him worthy of training as a paladin’s squire. At least Uncle Jahus had always shown faith in him.
Orion exhaled and closed his eyes. Uncle Jahus. If only Orion had possessed the strength, skill, and speed back then that he had now. He could have easily bested Dionne’s thugs and protected his uncle. Jahus would be alive now. Flashing Kell another admonishing glare for slowing his efforts on sharpening the weapons, Orion returned his attention to the letter from his beloved mother.
“…was only yesterday telling the ladies how proud I am of you… you are always in my thoughts and prayers… must take care and come back home to us safe and well…”
Orion smiled. The letter said both nothing and everything. There was no real news, nothing from back home, but the tone of the letter told Orion
all he needed to know. Orion folded the ltter carefully, deciding to save it for when he had more time to truly appreciate the time and effort that had gone into the words. For now, he had his evening prayers, and then a longer night of properly servicing his weapons and armor after the brutal attempts at care exhibited by his hapless squire.
Chapter Five
The musty scent of hops drifted across the dusty road as the easterly breeze swept across the fields from the sea. Sunlight poured down, unopposed from a crystal clear sky as the detachment continued north toward the foothills leading up to the mountains, and their destination. The men-at-arms continued to march at the fore in three ranks, Captain Georgis still at the lead but now riding atop a borrowed horse from the paladins, having given up on the long march by foot. His fifty men-at-arms enjoyed no such luxury.
Some halfway along the column, Tancred rode alongside Hugh and his ominously silent aides, occasionally glancing over his shoulder at where his paladins rode smartly behind the legion soldiers. Having spent days on the march in the unforgiving summer heat, the paladins wore their light robes of blue, armored only by their shining breastplates. The rest of their armor was carried in the baggage train, as attack was considered highly unlikely. Tancred had spent the journey alternating between his two other horses, but he now had returned to his primary steed, Desiree. Behind the paladins were the squires, and then the mercenaries. The mercenary crossbowmen ambled along without order or discipline, laughing and joking as they walked.
“Shame we had to resort to them,” Hugh remarked, nodding in the direction of Tancred’s glance, “but it’s understandable.”
“The problem with the north,” Tancred remarked as he swatted a fly away from his face, “is that the people take too much pride in rebellion based on ignorance. The Hegemon has the overwhelming majority of his armies scattered all across the northern provinces, keeping the forces of the Abyss at bay from not only Basilea, but much of the world. Yet, because these farmers and miners occasionally suffer at the hands of a small orc or Abyssal raid and they do not see a legion man instantly appear to defend them, they jump to the conclusion that the Hegemon does not care.”
“These peasants think the Hegemon lives for nobody but himself,” Hugh agreed, “and that could not be further from the truth. He is a wise man who does not take his responsibilities lightly, not in the slightest. It takes a great man to head the most powerful nation in the world, and he does it with the right blend of care and force. Our men fight and die to protect Basilea, but these simple country folk don’t see great battles on their very doorsteps, so they think the Hegemon and the Duma are idle. They look at those with wealth and power as foppish and lazy. I cannot tell you how much I resent that assumption.”
Tancred nodded, agreeing in principle with the nobleman but finding a gnawing of unease within at his choice of words. Still, Tancred’s father had spoken highly of Hugh, and the need for Hugh’s backing and favor was paramount. Returning to the City of the Golden Horn at the head of a victorious task, with Hugh speaking well of Tancred in the Duma, would no doubt get his advancement back on schedule.
The soldiers rounded the crest of a small hill, and Tancred looked down to see a collection of buildings in the shallow valley below. Situated at a crossroads, the settlement was just about large enough to call itself a town, although the complete absence of any stone buildings marked it out as less than prosperous. A pair of large buildings, possibly an inn and an administrative building, formed the core while the ramshackle, sun bleached houses of farmers expanded out untidily to meet the carefully tended fields in the land around. A gentle and scenic sequence of small waterfalls cascaded down from the hills to the north, terminating in a pool in the center of the town, while a broad, shallow river ran to the east with a long, low wooden bridge spanning it abeam the town’s mid point.
“Emalitos,” Hugh confirmed as he looked down at his map. “We’re still on schedule. I think it would be prudent for the men to wear armor from this point onward.”
“Agreed,” Tancred said as he looked down at a pair of farmers who leant on their pitchforks and watched the marching soldiers in silence from a crop field to the right of the dusty road.
More farmers moved to the stone walls at the sides of the road as the soldiers advanced to the town, all of them watching with stony faced silence. Their looks made Tancred feel more like he was an invader rather than arriving to apprehend a dangerous lawbreaker. Captain Georgis bellowed a command to halt from the front of the procession before allowing the legion men-at-arms to move off the road and reach for their waterskins.
“Tancred, take a couple of your fellows into the town and find out how much room there is at that inn,” Hugh leaned forward in his saddle. “Paladins are more… liked than the legion up here, so the question would be better coming from you.”
“Of course,” Tancred smiled, happy to be trusted with even a menial task.
He turned in his saddle and picked out two paladins to join him.
“Sister Jeneveve, Brother Orion, with me.”
Jeneveve spurred her brown warhorse into a gentle canter to catch up with her commander. With striking, freckled features and long, brown hair, Jeneveve was one of only two sister paladins in Tancred’s command. Disciplined, pious, and highly intelligent, she was everything Orion was not. Orion arrived some time afterward, his hulking warhorse seemingly as disinterested in proceedings as his rider.
“This is Emalitos,” Tancred said, “we’ll stop here for a rest before moving north. Let us go and see what we can find.”
“Aye, Lord Paladin,” Jeneveve replied.
The three paladins rode past the rickety wooden houses on the outskirts of the town and past the sun kissed waters of the lake near the center. As they rode along the thin road winding through the houses, a small group of children ran out from behind one of the buildings, waving and cheering. Jeneveve stopped her horse and turned to face them, leaning over in her saddle and smiling warmly as they approached. An authoritarian female voice growled a reprimand from the doorway of the building and the children turned silently to file back toward their home, leaving Jeneveve alone for a moment as her smile faded before she rejoined the other two paladins.
The trio of riders arrived in the small town square. Ahead of them, an elderly, robed man walked down from the entrance of the austere town hall, accompanied by two younger figures. Orion brought his warhorse to a halt and stepped down to the ground, his eyes fixed on the figures by the town hall. Jeneveve jumped nimbly to the ground, her features more passive as she turned in a slow circle to look at the town around her. Tancred dismounted his own horse and took the reins to guide the animal to the stable block next to the inn.
A moment later, three men in mail hauberks with swords at their waist walked out of the door before them. The first armed man, a muscular warrior in his mid-thirties with dark, cropped hair, looked up; and his eyes widened in surprise and alarm as soon as he saw the paladins.
“Go!” the dark haired man yelled. “Run!”
All three sprinted for the stable block. Whatever had caused the alarm was a complete mystery to Tancred, but nonetheless he was the first to react, planting a foot into one of his horse’s stirrups and hauling himself back up in the saddle.
“Come on!” he urged. “After them!”
The three armed men shot out of the stables on horseback as Tancred was spurring his own animal into a gallop, kicking up a cloud of dust behind him as Jeneveve and Orion were still dragging themselves back into their saddles. Digging his spurs into Desiree’s flanks, Tancred shouted an encouraging command to his warhorse as he accelerated after the three men and through the narrow streets of Emalitos. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Jeneveve galloping after him, but she was already too far behind.
The three riders spurred their horses around the corner of a large grain house, scattering a small crowd of locals to each side of the road. Tancred followed on their heels, steadily but slowly closing th
e gap between them as he coaxed every gasp of energy out of his horse. The riders headed east and down the shallow banks of the river, splashing into the knee deep water and hurtling off to the north with Tancred still not far behind. Children playing at the water’s edge cheered and shouted as they passed, the severity of the situation completely lost on them.
The sunlight shone brightly in his eyes as the light rays reflecting off the spray of water left behind the three riders, painting a rainbow of color in the water droplets kicked up by the charging horses. The leading two riders disappeared from view behind a corner of embankment as the river bent sharply to the left. Frantically digging his heels into his horse, the last of the three riders looked over his shoulder with terror as he saw Tancred continue to close, only perhaps three horse lengths behind him now. The rider looked forward again as he rounded the corner, just in time to let out a panicked cry before his head slammed into a low hanging tree branch, snapping his neck and wrenching him from his saddle.
Tancred threw himself into the turn and over to the left side of his horse, dragging the frenzied animal over to one side as he narrowly avoided the same fate. Pulling himself back up into his saddle, he looked back over his shoulder as he overtook the riderless horse; the dismounted rider lay dead in the shallow water behind him. Up ahead, the remaining two riders galloped up and over the embankment to the left of the river to leave the water and disappear into a wooded area to the west. Tancred followed them, kicking at his warhorse again for more speed to make up the ground he had lost in the turn.
Through the wood, he saw the two armored men continue to gallop away, picking their way through the trees and surrounding foliage as the undergrowth grew more dense and treacherous. The shorter of the two men shouted something out to the other rider – the dark haired man who had raised the alarm initially – and then peeled away to drag his horse around to face Tancred. The man drew his sword, fixed his eyes on the approaching paladin, and with a snarl, kicked his horse into a charge.