The Marches of Edonis

by G. R. Cooper

  "Howdy," he laughed in a deep southern drawl, "can y'all direct me to Clive's keep?"

  Lauren smiled up at him, then pointed to the eastern side of the square.

  "Thanks!" he said, tucking his helmet under his right arm and spurring his black stallion forward toward the keep.

  Wulfgar, Lauren, and Bear all walked through the ornate, heavy double doors into the sanctum of the guild hall. The room was vaulted, with the four corners of the room each stretching upward with what looked like buttresses that emerged from the ground and expanded as they rose until they met at the center of the roof. From the center, where the buttresses met, a large shimmering black sphere hung on a heavy wrought chain. Directly beneath the sphere a red wooden chair sat throne-like in the center of the room. Surrounding the chair a compass rose was inlaid into the dark marble of the floor. Instead of the cardinal point references, however, the three furthest points displayed three different symbols.

  To the left was a leaf.

  To the right a star

  The furthest was a human skull.

  Wulfgar stepped up to the closest point on the compass, which displayed no symbol, and looked up at the chair and the girl who sat upon it. She was lovely. Long raven hair swirled around her shoulders and draped into her lap. She sat forward, looking earnestly into Wulfgar's eyes - the purple of her irises seeming to look directly into his soul.

  "You want to follow a path," she stated flatly. Her voice was high but soft.

  He nodded.

  "And the others," she continued, "are just here for moral support."

  He nodded again.

  She flicked her right wrist, then dropped her hand back into her lap.

  Wulfgar looked behind him. Lauren and Bear were gone. He looked back to the girl, warily.

  "You sent them," he began, "back outside?"

  She smiled and nodded.

  "And they're fine."

  She nodded again.

  Wulfgar didn't know how he knew, but he did. His companions were just outside of the door that they'd just come through, waiting for him. He looked around the room. The three walls each had a door centered upon which was carved a motif matching the symbol on the floor in front of them. The door to the left showed a forest scene arrayed around a large central leaf. Two lines of trees stretched into the distance toward a vanishing point, creating an idyllic lane.

  To the right, the door held a central starburst surrounded by what looked like nebulae and swirling galaxies. Unlike the leaf door, the pattern left no sense of reason, but was a swirl of everything without purpose, but without need of a purpose. It spoke to Wulfgar of totality without direction. Endless possibility.

  The furthest door, the skull door, was the least decorated. In the center a bas-relief skull stared out at him. That was all that the door showed. It was otherwise undecorated. The skull sat alone.

  Wulfgar looked back to the girl.

  "Those are your choices."

  He frowned.

  "I need to know more."

  She shrugged.

  "You can always ask," she began, then raised her hand to silence him as he began to speak. "You can always ask others," she continued, "but they'll be unlikely to provide information that you don't already instinctively know." She dropped her hand softly back into her lap, but said nothing else. She simply watched him, waiting for him to decide one way or another.

  He considered leaving. Exiting the guild to do some further research.

  He shook that thought away.

  This world had been pretty good about providing him information, as long as he knew how to ask. He had learned that sometimes wanting to know was enough. He sighed and looked to his left.

  Wulfgar focused on the leaf and thought, concentrated, on the door. As he looked, the leaf seemed to come alive. The furrows dug into the wood of the door sharpened as the leaf took on a greater fidelity. The veins became more distinct and the blade of the leaf seemed to move slightly, as though a small breeze was blowing down the arboreal lane. The scene as a whole became more lifelike and the almost imperceptible swaying of the branches threw iridescent yet monochromatic shadows through the glade.

  This was the path of morning. The magic of the gaeans, the druids, and the shamans. The path of nature, for lack of a better term. The archetype of the mother. This was the magic of animals, of plants, of fire earth water and wind.

  Wulfgar looked to his right.

  As he focused on the star, it too began to move. To pulsate. It seemed to grow and shrink. The galaxies arrayed around it began to slowly rotate and the gasses of the nebulae to become more and then less opaque. He was overwhelmed with the vastness of the possibilities that the path provided. Unlike the structure of the first path, this one felt ready to accept whatever definition that the taker wished to follow. The boundlessness of the path, however, was tempered by the focus it required. It seemed he could go further in any given direction, but the path was more limited. The path promised great power with limited utility. This was the path of the night.

  He looked to the skull.

  The carving didn't animate as the others had done, but the eyes seemed to grow in his mind, to fill his consciousness.

  The path of evening.

  The path of life.

  And death.

  The path was limited, like the path of night, but it was less powerful than either morning or night. The focus was on the soul, on the manipulation of the creatures of the world.

  Wulfgar knew this was his path. He looked to the girl. She again nodded.

  "But," he began, "I know nothing of the paths of morning and night. Or even," he admitted, "the path of evening."

  "You know enough," she said, "to know which path you must take."

  He looked back to the skull. He knew that this path provided him the most power over the other players - sentient and NPC - of the world. He knew that his knowledge of Shannon's true name would be of the most use in this path. He also knew that it provided him the most opportunity to do wrong.

  The girl began to speak. As though reading his thoughts she said softly, "There is no path that is more or less evil than any other. Evil cannot be thrust upon you, you take it with you. It's a part of you, along with goodness. Your evil and goodness are dormant until your choices give them life."

  "Anyway," she continued, "you have already had experience with personal death, have you not?" She looked at him, then focused more intently, "Or will soon, at any rate." She sat back, "So the idea of death should hold no great fear for you any longer."

  He wondered what she meant - that he would soon experience personal death. What the hell did that mean? He looked into her eyes, thinking to ask, but thought against it. She was unlikely to expand on the point - obfuscating his decision as much as possible seemed to be her role in life.

  And besides, he thought, I'm here to make what should be a simple choice.

  He knew what he had to do.

  Wulfgar nodded, accepting his instincts. He knew this was the most difficult path - nowhere near as defined as the path of morning, nowhere near as powerful as the path of night. This was also the path of most temptation. The path that provided the most opportunity for whatever evil was within him to grow.

  But, he knew, it was the path to Shannon.

  There was no other reason he had for taking any path in this world. The choice was no choice but to follow that call.

  He looked back to the girl, and waited.

  "Now that you have chosen the path," she answered his unasked question, "the path will find you."

  He nodded and she raised her hand and, once again, flicked her wrist.

  Wulfgar appeared on the steps of the guild hall behind Lauren and Bear. She turned to look at him in surprise.

  "What the hell was that?" Then she softened and smiled, "That was kind of rude."

  "She just didn't want anyone who wasn't looking to join the guild to be in the room, that's all. Sorry she just bumped you out without a word, but s
he really was pretty friendly."

  Lauren looked at him confused. Then she shook her head.

  "What are you talking about?"

  "The girl. She was a part of the guild. She helped me choose which magical path I'm supposed to take."

  Lauren shook her head again.

  "What? We all three just walked in there and all three of us just got booted out."

  Now it was Wulfgar's turn to look confused.

  "What are you talking about? I've been in there for five minutes. At least."

  Lauren just turned and pointed into the square. The black knight, the one who'd asked for directions to Clive's Keep, was still spurring his horse through the crowd. He was making good progress and wasn't more than thirty seconds beyond where he'd been when they entered the guild.

  Wulfgar looked back at Lauren, now really confused.

  "But," he said softly, trying to work through his thoughts, "I've been in there," he cocked his head backward toward the guild door, "for a while."

  Lauren just shrugged.

  "Did you get a guild quest?" she asked.

  Wulfgar shook his head, "Nope. She, the girl, said that the path will find me."

  She pondered for a moment, "My business tends to keep me in contact with the warrior types, so I don't have a lot of experience around magic users, but most of the guild quests I've heard about are more straightforward than that."

  "How?"

  She thought for a moment, "You go into the guild, state your intention to join, and whoever you're talking to gives you a nice little profession oriented quest. That's the way it was for the Blacksmith's guild." She thought again, "And that's the way it was when I joined my religion as well. It's not like they want to make it hard to join." She looked back up at him, "At least, not typically." Then she smiled, turned and walked down the front stairs of the magic guild hall.

  "C'mon," she called over her shoulder as Wulfgar and Bear joined her, "Snorri's waiting for us at the Pumpkin', and I imagine that Rydra is already there as well."

  The three of them once again blended into and through the crowd.

  "It wouldn't do," Lauren continued, waiving her left arm in the general direction of the keep, "to make his royal majesty wait any longer than necessary for his valiant questers to learn what has befallen his beleaguered outpost!"

  The trio walked into the smoky interior of the Gilded Pumpkin and, as Lauren predicted, Rydra was waiting with Snorri, the two of them seated across from each other at a small table near the rear. Near the beer, as Snorri would say. The two of them looked up, all smiles, as the rest joined and sat or, in the case of Bear, curled up on the floor, his tail wagging out a constant beat on the floor.

  "All set?" asked Snorri, his mustaches foamy with beer head. He dragged one massive hand across his lips, wiping them.

  Wulfgar nodded, "You?"

  "Oh yeah. Mounts and pack horses in the stable. Packs filled, horses fed and watered. We," he nodded toward Rydra, "were just waiting for your sorry butts to get here!"

  Rydra stood, "I, however, need to make my own way out of town. I'll meet up with you guys on the road." He smiled, then answered his friend's questioning looks, "I took advantage last night of the boon I received from the rat folk for helping them with their quest." He'd been given the reward that, once per week, the rats would lead him through their underground passages into any building within Edonis.

  He shrugged, then smiled broadly, "So I figured, why not start off with the biggest and the best?"

  "You didn't!" laughed Lauren.

  "What?" asked Wulfgar.

  Snorri bellowed, "He entered the palace and looted the King's treasury!"

  Rydra waved them down, "Not so loud, you oaf! But, yep, I made my way through Clive's keep last night. Not," he scowled down at Snorri, "the treasury. Just the palace."

  "Legendary loot?" asked Wulfgar, laughing along with the rest.

  "Just baubles. Decorations and such. Solid gold candlesticks and the like. Enough to live like a king for a year. Pun intended," he chuckled. "But nothing that we can use on our grand adventure. No weapons or magical items. Those are all in heavily guarded rooms. Those," he winked and pointed down at Wulfgar, "will probably be a two man job."

  He straightened, "In any case, I was spotted. I need to lay low for a while." The NPC guards in Edonis had notoriously bad long term memory - if you hadn't been apprehended within a week or so, they forgot that they were looking for you. "So while you guys take the horses out through the gate, I'm going to have to sneak over the wall. I'll meet you on the road a few miles out of town."

  Rydra turned and began walking toward the door, "Just give me an hour or two head start, OK?" He waved as he left the inn.

  After filling their bellies with beer and bread, Snorri led the rest to the stables behind the inn. The smell of hay hit them as they pulled the double-doors open. This world was new enough to Wulfgar that he still marveled at the way all of the senses were triggered. The smells and sounds of the city mingled along with the view. The food was as good as any he'd tasted, and the water pure and clean. He ran his right hand down the neck of the sorrel in the first stall, enjoying the feel of the short chestnut hair and white mane. Taking the bridle in his left hand, he led the mare out of the barn and into the alleyway next to the inn. His friends, leading their own mounts, followed with the lone pack horse behind. Bear trailed the group at a respectful and wary distance from the larger animals.

  They soon reached the square and Wulfgar took advantage of the extra room after leaving the cramped lanes to move in beside the horse. He looked at it for a moment, then back at his friends.

  "Mounting a horse is one of those things I guess most folks just assume they'd know how to do. But I have no idea."

  Lauren laughed, "Right? It's not exactly the kind of activity that's instinctual." She handed her reins to Snorri, now holding onto three horses - his, Lauren's and Rydra's - and walked to Wulfgar. She pointed down at his left foot, then the stirrup hanging off of the saddle.

  "Put your left foot in there, then swing your right leg up and over the saddle." She watched as he did, then handed the reins up to him. "Just give a little kick with your heels to get him to go. Pull back on both reins to stop, or the left and right one to have him turn left or right. Easy peasy!" She started walking back to her mount.

  "How long did it take you," Wulfgar asked, "to get used to riding here?"

  She called back over her shoulder, "Farm girl! Been riding since I was little. These things are a lot easier to manage than real horses."

  Wulfgar watched as she hopped into her saddle, then moved her mount up next to his. Snorri, leading Rydra's mount and with the pack horse tethered to his, pulled in to his right. Bear moved ahead of them, looking back at Wulfgar with a sullen snort. He was obviously unhappy sharing his human with this weird looking animal. Wulfgar lightly kicked his heels and the horse began walking forward through the crowd toward the city gate.

  As they approached the guard post, the crowd made space for them. Wulfgar was startled to see that the two guards were the same who had been manning the southwestern gate the night he had first sneaked into the city a week before. He wondered if there was going to be a problem and was just looking over to Snorri to indicate that the warrior should take the lead when the larger of the two guards - who both outweighed Wulfgar's not inconsiderable bulk - approached him. The last time Wulfgar had run into these two, five or six days earlier, they had dragged him effortlessly into the magicstrate's office on the mere suspicion that he had been up to no good. The fact that Wulfgar had - had in fact stolen from these very guards - and the magicstrate would be able to cast a truth spell over him and force him to confess his crimes, compounded his unease.

  The guard reached up and patted his horse's neck.

  "Off on an adventure, are we?"

  Wulfgar nodded silently, waiting for the guard to impose his malevolent will.

  "Right," the man smiled up at him. "Have a good on
e, sir!" He turned and moved into the gate, shooing the foot traffic to either side as he waved the riders through. The second guard, smiling as well, nodded to Wulfgar as he passed underneath the portcullis and onto the raised causeway that led to the northwest.

  I guess they're friendly enough to Highlanders who are leaving the city, he thought.

  Flooded with relief, he kicked his heels again and the horse jumped forward into a little trot. He looked back over his shoulder and smiled at his friends as Lauren spurred hers faster as well. Snorri just shook his head and led his two charges along at a sedate pace.

  "Faster!" yelled Lauren as she urged her horse into a gallop, speeding by Wulfgar who mimicked her and rose into a crouch in the stirrups and, as though reading his mind, his sorrel matched her faster pace. Lauren's smile broke into a full face, toothy yell of delight as the two of them tore down the dirt road, clay dust rising in their wake as the occasional pedestrian moved into the grass to let them through.

  As they reached a long, straight, stretch, Lauren rose in the stirrups until she was standing, her arms thrust out straight to her sides and her blond hair trailing in the breeze. She twisted her torso until she could see Wulfgar.

  "See? Easy!"

  He just nodded. As easy as it felt to control this massive beast, he wasn't sure enough, yet, of himself to stand. She turned and dropped back into the saddle as they approached a small copse, then reigned her horse into a trot, then a complete stop. She turned the horse until it was perpendicular to the road as Wulfgar joined her. She nodded back up the road.

  "I figure we shouldn't be complete dicks." She smiled, "We should probably wait for Snorri, since he has a lot to take care of."

  Wulfgar looked back up the lane as his horse moved in beside hers. He was surprised at how far they'd come in a short time. It would probably take Snorri and Bear several minutes to regain them. Wulfgar leaned back in the saddle, gazing up into the branches that stretched over the roadway. As he looked, one of the larger branches began to move, to droop, as though being pressed by an ever increasing weight.

  He was just about to say something to Lauren when the branch snapped back up and a small cloud of dust suddenly rose next to his horse. Wulfgar reached behind his back to draw his short sword when Rydra appeared in the midst of the dust cloud. Wulfgar relaxed - his friend had been in stealth mode as he waited then dropped in on them.