Pathfinder Tales: The Crusader Road

by Michael A. Stackpole

  The older sprite posted fists on his slender hips. "You are Jerrad of Silverlake."

  Jerrad nodded. "Butt of jokes, target of squirrels, mud-man. You know very well who I am."

  "You, manchild, speak of who you were. I, Thyrik, speak of who you have become."

  The youth frowned. "Then I'm Jerrad of Silverlake."

  "Then you are the one we seek." Thyrik spread his arms wide. "Begin!"

  A flock of sprites descended from the trees and flew so swiftly around him that any one became a blur, and any attempt to follow them made him dizzy. He closed his eyes for a moment to regain his equilibrium, but that was a mistake. While he wasn't watching, the sprites spattered his face with mud.

  His eyes sprang open. He would have cried out save for two things. First, he didn't want to get mud in his mouth, and second, the sprites weren't haphazardly attacking him. Some smeared dark mud over his throat, jaw, and cheeks. Two delicately painted it over his upper lip. Others brought a white mud which they daubed down his nose and across his cheekbones. They spread it over his forehead and coated his ears.

  A whirring began above him. He looked up. A legion of sprites descended bearing a construct of branch and leaf. It resembled nothing so much as a pair of their wings, but large enough to be meant for a man. The sprites brought it down and, using thorns, attached it to the back of his tunic.

  Others flew down in their wake. They bore a coronet woven of ivy. They settled this on his brow, then withdrew. He expected to hear tiny laughter, as he had to look a sight, but solemn silence greeted him.

  Thyrik looked at Jerrad, then smiled. "Now that you have the proper aspect, we may speak as equals."

  Jerrad, not certain what to say, just nodded slightly. He didn't want the crown to fall off, and was afraid the mud on his face would flake.

  "In Mosswater, in the Cursed Tower, you freed Lissa, and she recovered Alorek's Bow."

  "Yes."

  "Thank you." The leader of the sprites pointed toward the sky. "Bring her."

  Four sprites descended, each holding a vine. Tightly bound and dangling from the ends, Lissa hung her head. Her captors brought her to the ground, then landed and pulled the vines tight so she couldn't wander.

  "I don't understand."

  "The Cursed Tower is so called because, for many years, sprites would disappear in Mosswater. The tower presented a challenge, for it was full of things we find intriguing. The Lost Ones would return after a time they could not remember. The only evidence of their disappearance came from a complete aversion to the tower itself. Even before the ogres took Mosswater, we forbade sprites from traveling there."

  "I had to get my grandfather's bow."

  "The prisoner will be quiet."

  Jerrad thought for a moment, and a few ideas came together. It had to have been that the wizard captured the sprites and used them for light, then released them after a time. He clearly did use some sort of magic to make them forget their captivity and instill their leeriness concerning the tower. Those who were captives at the time of the conquest...

  He looked up. "Did a group of Lost Ones return all at the same time when Mosswater fell?"

  Thyrik's eyes narrowed. "Yes, but this is not at issue. You rescued Lissa, therefore you have a say in her punishment."

  "I freed her from a brass lantern. She, using the bow she recovered, freed me from a city of ogres. I don't know who Alorek was, but I can't imagine him wielding that bow with more courage or skill." Jerrad shook his head. "If she is to be punished... What is the punishment?"

  "She will be banished."

  Lissa struggled against her bonds at that pronouncement.

  "I see." Jerrad considered for a moment, then nodded. "Then banish who she was, not whom she has become. As I am not who I was in your eyes because I rescued her, neither can she be who she was, because she rescued me."

  Thyrik looked past Jerrad. "You have heard. In light we welcome Lissa, and in dark send her away. How say you?"

  In turn each of the sprites seated in the circle let their light blaze or extinguished it completely. Jerrad had no idea if a simple majority would win the day, or even if the ballot would bind Thyrik. As it was, less than a quarter of the sprites went dark. When things came back around to Thyrik, the elder sprite shined brightly.

  "Release Lissa. Return the bow to her." Thyrik bowed toward Jerrad. "Your wisdom does you credit."

  "As you forgave me, how could you do less than forgive her?" Jerrad smiled, and mud cracked on his cheek. "Were I was wise as you suggest, I'd think you led me to the answer you wanted."

  "Were you not at least that wise, we would not have granted you wings." Thyrik again looked up into the branches. "Bring it."

  With Lissa in the lead, a half-dozen sprites flew down. Between them they held a web woven of vines. They set it in front of Jerrad. On it rested the grimoire he'd lost in Mosswater.

  "This is yours, yes, Jerrad Wisewing?"

  "Yes." The youth stared at it, then looked up. "You risked much to fetch it from Mosswater."

  Lissa fluttered over and landed on Jerrad's shoulder. "I told them of the fun we had with the ogres, and Thyrik couldn't resist."

  "Angering ogres is a dangerous game."

  Thyrik shrugged. "When are ogres ever not angry?"

  "Good point."

  "One we trust you will bear in mind in the future, Wisewing." Thyrik's wings fluttered, and he rose in the air. "May your way ever be in the light."

  "Thank you."

  All around him the sprites took to the air, Lissa among them. They circled the grove quickly, a cyclone of light, then withdrew upward and scattered amid the branches, leaving him kneeling there, alone. When he moved, the wings fell to clutter and the coronet became brittle and rough on his head.

  He remained on his knees. Save for the mud on his face and the withered ivy wrapped around his head, he couldn't be sure he'd not imagined the whole thing. He rubbed at the back of his head, just to see if he'd not bashed it again when he fell and dreamed the whole encounter. All he succeeded in doing was breaking the crown apart and tangling twigs in his hair.

  He climbed to his feet, measured some shadows, and started back toward Silverlake. He wasn't sure quite what had happened, but he felt pretty certain it wasn't bad. Even if all it did was earn him a reprieve from squirrels and tripping roots, he'd take it.

  paizo.com #3236236, Corry Douglas , Aug 10, 2014

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  At the Murdoons

  Tyressa accepted the wooden tankard full of mulled cider from Moll Murdoon and raised it in a salute. "To great health and mild winter."

  Nelsa's mother nodded, and they drank. Beyond them, in the back corner of the Murdoon's cleared property, members of the Murdoon Clan and a gang of people from Silverlake pulled ropes and pushed poles to raise the front wall to the new barn. The workers cheered as it came upright, then others scrambled around, pounding nails to keep it in place.

  Moll Murdoon wasn't what Tyressa had expected. Given Tunk's bluff exterior and rustic manners, she'd visualized her as an equally large woman, with apple cheeks, bright eyes, and broad hips—and saddled with a grandchild on each. She'd thought the woman would have years of hardships etched on her face, and perhaps a body stooped with decades of hard labor.

  Instead, she found a woman her own size, with sharp brown eyes and hair black as night. Tyressa guessed the color came from dye, but the hair's natural waves and sheen defied age. Though Moll's hands hinted at her true age, absent a look at them, Tyressa would have assumed the woman still hadn't seen forty winters. Or, if she had, they were mild indeed.

  Moll turned to glance at the barn. "Your people are making short work of this. Tunk didn't want to ask for your help, given that Mulish said he has no interest in your daughter."

  "We're more than happy to help. Mulish has been wonderful working around Silverlake. And his taking a lash..."

  Mulish's mother nodded. "Highlight of his life so far, t
hough the scar isn't quite what he wanted."

  "Why did your husband think we'd not agree to help?"

  "Lady Tyressa..."

  "Just Tyressa."

  "I was raised to know better, but have lived here long enough to accept." Moll smiled easily. "My husband has lived his whole life here, not just in the wood, but within the Murdoon clan. They're fiercely independent and proud. In fact, had Nelsa not run across your son in Thornkeep, I doubt you'd ever have met any of us."

  "You're not from here. I'd guess the south..."

  "Osirion, yes. I started life named Malkia." The woman set her tankard down, linked her hand through the crook of Tyressa's arm, then began to stroll away from where others were preparing food and drink for the workers. "My father was a merchant—still is, if he yet lives—in a family trading firm. My uncles and cousins and grandfather and father all went off on trading jaunts. They returned with wonderful stories. I listened, entranced, and wished to see those places. My father wouldn't hear of it, so I stowed away on a ship and came north."

  "That's quite an adventure.»

  "An adventure, yes, but not of the sort sung of in songs. I was headstrong, but young and innocent. I ran afoul of a variety of characters." Moll hesitated for a moment, then nodded. "I arrived in Thornkeep in a coffle. I was auctioned off in town, to Blackshield's predecessor. Fortunately for me, Tunk had been in town, witnessed the sale, and decided I should be free. He and his brothers arrived to rescue me about the time a line of guards stood between me and freedom. We won our way free, and Tunk named me ‘Moll' so if anyone came asking for Malkia, he could say he'd not seen her in years. I've been with Tunk ever since."

  "I think you leave much unsaid, but I can see where Nelsa gets her spirit."

  "Nelsa is the answer to my mother's prayer that I have a child as trying as I was." She squeezed Tyressa's forearm. "Echo Wood was not where I expected to find myself, but I have no regrets."

  "But you've not seen your family since, have you?"

  "I imagine they believe I'm dead." Moll shrugged. "It's probably just as well. This is a green land with fierce winters. This would be the greatest of hells to my people."

  "It's the same for most of those I know in Ustalav. Not because of the cold, just because of the raw wildness of the frontier. They'd look at this place and see nothing. I look at it and see everything." Tyressa pointed toward the barn. "Two months ago that was just a field. A year ago, I imagine, it was woods that you harvested to get the lumber for the barn. Through sweat and strength you're making something where nothing existed before. It's as close to being a god as any person should get."

  "Sagely stated. This is why Silverlake will endure." She nodded toward where Nelsa and Jerrad hauled sloshing pails of water over for the workers to drink. "We should speak of the secret our children shared. About the goblins."

  "They both want to be adults, yet it frightens them. And, I can't blame them for wanting to keep a secret. At the moment they learn something important, they realize how foolish they've been to take the risk. They expect to be punished, so they hide something we need to know."

  "Of course." Moll shot Tyressa a sidelong glance. "I believe they feared we would stop them from running about together."

  "I probably would have, too. Not to punish your daughter, but to protect her. I could never forgive myself if she came to harm because of Jerrad's actions."

  "I don't believe that would ever happen." Moll nodded. "Even though he's new to magic, he seems quite responsible."

  "What do you mean?"

  Moll patted Tyressa's arm, and Tyressa dearly wished she could get her arm free. "You do well to protect him, Tyressa. Nelsa had guessed. I told her to say nothing, but your reaction confirms it. And just so you know, Nelsa is that way inclined, too, but of a sorcerous bent. She gets it through Tunk's grandmother. How do you think she found the hollow where they saw the goblin?"

  "And how she makes it through the wood so easily."

  "Exactly." Moll sighed. "To tell you the truth, I'm pleased that what she felt is true. Her brothers are all blind to magic. She's proud, but has no one who understands. She could use a confidant."

  "As could Jerrad." Tyressa looked at her. "Who teaches her?"

  "She has some of her grandmother's books. Tunk won't send her away, so she learns by herself—sorcery is in the blood. Having someone else to compare her progress with might spur her on."

  "Jerrad as well. Should it worry us that their friendship could develop into romance?"

  "Could?" Moll laughed. "I know she's already taken with your son. Look at them now. I don't know if he's confided anything to you, but their willingness to keep a secret so we'd not separate them speaks volumes."

  Tyressa nodded. "It does. I don't want him—I don't want either of my children—to suffer heartbreak."

  "No mother should, but no mother can prevent it. First romances often go that way, alas."

  "Not mine." Tyressa smiled. "First and only."

  Moll's smile wizened. "What of you now, Tyressa? Tunk's youngest brother has to be your age. His wife passed two years ago of fever. He's got two children almost Jerrad's age."

  "Oh no, I couldn't."

  "I understand that Silverlake is your responsibility, but having someone to share the burden with..."

  Tyressa laid her hand over Moll's and squeezed. "You're wise and you're right, but I can't. I'm still married."

  "I thought you were widowed. That's what most seem to think."

  "Everyone but me." Tyressa glanced down, a lump rising in her throat.

  Moll shifted her arm and brought it around Tyressa's shoulders. "You can tell me. You best, in fact, so I can keep the Murdoon women away with their hints and suggestions."

  "I would bore you."

  "I doubt that, Tyressa of Silverlake."

  Tyressa studied the ground. "My husband was in service to my father when we met. We fell in love instantly, denied it for as long as we could, then announced it to the world. Of course, the match would not do, since I was noble and Garath was common. I was a prize chip in the political games around Ardis. My father was so against the match that he threatened to exile Garath, and I said I'd go right along with him."

  "So you had the ogrekilling spirit from your youth, then."

  "I don't like being caged." Tyressa sighed. "My mother found a genealogist who was able to prove that Garath Sharpax was really a member of the Vishov family. He's a seventh cousin or something. I think she actually paid to have the document forged, but suddenly Garath became useful. He was a leader in ways my brother was not, so all was well and we were wed. I even got to remain a Vishov."

  "A true romance."

  Tyressa nodded. "It was. But it's been ten years since Garath went north to fight in the Crusades. It wasn't the first time. He found court life cloying, but he always promised he would come back to me. He always had. But then, in the Worldwound, there was yet another big incursion. So many soldiers just vanished. We widows and widowers were so many, and we had nothing to mourn, nothing to fill graves. Each one of us told the other that we had to hope. I told a thousand people that my husband might not make it back, but that they had to believe theirs would. He was their leader and, as his wife, that was my responsibility to the families they left behind.

  "Then my own mother died, so I served my father in her stead. Then he died, and my brother required my services. And then..."

  "You've never had a chance to mourn."

  "No, it's not that." Tyressa brushed a tear from her cheek. "I've never had a chance to stop believing. Because if I do stop believing, I'll make a lie out of his promise to return."

  "You can't do that."

  "I won't let myself do it. I've never given up." Tyressa pointed east toward distant Silverlake. "I undertook Silverlake so my husband would have a place to come to. I wanted him to make it home, and maybe, just being closer to where he was lost..."

  Tyressa squeezed her eyes tight, but tears escaped nonetheless. She h
as to find me pathetic. To cling to a promise which, every year, became yet more impossible to believe; it was the gateway to madness. To undertake the establishment of a town in the vain hopes that after fifteen or twenty or forty years a man who was most assuredly dead would somehow find his way to her was completely insane.

  Moll hugged her tightly. "I believe you are a very lucky woman."

  Tyressa pulled back. "How can you possibly say that?"

  "You've had what so few women have ever had: a man who loves you enough to promise to defy death to return to your side. I dearly love my husband, and I know he loves me, but when he says he'll return after slopping the hogs, I know there's only half a chance he will, and that falls to nothing if he suddenly decides something in the wood needs hunting. Now, that's his way. I accept that, and I even love him for it. But to have a man who made that promise and kept it before, that's special. Were I you, I'd have turned a mountain into a hole quarrying stone for Silverlake."

  "You don't think I'm mad?"

  "Pity that you're not. It helps living here in the wood." Moll gripped her shoulders. "Now you'll forgive me if I tell you the things your husband will say when he comes back. You're a marvel, Tyressa of Silverlake, Ogrebane, Mistress of the Whip Banner."

  "You're much too kind."

  "Not by half. You think about all that. You've carved a place from wilderness. You've twice faced down Baron Blackshield. You've killed goblins and dropped an ogre with a fishing spear. You've got a daughter who could put an arrow through a crow on the wing at a hundred paces. You've got a son who stumbles into Mosswater and emerges with a small cut. Save that I've been hearing this all from sources I trust, I'd be thinking you were one of the tall tales my kin brought back from their trading trips."

  You cannot possibly see me that way. "You make it sound better than it is."

  "If your husband doesn't return, it'll only be because he'll be afraid he's not good enough for you." Moll gave her a wink. "And, for my money, anything that stands between him and you lacks any prospect of a long or happy life."