Winter 4986, 21 Aoimoth
“Years Branston. YEARS!” Rasnah rubbed her temples in tiny circles. It didn’t help banish her headache. “They were right in our backyard. A day’s ride out from Hamerfoss, Branston.”
Branston heaved himself out of his chair and rounded Rasnah’s desk. She didn’t bother to look up. Gripping her shoulders he started kneading and Rasnah finally leaned back with a groan. “Some General I am,” she mumbled.
“You are a fantastic General,”
Rasnah snorted, “Yes, which is why a Warlock group not only managed to kidnap Clearhelm citizens but also smuggled in dragon scale, kept a young girl hostage for who knows how long, AND did all of this within spitting distance of a fortress full of Paladins and Squires…” she flinched as Branston found a particularly stubborn knot and began to work it out.
Branston could only sigh as he continued his massage, deftly working some healing magic in with the kneading to ease the pain. “Do you really think this girl was the cause of the fire?” His order wasn't involved in the incident or investigation, but the Cleric had enough compassion to fill the kingdom -and then some- and the story of the girl without a name had troubled him greatly.
“She’s a fire Sorcerer, just like the ones they kidnapped almost six years ago,” Rasnah explained, leaning her head back to rest on Branston’s rotund belly.
Branston let his thumbs slide up the back of her neck to try and ease some of the tension there. Rasnah moaned, and Branston said, “That explains how she survived, but…”
“She doesn’t remember the fire starting, but what she does remember is one of the Archmages, ARCHMAGES Branston! Killing her animals. She almost lost her temper just telling us that much. There’s a reason fire sorcerers are almost universally sealed. If she lost control when it actually happened?” But to melt stone? Rasnah had seen fireballs on the battlefield melt the first few layers of rock, but never an entire tower. “The structure looked like a done candle Branston,” she whispered.
“There is good in this story, my dear,” Branston said, shaking her neck and trying to force her to relax. The Paladin leaned further back to arch an incredulous eyebrow at him. He pushed her head back down to continue rubbing her neck, “It seems to me that this girl managed to not only free herself but to take the burden of executing Warlocks off your shoulders.”
“She shouldn’t have had to. We should have been able to keep the Warlocks out of our province to begin with. And, AND…” her muscles tightened as the frustrated passion rose in her once more, “Now we can’t track them! We have no way of knowing where the others are, and we KNOW there are others. They were smuggling dragon scales from somewhere. AND we have no idea WHY they were even doing that.” she let herself fall back onto Branston’s stomach, her energy spent again and replaced by weary resignation.
She needed this, she needed to vent her frustrations, and her old friends were the only ones she was capable of doing it with. Branston continued his massage, working down to her shoulders again. He wouldn’t judge her loss of composure. To him, she was just Ras, adventuring companion and stalwart friend. But soon, she would have to be General Rasnah again, resolute and unflappable.
“We do have one lead…” she whispered, “The girl gave us names, and one of them is right here, in our very city. Morndancer.”
“The Noble Mage?” Branston squeezed a little harder, and Rasnah groaned, more at the implication than any pain, but the Cleric loosened his grip anyway, “What will you do?”
Rasnah sat up and patted her friend’s hand, signaling him to stop, “My job.”
***
“Well, at least one good thing has come from this,” Shaloon spoke carefully and clearly, considering each word before she said it to make sure her sentences came out making sense -and all in the same language- “With the tower so thoroughly destroyed there is no way they will be able to trace us.”
She sat beside Morndancer’s bed where the Archmage lay prone, half asleep and mumbling to himself. The entire right side of his face was plastered with burn scars. Though healed through the help of potions and salves, he would never be the same. A full five days had passed, and he still hadn’t come back to them. His mind lost to the void of the Outer Planes, where he -presumably- conversed with their master.
“Temple… time… connect…”
“What's he saying?” Ronni asked. The Morndancer daughter was the only one who'd seen the incapacitated Mage, and it was only her quick work with alchemy that had saved her father from the burns that by all rights should've killed him. Ronni Morndancer knew her father was involved in… questionable… research, unsanctioned by the Guild. She didn’t know he had formed a pact with an extraplanar being for more knowledge and power than any human mind could fully comprehend or contain. She didn’t know he was a Warlock. Shaloon wanted to keep it that way.
“Nonsense,” Shaloon answered.
“What if the Guild starts asking questions? Or the Temples?” Ronni clenched and unclenched her hands in her lap, playing with her fingers, displaying her nervousness for anyone to see, “What do I tell them?”
Shaloon glared at Ronni, holding the younger woman’s eyes with her color-shifting gaze until Ronni was forced to look away. How had someone of Morndancers knowledge and bearing ever produce such timid children? It must have come from their late mother’s side, “You tell them the truth.” Shaloon answered carefully, “If the Temples involve themselves, then they will see through any foolish lies you think to construct. You tell them the truth, your father was injured by an experiment gone wild. He had been showing signs of madness for years,” that last truth actually made Shaloon flinch. She looked at her counterpart but saw herself. How many years did she have left before her mind was reduced to a jumbled mess? Unable to separate the physical world from the Outer Plains of dreams and nightmares? “You don’t know what he was researching or where.” she finished.
Ronni swallowed, “What was he…”
“Fool Girl!” Shaloon shouted in draconic, jumping to her feet. Ronni leaned back, eyes wide. Breathing sharply through her nose, Shaloon gathered her control and calmed her temper, “Don’t be a fool, Ronni. Your ignorance is the only thing that will save you if the Paladins come for you.” She sat back down, closing her eyes to help maintain her composure, “But there is no reason for the Temples to…”
Clanging from the street below had both women on their feet and rushing for the window. A squad of armored men and women marched down the street, and Ronni gasped as they stopped before the gates of the Morndancer manor. “What do we do!?” Ronni pulled at Shaloon’s sleeve, but Shaloon shook her off with a curse.
“How? There should be nothing left, no one to…” she mumbled to herself, turning to Morndancer, still blissfully unaware of the excitement around him. His burns looked years healed, but to Shaloon, they stood out like a bull in a bakery, “The Firewyrm…” she must have survived.
“Shaloon, what…?” Ronni started, but Shaloon wasn’t listening. Holding her arm to the side Shaloon summoned her blade. She needed to kill him, cut this loose end, before Morndancer led the Temple back to the Talons.
“They have returned. They need a gate. We must… shift… focus…” Morndancer muttered as Shaloon pointed her sword at his throat.
Again with the return! Shaloon snarled, but her sword didn’t move. This was what they did. They eliminated threats to their secrecy. It was the only way they'd stayed hidden for so many millennia. The only way they'd managed to make any progress. Progress Morndancer had made; leaps and bounds beyond anything that had come before. HE had done it. HE had been the one to finally succeed where others had failed. Shaloon dropped her sword, and it dissolved into smoke.
“Tell them the truth,” Shaloon answered Ronni’s worried whimpers as a Paladin pounded on the manor door. She had to hope that Ronni was too ignorant to point the Temples in the right direction. Had to believe that Morndancer was too far gone for them to gain anything. Because she couldn’t kill him. Couldn’t wipe that priceless mind from existence.
“If the Paladins kill you, then so be it. I will continue our work...”
Ronni rushed from the room as the pounding on her door intensified. Shaloon resummoned her blade. “Ronni Morndancer, you and your family are being summoned to the Temple for questioning…” the Paladin’s voice floated up the stairs, but Shaloon had already cut a hole in reality.
“... I will bring the Firewyrm back.” Shaloon stepped through the portal, dissolving into ash behind her.
***
Within a silver circle embedded in the stone floor, the young woman sat terrified. The straps on the arms and legs of her chair hung loose. There would be no need to use them if she cooperated. “We have no intention of hurting you or your family Lady Morndancer. But I must warn you, if you lie within the circle, you will feel it.” Sir Rasnah stood tall, hands clasped loosely behind her back, looking down at the woman and showing none of the sympathies she felt.
Rasnah had been prepared to question the Morndancer family, but she hadn’t expected to find Archmage Froman Morndancer himself, half-burned and mumbling in a nonsensical language. “How was your father injured?” or more importantly, how had he escaped? For Rasnah was convinced deep in her soul that she had found the man who had tormented the nameless girl.
“He… he was injured by an experiment gone wild…” Ronni Morndancer’s voice quavered, the answer sounding rehearsed.
Rasnah narrowed her eyes, but the attending Paladin called out, “Truth.”
“What experiment?”
“I… I don’t know.” Ronni closed her eyes as if expecting a shock, but the Paladin called out the truth of her words again.
“How did he escape?”
“I don’t know.”
“Truth.”
Rasnah hated this method of questioning. There were too many loopholes, too many ways to twist the truth in such a way that no useful information could be gleaned. But the alternative preferred by her counterparts in the Temple of Horsa was even more distasteful.
“When did you last see your father?”
“Just before being taken in, he was upstairs. I was tending his wounds, and…” she rambled, and Rasnah lifted a hand to silence her.
“Truth.” the Paladin called unnecessarily.
“My mistake, Lady Morndancer. When did your father return injured?”
“Um… five? Five days ago?”
“Truth.”
“And what was his mental condition then?”
“He… he’s been showing signs of madness for years…”
“Truth.”
“And you never sought help? Assistance from the Church of Lune?”
Ronni shook her head, and Rasnah arched a disapproving eyebrow, “Words, Lady Morndancer, if you please.”
“N… no. He was functional, and he… he doesn’t approve of the gods…”
“Truth.”
“You know nothing of your father’s work?”
“No.”
“Truth.”
They were getting nowhere. “Is your father a Warlock Lady Morndancer?”
The woman’s eyes went wide in horror and fear, “NO! No Sir Knight, he would never, he…” Rasnah interrupted her with another upraised hand.
“Truth.” as far as Ronni knew anyway.
The door to the interrogation room banged open, striking the wall behind it with enough force to start swinging closed again. A man in long robes pushed it open again, after it bopped him on the nose, striding in in a huff, “What are you doing questioning my journeyman without my supervision?”
Rasnah sniffed, turning to the senior Mage without flinching, “This does not concern her status as a Mage, Sanlin.”
“And yet you ask her about Warlocks? Why were we not informed of this, Sir Rasnah? The Guild is directly responsible-”
“The Guild has been made aware of our investigation, Mage Sanlin. They sent a team from the capital specifically.” Rasnah interrupted. Sanlin spluttered, too indignant to find the proper words. Sir Rasnah said nothing. She'd been afraid of this and wanted to get the questioning done before the local Mages could go on the defensive. Accusing any among their own of forming an illegal pact for magic would subject them all to an investigation. The fact that the accused was an Archmage in good standing only compounded the shame and danger to the Guild as a whole.
“There is no evidence!” Sanlin finally shouted.
Rasnah’s eyes narrowed dangerously, “We have eye witness testimony…”
“General Rasnah.” a much calmer voice sounded from the door, and a knight in a crisp gray uniform accented with purple, stood behind the flustered Mage, making him jump in surprise. He was not one of Rasnah’s Paladins. The kingdom representative had come.
“A word?” he stepped aside with a gesture for Rasnah to follow.
When she did, he didn’t follow her into the hall right away; instead, he turned to her Paladin on guard, stating, “Please escort Lady Morndancer back to her home.”
Rasnah bristled but maintained her mask of calm. The Temple of Hengist might rule Clearhelm but Saint Giorgos ruled the kingdom.
The Saint Giorgos Paladin walked beside her down the hall, giving those in the room enough space not to hear them before he spoke, his voice calm, “Why are you questioning suspects, Sir Rasnah? Is it not the duty of the General to delegate?”
“Warlocks are a serious matter, Sir,” Rasnah answered shortly.
“All breaches of our laws are serious matters, General.” he didn’t give her time to respond before continuing, “You have no evidence.”
Rasnah barely kept herself from spluttering like the Mage. Speaking slowly, she said again, “We have an eyewitness-”
The Saint Giorgos Paladin interrupted her again, “A teenage girl, who was held for unknown years and subject to magical meddling we can’t possibly understand, is not a trustworthy witness.”
“And yet her story matches. The timeline is perfect. Morndancer has burns and appears on the same day as the incident?” Rasnah was not a new recruit and could see exactly what was happening, and she didn’t like it. But not liking it wouldn’t stop it.
The Saint Giorgos Paladin stopped walking, and Rasnah turned to face him, “This could easily be a coincidence without solid proof. There was no Warlock paraphernalia found at the Morndancer manor, and Lord Foram Morndancer remains in good standing with the Guild, submitting legitimate research throughout the years he would have been at the tower in question. What you have is an elderly Mage who has fallen to madness after severe injury. You have no evidence he is a Warlock or was involved in the tower.”
“The girl…”
“Is not a reliable witness.” the Paladin shook his head, “Say you are right, Sir Rasnah, the Sorcerer gave you a family name. There is the possibility that the man she knew was a relative, even a distant one, using the noble name to further his show of power. By all accounts, anyone not possessing immunity to fire should have died in that blaze. A teleport spell would take too long to cast if not prepared and held ahead of time, and no teleport would be cast to someone’s home. In fact, there is no record of a teleport gem being programmed for Smildna in the last year, and Archmage Morndancer was not known to be able to cast such magic.”
“We have a reliable witness of a Warlock opening a portal untracked by the guild,” Rasnah countered, but the Paladin merely shook his head again,
“A woman, and over five years ago. I’m not saying it isn’t possible, Sir Rasnah; I’m saying you have no real evidence. We cannot question the man directly, and we cannot execute a man, an old mad man, on the word of a girl also of questionable sanity. If there is even a chance he is innocent, then the laws of Clearhelm would have failed.”
Rasnah’s composure cracked, and she thrust her arm out to take in the hall and the interrogation room, “No coincidence lines up this perfectly. There is something here, I can feel it.” but arguing divine guidance with a fellow Paladin -of a different order- would do nothing to help her cause.
“You have no evidence,” he stated again, lifting his head to look down his nose at her, “You can watch the Morndancer family if you chose, but until you have solid proof, you cannot accuse Froman Morndancer of being a Warlock in the province of Clearhelm.”
“And what of the girl? What of the injustice paid her? Years of captivity?” Rasnah had to breathe hard through her clenched teeth. she knew there was no arguing with the Temple of Saint Giorgos, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t try. She had to. Hengist demanded justice and honor from his followers. “This is not justice.” she snarled.
“No. It is the law.” the Paladin of Giorgos walked away.
***
“I miss Veon-Zih…” Rasnah sighed, cupping her hot tea close to her lips. The tea, introduced by her Monk friend, was of small comfort today, however. She'd ordered every member of the Morndancer extended family questioned, as well as any Mage associates he'd worked with within the last decade. And though the reports had not yet been submitted from her subordinates, she knew they would come back with nothing of substance. Even if she was right, and she was sure she was, this Warlock group was obviously skilled at remaining secret.
“I’m at least twice the man he is.” Branston slapped his belly and shook it with a laugh, “Perhaps three times…” that at least got a smile from Rasnah. Branston chuckled, letting the fleeting mirth stretch as long as possible before saying softly, “He would be even less likely to make a difference in this than you, my dear. This problem can’t be solved with sword or fist.”
“I know, Branston. I know.” Rasnah sipped her tea but couldn’t taste it with her thoughts still spinning.
“Morndancer… He really is mad now, isn’t he?” Branston asked. Madness wasn’t a disease he could heal, and the fact would pain him even if Morndancer was found to be guilty.
Rasnah nodded, “He's completely incoherent, mumbling some half-formed arcane spells that the Mages can’t decipher.” She sighed, setting her cup aside and staring out the window, “I suppose he's as good as dead. He can’t do anyone any more harm in this state.”
“Then it is a mercy to his family to let this issue die. What good will come of finding the truth if the only result is an execution? Even if you had the proof you need, you would gain nothing from a man in such a state.”
Rasnah leaned forward to rest her elbows on her desk, rubbing the knuckles of her left hand with her right, “You’re right. Of course you are. We’ve had no solid leads for years. Why would now be any different?” perhaps her words to Veon-Zih had been more true than even she wanted to believe at the time. Perhaps this was a problem they wouldn't be able to solve for the next generation. “I have placed the Morndancer family under strict guard. Should anyone unverified try and contact them, we will know.”
“And the girl?” Branston asked.
Rasnah clenched her fists, “She will stay in Hamerfoss for a while longer. I… I don’t think it would be wise for her to learn of Morndancer's survival.” She remembered the girl's eyes, blue and curious, flashing crimson for a moment as she relayed her scattered memories of the day the tower burned. Would she seek vengeance? The melted remains of the tower's stone walls flashed in her mind, superimposed over the Morndancer manor. At least ten had died in that blaze. How many more would be lost if the girl lost control in Smildna?
“The Paladins will be able to keep her safe and can protect themselves while we learn more.”
***
Shaloon stood in a room thousands of miles away before a mirror that showed only fog. She held a single crimson scale between her pinched fingers, the only sample remaining from the Firewyrm. With her free hand, she circled the edge of the mirror and began her chant. She only had one chance to find the girl, and she couldn’t afford to waste it.
The remains of the tower took shape in the fog—the place where the sample had been removed from its subject. As if bound to a flying bird, the image moved over a blanket of treetops until walls followed by a fortress of an old design came into view. Utilitarian. A fortress that had seen war before the provinces were united into one kingdom. The image slowed and drew closer—boys ranging from young to near men practiced with swords in the courtyard. The image circled and zoomed closer. Towards the fortress itself and a window on the second floor.
The Firewyrm stared at Shaloon through the window. A man appeared behind her, carrying a tray of food, the sword of Hengist embroidered on his robes. They hadn’t moved her to one of the cities… Perhaps they thought she would be safe, surrounded by tall walls and Paladins?
Shaloon smiled, a plan taking form in her twisted mind. She knew exactly how to get over those walls. She merely needed to gather enough of a distraction to catch the knights unaware. And lucky for her, she had a way with draken.
