Ethan cleared his throat and began his story.
Better than a score of years ago a young man from a village called Broken Stone high and deep in the Barony of Vhar, beyond Whitethorn Mountain and on the verge of the Ice Wilds, lived his life like many of the village’s other inhabitants. He dwelt in the home of his parents and siblings and their children, and he worked the land cutting stone and raising the hardy white goats that dwell that far north. This man knew of the lands of the south such as Greenwell and Wendlith, but Broken Stone held everything he could ever want or need. He had loved ones and pride.
A peculiar thing about this man was that even though the work he did improved the lives of him and his family he desired a different calling. He longed to be a storyteller, though in villages like Broken Stone a storyteller wasn’t respected as much as those that pulled their weight. Though the Barony of Vhar was the land of storytellers, they were primarily entrenched in the barony’s southern portions on the south flanks of the Vhar Mountains.
The village of Broken Stone isn’t commonly known of anymore because it fell into ruin. That young man was there when it happened.
It started as a regular day. People went about their daily tasks required to keep the village alive and running. The man tended his family’s goats on the high slopes to the west of the village. In the distance he saw the approach of a string of dark shapes moving southward out of the white haze of the Ice Wilds. There was only one thing that the approaching shapes could have been and the thought of it brought a torrent of terror and anxiety into the core of his being, Berserkers of the Ice Wilds.
The man sprinted as fast as he ever had in his life down the rocky snow-covered slopes. He dodged between the odd columns of rock that were shaped by the constant frigid wind on the verge of the Ice Wilds. These strange pillars of rock served as a replacement for trees this far north. The man prayed aloud to the Ancestors in the Ancestor Lands that he would reach Broken Stone in time to warn its inhabitants. But he smelt the smoke before he ever got to the village.
Unfortunately, upon his arrival the Berserkers were not yet done. Standing slightly taller than the civilized inhabitants of the Barony of Vhar the Berserkers had long thick alabaster-hued hair and ruddy sunburned skin. They dressed in thick layers of white and grey furs taken from slain Ice Cats, the most hated enemies of the Berserkers out in the Ice Wilds, and they were known to wield crude chopping and piercing armaments made from thick yellowed bone. Berserkers raided the northern parts of the Barony of Vhar to replenish supplies and food to take back with them into the frigid wilds. Ice Cats were notoriously hard to slay, but they were the only other known life form in the Ice Wilds aside from the barbaric humans that also roamed that land. Hence the Berserkers usually survived by rationing the meat of a slain Ice Cat family among an entire tribe for weeks at a time. But when it became too long since the last kill the Berserkers were forced to march southward into the Vhar Mountains to capture the other half of their diets, humans.
When the young man finally reached his village he was greeted by fire, death, screams, and blood. At least half of the inhabitants of Broken Stone already were dead, and the remainder, all women and children, were being brutally beaten, captured and tied in leather rope, or raped. Their screams shredded the crystal-clear blue cloudless sky. As the man charged forward with a wild screech of fury and sorrow the nearest bunch of Berserkers whirled around, bone weapons in hand and fresh blood soaking their sodden white facial manes.
They met him halfway and the first swung a cruelly-shaped axe blade shaped from a human scapula, meaning to bury it in the ribcage of the man, but the frenzied young man dodged the blow and landed a powerful punch into the Berserker’s eye socket. He was rewarded with an audible crack as the raider crumpled unconscious. He picked up the bone blade of his fallen opponent, but doing so acquired him a heavy blow to the top of the skull with a thick bulbous-ended club crafted from a thick femur. His vision dimmed into a grey foggy tunnel and his hearing disappeared for a moment, and when he finally recovered it was too late to evade or parry a solid blow from the same club into his ribs that shattered a couple instantly.
With a deluge of hot blood cascading down his face and a chest that felt like some horrid construct of both fire and ice the young man somehow managed to swing his bone blade into the face of the Berserker with the club. It chopped into his open mouth, slicing through taut wiry tissue until it chipped into the base of his skull. The Berserker’s bottom jaw dangled from his sun burnt face by only a single side. But he was forced to leave the weapon in the man’s face as another bone club smashed into the side of his skull, splintering his vision and sanity. He staggered backward on legs suddenly made of clay, and his brown eyes rolled back into his head, the door shutting to wakefulness, and he fell into snow.
When he awoke it wasn’t in the Ancestor Lands like he had hoped, but it was instead on his stomach, and the sharp icy ground was moving beneath him! As his senses slowly returned he noticed that there was a horrid pain in his arms and shoulders. He slowly lifted his crimson-stained head to see that he was being dragged by leather rope tied around his bleeding wrists. He could hear and sense other captives around him, some being dragged and some struggling to keep up on foot with the quick-paced Berserkers who held them leashed like animals. Of his family there was no sign but he assumed the worst.
For six days he was a captive of the Berserkers. As a nomadic tribe they traversed the Ice Wilds with its searing freezing winds of ice and fog and ground of razor sharp ice, stone and snow. He could do nothing but attempt to stay conscious as, one by one, the fingers of his right hand began to blacken and abandon feeling. He constantly was racked with intense shaking as he struggled to retain a scrap of body heat with his bloody woolen garments amidst the glacial frigid environment that he was unfortunate enough to find himself in. For six days he sat there shivering and sobbing, dying, as the screams of his fellow villagers shrieked through the Berserker encampment as, one by one, they were chosen by the barbarians to be their meal, and were thus gutted and skinned alive. Their flesh was roasted before their fading teary gazes to be devoured by jagged rotten yellow teeth, and their hides were left unprotected in the dry bitter wind to be leathered into garments for the brutes. He survived for six days by only ingesting snow.
On the sixth day he was sure he couldn’t last another night, nor would the Berserkers allow him to remain uneaten. He would have assumed it the providence of the Ancestors, if he hadn’t already lost all of his faith in them, when the Ice Cats came. They arrived in a pack, instantly sowing pandemonium among the Berserkers. The Ice Cats, longtime foes and hunters of the men that inhabited the Ice Wilds, fell savagely upon the Berserkers shredding them in flurries of wicked fangs and claws. The Berserkers tried to defend themselves, but they were caught too unawares and the attacks of the Ice Cats were just too lethal.
One of the largest of the pack ambled up to the weary frail body of the man in his dilapidated and weakened state. The Ice Cat, a slightly above-average specimen some four feet tall at the shoulder and ten feet long, had a thick coat of white fur, with longer gray fur draped from his underside, a ridge of wiry black hair that ran from the base of his skull to about midway down his back. It had massive, powerful jaws from which a massive foot-long fang descended from each side. Piercing cerulean blue eyes gazed at the man with a fierce intensity and wisdom. The young man was glad to be ending his life on the fangs of an Ice Cat rather than those of his fellow man.
Yet the Ice Cat did not kill him. Rather it came forward with its toothy maw agape and bit down on the front of his sodden wool tunic. With a firm secure bite on his clothing it easily lifted the man from his back, and the Ice Cat took off at a furious gait southward towards the looming figures of the Vhar Mountains. By the end of the day the animal, panting and exerted, had brought him into the foothills of the Vhar Mountains. In another extremely rare act of human-like compassion the wild animal slept coiled around the feeble human using its t
hick fur and immense body heat to provide the man with whatever warmth that it could, which was no small amount. The man awoke in the late morning to a dead rabbit dangling from the fanged maw of the Ice Cat, and though forced to devour it raw, he still enjoyed it thoroughly.
The Ice Cat escorted the ravaged man beyond the ruins of Broken Stone and into the evergreen forests midway up the north flanks of the Vhar Mountains. There, as oddly as their union, they parted ways, the Ice Cat turning and bolting back to the north towards the Ice Wilds. The young man thanked his ancestors in the Ancestor Lands and continued southward. Arriving in the first village he came across, by the name of Whiteham it was known, he was fortunately granted with warm shelter and hot home-cooked food. His hosts tried in vain to save the ruin of his right hand, but all that remained were scars and two fingers, the pinky and ring finger. But he at least still possessed his life.
So when his strength and constitution were recovered the man departed Whiteham and traveled further southward, passing a few villages en route, until finally he reached the warmer forested country on the Barony of Vhar’s southern boundary. It was there were he entered the town of Lumberwall, safe behind its high walls and guards. Still enamored with storytellers, but knowing full well that he was too old now to train to become one, he instead would do all that he could to be around them. Eventually the young man grew into middle-age, his blond locks fading in hue and his once ever-present muscles became covered by age and mead-bestowed girth. Still he never once left Lumberwall. The wilds beyond the walls of a safe settlement were too fraught with horror and danger for the sensibilities of a person that had experienced such pain and misery that his time in the Ice Wilds and with the Berserkers had brought him.
He made a life for himself and managed to gear it around the tales, songs and legends he loved so much. Storytellers and minstrels flocked to his business and he was blessed with a very safe and enjoyable life.
Upon finishing his tale the audience raised a gleeful uproar of applause and hoorahs that smashed into the grinning Ethan like the fierce gust of a winter blizzard. He stumbled as he stood from his stool upon the stage and took a terse bow. He then stepped from the stage and was greeted by claps on his back and thanks for the great tale. Ethan thanked his audience warmly and walked back towards the bar. Just about everybody in the tavern put nary a thought into the identity of the hero of the story, but one individual in The House of Chronicles knew exactly whom the story portrayed. As Ethan strode forward his intense amber gaze was returned by a brown one even more intense.
“What do you think, Eikjard, good enough for supper and a bed?” inquired Ethan slapping his hand on the counter of the bar right next to where Eikjard’s gnarled right hand with its two fingers laid. Ethan smirked into the bushy worn face of the barkeep, and with a knowing smile he shrugged. Eikjard could only whisper, “How did you know? That story isn’t known around here, but for personal friends.”
“Well, Eikjard, I’m not from around here. The storytellers of the village of Whiteham have always traded tales with its closest neighboring village, North Ridge, my home.”
Eikjard could do nothing but shake his head at the resurgence of memories the night’s events had brought him. He then met Ethan’s level amber gaze and asked, “How does elk steak, wild potatoes, and fresh milk suit you?”
Chapter Three
Between Baronies
Ethan enjoyed not only his free meal but also the company of Eikjard and the patrons of The House of Chronicles, many of whom were storytellers themselves. Never before had he thought to ever find himself in the company of so many intellectual folk so similar to himself. Fresh milk soon turned into honey mead, which was thankfully granted to Ethan free of charge. After his hearty meal Eikjard shared with the storyteller a couple of slices of warm bread topped with golden honey and cinnamon.
When day turned into night many more patrons came in off of the streets of Lumberwall, including some additional performers. Ethan heard many more Vharian tales and songs with the enraptured audience, but he told no more himself on that summer night. Each and every patron appeared to be a hardy Vharian, and even the Wendlithian troubadour that had been performing upon his initial entry into The House of Chronicles had departed the common room at one point or another.
Most of the tales he already knew and the ones that he wasn’t familiar with were reflexively catalogued into his memory to be used later should the occasion arrive. But the more the young storyteller thought about his near future the more sure he was that his skills as a storyteller would become less important once he passed beyond the border of the Barony of Vhar and entered the Barony of Greenwell. As his grandmother had explained, the Barony of Greenwell was a land of books and texts and the rural storytellers of the Vhar Mountains were little more than curiosities of the rugged northern land. Despite that, Ethan still intended to venture into the warmer lands to the south where forests of birch and oak and maple blanketed the land from settlement to settlement on a ground shrouded in moss, grass, and ferns. Vhar held nothing more for him. It only held his past.
Later in the evening, likely close to midnight, Eikjard’s shift was relieved by a plump-bodied and rustic-voiced gal named Molly, whom Eikjard was known to bed with. The old barkeep and Ethan sat alone at a corner table near an open window looking over the dirt lane outside. A single candle illuminated their quiet conversation and both were well into a small cask of honey mead. In the waning conversation and crowd of the tavern Eikjard inquired, “What then, lad, do you intend once you cross over into Greenwell? Is it going to be adventures before you settle down and try to make storytelling popular thereabouts as it was in the Ancient Age?”
“I don’t know yet, Eikjard. All I know is that these high snowy crags and their copses of pine and aspen hold nothing more for me. My family is now completely vanished, departed into the Ancestor Lands with the rest of my kin, and to tell you the truth, my life as a storyteller in this barony has garnered me no respect to speak of.”
“Why not remain here in Lumberwall? I know as sure as myself that you would draw one beast of a crowd from one night and on to the next. You have a gift, Ethan. Myself, I’ve seen scores and scores of storytellers pass beneath that doorframe and naught a one in recent memory has enraptured an audience so with their first telling. You could easily make yourself a fine living here, at the foot of the Vhar Mountains. I’d even consider you an employee of The House of Chronicles. I’d give you a steady wage in addition to room and board. Beyond the boundary of this barony the skills that you’ve spent your whole life learning since you were a babe, the skills to become a storyteller, will become worthless.”
“I have no idea what will happen once I enter Greenwell, Eikjard. All I know is that’s where I’m going. And I’m going tomorrow.”
Ethan’s room was in the inn section of The House of Chronicles that was entered through a door in the stables attached to it, or, as was the case with Ethan, an individual could walk up a wooden staircase in the tavern’s common room. This staircase led to either the tables located on the balcony overlooking the taproom, or they led outside to a short, decorative, wooden bridge that stretched over the exterior side street to the three floors of chambers located in the inn section. He was located in one of the ten pleasant rooms that comprised the third floor.
He sat alone on the end of his bed, a moderately-sized affair draped in wool and linen blankets, and he admired the room he found himself in. Walled in aromatic timber the walls were broken only by a single window that looked down into Lumberwall’s main avenue. A single lantern that had obviously seen years of use burned atop a small square table aside the headboard of the bed. The room radiated a rustic, rural, but comfortable feel that so well summarized the attitude of the Barony of Vhar. He smirked and blushed at the sound of a couple, likely traveling performers, making love in the next room.
Ethan felt excited, yet at the same time anxious, for the morrow that would take him over the border and into the Baron
y of Greenwell. He peeled off his woolen shirt and trousers and tossed them in a pile before the heavy pine door of the room. He then unlatched the window and pushed it open, letting the cooler night air kiss his skin, damp from the thick wool clothing Ethan owned. A few riders and loud drunks traversed the quiet dirt roads of Lumberwall in the still late darkness, and Ethan’s view afforded him an astounding view of the town. Castle Lumberwall, home of the Baron of Vhar and his family, dominated the center of the circular walled town like the hub of a great wheel, but just slightly less in size was the Grand Chapel of Lumberwall. It was a church of the Ancestors in the form of a towering stone cathedral where priests and priestesses orated to the populace on the proper ideals to achieve the Ancestor Lands upon death as opposed to the lonely frightful Soul Wastes.
Ethan scratched the side of his head which brought him to notice his long hair that hung just past his shoulders was unkempt and soiled. His skin felt much the same and his red beard and mustache, an actual shade of red unlike his dirty-blond hair, were itchy and odd-feeling. Ethan had always trimmed his facial hair to the skin as he had been told it kept his boyish good looks, but on the wild stretches of trail that meandered through the Vhar Mountains he was afforded no opportunity to shave. It had been over two weeks since the village of Gredor where the storyteller had taken his last real bath, and he was in dire need of another. He just considered himself fortunate that none of the patrons of the tavern had noticed his filth, or if they had, they thankfully didn’t bring it to attention. “Maybe Eikjard wouldn’t mind letting me take a bath before I depart,” Ethan stated to himself after sneering in disgust at the appearance of his grubby reflection in the window.
The Azure Wizard Page 3
