The Companions of Tartiël

by Jeff Wilcox

  The Companions of Tartiël

  By Jeff Wilcox

  Text copyright © 2012 Jeff Wilcox

  All Rights Reserved

  Cover Art designed for this book by Aaron Miller

  Table of Contents

  By Chapter

  I.

  II.

  III.

  IV.

  V.

  VI.

  VII.

  VIII.

  IX.

  X.

  XI.

  XII.

  XIII.

  XIV.

  XV.

  XVI.

  XVII.

  XVIII.

  XIX.

  XX.

  XXI.

  XXII.

  XXIII.

  XXIV.

  XXV.

  XXVI.

  XXVII.

  XXVIII.

  XXIX.

  XXX.

  XXXI.

  XXXII.

  XXXIII.

  XXXIV.

  XXXV.

  XXXVI.

  XXXVII.

  XXXVIII.

  XXXIX.

  XL.

  XLI.

  XLII.

  XLIII.

  XLIV.

  Epilogue.

  Afterword.

  Sources.

  I.

  Young Blademaster Kaiyr sat stiff and straight in his chair in a little tavern at the edge of Ist’viel’s trade district. His mane of midnight blue hair partially concealed his features, but beneath that curtain, cobalt eyes scanned the crowd. He was not unaware of the occasional curious looks he received; none of them was hostile, but due to his nature and training, the blademaster did not let his guard down even for a moment. His long, elven ears twitched to and fro every time someone put down his ale with more than necessary force.

  Despite his apparent readiness to defend himself, Kaiyr carried no visible weapons. The voluminous blue robes he wore could have concealed an entire armory, but he truly carried not a single weapon in accordance with blademaster tradition.

  It surprised Kaiyr that, despite the crowd, no one had come to share his table, and he carefully controlled his breathing, trying not to inhale too much of the pipeweed smoke that drifted around the room in lazy whorls.

  No one was prepared for the sudden burst of sound and commotion when somebody kicked open the inn’s door. A halfling seated at the bar near the door squeaked in surprise and ducked into a shadowy corner. Framed in the doorway, ebony hair blowing wild, stood a woman who radiated danger and sensuality—but mostly danger. Her violet eyes narrowed as she scanned the room, her teeth bared in a snarl. In her hand she held an unsheathed rapier, its gleaming edge shimmering with light that could only be the result of enchantments laid into the steel.

  Her eyes locked with Kaiyr’s, also narrowed, and the woman stormed through the crowd of stunned patrons. All of them scrambled out of the way, giving her a wide berth in case that blade started whipping about. Even the smoke seemed to clear for her passage, parting hastily before her.

  In the few heartbeats between the moment this woman entered the room and when she leveled her rapier at Kaiyr, the blademaster assessed his aggressor. The woman was tiny, standing a few fingers shy of five feet even with her high-heeled, black leather boots on. She was dressed in a very revealing, black leather bustier and inappropriately short skirt of the same material. Nearly every scrap of available space on her body held some kind of weapon, from daggers tucked into the tops of her boots to sheaths and scabbards crisscrossing her body. Kaiyr also spotted a few bulges where she might have stowed hidden blades amongst her own… bulges.

  Her swaying hips would have had every man in the room on his knees, had she not come with enough weaponry to outfit a small army. She stalked toward Kaiyr until the table stopped her from running her weapon straight through the elf’s eye, who sat impassively as she approached.

  “Sayel!” the woman snarled, tossing her hair to reveal pointed ears, shorter than Kaiyr’s. A half-elf? “Draw your blade, murderous scum! You’ve breathed your last.” The rapier in her hand shook with barely leashed anger.

  Despite the fire in her heliotrope eyes, she seemed more eager to mete out verbal justice and lay him low with words before gutting him, Kaiyr decided. Further, the tremble in her blade revealed to Kaiyr’s warrior instincts a bit of fear and perhaps a lack of certainty in her verdict.

  Kaiyr placed his palms on the table in a gesture to show her he was not armed and gave her an apologetic look past the sword tip inches from his face. “I am afraid you have me at a disadvantage, Lady…”

  “You know damn well who I am, bastard,” she shot back. The blade in her hand shook even more. “I’ll kill you for what you’ve done.”

  *

  January of 2008 at Shippensburg University was windy, which came as no surprise to any of us. Worse, the days were often too warm to nurture any decent snow on the ground, and the nights were far too cold to be comfortable.

  We lived in Lackhove Hall, “we” being the four who would come together to tell a story that moved us so greatly I felt compelled to chronicle it in this book. My roommate was nicknamed “Xavier,” even though his real name is Mike. For the record, “Xavier” is neither his middle nor last name. We have been friends for more than a decade now and have been through the proverbial thick and thin, and I had no small part in helping him earn his nickname.

  Matt was a freshman at the time, starting his second semester of college. I didn’t know him very well; he was the roommate of a friend who happened to be the president of the Shippensburg Anime Society, for which I was an occasional supplier of the token Japanese animated cartoons.

  The winter winds had also brought back a familiar face to Shippensburg. The last member of our little group (cadre? cabal? flock? murder?) I had met a few years previous, when I was a freshman and had joined a Dungeons & Dragons™

  [1] group that was soon to split into two separate games due to the sheer number of players we had at the table. At school, most of his friends called him “Dingo,” even though everyone else knew him as “Sean.” The end of 2007’s fall semester heralded his return from Spain, where he had been studying as an exchange student for college credit.

  I had been fairly ecstatic when Dingo asked if Xavier and I wanted to play in a D&D campaign with him and Matt; Dingo would be the DM

  [2] . It hadn’t been long since I’d last played, but I wasn’t currently engaged in any other games.

  The four of us assembled in the room Xavier and I shared. Dingo set up a small folding table for himself, and we spread ourselves around the room instead of convening at a table.

  We had created characters after Dingo explained his few modifications to the D&D rules. He even let me play as a blademaster, a homebrew character class

  [3] I crafted and had been refining on and off over the past several years; he was going to let me play-test the class to see if it was balanced for general use.

  Xavier is a fan of wolves. He has a blanket with a giant wolf on it, and his dresser at his home is covered in wolf statuettes. So, it came as no surprise that he chose a wolf theme for his druid. “Caineye,” was the name he chose for his character, who would grow to be an important part of the group and endearing personality to us all. Caineye began play with an animal companion, as per the druid class, and Xavier naturally chose a wolf, naming him “Vinto.” However, Xavier used a non-phonetic pronunciation of the name, so the wolf’s name is actually spoken “Vento.”

  Xavier and I were joined by Matt, a young man of medium height and build, with glasses and short, curling auburn hair. “’Sup, bitches,” he said by way of greeting. He unfolded a red camp chair he had brought wit
h him and settled in. “We ready to play?”

  Xavier and I both said hi, and I chortled, “Yeah, we’re ready to roll some dice, kill stuff. You know, the works. You got everything in order there?”

  Matt had also come to me for a little character advice a few days before. “Yup, got him all ready to go. You’re going to love his name.”

  “What is it?” I asked, curious.

  “I’m going to wait until Dingo gets back from his snack run before I tell everyone,” Matt replied, opening a clear plastic holding case with his dice inside and letting them cascade onto his character sheet, which he kept on top of his copy of the Complete Adventurer, a supplemental book useful to rogues and scoundrels.

  It wasn’t long before Dingo returned and took a seat in one of our chairs. “What’s up, Dingo,” Matt said.

  “I did your mom last night, that’s what’s up,” he shot back cheerfully, which we all understood was merely his way of greeting us. We’re a very formal and G-rated bunch.

  “Oh, that’s who was in bed with us,” Matt replied, throwing his arms into the air, unfazed and eager to return fire.

  After sharing a laugh at the exchange, we got down to business. I stuck my character sheet on my clipboard and readied my favorite, if fickle, set of aqua dice. We all leaned forward in our chairs, eager to start the adventure, none of us aware just how incredible an experience it would prove.

  “Okay, guys,” Dingo said, flipping through his binder and checking his notes. “Our story starts in a small city called Ist’viel. Ist’viel is a city floating in the sky over the Elven Lands, or ‘Vintiens’ in the elven language. Uh, Jeff, what’s your character’s name, and why is he here?”

  I shuffled my sheets a bit, buying a second to collect my thoughts. “My character’s name is Kaiyr. ‘Blademaster Kaiyr’ to anyone who doesn’t really know him, and he’d introduce himself as such.” I waited while Dingo wrote down the name, spelling it out for him when he asked me to.

  “Kaiyr hails from a tiny, out-of-the-way village in the Elven Lands. I don’t really care where you stick it, just so long as it’s really off the beaten path. It’s called Ivyan. He’s here because someone stole a relic—again, I’m leaving the decision about what the artifact is to you—from our village, and as a final test to obtain the title of ‘Blademaster,’ he’s been sent to recover the artifact. Unfortunately, his last lead was a bust, and it left him here with no course of action.”

  “Okay,” Dingo replied. “Well, it’s a normal day in the tavern room of a small inn where you’ve been staying the last couple of nights…”

  *

  Astra glared at Kaiyr as if daring him to answer; in her eyes, he could do no good. Several of the tavern’s patrons had already booked hasty retreats up the stairs or out the damaged front door.

  Kaiyr pursed his lips and leveled a severe stare down the length of the blade held in his face. “You would attack an unarmed man in the middle of dinner?” he asked, his voice deep and serious.

  “Don’t try playing that game with me, Sayel,” the raven-haired lady spat, whipping her blade in an emphatic arc as though to cut Kaiyr’s words. “I know of your weapon.”

  At that moment, a man with a wolf-like dog descended the stairs, having left his room in the hopes of finding something for him and his animal companion to eat. The beast padded silently down the stairs next to its master. Both of them stopped upon reaching the commotion in the common room, the dog—maybe it was really a wolf, but Kaiyr could only see it in his peripheral vision—stopping alongside the human and watching the scene unfold with eyes that sparkled with intelligence far above that of the average pet.

  “Excuse me!” bellowed the newcomer, destroying the tense silence that had fallen over the room. “What’s going on here?” Stepping around tables and cowering patrons, he made his way to stand before Kaiyr’s table, the position showing that he did not pick sides and had no intentions of getting in the way of any deadly exchanges between the two parties. “Who are you?” the man with the dog demanded of the woman.

  She shot him a withering glare that did not faze him in the least. “Stay out of this, boy,” she drawled. “I’m not here to hurt you. My quarrel is with this… fiend here.”

  At the word “boy,” the man with the dog raised one eyebrow and looked up as though glancing at his brown but graying hair. “And what quarrel would that be?”

  The woman hissed in frustration and shook her sword in Kaiyr’s direction. “My reasons are my own.”

  Scratching his head, the man looked over at his furry companion, still on the stairs, and motioned him over. The beast trotted to his side, tongue lolling. Kaiyr would have raised an eyebrow if he knew the woman before him wouldn’t mistake it for an expression of derision. This certainly was no dog; it really was a wolf.

  “Okay,” said the man with the wolf, his tone apologetic, “there’s a real easy way to solve this. You, Miss…”

  “Astra,” the woman growled. The man with the wolf nodded his head in thanks.

  “You, Astra, are accusing this man…”

  “Blademaster Kaiyr,” Kaiyr offered, also receiving a nod.

  “Lies!” Astra spat, “This is Saye—”

  “… of wronging you,” the man went on, louder than the angry she-warrior. “Blademaster Kaiyr, have you had contact with this woman in the past?”

  Kaiyr shook his head gently. “I have not.”

  “Are you really who you say you are? You are Kaiyr and not this ‘Sayel,’ as this woman believes you to be?”

  Kaiyr nodded. “I am indeed Blademaster Daioskaiyr Stellarovim.” He wanted to add more but sensed that additional words might have inflamed the situation further.

  The halfling who had run away from the door upon Astra’s more than dramatic entrance reappeared and hopped up on the chair opposite the man with the wolf. “You know, lady, you’re kind of ruining the whole mood of this place. Besides, he doesn’t look like such a bad man. I mean, if he was, and you came storming in here the way you did, would he have wasted any time in cutting you out of that oh-so-revealing top?”

  Astra scowled in the halfling’s direction. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Wild,” the short fellow replied with a wide smile. “Billcock Wild.”

  *

  “W-what?” Dingo sputtered as Xavier and I burst out laughing. Matt just sat back, arms crossed and utterly pleased.

  “You heard me,” he said, crossing his arms and still grinning. “His name’s Billcock. It’s actually a real name.”

  “Oh, God,” Dingo sighed, amused. “Sadly, I can vouch for that.”

  Matt saw me and Xavier chuckling, and he leaned forward in his seat. “Hey, guys. Billcock, Billcock, Billcock!”

  That, only sent us all into fits of laughter, and it took Dingo several minutes to recover and regain our attention.

  “I think I’m just going to call you ‘Wild’,” I told Matt, who shrugged.

  “That’s actually what he goes by,” he replied. “Billcock,” he stage-whispered, and we all snickered again.

  “Okay, for roleplaying’s sake,” I said. “Let’s get back to the game. Dingo, what happens next?”

  “Well,” Dingo replied, playing with couple d20s in his hands, “Astra glares at Wild and is like…”

  *

  “And what the hell do you want?” the woman huffed, the wind taken from her sails by the interference of the two people and the wolf.

  Wild shrugged. “I just want to know what in the Nine Hells makes you think you have the right to come storming in here, whipping your little sword around and threatening patrons. This guy wasn’t causing any trouble to anyone here, just enjoying a quiet meal by himself.”

  Kaiyr closed his eyes for a moment as silence reigned supreme again. When he opened them a few breaths later, he spoke up. “Masters Wild and…”

  “Caineye,” the man with the wolf told him. Then he pointed to his wolf. “And Vinto.”

  Kaiyr nodded. “Master
s Caineye and Wild, I thank you for coming to my defense. However, I do not wish to make this your problem.” He fixed Astra with his serious, cobalt stare. “Lady Astra, you have my condolences for whatever this Sayel caused you to lose. What can I do to prove to you that I am not this ‘Sayel?’”

  Astra scowled again. “Show me the blade you carry, elf.”

  Kaiyr maintained his level expression. “You must understand that I carry no blade. I fight only with my spirit—”

  “Show me, now,” she hissed, and both Caineye and Wild raised concerned eyebrows and aimed them at Kaiyr.

  “Very well.” Slowly, so as not to provoke her, Kaiyr pushed his chair back and rose, drawing himself to his full height of six feet, very tall for an elf. “Though I bare my fighting spirit, I swear to do you no harm, my lady.”

  Astra rolled her eyes, keeping her rapier pointed at the blademaster’s heart. The shaking of her grip had subsided, and she now seemed more exasperated and willing to get this over with.

  Curling his fingers around a handle that was not there, Kaiyr closed his eyes and sent his thoughts spiraling downward, into himself. When he opened his eyes again, he saw the world in a slightly different light. He could sense, almost see, every tiny movement in the tavern. His senses were so heightened that they bordered on supernatural prescience.

  With an effort of will, Kaiyr commanded his spirit to come to his call. For a moment, a single, golden mote of light circled his hand. Then, as suddenly as though it had always been there but had gone unnoticed, a golden hilt appeared in his hand, a solid shaft covered in intricate wire-work of the same material. After a heartbeat, a blade made seemingly of glass appeared, extending from the hilt. It manifested with the same, always-yet-never-there sensation as the first half. The blade glittered in the lamplight, and more than a few of the remaining patrons leaned forward in their seats, breaths held.