“Then Mystara gave birth to a new race, the humans.” The Keeper paused, looking at Johauna and Brisbois, a faint edge of accusation in her eyes. Karleah pursed her lips and wondered how the woman knew not to look at her or Dayin.
“Go on, Keeper,” Dayin whispered. “Go on.”
The woman nodded. “The birth of humans marked the doom of the abelaats, for humans hated abelaats and called them the creatures of the night. Humans multiplied quickly and took over the land. The abelaats were forced from their homes and hunted.” Keeper Grainger lowered her head momentarily. “The butcheries they brought on the abelaats were great. They hunted them for fear and sport and cruelty, and they left their bodies to lie in waste.
“That’s when the abelaats began their ceaseless war with the humans. They started to hunt them for food. But even that was no great crime—for millennia, the abelaats had fed off one another as well.”
“The abelaats ... ate each other?” Jo asked, horror lacing her words.
Keeper Grainger shook her head. “No. They drew sustenance from each other’s blood. But as their numbers dwindled on Mystara, and as their gates to their home world collapsed, one by one, the abelaats began to seek sustenance from human blood.”
The Keeper’s voice hardened. “Humans destroyed all but a few of the abelaats. The survivors hid in the mountains and the valleys and the deepest gorges, seeking escape from the encroaching hordes. In the end, only one true abelaat remained; Aeltic was his name.”
“Abelaats had names?” Jo asked hesitantly. Her hand rubbed her scarred shoulder nervously.
“Have, squire, not had,” Keeper Grainger gently chided. “Even the pathetic creatures who attacked you and the boy had names.”
Jo shot an amazed glance at Dayin, who returned her look. “How . . . how did you know we’ve been . . . we’ve both been attacked by abelaats?” Jo asked uncertainly. Karleah felt a pang in her heart for the two of them. Neither wanted to be reminded of those awful times.
The Keeper’s pale green eyes flickered in the firelight as she gazed from Jo to Dayin. “The bile of the abelaats lingers in your bodies. It . . . gives off a distinct odor. Some of us are sensitive to it.”
Karleah leaned forward intently. Will the Keeper reveal her secret? she wondered.
Keeper Grainer looked down at her white hands, then slowly added another piece of peat to the brazier. Her furrowed brow smoothed, and a certain calmness seemed to enter the woman. For a moment, it seemed as if the Keeper would not continue.
“Tell them, and be done,” Karleah hissed.
The pain in Keeper Grainger’s eyes deepened, and she closed them as she spoke. “What none of the legends say is that the abelaats’ world was drained of so much magic that the abelaats who were still there grew weak and, eventually, turned slowly to stone. Magic was their life essence, and without it, they became crude, slumbering statues. As the magic energy ebbed, the last gates between their world and this one fell. The abelaats on Mystara could not return home, could not bring back magic to awaken their sleeping brothers from the stony ground.”
“And Aeltic descended from those few survivors,” Karleah supplied.
“Yes. Aeltic was the last true abelaat.”
Karleah huffed and drew the blanket back from her features. “A pretty and tragic tale, the Keeper tells. But it is only half true.”
Karleah stood and gestured for the others to remain seated. A wry smile formed on the crone’s lips. “Your story has told us much that we needed to know. Now let me tell my companions the rest. The abelaats were a beautiful race indeed, as are vampires and other creatures of darkness. Their beauty is cold and lethal. Abelaats have no love for the children of the day, treating them like cattle, subsisting on their blood. Humans, elves, and dwarves alike.”
“Abelaats are vampires?” Jo asked, confused.
Karleah shook her head. “No. They are like vampires, but are living creatures, not undead. Abelaats are born of sorcerous darkness and blood-lust.”
Jo looked worriedly at the Keeper, expecting her to take offense. But the womans drawn features stared emptily into the brazier.
Karleah approached Braddoc, jabbing a finger into his chest. “The dwarves feel a kinship with the abelaats because they were, like the dwarves, creatures of stone and darkness. According to dwarven legends, abelaats and dwarves were brothers. That is rubbish. It was only by trickery and illusion that the abelaats could even move among Braddoc’s folk.”
“You’ve said enough, old crone,” Brisbois growled, rising to his feet and setting a protective hand on the Keeper’s shoulder.
Jo interposed herself between the enraged man and Karleah, Wyrmblight raised and ready in her hands. Though her eyes sternly warned Brisbois back, she spoke to Karleah behind her, “Please, Karleah. Isn’t it obvious Keeper Grainger is in pain—”
“Pain?” the old witch cried. “Pain? You yourself should know about pain, Johauna. You know what it feels like to be attacked by an abelaat. And you, idiot knight. Has this woman’s spell so completely enraptured you that you cannot guess the source of her allure?”
Stunned, Brisbois stared at the Keeper.
“It’s from the abelaat blood,” Dayin murmured without peering up.
Karleah nodded, keeping her blazing eyes on the two fighters. Brisbois blinked as if he had been slapped in the face, and Jo’s arms dropped heavily from their defensive posture.
“Yes, it’s true,” Karleah said. “The abelaats have many magical powers, and this ‘attraction’ is one that has allowed them to live among humans all these years,” the old woman said. “All the abelaats that came to Mystara before the gates collapsed share in that beauty. Those who are gated in now are twisted by their journey, transformed into horrible monsters.” Karleah pointed a crooked finger at the Keeper, who still sat on the floor beside the brazier. “The Keeper is from the old line.”
Keeper Grainger nodded. A tear rolled down her cheek. “Aeltic—the last true abelaat on Mystara—was my father.”
Chapter XIII
our father!” Jo exclaimed. Stunned, she stared in disbelief at Keeper Grainger. The others around her, even Karleah, in the shadows, leaned toward the woman beside the brazier.
The Keeper nodded. “Yes, my father, though so many times removed as to no longer hold the meaning you have for ‘father.’ He was the father of the Keepers—we who keep the memory of the abelaat alive. Aeltic was the last abelaat, and he took as his consort a human. Their offspring, a daughter who bore traits both abelaat and human, mated also with a human. And so it went for a thousand years, until at last I was born. I, the last Keeper, have only a bare trace of my father’s blood left in me.”
“This is all neither here nor there,” Karleah spoke up in her raspy voice from the shadows. “You are the last Keeper—tell us what we need to know.”
Keeper Grainger stared in the direction of Karleah’s voice. “You are bold, Karleah Kunzay of the Red Ones,” she said angrily. “Though I was but a babe when last we met, I thought it might be you ”
“The ancient traditions demand that you answer our questions, Keeper,” Karleah said sternly, drawing the blanket up to shade her features.
“I have denied my vows of tradition, witch,” Keeper Grainger rejoined, “for I have taken no mate. The line of Keepers ends with me.”
“Of course it does,” Karleah snapped. “But the time has come for you to give us what the Keepers have passed down from generation to generation—and you know that.”
Keeper Grainger’s face clouded over. Her pale skin flushed as she bent her head, and Jo had to strain to hear the womans voice. “You have come to find the abaton— what you call simply the puzzle box—which Auroch has unleashed on Mystara.”
“Yes,” Karleah said, her bony frame finally entering the circle of light.
The Keeper continued, “The abaton was created to save the abelaat race, to give them one final portal for entering and leaving Mystara.”
“Wait a m
oment,” Jo said, shaking her head in confusion. “ What good is a portal if there aren’t any abelaats to use it? In their home world, the abelaats are asleep—slumbering statues of stone, like you said. And those abelaats that are here are hideous monsters who wouldn’t think to use a gate.”
“The portal is not so much for the abelaats to cross,” Keeper Grainger replied, “at least not initially. The portal’s first function is as a drain, to draw magic out of Mystara and deposit it into the abelaats’ world. Only when it has drawn enough magic to awaken the first abelaats, only then will the abaton begin to serve as a portal for the creatures themselves.”
“But, why would they want to come to Mystara, where they are hated?” Dayin asked quietly.
The Keeper smiled wanly at the young apprentice. “The abelaats desire more than all else to draw their magic back to their own world. They want to revive their slumbering kin. After they are awakened, they will march upon Mystara, to reclaim it as their own.”
Jo turned and looked at Brisbois. The man was obviously confused. But she had a sudden revelation, a horrible realization that no one had voiced. “That must mean Teryl Auroch is in league with them!”
“Yes.”
“Because he, like Keeper Grainger, is part abelaat,” Karleah conjectured.
The Keeper nodded leadenly and added, “Teryl Auroch’s mother was a human sorceress who dared to travel to the land of the abelaat. She took enough magic with her to awaken one of the ancient creatures. She never returned, but gave birth to a son—”
“Who built the abaton to shift the balance of magic back,” Jo concluded.
The Keeper simply nodded.
Dayin whimpered slightly, tears running down his face. Jo knelt beside him, sliding her arm gently about his shoulders. “It’ll be all right, Dayin,” she said stupidly. Censoring herself for the platitude, she elaborated, “You are your own person now, Dayin. That man, Auroch—he isn’t your father any more than I am your mother. The evil that he’s done can’t touch you.”
The boy’s sky-blue eyes regarded Jo coldly. “You don’t understand,” he said, his voice uncommonly bitter. “I’ve got abelaat blood in me, too. You just heard about how they’ve been hunted and tortured. You’ve heard their tragic story. It has everything to do with me. Teryl Auroch is my father.”
Karleah sat down next to Dayin and held him in her arms. She said, “The boy is right, Jo. Let him feel what he feels.”
Brisbois had begun to pace nervously. “So, if we don’t intercept this—this stupid box, we’ll have an army of monsters marching down our throats. Is that what you are saying?”
“Yes.”
“Why are you helping us?” Jo blurted, suddenly, rising from Dayin’s side and clutching Wyrmblight nervously. “You’ve got abelaat blood in you, too—”
“Teryl Auroch is an abomination to the abelaats. He wants vengeance, he wants Mystara to suffer for stealing the abelaats’ magic. I don’t want that to happen. You must understand, Mystara is my world, the only one I’ve ever known. I don’t want it to be destroyed any more than you,” the woman said, finally standing from her place. “Besides, he will desire my death in his quest to purify Mystara of all its human traces. As his power grows, he will become more and more aware of me. He will come for me soon. I have seen it.”
“Come, Dayin, we must find other accommodations tonight,” Karleah whispered, slowly rising. She helped the boy to his feet, and he sadly clutched her side.
Jo shook her head in outrage and confusion. “There must be something we can do!”
“There is,” the Keeper said despondently, moving toward the door, which Braddoc pulled open. “Find the abaton. Remove it from any source of magic. Find a way to destroy it.” She paused and reached into a pocket in her dress. “Take this.” She held out her hand, presenting a beautiful amber crystal, eight sided and pointed on the ends. “It is a crystal from my father—the most powerful magic I can give you.
“Now I think you should go. You can find lodgings at the Maiden’s Blush,” the Keeper said. As she stepped out of the barn, she added, “Do not come this way again.”
Jo tossed fitfully in her bed, wishing they could set out for Armstead. But earlier that evening she had lost the argument about pushing on before morning. Even Braddoc had refused, saying that she obviously had never traveled through the Altan Tepes Mountains. Karleah, too, noted wryly that in order to capture the abaton, they must first reach Armstead alive. Despite all the good reasons for staying in Threshold that night, Jo wanted to leave, if only to pay Brisbois back for his sneering taunts. “I should have killed him in the alley,” she told herself, rolling angrily over.
Brisbois wasn’t the only surly malcontent. When they had checked in, Jo asked the innkeeper about sending a message back to Penhaligon and was answered with a stupid stare. The man was irritable enough, having been awakened after midnight, and that request sent him over the top. He’d even charged them for four separate rooms. Brisbois, of course, took full advantage, demanding a room for himself. Too tired to quibble, Karleah and Dayin, Braddoc, and Johauna each took the other rooms. The waste of gold irked Jo to no end, but, clearly, they would acquire no other accommodations tonight.
There was a shattering of glass, a man’s scream, and a pounding thump from the room above Jo—Brisbois’s room. As she leaped up from her bed, Jo heard Braddoc rise in the room next door, heard the rattle of his axe being lifted from the doorknob, where he had hung it. Jos hand reached for Wyrmblight but drew back: the sword’s great length would make it useless in the mans room. She slipped a shift over her shoulders and, grabbing her belt, slung it around her waist. She tore open the door and bolted up the stairs. As she checked to make sure her dagger was in its sheath, Jo heard Braddoc’s solid footfalls on the steps behind her.
Jo reached the head of the stairs, rushed for Brisbois’s door, and threw it open. In the wan light of an oil lamp, she saw Brisbois standing, stunned, beside a broken window. Shattered glass lay in glittering triangles across the floor, blood showing on a few of the edges. Then she noticed that the dishonored knighfs arm was bleeding.
“What happened in here?” Braddoc demanded, appearing in the doorway behind Jo and hefting his axe.
Brisbois gave a dismissing gesture and winced from the pain in his arm. “Nothing,” he slurred. “An owl or something was looking in the window at me.”
“Looking in the window?” Jo asked, glaring at the man. “You’re drunk, aren’t you?”
“No,” spat Brisbois. He suddenly straightened and, blinking, tried to look Jo straight in the eyes. “It was looking at me,” he insisted, his voice still thick with liquor. “I think it was Verdilith, the Great Green.”
With an expression of disgust, Braddoc turned to leave. “Yeah, Verdilith, the Great Green Owl. You’d better do something about that arm.” He disappeared from the doorway.
“So you thought you’d punch the window out to let this owl come in?” Jo asked sarcastically. She walked over to the window and peered outside, her heart pounding with excitement.
“No, my mistress,” Brisbois said with a mocking bow. “I tried to stab it with my sword.” He gestured toward the bloody blade, leaning in the corner of the room.
He's a fool, a drunken fool, and nothing more, whispered a voice inside Johauna’s head. She felt the warmth of the abelaat stone in her belt pouch. Yes, Flinn, she thought, I know he’s a fool. She looked out the window toward the ground below. “Where’s this owl’s body?”
“I thought it fell,” Brisbois said, leaning over her shoulder to see out the window.
By the odd smell of Brisbois’s breath, Jo was sure he was drunk. She pulled away from him and snarled, “There wasn’t any owl, Brisbois, except in your drunken imagination. You didn’t stab Verdilith. You stabbed yourself. And you’ll pay for that window out of your own pocket, come morning.”
Brisbois whirled on her, some stinging retort on his lips, but when his eyes met hers, he averted his gaze and f
ell silent. Shuffling to a hook on the wall, he gingerly opened his pack and removed a small box. He flipped the lip back, revealing a bolt of gauze, a few sharp-edged knives and needles, and a small bottle. Uncorking the bottle, he took a swig, then spattered his wounded arm with the rest. Tearing away a piece of the gauzy bolt with his teeth, the man began to wrap the wound. Jo watched from across the gloom as he attended himself.
Brisbois paused long enough to glare at the young squire. “If you’re not going to help, get out.”
Jo felt an involuntary sneer cross her face. “I wish I could say the same to you,” she muttered under her breath. She stalked out of the room, leaving the door ajar.
The dishonored knight kicked the door shut with his boot and continued to bandage the wound. He smiled.
A poisonous tendril of gas rose from his nose.
Spring had only newly come to the Black Peak Mountains as Jo and her companions rode through the range. Jo set a north-by-northwesterly route, seeking the tiny village of Armstead, somewhere in the wilderness ahead. Although the path she chose wound through the mountains, her sense of direction was true. Unfortunately, the mountain paths were too treacherous to chance fast travel.
Lost in thoughts of the abaton, Jo didn’t notice when the mountains’ heights changed the climate from one of spring to one of winter. Patches of ice and unexpectedly deep snow lined the ravines and passages between the Black Peaks. Much of the rock was obsidian, which lent the range its name, as did the sheets of ice, black from the underlying obsidian, lingering along some sides of the mountains.
The trail was rugged, little better than forging across country. In fact, when the path turned east, the group abandoned it, preferring instead to continue to head north by northwest. At one point, Brisbois said he saw hoof prints whose horseshoes bore the emblem of the castle, but none of the others could spot them in the trampled ground.
At midday Jo held up her hand and halted the group. She patted Carsig’s neck and watched the horse’s white breath curl lazily away. The big gelding was holding his own. Jo blew on her hands and rubbed them to warm them; she pulled her woolen cape closer. She hadn’t really believed Sir Graybow when he had said she would need such a warm garment for the mountains, but she was glad now that the man had insisted.
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