by Ember Lane
“Know what?”
He made to cross the room to Shylan, but hesitated.
“You don’t know?” he asked again.
“What!” they both barked.
“It’s Sakina—there was a battle.” I could see the prince was struggling with his news; that he was beside himself with grief. “She fell, Shylan. Sakina is dead.”
Name: Alexa Drey. Race: Human. Type: Chancer.
Age: 24. Alignment: None. XP: 500. Level: 3.
Profession: None. Un/Al pts: 6. Reputation: Nobody.
Health Points: 13/20 Energy: 60/60 Mana: 50/50
HP Regen: 2/Min EN Regen: 6/Min MA Regen: 5/Min
Attributes: (Level, Bonuses)
Vitality: (2, 0), Stamina: (6, 0), Intelligence: (5, 0)
Charisma: (3, 0), Wisdom: (5, 0)
Skills: (Level, % to next level, Boosts %, Level Cap)
Running: (3, 67, 0, 12), Perception: (3, 16, 0, 15), Commerce: (1, 0, 0, 6), Magic: (1, 0, 0, ∞)
Talents:
Tongues of Time.
Quests:
Seek out the Legend of Billy Long Thumb. Status: Incomplete. Reward: Unknown.
8
Marista Fenwalker
Silence filled the air. Not the silence of doom, nor dread, but the silence of the stunned. Cronis’s jaw dropped farther, his hand twitching, knocking over his ale. Shylan just stared up at the ceiling, appearing unable to comprehend what he’d been told. Petroo turned and looked at me, his gaze rooting through me, uncovering my stats with ease.
“You need to improve your running,” he said, and walked over to the table, picking up Cronis’s mug, Shylan’s too, and mine, pouring three more ales, and then one for himself. He sat at the table.
“How?” Shylan eventually asked.
“Morlog,” Petroo stated, as if that one word explained everything.
“A mutant?” Cronis spat.
Petroo nodded. “A creation, no doubt smuggled through the mists, and quite enchanting by all accounts.”
“I can’t believe she’s gone. Not her, never her, me, or Shylan, but never her.”
“Hold on,” said Shylan. “You said ‘You must already know,’ what did you mean by that?”
Petroo looked perplexed, confused. “Because you’d already selected her replacement.” He looked straight at me.
Shylan turned. “Alexa?”
“She has the mark.”
“She has?”
“On her palm—The Veils of Lamerell,” Petroo said.
Shylan scrambled over to me, grabbed my hand and turned my palm up.
“The Veils of Lamerell,” he whispered. “But how—” and he looked at my stats. “There it is, plain as day, and yet it wasn’t there just now… Or were you hiding it?”
“I don’t even know what it is,” I said. I was getting nervous now, things had taken a severe sideways turn, and I seemed to be the focus of far too much attention.
“How many days have you been in Barakdor?” Cronis asked me, shuffling closer.
“This is my fourth day.”
Cronis eyed Petroo. “When, precisely when did Sakina fall?”
Petroo paled. “Four days,” he said. “It took a day to recover her body, to get it into the keep of Zybond, the rest to run here.”
“Her essence must be returned to Rioan, to Pandreya, else they will never meet again,” Cronis announced.
Shylan nodded. “It will end him. If ever there was a love it was Rioan and Sakina.”
Cronis grunted. “No one saw that coming.”
“Indeed.”
“That’s why I came to you,” Petroo said. “Her body is riddled with dire magic. There is no way to cleanse it, to send her to the boatman. The mutant ruined her. Her veins ran black with foul magic, and they ripped asunder. We have stored her body in the bowels of Zybond, I have done what I can to stop its decay, but the dark magic within her must be seperated from her essence before it gets a chance to stain the Valley of the Beggles. Her soul, her essence and her body are muddled. The boy, Zehnder, has overstepped.”
Both Shylan and Cronis nodded.
“Let us make haste,” Shylan said, and they stood.
“Neither of you will be going anywhere looking like that,” a woman’s voice rang out. I looked around. She had long, brown hair rippled with loose curls that draped and framed a golden necklace hanging from her neck with an emerald the size of a walnut draping from it. Gold earrings glinted out. Her dress gave the impression that she was floating above the flagstone floor, and I felt my jaw dropping.
All this I saw, but I couldn’t wrench my eyes away from her face—she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.
“You.” She pointed at Petroo. “Summon some horses, Petreyen mind, no rubbish. We can’t all run like the wind.”
Reaching into her dress, she brought out a small vial filled with a white liquid. She tossed it at Cronis. “That should clear up your face, and mind you wash in the stream before you change.”
She nodded and turned to leave, hesitated and spun around, appearing to notice me for the first time. I felt that piercing feeling as my stats were viewed. She started shaking her head, and then looked at Cronis, then Shylan. “Level three? What in Lamerell’s name have you been doing? Her stats on show for any level one toad to see?” She blinked at me.
Congratulations! You have been gifted the skill, Concealment by Marista Fenwalker. Concealment gives you the ability to mask your identity from others.
She approached me and reached out, I gave her my hand, palm up, so she could see the leaf. Marista knelt before me, her dress rustling like breeze-blown leaves. “My child,” she said. “Do not show the veils to anyone.” And then she looked me up and down. “Why is she still dressed in a potato sack?”
I noticed Cronis doing an in-depth study of his ale mug. Shylan turned and looked out of the window. “Well?” she shouted, the single word demanding, and I mean demanding, an answer.
“It’s the beggle, she’s living with the beggle. His charge, we were just…”
“Educating her,” Shylan said, turning.
“Greman Ramjook!” Marista screamed, jumped up, grabbed my hand and pulled me out of the room. As I left, I heard three loud sighs.
Greman met us halfway down the path. “Marista,” he said, as he waved.
“Don’t you Marista me. Dress this… Oh leave it to me. Are you coming? I take it you’ve heard. Second thoughts, you’re coming. Rioan will need you. Get a wagon ready—a quick one—the jaspur if they’ll let us have it.” She looked down at me. “No, they’ll let us have it. We have no choice but to take Alexa.”
“Shouldn’t she stay here? Wouldn’t it be safer?”
“With who? Fate, Greman, it has both taken and given, it is up to us to grab it and wring its little throat until it bends to our will.”
She huffed and started pulling me along, straight toward the overgrown muddle that Greman had said was her home. “Men,” she spat.
Greman’s house had a white, picket-type fence surrounding it. Marista’s used to have one, and it may once have been white, but now it was tangled in a burst of thorns, and it was rotten, and mostly flat on the ground. Greman’s garden had neatly tended grass, weeded borders with pink, yellow, red, and blue flowers dancing in the slight breeze. Marista’s garden was ten feet tall and was as dark as the conifer forest. Greman’s house had quartered windows, a slate roof and a red front door…
We picked out a path to her paint-peeled front door that was hanging from one hinge. One of her windows was propped up against a curly trunked tree whose branches grew through the hole it had left. The garden seemed to close in on us as we approached.
“Never wanted one,” she said, without explanation. As she pulled open the door, it fell on the floor. “Screw it,” she muttered, and stepped over it.
Inside, the floorboards had long gone, replaced with mud, and the tree’s branches were laden with birds, perched, facing the door. They all began chirpi
ng as Marista entered. She reached inside her dress and brought out some seed, scattering it on the floor. The birds swooped down as one. She reached in again, grabbing my hand and pouring some seed onto my palm.
“Feed them when they’re done, but take care not to reveal your stats, birds can be very talkative, you know. It’s how rumors are spread.”
“But, I don’t know how to use the skill.”
She beamed. “Are you telling me you’ve never lied? It’s the same thing. You can hide who you are, or pretend to be someone else. Whatever works for you.” She walked toward what resembled another doorway, except it had no door. “I’m going to get out of this getup. Back in a bit.” And she literally vanished as she walked through, and I mean vanished.
Turning back to the birds, I did my best to deflect their inquiries, but it was hard and felt like twenty beaks pecking at my mind. I tried to think of someone, anyone that I could use as an identity, but my mind could picture nothing else but the last thing I saw before I boarded the Grav Buster—namely a huge fast-food billboard.
Congratulations! You have concealed your identity from Levels 1, 2 and 3 creatures. Practice to level up and protect you from further intrusion.
Congratulations! You have reached level 2 concealment. Who are you?
Scattering the seed, I decided to explore the house, such as it was. The room I was in was nothing more than I could already see—branches, perches and the odd trailing vine, some ivy, and a rather peculiar stump that had a number of runes carved into its top. I steered clear of looking in the room Marista had disappeared into, for fear of losing my head—everything seemed to end at its threshold. Instead, I walked to the back of the house. Picking my way through an almost exact replica of the front room, I found myself outside and looking up at the slope packed with jaspur trees. They were doing their strange geyser-like thing, but stopped as I approached.
I hung back; fearful that they might scoop me up, but I also wanted to thank them for the gift they’d given me—The Veils of Lamerell. Though I didn’t quite understand what the gift was, I thought it must be of great value given everyone’s reaction to it. Tiptoeing forward, I stopped a couple of feet short of them and knelt. The nearest trees were no bigger than button mushrooms, the next, slightly higher, and so on, until by Greman’s well, they looked fully grown.
Reaching out, I touched one with my fingers and whispered, “Thank you,” and then the strangest of things happened.
As one, the jaspurs bent toward me, their leaves draping forward, and I felt a shiver run up my spine. I swear I heard them grumbling, griping about their land and how it had been taken from them. They wanted revenge. They wanted freedom. Some counseled caution; others wanted war. But most of all, they merely wanted a promise from me, a promise that I would never forget their suffering, that I would not forget them.
“I won’t,” I whispered, and then I felt their joy.
I heard a popping above my head, like a firework going off, and I felt my tunic change, and a belt wrap around it, and then my pants, and my boots.
The jaspur tree cherishes your freely given promise. It wishes you to accept gifts in return.
The tunic of Lamerell, Light Armor, +6 Vitality, Item = Unique
The belt of Lamerell, Light Armor, +3 Vitality, Item = Unique
The pants of Lamerell, Light Armor, +4 Vitality, Item = Unique
The boots of Lamerell, Running boost, +25% performance, Item = Unique
“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” I said, looking down at my new clothes. They were mauve like the jaspur leaf, and they fitted me perfectly.
“Well, they should certainly help,” Marista said, having snuck up on me. “What did you do?”
“I said thank you for the veils thingy.”
“Thank you? I fear it is the trees themselves that should have been thanking you, but never mind. The gifts are priceless. Their boost is quite helpful. You will have to replace them eventually of course, but not for a long while. Unless you get bored with the color, of course.”
I checked out the tunic, it had a lace-up neck, two breast pockets, two hip pockets. The shoulders stretched out a bit, and the sleeves were tight against my skin, and it was so comfortable—especially after the hessian of before. Marista handed me a pair of black, elbow-length gloves.
“Here,” she said, “not quite Lamerell, but reasonable. They’ll help hide that mark on your palm from prying eyes. You’ll need to spend some time with Cronis—he can teach you how to make them look…hand-like. If you want, of course.”
I slipped them on.
Marista Fenwalker has given you a boon. It wise to cherish those who give.
Gauntlets of the guild of thieves, Luck + 5, Item= Common
“They’re not the best, but they’ll do until we get to Partic Fair or some such place.” She looked me up and down. “Good to go,” she said.
I noticed she’d changed out of her gown, and wondered what lay beyond that strange doorway. The rest of the house didn’t look like it had a place to sit, let alone get dressed. She’d looked stunning in the dress, but looked even more so now, more like I’d imagined a tracker or a ranger would be, and the rich, chesnut-brown color suited her perfectly. Instead of walking back through her house, she led me around it and out into the vale.
Shylan was mounted on a gray horse, and it was larger than any I’d ever seen back on Earth. His long coat flowed around the horse’s flanks, and he had turned his collar up. I saw how imposing he looked, and it wasn’t just his height. I suppose I’d always thought that wizards would be skinny, scholarly types, but no, Shylan looked every inch a warrior too, broad of shoulder, powerful.
Cronis, amazingly, had changed out of his charred clothes and into a hooded, gray robe—like a holy man of old might wear. Marista’s salve appeared to have calmed his raging blisters, but he still had clumps of hair missing. He and Greman were sitting on the bench of a cart drawn by two more horses, and Petroo was standing by.
The cart itself was odd, and looked a bit like a garlic bulb on four wheels. White wood bent out and around from the base, tying in at the top. The roots reached out to the white wheels, and crept around to form the bench that Greman and Cronis sat on. The two black horses were tethered to it, baying and scraping the ground with their hooves, clearly eager to get going.
“Suitable,” was all Marista said, and she grabbed my hand and walked to the back of the cart. She opened a trunk-shaped doorway, and I blinked in confusion. The inside looked a lot larger than it should. “Quite roomy,” Marista muttered. “They must really like you.”
“Can’t I sit up front?” I blurted.
Marista cocked her head. “Why would you want to do that?”
“I’ve never seen anything outside of this vale or the Endings River,” I said.
She considered my request. There was no doubt in my mind who was in charge of this group.
“Two hours up front with Greman, then two in the back with either myself or Cronis. We must use this journey to up those feeble levels, fancy clothes or not.”
Cronis jumped down from the front bench, scrambled around the wagon, and barged me out of the way, jumping in the back. Marista tutted and got in after. I dashed around the front and jumped up next to Greman.
“All set,” he asked, glancing at me. “New outfit? Color’s familiar.”
“The trees—”
“I know.”
The cart drew away, Shylan by our side, and Petroo jogging in front.
“Why hasn’t Petroo got a horse?” I asked.
“Too slow,” Greman said, and Petroo disappeared in a blur, straight through the conifer trees.
“Won’t the jaspur crowd him out and herd him back?”
“Now why would they do that?” Greman asked. “Oh, you—the other day. Was that when you got the mark?”
I nodded.
“Alexa, there are certain things that you should keep a secret, and there are certain people you should trust. You should decid
e who they are, and make your choices wisely, and soon. Not everyone is worthy. Now,” he said, perking. “Into the forest.”
We traveled past Shylan’s tower and on to the bottom of the vale. Just as it looked like the horses were going to smash straight into the trees, a small, mud trail opened up. I looked around openmouthed, like you’d think I’d never been in a forest before. Little orange boxes popped up everywhere saying shrew, fox, rabbit, ant, ant, ant, ant, and by the stream, carp, newt, frog, ant, ant, ant.
“Greman?”
“Yes Alexa.”
“My perception’s gone into overdrive.”
“Tune it down a bit. Tell it to only signal when you ask or if there’s a threat.”
I did just that, and they all vanished. “Thank you.”
“You’re very welcome. By the way, what’s a clown? You’re telling everything you’re a clown. What are they?”
“Like a… fool?” I ventured.
“Jester?” he asked.
“Yep, like one of those.”
“Use Jester then, else every thing you encounter will think you’re crackers—or very frightening. Though if folk think you’re a jester, they’ll ask you to tell them a story, or juggle. I’d think of something else, something boring.”
“Like what?”
Greman looked me up and down. “Forester, think forester. No one pries too much if they think you’re a forester.”
“Why?”
He grunted. “Trust me, after a season alone with just trees to talk to, the last thing you ask a forester about is his job. Given half a chance they’ll drone on, and on, and on.”
“A forester it is,” I said. “Where are we going?”
“The Castle Zybond.”
“Where’s that?”
Greman glanced at me. “Full of questions. Castle Zybond is to the southeast. It protects the sole land border between the lower lands and Irydia, and as such, it is constantly at war, though the war rarely spills up to it, you see, the Lowlands, as the name suggests, are quite a bit lower.”
