Cronica Acadia

by C. J. Deering

  The fenix tied a leather collar around Ashlyn’s neck. “I welcome you to the School of White, Ashlyn,” she said. “Show us your colors.”

  And Ashlyn turned into her tyger form, and afterward all the druids took animal shapes, including the fenix, who became a bright white tyger, adorned with rune symbols in the shape of stripes. And there was great howling and roaring and screeching, and even the unicorn was moved to rise up on hind legs and cry out. Dangalf clapped.

  The druids returned to bipedal form, and Ashlyn humbly accepted their well-wishes. Dangalf kept to himself until Ashlyn went to him. “Grats,” he said.

  “Thanks.”

  The fenix approached and smiled at Dangalf, who bowed again. “And who is this?” asked the fenix.

  “Your Highness,” said Ashlyn. “I would like you to meet Dangalf of Hempshire.”

  Of course, thought Dangalf. She had obvious royal bearing, but he was misled by her druidic scanties and the whole bird thing. But the immortal elves did expect all to answer a calling, even the royals, and to many elves the druid calling was the most honorable. “I present Princess Grian.”

  “Another one of the four who saved the royal sister,” said Grian smiling.

  “Your Highness?” said Dangalf. “Princess Dymphna is your sister? You’re both elf princesses. Of course you’re sisters,” he said with a laugh. “Our other friend Doppelganger thinks very highly of your sister,” he said.

  “Is that so?” said Grian. “You speak of the human mercenary?”

  “Uh, yes, ma’am,” said Dangalf.

  “Dymphna has had an infatuation with humans since she was a child. I hope she was not unduly familiar with your friend. She was thirteenth born after all, and you know what they say about the thirteenth born.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am. I do not.”

  After a moment Grian said, “You see, my sister is very—special. She applied to the Guild of Sages and Seers at only nine years old. She received a perfect twenty-four on their exam.”

  “Ma’am, I’ve read of that test. I thought twelve was a perfect score.”

  “A perfect score was twelve. But you see, my sister answered all of their questions before they were asked. They created a new scale because of her. Not that anyone else has ever scored above twelve since.”

  “Ma’am, she told us of an ancestor visiting her,” said Dangalf. “With a warning and bloodstained room left behind.”

  “It was quite a colorful story she told,” said Grian. “And it had all of the household in an uproar. That is, until it was discovered that it was my own sister’s blood in the room. Quite a bit of it as well.”

  Dangalf nodded solemnly, and just as Grian was turning away, he asked, “Ma’am, did your sister have any wounds that would have produced the quantity of blood that was found?”

  “She did not. But the fact remains that it was her blood. And there was no other evidence to support her story of the bleeding butterfly.”

  “Are you without guards today, Your Highness?” asked Ciar.

  “I fly too high and too fast for escort, sister,” said Grian smiling. After a few more pleasantries, Grian bid them farewell. In a fiery flash she became a fenix and departed in flight. Now the others were free to depart, and in short order they did.

  Ashlyn took Dangalf’s hand as they left the hall. She was pleased to find Doppelganger and Nerdraaage waiting outside the white arch waiting for her. She hugged them both. “Grats on becoming…what are you?” asked Doppelganger.

  “I am a metamorph,” she said beaming.

  “Keep it simple. She’s a wannabe druid,” said Nerdraaage as he presented to her a bouquet of tyger roses.

  Ashlyn thanked him and bit the head off of one of the roses. She looked at her friends staring at her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I haven’t eaten all day.”

  The unicorn departed the white hall. “So how come a horse gets to go to your ceremony and we don’t?” asked Nerdraaage.

  “Horse?” asked Dangalf. “You mean the unicorn?”

  “Whatever,” said Nerdraaage. “At least you wouldn’t have to worry about me taking a dump in the middle of the ceremony.”

  “If only I could have been certain,” said Ashlyn.

  “Who was that big bird who left here?” asked Doppelganger.

  Horses! Big birds! Now Dangalf understood perfectly why there were white halls and red halls. “That was Princess Grian,” said Ashlyn.

  “Princess, huh?” said Doppelganger. “How far from the throne is she?”

  “Tenth in line,” said Ashlyn.

  “Oh,” said Doppelganger. Dangalf resisted the urge to tell him what was said about Dymphna.

  A hawk presented itself to Ashlyn, and she took the message. She smiled as she announced it was congratulations from Fionn. Dangalf frowned. “Thank God,” she said. “I was afraid he thought I was a psycho after that night in the King Bee.”

  There were no other gifts for Ashlyn as it had been previously decided each would take her shopping to get something she liked instead of something they thought she’d like. That had been her idea.

  LXXIX

  After lunch they went to the town hall, where they checked the board for quest postings. As in Hempshire and Hammersmith, there was a large, faded poster advertising ten thousand gold for the head of the Witchfinder General, but they reasoned that they were still far from being able to kill the Grand Templar Aelfweard. “How many kills do you need to move on to your next level of training?” Doppelganger asked Ashlyn.

  “None,” she said.

  “None?” asked Dangalf. “Even I had to kill one sapien.”

  “Healing class,” she explained. “But I need to do a lot of healing, so you guys feel free to get wounded a lot.”

  It was Ashlyn who found their next quest: a plea to return children stolen by goblin slave traders. It was not the richest quest they had considered, but it was within their operational range (being near river transport on the Mor Duin), and the paltry reward (barely enough to cover their anticipated expenses) meant that it would meet the altruism requirements of three of the Keepers’ commissions. (Blackguard candidates were not required to demonstrate altruism.) The two humans also found themselves surprisingly eager to be on a quest that would take them out on the water. Ashlyn was relieved that her first combat healing experience would be against the weak, unimposing goblins.

  It was this weakness that drove goblins to kidnap children. They were more manageable than adult slaves, and when they grew unmanageable in size and strength and will, they could be sold to the trolls. The trolls were expert slavers and for eons had enslaved the ferocious orcs. It was only post-Sundering, when the worlds collided again, that the trolls gave up enslaving orcs, for the most part, to make them allies against the righteous races.

  They made arrangements to set out the next day for their first quest with the Keepers all per diem members of their respective classes. With the help of Doppelganger’s back, Dangalf was able to return all of his library books in one trip. Ashlyn said good-bye to Ciar, who kissed her on both cheeks.

  That night while Dangalf slumbered, a knock came at the door of his imagined library. All the dwarves had already entered and were busy repairing his body, so he was very curious. He looked through the peephole to see Red Riding Hood in her red wedding gown. He woke with a start but there was no relief in waking—in fact his terror increased, as he saw Red sitting on his bed. She was projecting her pretty visage which was just as well. If it had been her charred and mutilated form, Dangalf’s heart might have just given out altogether. “Good morning, Dangalf,” she said brightly. She sat with her legs tightly folded under her body as only children and elves can do. “Were you dreaming of me?”

  Dangalf’s intellect resumed control, and he relaxed. She was just a specter after all. He had nothing to fear from her in a room full of his friends in a town protected by elven magic. “I think you know the answer to that,” he said softly. Could his friends see and hear
her? Would they awake to think he was talking to himself? He was almost certain he was not. “Why are you here?”

  “Silly! I am your black bride. Your blood bride. We are bound forever!”

  “That is not true by any measure, and you know it. Your kind are tricksters, and your game does not frighten or amuse me.”

  “Ah! But it amuses me, and it has been so long since I have had any amusement, beloved. And now we are man and wife. I have your ring!” and she displayed the oversized ring on her small pale hand.

  “I may be a stranger to your lands,” said Dangalf, “but I know that there is no custom or law by which we are married.”

  Red laughed. “Custom or law!” And then Red took on a seriously spooky smile. “Your customs and laws are bleating to my ears. I am a witch. Daevayasna. You are my betrothed Dangalf because I will it. i will it.” Then Red looked fearfully to the door. “Now I must leave you, but before I go,” and Red moved her rosy red lips toward Dangalf, and he did not move away from her quickly enough.

  Ashlyn awoke even before the pounding on the door. She smelled smoke. She opened the door, and Ciar stepped in. She was followed by an elf in robes she had not seen before and two guards carrying torches. Torches in Templa Taur! “You have brought great evil here,” said Ciar.

  “What do you mean?” asked Ashlyn and she looked around. Doppelganger and Nerdraaage sat up in bed. And beyond them she saw Dangalf in the torchlight. He was covered with ectoplasmic bile.

  “She is gone,” said the robed elf. “The witchmistress from the Blackened Grove. Abigail is her name,” he divined.

  “Abigail,” said Dangalf thoughtfully. Now he had her name. Ciar gently chastised the human conjurer for his dabbling in the black arts but had little to offer them in the way of a solution. “They have unfinished business, those who will not depart,” said Ciar. “They can haunt a place or an object or a person. It seems you have detached this ghost from her place and attached her to yourself.”

  “How do we attach her to something else?” asked Ashlyn.

  “Often they may be satisfied by the simplest of closure,” said Ciar. “One famous story tells of a violent ghost who departed with the shuttering of her house against the coming winter. Other times it is more ceremonial.”

  And then Nerdraaage came up with the perfect solution. He said that they should hold an actual wedding where Dangalf married Abigail. All the others agreed that this was the worst idea ever.

  But whatever the long-term solution, the immediate solution was to leave and draw the entity away from the town. Since they were already packed, the only change was eating breakfast on the road instead of one last meal at the King Bee. They left a handful of silver coins and a note for Ainnir. Nerdraaage said that they were overtipping, but he was reminded that they had not paid for anything since they arrived.

  Doppelganger carried provisions and the communal coin, which was only gold now, as the odd silver and copper pieces were divvied up among the party. He wore his breastplate, but beneath a hemp shirt with an ordinary-looking mail shirt over that to disguise the wealth of adamantine.

  Ashlyn’s rucksack contained more clothes than the other three carried combined. But what she wore did not weigh much or take up much room. She also traveled without provisions as she had the least need and was now a naturalist trained to live off the land.

  Nerdraaage assumed the appearance of an ordinary hunter. (Only the keenest observer would recognize him puffing away on a garrote pipe.) He carried the largest weight of provisions which was mostly beer.

  Dangalf, without armor or weapons and with his books tucked away in his imaginary library, traveled light as well. He had only a small appetite, and Ashlyn had promised she would find enough food and water for them both.

  The Keepers had a hearty breakfast in the woods by daylight. Afterward they studied the map, even though they generally knew where they were going. Doppelganger pointed to a point of interest and dragged his finger across the map. To everyone’s amazement, the map scrolled along with his finger. He had accidentally uncovered another secret of the map. Even though the default setting was to center the map on the location of the bearer, you could actively scroll the map in any direction. An enchanted map would only display places that the bearer had already visited, but since Icil was the previous bearer, this map provided them a nearly complete map of Acadia. Dangalf scrolled about looking for Oceania, but the map was unfinished outside the borders of Acadia. And on those unexplored margins it was ominously written, Here Do Be Monsters.

  LXXX

  The Keepers’ immediate destination was Portsmouth, a well-fortified town just across the Mor Duin River as they traveled west from Templa Taur. Technically part of Hybernia, the town was founded and administered by humans, the dwarves wanting no part of a port town on the wrong side of their towering, defensible mountain ranges. Over time it was fortified as a naval base, but it retained its civilian populace. There they would charter a boat to take them to within striking distance of the goblin slave camp.

  When they first arrived in this world, they were blissfully unaware of the grave dangers they faced. As they learned of these dangers, their skills and mettle rose to keep their fears in check so that it always remained just as an undercurrent—which was good because it kept them alert. And now confidently, with just the proper amount of fear, they headed off to Portsmouth, the first town they would encounter that had no companion in the game that introduced them to this world.

  They walked for hours and as usual it was without burden or boredom. They talked genially, and sometimes Dangalf would tell them stories from the Cronica Acadia. And even when they were silent, Dangalf was still fascinated by what in their old world would have been a monotonous dirt road through woods and rocks. But he marveled at every oddly bent tree and the occasional gigantic boulder and knew that for each one there was a story behind its posture and placement.

  Even before they had sighted town, the humans had smelled the river, and it filled them with gladness. Doppelganger’s mesomorphic lungs filled like a billowing sail. “Smell that,” he said.

  “I know,” said Dangalf. “It’s intoxicating.”

  “What?” Nerdraaage asked.

  “The river.”

  Nerdraaage sniffed at the air futilely.

  “Water doesn’t have a smell,” said Ashlyn.

  “It does,” insisted Doppelganger.

  Dangalf had never been a water person, or even a beachgoer, and had even gotten seasick on a Disney cruise, and so he didn’t entirely understand this new fondness. He chalked it up to race memory and something he had read in Cronica Acadia: The elves have their trees and the dwarves have their rocks, but humans have the great vast ocean and all that lies beyond. The Mor Duin River was fresh water, but the prospect of traveling on it excited Dangalf and made him glad Huckleberry Finn was among the books he had captured in the other world.

  Portsmouth came into view as much larger than Hempshire, and the guards at their stone gates were better garbed and stood straighter. They sported shields of red, white, and blue, but the design was the Vinlandian ensign, an anchor, and not the Great Lighthouse. The port town was teeming with all sorts, and the guards did not stop any of them for papers. But Dangalf stopped anyway to ask them for directions.

  They met with the scrivener, and he examined their commissions. He copied their achievements for dispatch to Vinland should their original scrolls be lost. He also recommended to them a Captain Longfellow. He was an old man, but the scrivener believed him to be in port with a craft to rent at a fair price.

  Longfellow was not a charming sort. Dangalf thought “old sea dog” was an appropriately nautical description of him. He puffed a pipe and wore britches with knee socks, a puffy, mostly white shirt, and an eye patch. He barely spoke, and what words he managed to utter were clearly of secondary importance to the work he did about his ship. Or was it a boat? Dangalf didn’t dare ask. It was small with sails and oars tucked away. There was no c
abin.

  Longfellow took a cursory look at their commissions and muttered that dwarves and elves were bad news onboard but to sail with a she-elf was just begging to be scuttled by Icanus. (Cronica Acadia identified Icanus as a minor river deity of interest only to “sailors and drowning people.”)

  The Keepers were adamant that Ashlyn was going. Longfellow puffed on his pipe, sewed some canvas, and grumbled in Trollish about she-elves being only useful when clutching their ankles. Dangalf warned Longfellow, also in Trollish, that Ashlyn could appear behind the door as either the lady or the tyger.

  “And why would a wizard speak Trollish?” demanded Longfellow. “There’ll be no witchcraft on my boat.”

  “But you spoke Trollish,” sputtered Dangalf.

  “All sailors speak some Trollish,” shrugged Longfellow. “They have the best curses.” They all laughed, even Dangalf a beat later (for all his intellect, the others still got some things quicker than him), and Longfellow winked at Ashlyn. Or at least she thought he winked at her, but it was difficult to tell since he had only the one eye.

  And the laughter mollified the old salt, though he did not actually laugh, and he even puffed out a chanty for them as they took to the sea:

  Toes on her feet

  Toes on her hands

  Has enough toes

  For a marching band

  They sailed against current, Longfellow zigzagging the breadth of the river to do so. He also told Doppelganger to grab a set of oars and begin rowing. Dangalf asked if he should grab a set of oars as well. Longfellow looked him up and down and barely shook his head.

  Longfellow’s craft appeared to be able to hold a dozen children should they be so successful in their rescue. They hoped to rescue at least one and didn’t know what they would do if they rescued too many to fit into the small craft.

  Dangalf watched their progression on their magical map. Each of Doppelganger’s strokes rushed them forward in the water. Both humans were in their element on the open water. Ashlyn and Nerdraaage were not so fortunate, both being separated from the earth, which metaphorically and literally kept them grounded. Nerdraaage sat in the very bottom of the boat drinking heavily. Dangalf understood just how out of sorts he was when he refused lunch. Dangalf knew that no elf or dwarf had visited Oceania because of the weeks-long journey by sea. The trolls had done so only by burying themselves alive in soil from Sylvania. That method of sleeping in dirt had not tested well for either elf or dwarf.