<html> <body> And part three! --------- Metamor Keep:  Heading to All Tomorrows by Charles Matthias He wasn't quite sure how long he'd been walking when he reached the bridge across the river, but it was in the middle of the day, and all suggestion of rain had long passed. The air was warm but not humid, with a crisp scent from the river, as well as the pungent offal of a human village with livestock milling wherever they so chose. A forest had once lined the river, this the eastern arm of the Marchbourne that fed Lake Bozojo, but they had all been cut down centuries ago to make way for pastures and farms. And also a garrison. This stood on a rise overlooking the river and the wide bridge that crossed it, and from its towers snapped the flags of Bozojo and Salinon. From the ramparts archers could decimate any army attempting to seize the bridge, though on that day, with the warmth making the air shimmer as he glided along the winding road with its close fitting stones, they stood at their posts with as much animation as the gargoyles decorating the walls of Midlander castles and cathedrals. The village was nestled behind another ring of walls. These at times seemed to be fashioned from stone, and others from wood, and this moved back and forth so smoothly, that Andares wasn't sure if he was gazing at a moment in the present, or one from the distant past when the humans had first settled this favorable bend in the river. Even his feet seemed to float above the road, rising up higher and higher as he neared the bridge. He could hear others speaking to him, and words seemed to pass from his lips though he couldn't remember them once they left his tongue. The strangers around him, some travelers, some villagers, and some soldiers stationed to keep watch over the road and the river, were all unfamiliar with a blend of faces that resolved into only the most general of human countenances. They were neither short nor tall, fat nor thin, with neither blond hair nor black hair, blue eyes or brown eyes. They were all these things and none of them at the same time. Andares skipped through the air, born aloft on the bright blue sky, settling back to earth only when he'd finally left the lands of Bozojo behind, his boots touching down in Linduin. And the rest of that bright day was a smear of light, field, and forest. ---------- April 4, 708 CR In the week since Andares and Anefistar had decided to journey together beneath the willow's sheltering boughs, they'd met with good weather along the road with bright sunny days and warm breezes that suggested Summer without bringing it. Despite the scholar's age, he had no trouble in keeping pace with the Åelf, and so after two days of walking they crossed the bridge over the Marchbourne and were soon in the country of Linduin. While the soldiers bearing the fish heraldry of Bozojo were left behind at the bridge, they still saw a large number of soldiers stationed in each village they passed. But the villagers themselves were always friendly and willing to put them up for the night once the sun had set. They were greeted each night by good food, warm blankets, and a soft if lumpy pillow. With the dawn they would set out again, and while Andares would wonder at his dreams which seemed unusual in both their clarity and their disjointedness. These he kept to himself, but during their day's walk he and Anefistar would share stories of their journeys, the gods, and also thoughts on the precarious state of many of the kingdoms of man. To Andares's relief, Anefistar, as asked, never brought up the situation in Dûn Fennas that he had once asked the Åelf to intervene in. The scholar seemed resigned to the fact that Andares would be parting ways with him once they reached the fork in another few days, and while there were moments when they were lost in their own thoughts that the human began to brood with heavy brows and darkened countenance, those fears never spilled over his tongue. But after a week of journeying together, never had they seen anything that stilled their tongues completely until that day. The road took a turn toward the southeast, but for a moment as they came around the bend, the hills flattened out and in the distance to the northeast they could see a long gray line that bled over the horizon. Nothing else stood at the periphery of the forest, all was blighted for a mile around as if life itself refused to prosper in the shadow of that ancient and dark wood. Anefistar stopped in his tracks, eyes wide and one hand lifted to ward off evil. Andares also paused in his steps, eyes narrowed, one hand resting upon the ivory pommel of his sword. He couldn't even hear any birds singing as they struggled to make their feet take that next step. The road continued down into a slight depression where a line of hills would shield them from sight of that cursed place, but it would take them a minute to reach that seeming safety. This was not the only place along the northernmost road through Marigund country that one could see Elderwood; in fact, there were other places where the road came much closer to the baleful woods. And never before in his journeys had Andares felt such a peculiar sensation, an inkling that brushed up across his back and through his long, black hair like the curling tendrils of smoldering myrrh. This was no mere pious caution in the face of an evil imprisoned, for such an evil could never strike beyond the reach of its chain, or from beyond the borders of its cage. Andares stared at the Elderwood as if somebody had unlocked its chain and unbarred its cage. The air, for a moment as still as they, turned against them, bringing a chill that lanced through their traveling cloaks, as well as the festering scent of mushrooms and choked foliage. Anefistar finally lifted one hand to brush across his nose and he stumbled a pace backward. That one motion broke the Åelf's paralysis. He swept his free arm out and grasped the scholar by the shoulder, steadying him. “It is best to move quickly here. Something is not right. Keep close to me.” Anefistar nodded, and the two of them walked stiffly down the bend in the road. Andares kept his free hand on the hilt of his blade as step by step the Elderwood passed out of sight. He listened intently but the only thing he could hear was the nervous breathing of his companion and his clumsy footfalls. The air felt crisp, with the sweet scent of blossom and new grass fading beneath a veneer of empty wind. Even the sky, so bright a blue, seemed somehow utterly remote as if that vibrant color had been bleached onto the heavens instead of born there. They kept close together for several minutes, their anxiety pulsing in their hearts with each step they took. The road kept behind a line of hills for several miles so that they could not see the edge of the Elderwood as it lurked off to their left. The sun shone bright on their right but did not seem to warm them any. The wind tried to resume a gentle breeze but failed ere it had begun, leaving all a calm that came not from peace but from patience, as of a watcher waiting to see what would come to pass. Into that world of muted sense a sudden grumbling like two stones rubbing against one another erupting from the stones behind them made Andares draw his blade. The hiss of steel seemed a beast's reply to the threat, of a snake rising up to strike back at the one who'd nearly trod upon him. Both Anefistar and Andares spun on their heels to see what threat had begun to follow them, but the road was empty and the hills barren of all but grass, scrub, and a few miserly trees. They waited a moment in that place, but the sound never returned, and once their hearts slowed enough that they could breath normally, they resumed their quick pace along the road. Andares did not sheathe his sword for several minutes, but eventually he did, and while he kept his hand upon the pommel, for several hours he had no reason to draw it. The sound did not return in all that time as they moved across the miles. At a few junctures the road lifted along the hills until they could see the Elderwood again stretching across the northwest, but the sense of dread it had instilled in them at their first sight now became muted, as if whatever beast had been prowling in that cage had gone to lie down, convinced that its bars truly did confine it. By the time the sun was nearing the horizon, their road began to descend further toward a wide valley in which a narrow river coursed and along whose banks a village clustered. Fields were given to pastureland on the western bank, while the eastern was divided into several small farms. The road passed through the valley lengthwise, but first it diverted around several piles of rock upthrust from the ground in an earlier age. The sides of the rock had been gouged by weapons of some sort; the marks were regularly spaced in sets of three on the northern flank, a curious fact that gave Andares, exhausted by their hearty pace that day, some pause. “Bless be the gods!” Anefistar exclaimed, the first words either had spoken since they'd first seen the cursed woods. “A village! I am all for staying in a good tavern tonight, with fresh ale and some stew to fill my belly.” “As am I,” Andares admitted, his tongue moving only to form the words, which escaped his lips in a sibilant whisper. They lost sight of the village as they began to move around the cairn. The northern hills also flattened out so that they had one last view of the Elderwood. Though still lurking on the horizon, the trees appeared taller, their line shifting like a wave at sea, pulsing as of a giant's breath, while the ground between them seemed to teem with a million ants. Andares stopped and stared in both wonder and horror, but whatever those ants were, they all seemed to flee the blighted lands to vanish back beneath the doomed boughs like children scurrying beneath the hem of their mother's dress. Just as the last of those little dots disappeared, the groaning rumble they had heard once before sounded again. Only this time it did not follow them like a jackal pursuing a rabbit on the Steppe; this time it challenged them from along the road ahead of them. Anefistar who had been standing at Andares's side as they watched the strange dark shapes flee into the forest, now gasped in fright, coughing and clutching his throat as his eyes bulged from his face. Andares drew his blade and turned back down the road, tensing as some dark shadow slipped out from behind the cairn before them. The creature was nothing that Andared has ever seen before. It possessed a bulky mass with no discernible head but four arms radiating out at equal intervals from its bulbous main body. Each arm ended in a paw with three long claws like the talons of a hawk. It strode upon four legs splayed out beneath its arms, each one striking the ground with a crunch of stone. The skin, now that it was visible in the last rays of the sun, was leathery in texture, covered in a blend of scales and patches of a dark downy fur. It was not completely black in hue, for the scales themselves had a deep green luster that shimmered as it moved. The main body had between each set of arms what could only be a mouth, with broad flat teeth that ground together like a mill crushing flour. “Go back to the shadows!” Andares declared in a powerful voice as he raised his bright, silver blade, etched with runes that glimmered with power. Anna-ithil-årda trained upon the beast, and though it had no eyes they could see, a pair of arms turned toward them, and one of the mouths opened in hunger. “You do not belong here!” The four-legged, four-armed, and four-mouthed beast did not seem to agree as it began to lumber toward them both, long arms stretching outward, sickle-like claws waving up and down. Andares pushed Anefistar behind him with one hand, and with the other turned the blade to one side and then slashed across at the nearest arm. The flesh parted easily and the grinding sound intensified as the flat teeth pressed deeply against one another. The end of the monster's hand dangled limply, held to the arm by only a shred of skin and sinew. Anefistar stumbled back several more paces, while Andares held his ground. He felt an intense urging to turn and follow the human in retreat, but he marshaled his heart with the quiet reserve that the patience of long years had built in him. He slashed a second time, the bright silver of his blade nearly severing a second arm. The creature wailed with its ponderous voice as it flailed its two wounded arms back and forth. It lunged one more time at Andares, but this time he nicked it along the side of its bulbous form between two of the mouths. A foul smelling ichorous pus oozed from the wound, and with a scream that sounded like sheet rock sliding across each other, the beast turned back to the north and retreated through the hillocks. Andares brandished Anna-ithil-årda over his head, catching the last of the sun's gleam as he dared the creature to come for him one more time. But its flight was true and it made with great haste for the sheltering canopy of the Elderwood in the distance. “Is it gone?” Anefistar asked as he came back around the side of the cairn, his breath ragged in his chest, one hand clutching the end of his beard as if it were a startled dog trying to scramble into his arms. “Aye, it is gone,” Andares sheathed his blade and glanced at his attire, but saw no stain of that ichor. Little piles of it had been left where the creature ran off. The grass shriveled beneath it. “But it is not dead. We had best move quickly.” In silence they proceeded at a brisk pace down into the valley where the high hills shielded them from the sight of the Elderwood. The village nestled along a small river and they had erected wooden stakes all along the hillside to the north, as well as a dozen watchtowers in roughly equal sections. Similar fortifications graced the southern hills, but these were not nearly as extensive. They passed by several young men with spears, bows, and swords as the road wound down between the first set of buildings; these were fashioned with stone foundations and wooden upper floors with high windows to give them a good view of the valley entrance. The young soldiers accosted them briefly and listened with grim faces as Andares described the beast that they fought only minutes before. “We've seen three of those things in the last two weeks,” the eldest of the soldiers admitted. He spat on the ground and nodded his head with a heavy sigh. “Thank you, Velelya, for your assistance.” “Have you seen them before?” Anefistar asked. “Not in my lifetime, but there are stories of them. And other things...” two of the other soldiers made signs to ward off evil. “What other things?” Andares asked. “Nothing we've seen yet,” the soldier replied with a sudden firm set to his lips. His eyes narrowed and he cast a quick glance to the north. “We can handle these four-armed things. But if anything else comes...” He turned back to the two travelers and gestured over his shoulder with a thumb. “Best you Velelya be finding a place to sleep for the night. The Inn's a dancing deer. You'll see it.” “Thank you, maethor,” Anefistar bobbed his head to them, before stumbling along at Andares's side down the road between the homes and shops. Few townsfolk were about that evening, and what few that did walk the streets moved quickly and paid them little heed if any heed at all. A brief glance at most before they rushed along. “They're frightened,” Andares noted with a heavy sigh. It ached his heart to see the people so distraught. The few times before he had passed through this village it had been a bright place full of laughter and... children. He saw no children on those streets, only grown men and a few women escorted by men. “Three of those things in two weeks? And nary a foul thing for years before, they have cause to be frightened. What could have led those beasts to leave the forest and attack these simple folk?” The Åelf shook his head, and then drawing his cowl more firmly over his raven-black hair and pointed ears. “I do not know what it could be, but it cannot be left alone.” “And why only these few soldiers? Do not the princes of Dûn Fennas know what transpires on their most treacherous border?” Andares's frown deepened, but he said nothing. Nor did Anefistar press his questions further. Together they brooded as they walked down the street to find the Dancing Deer Inn, where they both expected to sleep lightly and without any peace. ---------- May He bless you and keep you in His grace and love, Charles Matthias </body> </html>