<html> <body> --------- Metamor Keep: Divine Travails of Rats by Charles Matthias and Ryx Pars II: Denuncio (q) Friday, May 11, 708 CR Murikeer paused at the open doorway of his new – thought very old – house and waved a billowing cloud of debris to go deposit itself somewhere other than the floor of the main hall. He had already long ago convinced the local vermin population that the forest was a more pleasant place to live and he was down to giving the place a thorough cleaning. Even with his considerable abilities with magic, which made the task of dozens feasible for only one skunk, it was slow going. Kozaithy helped out, though her acolyte level skills reduced her to making the multitudinous brass fittings shine. The villa had been vacant since Nasoj's first attack almost a decade before when the entire family that had resided there fell during the early days of the siege. Lord Avery had given it to him not for payments of any services rendered, for Jurmas had seen to his comfortable residence in the Glen, but as a favor. Better to have a powerful mage, who could work with more than just trees, a pleasant ride away rather than half a day to Metamor seeking aid and another half day to return. The thunder of hooves approaching at a gallop made him pause in his efforts. When his ears revealed that the course of those pounding hooves would bear the galloping animal into the courtyard before his house Murikeer faded a pace back into the shadows. He felt Kozaithy slightly behind him a few moments later when she, too, heard the approaching hooves. His tail brushed her hip and they stood silently, waiting. Along the southern shore of the small lake just south of the Glen, through gaps in the trees, they caught the occasional flesh of a white beast making its way at a gallop down the overgrown wagon track that led from Glen Avery to the house. Within moments that white beast revealed itself to be a muscular Percheron charging through a gap in the undergrowth, a brightly clad rider hunkered low over its back. Drawing up smoothly without the slightest mishap on the smooth, tight seamed flagstones of the courtyard the horse came to a swift, easy halt. The rider, seated astride the beast using only a stirrup strap and no saddle whatsoever, gave the animal's muscular neck a slap before dropping down with the ease borne of a trained rider. “Splendid run, Versyd, splendid indeed! I've not sat a horse in many years who could carry me at such a pace without tenderizing the inside of my thighs like a butcher!” Tossing his head the horse snorted and pranced sideways, hardly blowing hard for the distance they had heard him running. “Malger, welcome.” Murikeer stepped from the shadows of his doorway. “Versyd, don't take the praise too high – you sounded like an avalanche approaching.” The marten, clad in a spare but nonetheless fancily tailored shirt and trews of vibrant scarlet, laughed warmly and swatted the stallion's neck once more. “An avalanche as smooth at a gallop as a pleasure boat on a becalmed lake,” he assured with a wave of his free hand toward the unblemished flat plane of Spring Lake – so called because of the Glen tradition of cracking the ice on the first day of Spring – stretching northward from the edge of Murikeer's lawn. One wing of the house stretched down to the shore and even out over the water a short distance in the form of a boat house. In winter the walls of the extension were below the surface of the water and would prevent it from freezing within so they would always have access to fresh water and, ostensibly, fish. “Take a walk, Versyd. Get a drink and relax, I shan't go far.” With a bob of his head Versyd turned and trotted toward the water. Malger brushed imaginary road dust from his shirt and gazed at the front of the skunks' sprawling abode. “Rather looks like you've got quite a task before you, Muri my boy.” “Quite,” Murikeer chuckled. “I've cleared away a good bit of brush since your last brief visit so now you can see just how surprisingly... expansive the building is. There are a few second floor residences; it sprawls out rather than stands tall, like a tired hound long past his prime but, in the same mien, is as comfortable.” With a wave of his hand he invited Malger to step into the cooler shadows within. “I'll have it freshly thatched by the end of the season and, with luck, next year I will be able to begin furnishing and living within.” Kozaithy left the two men to chat and wandered deeper into the house, her white pelt and pale dress glowing in the shadowy gloom before she disappeared through a thick-beamed doorway. There were no actual doors in the house, even the front, all of them having been removed or rotted away along with the shutters. That was how, it seemed, half of the forest had decided to take up residence there over the past decade. Steeply pitched gables climbed above them now bereft of cooing birds and scampering rodents though with more than a few holes through which sunlight lanced. Murikeer showed him through the dusty, dimly lit, multitudinous rooms of the mansion-sized house. At some point in its past it had actually been the manor house of a small community though the community had long since relocated to Barnhardt or the Glen proper with the rest killed in the vile days before Three Gates, but the smaller residences had all, if not torn down by Lutins, succumbed to the encroaching forest. They engaged in idle conversation about Murikeer's plans for the place; initially as a home but in the future perhaps a place for him to teach others to wield their innate abilities as he did. Just as he was teaching the Lady Matthias and Kozaithy. “Your ideas are bold, Muri,” Malger observed as they stepped from the further wing of the house from the shore. Looking back he was surprised to find that they stood on the side of a hill somewhat higher even that the tall, steep pitched roof extending out over the lake. “Perhaps you seek my... approval?” He twitched a brow sidelong at his young friend as they approached the mouth of a cave. Marks in the stone showed that it had been worked by the hands of men at some point in the past to enlarge and smooth the entry. “Charles – Sir Matthias, now – was similarly ebullient about his new demesne.” Murikeer paused to look back as Malger did, staring out over the lake and surrounding forest. Down below they spied Kozaithy talking Versyd, now humanoid and clad in a voluminous, drab robe like some wandering monk, into moving a massive limb that she and Murikeer could not lift. “Sir Matthias has an entire fief to oversee, Malger. All I've got is this villa and a hundred acres or so of forest. I don't foresee myself having more than my household.” “What, you're not looking for a patron to help you erect a towering spire for mages to gawp at for a few centuries?” Murikeer cast a glance at him from his good eye. “After being locked up in one, would you even approve of such construction?” Malger shook his head, “Not likely! Besides, you've got your tower at the Keep.” “Kyia's tower, mind you. She merely let me maintain a residence there.” “Ahhh, the spirit of Metamor. I've only seen her the once, during the dedication of the Name Stone after Nasoj's last attack.” Malger turned to watch Versyd shoulder the huge limb at Kozaithy's direction and, carefully, shamble toward a heap of discards on a small muddy spit of land jutting into the lake. “Speaking of that,” he looked sidelong at the young skunk at his side, “Charles mentioned Llyn. Or, rather, what I did for you, during your convalescence.” “What You – I –” Murikeer scowled briefly, not comprehending, and then reached up to touch the eyepatch over the empty socket of his left eye. “Bringing her soul back?” “Just that.” “Oh,” Murikeer frowned with a droop of his white whiskers. “Why'd you tell him?” “I – ahh, I was not thinking that it was a taboo.” Malger turned to face his young friend more directly, dropping a hand upon his shoulder. “Muri, what I did for you was – is – not something that I can just do, willy nilly. It has a cost, and a steep one at that,” he admonished, though gently. “I would much rather it be kept a secret, between you and me and Nocturna.” “Your vixen knows, too.” “She walks the dreams as I do, at Nocturna's grace. But, please, let us not mention it to others?” Murikeer scowled and nodded, resting his fingers upon his brow in consternation. “I'm sorry, Malger. I blurted it out in a moment of pique. Charles' pupil, Garigan, was speaking ill of you and I sought to correct him.” “So Garigan, too, knows?” Murikeer winced and nodded. “And anyone else who may have overheard our argument about you. Well, more about that guild of yours, in truth.” It was Malger's turn to wince and he nodded. “Aye, a rather sharp edged regret of my early... explorations, upon becoming something other than human. I have retaken the reigns, there, and will be bringing them to heel in due course.” “Be that as it may, my slip was done by mistake. I shan't let it happen again.” “Thank you.” He gave Murikeer's shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “Let us go save my mount before your – pupil – finds him a boulder to carry.” Malger's whiskers twitched and Murikeer caught the knowing gleam in the marten's gaze before he could say anything. With a chuff he could only laugh, but in the back of his mind a thought nagged. Why would Charles bring up the brief resurrection of Llyn's soul to Malger, anyway? ---------- May He bless you and keep you in His grace and love, Charles Matthias </body> </html>