<html> <body> Metamor Keep: Divine Travails of Rats by Charles Matthias and Ryx Pars V: Ascensum (d) Wednesday, June 23, 724 CR - Morning “After returning home I placed the stone on a chain and have worn it ever since.” Kimberly lifted the stone pendant from her chest for just a moment that Charlie might take a closer look. The amethyst was dull but in just the right glint from the witchlights he could see a flash of color. Along one side a small crack marred its otherwise smooth surface. He could not recall a time that his mother had been without it. “It's not shattered,” Charlie noted in a soft voice as he studied the stone. “So unless you had Master Murikeer magic it back together again you did not reduce father to a rat true. Does... does he know what it is? After all these years?” “I have never told him but I know he understands in part. It is a quiet way between husbands and wives. Some things are never said, simply known. So it is with this and with Marzac. Your father and mother speak thus too.” He nodded and after rubbing the soft tip of his finger across the narrow crack in the stone, leaned back and let his mother rest it against her bodice. A slight glance, a tilt of the snout, a moment of profound silence, and so many other little things he had observed between his father Malger and mother Misanthe over the many years in which narratives deeper and truer than any words could convey were shared between them. “So what did you do, mother? I know it was another three days before... before the...” “Before he went to seek the aid of Malger Sutt, your father?” Charlie swallowed and nodded. “Yes, I know of it. And I know what happened is the foundation of their friendship. I know there was no betrayal because Charles could never hurt me. No matter what Master Murikeer feared, Charles could never hurt me or you children.” Charlie's whiskers drooped as he tried to remember anything from that time, but of course all he could think of was what he had learned from his sire the night before. “What baubles did he give us? I don't remember them at all.” Kimberly rested her hands in her lap and sighed. “They were colorful little river stones. One by one they were all lost. I think you and Bernadette both lost yours on the journey to Sondeshara. By then it didn't matter.” He nodded and grabbed the chewstick he'd brought with him. He nibbled on the end for a few seconds before asking, “So what did you do?” Kimberly lowered her eyes. “I hoped and prayed. I was scared... so very scared for you all. But when Charles returned that night, he scooped you all into his arms with such love and gentleness I knew he could never hurt you. But..” Her throat tightened and in it he could hear her pain. “But Bertram was different. I could see it in his eyes, something I had never seen before. Hate.” Kimberly tensed, eyes closing tightly. Charlie expected to see tears flow but her cheeks were untouched. He gnawed on his stick and said nothing. After a few moments his mother opened her eyes and continued in a hush. “He would kill that little boy if provoked. I kept my hand on the stone all that evening. And the next few nights I made sure that Natalie and Bertram did not come or left as soon as Charles returned home.” “It's hard to believe... Bertram?” Charlie shook his head. “Erick and he are practically inseparable now.” “That frog is a good young man and a bosom companion to your brother,” Kimberly agreed, a smile touching the edge of her snout. “I think your father took him on as a squire to make up for what Marzac tried to make him do.” Though he said nothing, Charlie wondered if the shepherd Silvas was given so much leeway in the Narrows for a similar reason. How many others had his sire hurt because of Marzac that he now offered an unending stream of generosity? “So what happened next?” Kimberly sighed and clasped her hand around the stone pendant again. “I kept our home as best I could with Charles off visiting the Narrows each day. I prayed and I watched, and I held this close and loved him as best I could. And then, a few night's hence, everything happened at once... It began with... I had... an unexpected visitor in my bedchamber.” ---------- Saturday, May 12, 708 CR – Eve of Midnight The Lady Kimberly Matthias was roused by a sharp crack and sat up in her bed abruptly. The suddenness of the noise, so close at hand, had elicited the beginning of a startled squeak from her throat but the appearance of a looming form towering at the foot of her bed bade that squeak reach deeper and escape her breast in a full scream of fright. Instinctively she lashed out with the only thing that was readily, if not easily, within reach; she hurled a spark of fire at the intruder. Both scream and spark guttered away before traveling far plunging the room into silence and her sleep-fogged vision cleared enough to see that the shadow was cast by a witchlight that was not her own and the visage it illuminated was one familiar to her. One harried eye looked down upon her, recumbent in her own bed, with the gaze of a madman. “Murikeer!” She cried out indignantly, snatching the coverlet over her though her modesty was assured by the shift she wore when sleeping. “Why are you in my bedchamber!?” He had never gone anywhere near the private rooms of the Matthias residence in the many years he had visited, when she lived in Metamor and the Glen both. To find him intruding now, moreso while she was asleep, sent a shock of fear and drear through her that had nothing to do with the fright of his intrusion. Grasping a bedpost with one hand he reached out with his other. “Come, milady, I need your help and swiftly.” The skunk hissed, his good eye gleaming under the steady glow of his witchlight. “Murikeer, I am not in my modesty! Any you're in my...” “I would wish any other manner, milady, but time is of the utmost importance.” His fingers grasped beckoning at the air. “Please, come with me now! Charles' life may depend on swift action!” “Charles?” She sat up straighter, turning to her right to where her husband slept. Only his side of the bed was empty. Startled, she pulled her legs off the bed and stood, still clutching the coverlet close. “What has happened to my husband?!” “We have lost him, milady.” Murikeer quailed in fear as he stepped around the end of the bed and reached for her shoulder. She shied away reflexively, backing toward the corner between bed table and wall near the closed window. “We have lost him, and I fear only you can find him again.” He approached no closer, dropping his arm to hold his hand toward her, palm up. After a few moments of indecision she stepped forward and reached for his hand, gathering the coverlet close against her throat with the other. “Where are we going?” “Not far, milady, but very far as well. I cannot easily explain.” Kimberly could feel the urgency in the gentle grasp of his long fingers as she lay her hand upon his. “Where does he keep his vine?” “In the stables, below, why?” “We will need it.” Helping her drape the long bed linen over her shoulders and wrap it around her Murikeer followed her out of the bedchamber and across the living room toward their front door. “What of the children?” “They hear nothing, milady, and sleep undisturbed.” He gently urged her toward the door, haste writ in every fiber of his being and bristle of the monochromatic fur tufting from the throat and cuffs of his wardrobe. “We will go, I hope, no further than the stables.” “Will they be safe?” “On my life, Kimberly, on my very life.” Little mollified she preceded him through door and out into the cool darkness of the Glen commons. Circling around the tall buttressing roots of the tree they descended a short distance to the door of the stable in which Charles kept his pony, Malicon, and the vine that sustained him in ways none of them could fully grasp. “But, Muri, what do you mean you lost him?” “After the others were touched by the tattered remnants of Marzac we feared, as I said when I gave you that talisman you wear, that Charles had not escaped it.” Drawing open the door he let a dim witchlight bob ahead of them into the stables. Malicon's head raised above the partition of his stall and a curious snort escaped his nose, short equine ears pricked forward. Against the back wall the vine spread from beat and post, shifting subtly in the light. “We watched over him, to see if the touch might find him.” “We?” “Garigan, myself, James and others.” Leading Kimberly over to a pile of straw near the back wall he bade her to sit down, her long rodent legs crossed as he had taught her during meditations to clear her mind before his tutelage. “But he slipped away, and I fear that he has been cast in the shadow through which we cannot see.” “Marzac has taken him?” Kimberly quailed, clutching at the amethyst talisman Murikeer had crafted for her, horror widening her eyes and flattening back her round ears. “Its shadow has reached out and touched him, we fear.” Sitting down facing her Murikeer reached out to take her hands gently in his. “And with all of our forewarning we cannot pierce that veil. But you can.” “I?” “Yes, Kimberly, you. No one else, you. From this place, with the conduit that I prepared.” Kimberly felt the cool stone in her hand, the intricate tracery of dark lines crazing about its smooth surface under sensitive fingerpads. A quiet, whispering rustle moved about behind her, a light touch brushing across her tail, but Kimberly could not bring herself to move, to tear her gaze away from the skunk's lone eye before her. “What must I do?” “Seek him.” Murikeer nodded to the talisman in her hand. “The way to his spirit resides within you.” Folding her hands between his own he closed them upon the stone. “Seek him as you seek the threads I have shown you; like fire, air, water.” Leaning close, the gaze of his single eye calm but earnest, his voice intoned, “His is a thread only you can see; it binds the two of you.” Kimberly felt something brush her shoulders, along her arms where they emerge from the draped coverlet. Leaves appeared beneath her sight as the vine wound about her forearms. Had she not known of the vine that helped her husband live the sight would have sent her into a panicked catatonia. Even with that knowledge its serpentine animation left her heart cold with instinctive fear. But she did not move to cast it off while slender tendrils worked about her wrists and between her fingers. Murikeer drew his hands away ignored by the vine. Taking a breath to steel herself Kimberly bowed her head slightly and looked toward her cupped paws, through the tight bundle of leaves, and to the softly glowing purple stone resting in the shadows of her grasp. Expanding her senses she listened for the telltale notes and subtle scents that Murikeer had taught her. Where he could see threads she could hear sound; the trill of birds, the pluch of a harp's string, a chord of distant music. Where Murikeer saw color she smelled spice and earth. In her palms a deep, throbbing melody rumbled in basso resonance. It was a complex melody she had never truly isolated before, it had always been around her, everywhere; subtle but ever present, always underscored by a quintet of brighter, dancing melodies in higher octaves. One of the quintet had faded, long ago, to a distant tremulous whisper but it had never truly been lost from the symphony. But now, as she listened, the heart of the music had become entangled with that faded whisper and two had become jarring. Something harsh, burdensome and discordant had taken up the faded whisper and begun to mimic it. But it was frightfully off key, dissonant and sharp like a bow drawn too roughly across the strings of an over-tightened violin. And the scents were of family; the stables most profoundly. Malicon's heavy equine spiciness, the wood and straw and light, soft sweetness of the vine beneath her chin. Murikeer's personal scent was a void in her physical senses but there was the other scent, her sense of the magic about him which he saw with his mage's sight was a complex melange of aromas which her nose could not prize apart. Mingled throughout was a scent identical to that of Charles, her children, Baerle and the others in the Glen; the curse. All such complexities she had long ago learned how to set aside so that she could focus on those scents and sounds she sought. The dry acridity of fire, the scintillating coruscation of water, the unique musks of her husband and children. His and four others were strong, each tickled her senses with fleeting snippets of laughter and memory. The last was subtle, almost lost among those others, but as with the new strand of melody there was another that lingered with the scent of that faint trace. Somehow, despite being so strikingly similar that the mere tingle of it brought forth bright memories these was a dark coldness about it; a rancid bite that made her whiskers fold back. She could let the soft scents of her children slip aside to focus more upon Charles' melody and scent but, no matter how she plucked and pushed with her inner focus, she could not separate the corrupt scent and discordant tune mimicking something she had lost. “Ladero,” Kimberly whispered, not lifting her gaze from the glimmering purple stone. Dark tendrils, the thread-thin roots of the vine, traced about the stone, dug into the tracery that Murikeer had etched upon it. “My boy, my Ladero.” “He is there?” Murikeer murmured quietly, his voice shimmering at the edge of her focus without intruding. Kimberly let her eyes drift closed, bending her ears and nose toward the tangled presence of her lost husband. “Yes, but no. Something.” She shook her head, unable to separate one from the other. “Master Muri, can you see?” “No, milady,” Murikeer admonished gently. “I cannot see. That is why we need you to seek him through the veil of shadow that Marzac has enshrouded him.” “I – I will try, Muri. But he is... so distant. He seeks something, his thoughts are bent toward it.” “Ladero.” Murikeer's soft churr was a hissing growl of irritation. “That is his bell, his hyacinth. That is the seduction that grasps at his heart.” The skunk let out a defeated sigh. “He is beyond us, Kimberly. Now, only you can reach out to him. Please, try to call him back. Let him know you're there, with him, wherever it is the shadow has taken him.” “He seeks Ladero?” Kimberly's hands wavered as, behind her closed eyes, shadows began to take on vague forms in the darkness. A moving, upright form with a long shadow swaying behind it. Beyond, a looming shadow like a tower or tree. “Can he...?” “No!” Murikeer hissed warning. “That veil none can pierce and return! Do not let him go there, Kimberly!” “But...” Kimberly pressed on, striving through her focus to reach out toward the shadowy form of her husband in the misty darkness. He began to appear more real, more substantial; scent and sound assuming a familiar form. Before him, reaching into the grayness of the heights, the branches of a great tree stretched out overhead while buttressing roots bulked like walls from the earth. “He... he is there!” “Kimberly, focus!” She felt the skunk's gentle touch. “The shadow that seduces him lies! Reach out to him, warn him of the lie!” As she drew closer to the monochromatic half-dream form of her husband she sensed that, while the towering tree and gray skies cast no shadows upon the shattered ground over which he trod, there was a single shadow stretching behind Charles. Where it lay across the buttressing roots it took on a smaller form that was not Charles but walked at his side. The shadow's music shrieked in her ears with the chord of Ladero and the scent was corruption and rot, but Charles strove for it. It was her son! But, it was not! Kimberly's heart withered in fear even as she yearned to reach out and draw her lost son to her breast once again. But it was not Ladero. It was something – other. Some deadly doppelganger whose inky black talons had reached out to grasp her husband's heart, blinding him to its corruption. “Charles!” Kimberly cried out, unsure if it was her physical voice that cast forth his name or merely her own imagined plea. “Charles, beware! He is false!” She strove toward the gray form in the darkness before her. But the shadow abruptly reared up, striving outward from the gnarled wall of the dark tree's root, and cast a pall between her and her husband. She felt it surge toward her and felt the icy vileness wash over her in a cacophony of ghastly noise and revolting stench. In her hand the amethyst stone dimmed abruptly, the tendrils of the vine enfolding it suddenly blackening and shriveling away. The nearest leaves also blackened, wrinkling into desiccated husks and falling from the vine. Murikeer's fur flattened in dismay, frustrated that he could do nothing but witness the struggle through the all too frail seeming rat seated before him hunched over the dim purple glow in her cupped paws. Behind her the solid bulk of Malicon stood silently, like a wall, his head dipped over her shoulder but otherwise unmoving. The vine draped over his back from the wall of the stable, entwining over Kimberly's shoulders and about her arms. Even as its slender tips blackened fell more rustled forward, fully enshrouding the stone. After a few moments the fitful dimness began to flutter with light, wan and pulsing, once more. “The shadow hears you, it knows you can pierce its darkness! Call to him, Kimberly! Warn him!” Reaching out, Murikeer laid his hands upon her forearms where the vine did not touch and lent as much of his presence as he could. There was no magic he could lend, her conduit was too frail, to tenebrous, to attempt any aid. All Murikeer could do was offer the reassurance of his presence, like that of the quiet pony and valiant but mysterious vine. Grateful for what each offered, Kimberly tightened her grip on the amethyst, shaken but not deterred. Her husband was there somewhere. Her heart flowed outward to find him again, listening for his melody, smelling for his scent. And from her heart wended a melody of her own within a prayer. She wasn't even sure if it reached her tongue, but it was a prayer all the same. “Eli, help my husband. Help us.” ---------- May He bless you and keep you in His grace and love, Charles Matthias </body> </html>