Anthology - Untold Adventures - A Dungeons and Dragons Anthology

“Enough for you,” she said, her voice low and growling. “Three days at the bowl and you’re still alive. ’Tis a miracle no one should be forced to witness.”

Horn rolled away from her, pressing his face into the tabletop until splinters plucked at his lips. “I’ve witnessed too much,” he mumbled. In the corner of his vision the barmaid moved, but she was different. More graceful. More powerful.

With a sudden sense of panic, he slapped at his vest. The weight of fate still hung there. Its silk was clammy and close now.

“I ain’t taken it yet.”

He tilted his head to look at her more closely-how did she know?-but the barmaid was walking away.

And she had grown distinctly prettier. He certainly wasn’t any more drunk.

Magic, the blessed curse that gnaws at the soul and leaves a void in the mind into which too much that is alien and deadly can settle.

He’d known women beautiful enough to have launched entire navies for the sake of their faces. He’d known women who looked like the wrong end of an old sergeant after a hard day’s training. But there had been only one Manxinnaea.

Her nose was bulbous and slightly crooked. Her eyes were the brown of a good businesswoman, as was her hair. No one would have mistaken her for a courtesan, which she wasn’t; or royalty, which she was.

But she smelled like heaven, and she moved like a cat in a granary, and her attention focused as powerfully as any wizard’s could ever hope to. Manxinnaea had been Horn’s only love in life. When they had betrayed one another, something inside his heart had died.

Why was he thinking of her now? Fool, fool, fool. The barmaid had cast the oldest spell of all on him, a cantrip requiring only alcohol, sorrow, and time.

Wet and blinking, Horn stumbled away from the table to find the outhouse somewhere between the kitchen and the stables. The sun stabbed his eyes like a shining assassin. The air smelled odd, though after a moment he realized it was just fresh, or at least fresher than the fug within the tavern.

The world tugged at him like a child on its mother’s skirt. Horn did what he came for and ignored the rest. The reeking darkness of the tavern held room for his doubts and the slow banishment of his memory.

Milieu

The old man’s skin was the color of walnuts, and so wrinkled and scarred it very nearly could have served him as armor. Horn had no intention of testing that assumption. He was here on different errands.

He had reached the Temple of Winds near the peak of Mount Eponymous, on the Lost Island of Ee. Not so lost, in truth, for anyone could book passage out of half a dozen ports in the southern extents of the Starfall Sea. Assuming a captain was willing to brave contrary winds and little chance of profitable trade to carry a lubber into seething waters.

Sometimes the name was everything. Romance, danger, a hint of riches. Or perhaps just a gigantic angle-sided building with hundreds of windows very nearly on the edge of a smoking crater from which a sullen red glow could sometimes be seen at night.

He’d approached the temple by climbing the Path of Ten Thousand Steps. Being who he was, Horn had counted. There were only 4,238 steps. Again, the name was everything. The Temple of Winds could have held hundreds of acolytes, priests, worshipers, and servants, but in point of fact he’d wandered the worm-haunted wooden hallways and galleries with their peeling murals for the better part of a day before locating anyone.

“You’re not the chandler,” the old man had said on first spotting Horn. He’d spoken Kyrie, the common language of traders and slaves all along these waters, but with an accent reminiscent of the hieratical tongues of distant Khappas.

“No,” Horn replied. “I am a seeker of wisdom.”

The old man squinted, taking in Horn’s scars, motley head of fire-scarred hair, and ropy muscles. “Looks like you haven’t found it yet, or you’d have learned to stay out of trouble.” He wheezed with asthmatic laughter at his own wit.

Horn shrugged. His skin was less tortured than his host’s. “Trouble finds me. I end it, one way or another.”

Another snort from the old man. Then: “We have wisdom in great supply here. Libraries full of it, scrolls stacked a hundred high. Were you looking for any particular sort of wisdom?”

Ignoring the sneer in the old man’s voice, Horn carefully offered the answer he’d been working through for weeks, months even, since embarking on this particular journey. “I have gained power and lost purpose as I have traveled through my life. I come to you seeking direction, which is, of course, the cardinal characteristic of the wind.”

“Actually, the wind mostly just blows,” the old man muttered. “It cares not for direction.”

“Yet here is where you stand against the wind and watch the world,” Horn replied.

Something gleamed in the old man’s eyes. “Our secrets are not so secret, are they?”

“You are the rumor in a dozen ports, and the whisper in half a hundred more.” That was almost true.

“Come, then. I will show you our world-watching. Then you can decide if you really wish to ask for direction here.”

“The ship on which I hired passage will not be back for at least three weeks,” Horn said. “I may as well learn something in the meantime.”

“A practical man, I see.”

At nearly forty years of age, Horn hoped he’d learned something from life. He followed without comment.

The temple’s paucity of acolytes and servants showed in the dust and grime lining the hallways. Elaborate doorways carved from teak or mahogany punctuated their progress. Their friezes were cracked and split from a lack of polishing. Red pillars lining the corridors were fading to a dusky melon color, streaked with smoke. Most of the lamps were not only unlit, but also in obvious disrepair.

It was like seeing a great lady of some earlier generation reduced to face paint and ill-fitting dresses. Horn could appreciate what this temple had once been, and might someday be again if it found patrons and worshipers.

Eventually they arrived at an enormous open space that rose through all the nine stories of the temple. It was like a high, wooden cave. Each level had a railing carved and painted to represent old battles between gods and monsters, though these were now as cracked and faded as everything else. Five stories below, at the bottom, the floor was occupied by an enormous map.

Horn stared down at it. He realized he was seeing the Starfall Sea at the center of the map, but there were countries and waters beyond its borders that he’d never known of. It was magnificently detailed, as if he looked down upon the world itself.

That thought made him consider how the hairs on his neck prickled. Slowly, Horn realized he was looking down upon the world itself, at least in a sense.

“The wind sees everything, sooner or later,” the old man said softly beside him. “It carries word and deed across rivers and mountains and oceans.”

Breath stuttered in Horn’s throat. “Here, you listen to the songs it sings.”

“Listen and take note.”

He studied the map. “That is not a work of hand, is it?”

“Prayer and study and ancient miracles bound into place.” The old man grasped Horn’s arm with a grip of iron. “Far greater men than you have come to steal the secrets of how we do this thing.”

“I come to steal nothing. Only to ask.” Horn had the distinct impression that if he looked hard enough, he’d find the Lost Island, and the Temple of Winds, and a great gallery with two men looking down.

He could see every place he’d ever be able to reach in his lifetime. That thought made Horn feel very small indeed.

After a while, the old man spoke again. “Most don’t want to see what lies before them.”