Anthology - Untold Adventures - A Dungeons and Dragons Anthology

“I have fought,” Horn said distantly. “Fought with sword and spell. I have been the red knight of slaughter. I have called down fire upon my enemies. I have killed half a hundred men, countless orcs and goblins, and dozens of stranger enemies. I can magic the fish from their shadowed realms alongside the riverbanks, and I can face down an army if I find it needful. I know what lies behind me. Seeing what lies before can guide my steps in new paths.”

“Or the oldest ones.” Another grip of the arm, this more of a friendly tug. “Come with me. It’s nearly time to eat. You stay here too long, you will lose yourself in the map.”

A dozen monks gathered in a corner of what had once been an enormous refectory. The kitchens beyond were dark and quiet, their great clay ovens with the dragon mouths long gone cold, or even cracked. Iron pots hung like the helmets of ogres in those old shadows.

These men had made a stew in a warming fireplace in the dining area itself. They gathered around the one surviving table from what must have once been scores of tables. All were as old or older than Horn’s guide, and all shared the man’s hard-used air. They seemed more like veteran warriors than elderly clerics.

His appearance caused no comment at all. Clearly they’d known he was here. Some signal passed silently between them? Or perhaps just the wisdom of anyone who knows his own house well.

Horn took a bowl, shallow and oblong with tiny feet beneath, then followed his old man’s example of scooping out a ladle or two of the stew, along with a piece of flatbread still steaming from its own little pot-oven in the fire. Each monk had brought his own spoon, so Horn just slurped from the bowl.

A minute or two later, he realized that all the bowls were the tops of skulls, carefully sealed and lacquered. No one else seemed to care, so Horn kept his own counsel. The dead did not worry him overmuch. Besides which, he had not killed the people whose heads these were. They would not haunt him.

They ate in silence, except for the occasional grunt or raised eyebrow. Horn got the impression of a conversation taking place. One that had long since transcended the need for words. He maintained his own silence out of politeness as well as a sense of caution.

As the bowls were set aside, one by one the monks came to sit before Horn. Each spent a few minutes studying his face from a close distance. A quiet staring, intense, strange. As if his future were being read from the bones beneath his skin.

After their study, the monks one by one nodded at him, then nodded at his guide, then drifted off into the dusty shadows of the Temple of Winds.

Finally only Horn and his monk remained together in the refectory. He felt a distinct sense of abandonment. Like a ship drawn up on a beach, left to woodworms and dry rot. Or, indeed, this building.

“Paths,” the old man finally said. Shrewd calculation crossed his face. Horn was certain that was a deliberate display.

Finally, Horn spoke up for himself. “I had purpose once.”

“You would do better to petition the Raven Queen”

Horn shrugged. “Where would I find Raven Queen? With her demense in Lethrna, she cannot be found ensconced within a temple, or in the mumbling prayers of priests.”

The monk nodded. “Fair enough. But neither does the wind care for your purpose and your future. As soon inquire of the tides, or seek wisdom among the rocks.”

“People do those things.”

“Are they any wiser for it?”

He had to laugh. “I have seen little so far in my life to lead me to believe that people are any wiser for anything.”

“Yet here you are, many weeks’ sailing from your home, wherever that may be.”

Horn thought of the distant hills of his birth with a small pang of regret. Most of his fellow sellswords had long since gone back, settled down with a village girl, and begun the serious business of breeding the next generation of boys. He was fairly sure that neither Feather nor any of the other Old Men had ever expected to see him again.

“Home is where my boots are,” Horn finally said.

“Some would name that a sad fate.”

“I have seen the world.”

Now the monk shrugged. “So have I.”

What was this scarred old man trying to tell him?

Horn tried again. “Given that I seem unable to petition the Raven Queen as you suggest, is there another path?”

“Some things change a man slowly. Journeys. The passage of years. The love of a good woman. Imprisonment.” The monk paused a moment. Horn sensed he was speaking from experience, looking back at his own paths. Then: “Some things change a man swiftly. War. Disease. Shipwrecks. The love of a bad woman.”

“Change is inevitable.”

“And that is what you crave. The inevitability of change.” The monk leaned close, as his fellows had. “Have you ever encountered a true artifact? From the First Cities, or the Old Gods, or out of the treasure houses of the greatest mages of history?”

Horn frowned. He was familiar with the concept of artifacts, mostly from his studies with the wizards of High Canton within darkened rooms among its square towers. “It is possible that an old master of mine handled such, but for my own part, no.”

“One way to think of such items is as change itself, distilled into the palm of your hand. Even something as simple as a wand can change the user. You have found this in your own experience, I am confident.”

Nodding, Horn agreed. He could remember certain spells, certain secrets, the learning of which had reshaped his view of the world. On occasion, abruptly so.

The monk tapped Horn’s chest. “Then to find your purpose, you might consider seeking out one of these artifacts. Not all of them are in strongrooms and locked boxes.”

“You have something in mind?”

“We know where many things in this world are to be found. The Map of Winds is an artifact in its own right. Many secrets whispered under the open sky find their way here.”

Horn was wary, on his guard at this. “Everything in this world comes with a price.”

“Of course.” The monk smiled, like evil dawning. “We have need of something wrongly taken from us long ago. Fetch this item back from where it is held today, and we will place fate in your hands.”

Knowing he was committing himself blindly, Horn let himself step forward. “What is this thing, and where do you need it fetched from?”

Melee

It took him more than a year to fight his way back to the Temple of Winds. Along the journey, Horn took wounds of the body and soul. He slew a white dragon, losing the tips of two fingers and most of his hair from its icy breath. He bargained away the life of an entire village for passage through a high trail defended by ogres.

In a glacial cave far higher up a mountain than Horn had ever hoped to climb, he found the Rod of the Eight Winds embedded in a crystal sphere guarded by four enormous nagas. After dispatching them, he skinned them and traded their hides to the ogres before passing through the smoldering ruins of the white dragon’s village on his way back to the temple. The ship on which he bought passage was attacked by pirates, three of the waterfronts he visited were set ablaze in his time there, and near the end of his journey Horn came down with a hacking cough that threatened to carry away his life.

Seen another way, the Raven Queen had opposed him at every turn.

It was as if she knew everything he did was fighting toward an attempt to force her hand in granting Horn a purpose.

In the last port, the one from which he could take ship to the Lost Island of Ee, he took a room so he could rest and ride out the worst of his cough. The Rod of the Eight Winds was concealed in a ceramic globe he’d had fashioned not long after securing it, and covered with poorly crafted paste gems to discourage thieves from becoming too creative. It was well enscorcelled, too, of course, but Horn could handle those without endangering himself.