R. Salvatore - The Ancient

Returning from their last trip to Chapel Isle, they had prepared and buried Regwegno’s heart and some rock and begun the process. This very afternoon, right before they had departed, they had felt the first rumblings from the Sepulcher (the term also was used to describe the physical grave-womb). Regwegno’s son would climb free five months hence, and judging from those initial trembles all expected this one would prove a scrapper to make his sire proud.

“I’m hardly for remembering it,” Mcwigik admitted, “for I been a hundred five of me hundred thirty right here on the lake.”

The dwarf behind him, the only one other than Bikelbrin who had come to Mithranidoon beside Mcwigik, gazed wistfully out to the northwest, toward the towering glacier wall, and lamented, “I make me brother Heycalnuck paddle out to the ice, just so I can feel the feel o’ cold water. Never thinked I’d miss the dark chill of the Mirianic, did I.”

“Aye,” Bikelbrin agreed.

“And I’ll be finding it again’s me hope,” said Mcwigik, and even the wistful dwarf behind him stared at him incredulously for that comment!

“Mcwigik the fool,” Pragganag said from the back. “The land’s to be freezing yer blood solid inside ye, ye dope. Ye thinking ye’re a glacier troll, are ye? Well, ye’re thinking’s to get yerself dead.”

“Yach and aye!” said the dwarf behind Mcwigik. “We’re not even for knowing where lies the damned Mirianic. East, say some, but west for others. How many hundreds fell on the march inland, the one the priests called glorious? Weren’t for Mithranidoon and we’d’ve all been killed to death.”

“By the cold, if not the barbarians, if not the monsters,” Bikelbrin agreed, but there was a noticeably different timbre in his voice compared to the consternation of his fellow traveler.

Bikelbrin and Mcwigik exchanged a silent thought, then, a slight nod and resigned grin, for they often mused about leaving Mithranidoon, and of late had openly wondered how much worse death, even death without Sepulcher, could be compared to the tedium of life on the foggy lake.

One of the dwarves behind them began to sing, “When the stars come out to shine.”

“Twenty boys, side-to-side in a line,” another intoned, picking up the solemn chant of an old powrie war song, one that ended, as had the battle it described, badly.

“Yach, but not that one!” another cried. “Tonight’s the night for fun, ye fools. We’re not for war, but for sport!”

“Sport that’s to get Prag’s face broken,” said the first singer, and all the dwarves began to laugh-except for Pragganag, of course. He stared hard at the others and slid his hatchet’s metal head along a sharpening stone, the screech of it lost in their continuing laughter.

The night was dark, so they could hardly see the darker silhouette of Chapel Isle through the mist. They were quite familiar with their approach, though, and few could navigate as well as powries, even when Mithranidoon’s mist was high enough to almost constantly obscure the stars.

“Ha, but it’s lookin’ like the monk’s ready for a fight,” Bikelbrin said after a long period in which only the quiet dipping of paddles in the warm lake water accompanied the ride. The dwarf lifted his paddle and pointed it ahead, where through the drifting mist a single torch could be seen.

“He’s there with fifty o’ his friends in wait, not to doubt,” Pragganag grumbled.

“Then it’s open hunting and me beret’s sure to shine all the brighter,” said Mcwigik. “Steady and straight to the beach, in either case, and if there’s a bunch to be found, ye be quick in passing that axe, Prag, so we can open them up wide and fast.”

Cormack never heard the craft’s approach, for the wind was up this night and off the water, and the sound of the lapping waves against the rocky beach filled his ears. He had been out of the chapel for several hours by then; his second torch burned low, and his attention had long since left the unseen water. He sat in the sand, his back against a stone, staring up at the stars, which peeked out every now and then through the gray swirl. He worked two gemstones, a soul stone and a lodestone, through his fingers, tapping them together at intervals. The lodestone’s power lay in magnetism, and Cormack had often come out with it, using its magical properties to look through it at the beach and shallows surrounding Chapel Isle. He had found many coins, and old weapons and tools, for with the lodestone he could sense metal-he could even use the power of the stone to telekinese small metallic objects to his waiting hand.

He hadn’t found anything this night, but he hadn’t really looked, using the lodestone as a pretense for getting out of the chapel without drawing suspicion. Once out here, the sun setting, he lost any interest in even pretending to search, as one question dominated his every thought: Would the powries come?

Even the pressing thought of impending battle had been lost to him soon after that, as the stars began to shine and before the mists climbed high enough to obscure them so greatly. Cormack often lost himself among the celestial lights, letting his mind drift back to his days in Vanguard at Chapel Pellinor and across the gulf in Chapel Abelle, the mother abbey of his Church. Those had been good and heady days those years ago. Full of purpose and meaning, Cormack had charged into Chapel Abelle with his eyes wide and his heart open, soaking in every detail, every premise, every tenet and every hope of Blessed Abelle’s homily.

Did those ravenous and hopeful fires remain? the monk asked himself. He often found himself melancholy these long and arduous days, his love for Chapel Isle and this lake called Mithranidoon long lost. He did not cheer when the next level of the rock abbey had been completed, for it was a place that no one other than the brothers and their servants ever attended. He did not feel joy at the sermons of Brother Giavno or Father De Guilbe, even when they read from his favorite of Blessed Abelle’s teachings. The messengers, he knew, could not inspire him, for while Cormack hated neither man (in fact, he was quite fond of Giavno), he knew in his heart that they had misinterpreted their purpose here in Alpinador. They had been sent to proselytize, to teach and to convert. Out here, the early hopes for their mission had not come to fruition. The barbarians would not hear their words any longer, and the rift would not mend. To Cormack’s thinking, and he knew their neighbors on the lake better than anyone else at Chapel Isle, their failure would never reverse.

The fighting would not stop.

The barbarian souls would not be saved.

“Ah, Milkeila, alas, for you were my last hope,” Cormack whispered, and his voice thinned even more as he moved to toss a pebble out toward the water, for there, coming at him through the uneven mist, loomed the hairy and wrinkled faces of the bloody-cap dwarves.

Cormack scrambled to his feet, brushing the sand from his pants.

“So ye came out,” Mcwigik greeted him. The dwarf stepped closer and glanced all about, and Cormack retreated a step. “Alone?”

Cormack nodded, his eyes scanning the small band, then locking on the one in the back of the bunch, his planned opponent, who stood grinning wickedly and slapping a wooden club across his open palm. For a moment, panic set in, and the monk felt his knees go weak, his brain screaming at him to turn and flee with all speed!

“Alone?” Mcwigik said again, and he slapped the monk on the hip.

Cormack instinctively hopped aside, and all the dwarves bristled, and the man thought he would be overrun immediately. But the attack never came.

“Well?” Mcwigik demanded.

“Yes, alone,” Cormack stammered. “I gave you my word.”