Alex Irvine - The seal of Karga Kul

Fool.

His final bit of proof would be this half-elf wizard who even now stood within arm’s reach, resolutely defying the charge of the sorrowsworn and the shadowravens who flocked about them.

Fools die and you are a fool, first. You will die, and then because of you, all of your companions.

The cambion’s mouth was dry. It had to speak the charm three times before making all of the sounds correctly. And then it knew that as the last syllable left its mouth that this final spell would kill it. There was no regret in this knowledge. The spell would kill another as well.

The shadowravens boiled in a cloud around the stones of Iban Ja’s bridge, unable to approach because of Iriani’s protective charm and the energies of Erathis and Bahamut projected through Keverel and the paladin Biri-Daar. The six adventurers had slaughtered tieflings beyond counting, and the cambion magus charged with holding the bridge lay dying; the far side was nearly gained.

Then Iriani looked down, toward the sorrowsworn, and his charms faltered. “No,” he said. He began to turn, his face a terrible mask of helpless realization and terror, but before he ever saw the magus again, the wizard Iriani immolated in a pillar of soulfire. It burst from the twin seats of the soul in head and heart, annihilating Iriani’s body in the time it took for his comrades to feel the heat. The cambion magus died knowing it had succeeded; Iriani died knowing he had been close, so close to delivering his comrades through to the next stage of their errand. As quickly as the blast of soulscorching fire appeared, it blazed out, leaving Iriani’s body unmarked but lifeless, to topple sideways onto the edge of the rock. The body rested there for a moment. Maybe it was the wind that took it in the end, or the heavy tread of a man or elf or hobgoblin fighting for its life that rocked the stone just enough. Or perhaps the last escaping breath of an elf wizard named Iriani, native to the forests that blanket the mountains that give rise to the Whitefall on its course toward Karga Kul and the ocean, was enough to settle the body so that it tipped, bit by bit, over the edge. And fell.

The cambion magus was dead and smiling. And the shadowraven swarm began to press closer.

“Break!” screamed Biri-Daar. “To the far side! Run!”

They ran, pursued by the last of the tieflings, slashing their way through shadowravens that cut them terribly with undead beak and talon. For the rest of his life Remy would remember the shadowraven talon that slashed along his forehead seeking his eyes. Through the spatter of his own blood he saw his sword cut through it, saw the blade tear the shadowraven into tatters of shadow that blew away in the winds of the gorge. They ran and leaped from stone to stone, finding the other side together, fighting the last of the tieflings as they scrambled up the ruined giant’s playground of fallen and tilted stone blocks that remained of that side of Iban Ja’s bridge.

When they were across, the tieflings and hobgoblins fell back. Not just to the next stone away from the surviving portion of the bridge. They fell back stone by stone until they reached the exact center of the gorge. There they raised their swords and spears, clashing them on shield and roaring a song of victory.

“Did they win?” Lucan panted. “I didn’t think they won.”

“We’re here,” Biri-Daar. “But Iriani is not.”

“I saw him fall,” Remy said.

Kithri was nodding. “Me too. He was already dead.”

Looking out over the mass of hobgoblins and tieflings, Biri-Daar said, “So should we be. The shadowravens do not follow, the sorrowsworn retreat to their lair. The rest come only halfway. Why?”

Lucan was looking at the road that stretched ahead of them, from the lip of the gorge into a misty and forested middle distance. “I have a guess,” he said.

Behind them, the tieflings sang. Biri-Daar looked at them with hate plain on her face. When they had caught their breath, though, she led them away and would say no more about their passage across the Bridge of Iban Ja.

Not even when Kithri tried to provoke her. “You weren’t quite yourself out there, paladin,” she said lightly after they had walked a few hours into the woods. “Shouting, demonstrating…”

“It got those tieflings into a frenzy, that’s certain,” Lucan added.

Biri-Daar raised a hand, palm out toward them. “Do not try to bait me. If Iriani’s death is on my head, I will know it. I will repent of it. Keverel, I would speak with you a moment.”

The cleric followed her a little way apart from the group. The rest of them walked in a loose group. They had no horses, no packs; they would be living from what they could forage until the next settlement, and none of them knew where that settlement might be. “When I passed through here some years ago,” Lucan said, “there was a trading post near where the Crow Road emerged from these woods.”

“Bring on the dancing girls,” Kithri said with as much sarcasm as she could muster.

“Your tongue is somewhat dulled of late,” Lucan said. “I fear for your health.”

“I fear for yours if you don’t hold your tongue,” she snapped.

Remy saw the stresses pulling at the group. He said nothing. It was not yet his role to have something to say. He walked. They all walked, in small groups that shifted and broke and reformed as they rose away from the Gorge of Noon into the highland forest on its eastern rim. None of them had much to say because each of them had much to think. Iriani, dying, weighed on their minds.

“These woods are touched,” Lucan said sometime later, when dusk was nearly total and they had resigned themselves to a night of sleeping rough.

“Feywild?” Keverel said softly.

Lucan nodded, looking around. “They will show themselves when they wish to,” he said.

Which was just at the moment of full dark, when Remy could no longer see a trace of color in the woods around him or on his own clothes. “Travelers,” came a voice from the trees to their left. “It is forbidden to traverse this part of the road without the permission of the Lord of the Wood.”

Lucan answered first. “I can see you, elf. And you can see me. Come out and let us talk like civilized beings.”

“You know you don’t belong here,” the elf said, appearing at the side of the road. “The stink of the city is in your clothes.”

“I belong where I choose to go,” Lucan said.

“No. You may choose to go anywhere. But you may not choose whether the people already there decide you belong.” The elf winked at them, sporting cruelty in his smile. “Same for your half-breed who didn’t make it this far. It’s the curse of mixed blood, I’m afraid.”

There might have been blows exchanged then. On both sides hands fell to sword hilts and eyes locked, gauging defenses and reflexes and-most importantly-intent. More elves appeared from the trees.

Then another figure on horseback spoke, and everyone else present realized that he had been there for the entire exchange even though none of them had heard him approach. “Easy, Leini. They’ve lost a friend,” he said. “They shouldn’t have to endure your baiting after that.”

“This is none of your business, Paelias,” the elf Leini said.

“I believe it is. These travelers, who have spent their day fighting the tieflings and killing off the cambion magus of the old bridge, deserve better than your hostility.” Paelias turned to Biri-Daar. “You may stay until your companions have healed enough to go on. But we want no traffic with the wars of the outside, or the hatreds of this world. You survived the bridge; for that we offer you respect, and a meal, and a dry place to spend the night. Please don’t ask for more. Even if,” he finished, glancing at the sharp-tongued Leini, “he provokes you.”