R. Salvatore - The Dame

“Yes, yes, I know,” an obviously impatient De Guilbe replied, his tone revealing that this decision had weighed heavily upon him. When word had come of Ancient Badden’s designs over Mithranidoon, a plan that would have wiped out all the communities living in the many islands scattered about the warm waters, De Guilbe determined that this fight was not his. He turned from the barbarians and powries, long his enemies, and their call for unity against Badden and decided that the time had come for his missionary group to return to the south, to Vanguard and the civilized lands of Honce. Away from the warm waters of Mithranidoon for more than two weeks, with no knowledge of what had happened in the brewing fight with Badden, the band of monks had wandered the rugged and broken terrain of Alpinador without much success. They had expected to be in Vanguard by this point, back in Chapel Pellinor, at least, but more than once they had lost days of travel by wandering in circles.

And worse, they had lost ten men to the elements and to monsters. Brother Giavno’s warning recalled a dark night only a week before, when a host of ice trolls had descended upon the band. With magic and fighting skills, the brothers and their servants had driven the foul creatures off but at a cost of three lives and many wounds-so many that the entirety of the next day had been spent using the healing magic of the soul stones.

“Our food stores run low,” Giavno said. “When the storm abates, we must form hunting parties and send them out.”

“You are a beacon of hope on this miserable night,” Father De Guilbe scolded. Brother Giavno went respectfully (and fearfully) silent.

“You still carry the weight of guilt that we did not follow Cormack up the glacier to do battle with the Samhaist ancient,” De Guilbe accused him. “Or is it that you still carry the weight of guilt for the flogging you delivered to the traitor?”

“No, Father,” Giavno denied, his eyes averted.

“Yes!” De Guilbe shot back. “Let it wash downstream, Brother Giavno. Cormack was condemned by his own actions. Your arm struck not from personal vengeance but from the demands put upon us as brothers of our beloved Abelle. You struck with righteousness.”

“He was once my friend,” the humble Giavno said simply.

“Of course it pains you, but our road is not easy. Spiritual purity and devotion are oft the harder roads, but it is a course we walk with pride!” He glanced around and gave a helpless little laugh. “Although I admit this Alpinadoran road is at least as confusing! Would that we had an Abelle of a different sort, yes?”

Brother Giavno’s eyes widened at the apparent blasphemy, but Father De Guilbe patted him on the shoulder and chuckled his concerns away. “It is not an easy road we have chosen,” he repeated, “not in body, not in spirit.”

Before Giavno could respond, a brother along the western perimeter of the encampment called out, “Intruders!”

De Guilbe and Giavno rushed down, as did every other member of the group until De Guilbe impatiently waved them back to their posts.

“In the trees!” the monk explained to the leaders when they arrived. He pointed to a small copse of deciduous trees and a few evergreens about twenty yards from the boulder tumble.

De Guilbe stared hard for a short while, believing he noted a form slip through the trees, though he could hardly identify it. He waved several brothers over and handed each a smooth gray stone, a graphite, the stone of lightning.

“All at once,” he explained and held his own hand forward, clenching the largest of the graphite stones. “If it is a troll or goblin scout, then let our barrage ward any others from thinking to come so near. On my count of three.”

“Perhaps it is an ally,” one of the monks replied. “Brother Cormack, or-”

Father De Guilbe fixed him with a withering stare. He most certainly did not want to hear that name with the reverent word brother before it.

De Guilbe looked back to the copse and began counting down. As he finished, ten bolts of lightning reached from the monk line, slashing through the trees, thundering into the snow-covered ground.

“Whoa, now!” came a cry from the north, up the hill below which Giavno and De Guilbe had just been standing. All in the camp turned with a unified gasp to see a man sitting calmly halfway up the rocky, seemingly unclimbable rise. He was dressed in deerskin, a thick brown cloak about his shoulders and upper chest. A tricornered hat, small feather in one side, adorned his head. A stick of some sort, perhaps a bow, rested easily across his lap.

One of the monks near De Guilbe lifted his hand toward the man, as if intending to loose another bolt of lightning.

“Whoa, whoa, young one,” the stranger said, waving his hands defensively and wearing a smirk that showed no fear at all, that almost seemed to mock the impetuous man.

Father De Guilbe slapped the monk’s hand down and stalked up to the stranger, Giavno in his wake. “Who are you, and what business have you with us?” the leader demanded.

“You boys seem a bit lost,” the man replied. “Been watching you for a couple of days now, and I’m guessing that you haven’t any idea where you’re going.”

Father De Guilbe bristled. “We are on our way to Vanguard and Dame Gwydre,” he announced stiffly.

“Oh, I’m not doubting that you know where you want to go,” the man replied. He slapped his hand on his knee and stood up, hooking the bow, for it was indeed a bow, over one shoulder. He eyed the decline before him, then skipped down nimbly and sure-footedly across the snowy and icy stones.

He was not a young man, clearly, his short hair and thick mustache long gone gray, but he moved with the grace of a twenty-year-old. He kept his upper body incredibly still while he moved down the broken path, and his legs seemed too long for his body. He was thin but not skinny and exuded an aura of great strength and power. Monks and attendants shied away from him when he got down from the hill.

“I said that you haven’t an idea of where you’re going,” he finished, coming up before De Guilbe.

“I asked you who you were.”

“I could be asking the same of yourself, since you’re the ones who are out of place here.”

“This is your home?” De Guilbe asked, looking about with mocking doubt.

The man shrugged. “As much as any place could be called that, I expect.”

“And your name?”

The man laughed. “Jameston Sequin,” he replied. “Not that it should mean anything to you.”

“I have never heard of you,” De Guilbe concurred.

“And that pleases me,” Jameston replied. “The fewer of your church who know my name, the happier I am.”

De Guilbe’s face further tightened. “You are a Samhaist.”

“Not in this life, not in the next, if there is a next,” Jameston said with a snort. “And not in the one after that.”

“Then-”

“Then nothing,” Jameston said with finality. “I’m a hunter, and I know this land better than any man alive. You say you want to go to Gwydre, and that’s where I’m going, so you should be glad to see me.”

De Guilbe glanced over at Brother Giavno, who shrugged, unable to deny that they could indeed use some help in navigating their way from this inhospitable land.

“I’ll take you, monk,” Jameston offered. He looked over at the copse of trees, one of which was still showing small flickers of flame from the lightning barrage. “But only if you promise to stop scarring my home.”

J

ust a few miles to the west of De Guilbe’s group, Bransen’s band of six unusual characters settled in for the night. They had found a small hollow between two large stones. The two powries of the team had gone to work immediately widening it, mudding and blocking any creases, cracks, and openings. Now the six-three men, a woman, and the powrie pair-settled in quite comfortably. The industrious dwarves had even constructed a chimney of sorts to keep the smoke out of their impromptu chamber.