R. Salvatore - The Dame

They had left the glacier above Mithranidoon a full week after the departure of Father De Guilbe and his monks, after the fall of Ancient Badden and the sorting that needed to be done in the aftermath. Little fighting had been required after Badden’s fall, for most of his minions, including the many Samhaist priests who had come into his call, had fled at his demise. These six, along with Milkeila’s barbarian tribe and the other powries of Mithranidoon, had remained in the ice castle the ancient had constructed, awaiting an attack. No other priests of Badden’s Samhaist order had arrived, however. The trolls, giants, and goblins brought together under the power of the great and evil man had simply dispersed to the mountains with his fall.

Still, there had been much to do. Ancient Badden had constructed his grand ice palace through the earth magic of Mithranidoon, digging a deep well to access that power directly. Day after day after his fall, the shamans of Milkeila’s Alpinadoran tribes had worked tirelessly to close that conduit of power, to heal the wound Badden had inflicted upon the glacier, the lake, the earth itself. There also remained the disposition of Badden’s prisoners, of which Jond had been one. Of the others, more than fifty in number, some had seemed capable of making the journey south with the winter coming on in full, but others obviously could not have survived.

And so it had been decided that just this one band of outcasts, unaffiliated any longer with the church or the tribe or the clan, would make the arduous and dangerous trip to Dame Gwydre in the hopes of securing a rescue caravan in the spring. Until then, the other survivors of the ancient’s insanity would live on Chapel Island, the now vacated land where Cormack’s Abellican brethren had built their home.

It fell on this group, now taken to calling themselves Six Cogs One, to relay the tidings to the people of Vanguard and to find the resolution.

“You should return with the caravan in the spring,” Bransen said to Milkeila as they discussed the tasks before them again that night in the hollow.

The woman shook her head.

“Don’t overestimate the generosity of Yan Ossum,” Cormack answered for her, using the proper title of Milkeila’s tribe. “They understand that in agreeing to bring the refugees from Vanguard to Chapel Isle they are threatening their very way of life.”

“Longer than our memories have we lived on Mithranidoon,” Milkeila added. “Only rarely have outsiders come to our shores, as with the brothers of Abelle a few short years ago. Now we have invited strangers to settle upon our waters, perhaps to learn our ways, and then they will be allowed to leave. I am amazed that Teydru and the others agreed to this-I think it an impulsive decision made in the glow of Ancient Badden’s fall.”

“The fall and, therefore, the salvation of all who dwell on Mithranidoon,” Bransen reminded.

“Yach, but that Badden would’ve washed them all away,” Mcwigik put in.

“All true, but there is no doubt in my mind that the shamans and elders will come to recognize the danger of their decision,” said Milkeila.

“You do not believe they would hurt the refugees?” Bransen asked.

“No,” Cormack insisted before Milkeila could answer. “They are honorable to a fault. They would not bring such dishonor and treachery upon themselves.”

“But they will not be pleased at the arrival of the caravan from Vanguard in the spring, should it ever actually arrive,” said Milkeila. “And I would not have myself associated with that troubling spectacle any more than I would now. I will not return to Mithranidoon, likely not for the rest of my life.”

Bransen, having no argument, simply nodded.

“But me and me friend’re going back, and might be in the spring,” Mcwigik said. “Soon as we find a place for our kin away from that lake, we’ll go and fetch ’em.”

“Yach, and hopin’ it’ll be a place back on the Julianthes,” Mcwigik’s powrie sidekick Bikelbrin added. “Back to the dark sea, at least.”

“Where to, then, for any of us?” Cormack asked, drawing all eyes his way. “You, Bransen, will find your wife, and Gwydre promised you that her Writ of Passage will allow you to go wherever you will, but what’s in store for Milkeila and me? What for the powries, whatever their desires? We know where we are going now, to Dame Gwydre, but what about tomorrow’s journey?”

“Wherever the Father of Chapel Pellinor tells me to go,” Brother Jond said with a little laugh.

Bransen tightened up at the reminder that his friend Jond had ties greater than their road-sewn bonds.

“It is so much easier when you bear no responsibility for your road, true?” Cormack asked playfully. Bransen noted that the former monk was looking directly at him as he spoke.

“Sometimes, Broth… Cormack,” Jond corrected himself, echoing that helpless laugh. “And sometimes it is a burden, truly.”

“Perhaps our roads will stay as one, then,” said Milkeila. “I would enjoy that.”

“Not mine,” Bransen said immediately and definitively. “With the fall of Badden, my indenture is ended and my road is my own to choose.”

“And you would not choose to be with us?” asked Jond. “You wound me, friend.”

“No, it is not-” Bransen started to explain, but he noted Jond’s mischievous grin and knew the blind man was playing him here. “I miss my wife,” he finished simply.

“I can understand that, certainly,” said Cormack, who was now staring at Milkeila intently, a look Bransen understood, recognizing that he wore that same mask of desire and longing whenever he looked upon Cadayle.

Cadayle! She filled the young man’s thoughts then, more fully than any time since his departure for Alpinador. His anticipation grew by the moment as he sat there in the comfortable hollow. All he longed for was to be in Cadayle’s arms once more.

Soon, he knew. Soon.

I left the injured woman with some friends in Alpinador,” Jameston Sequin explained to Dame Gwydre only four days after he had met with De Guilbe’s party. With the scout leading them, the troupe had made great time moving into Vanguard and to Gwydre’s castle in Pellinor.

Eager for news from the front, Gwydre had wasted no time in summoning Jameston to her court. When he had arrived, Gwydre had immediately shuffled Father De Guilbe and Brother Giavno, along with the other brothers of Abelle in attendance (including the father of Chapel Pellinor and her own lover, Alandrais), off to the side of the room.

Her smile had drooped with Jameston’s every word as the man recounted his short time with her strike force, ending in a disastrous fight with a troll prisoner caravan, when, seemingly, it had all come undone. When, Jameston believed, Bransen and Jond and the others had been fully defeated.

By Jameston’s grim account, it seemed certain that Ancient Badden had won.

“I went back toward the glacier, but just a few miles,” Jameston explained. “Badden surrounded himself with many powerful minions-giants, even. I couldn’t get near the place.”

“But you do not know if they are dead?” Gwydre asked, obviously uncomfortably. Beside her, Dawson McKeege put a comforting hand on her shoulder to steady her.

“Only poor old Crait, and a fine fighter he was,” said Jameston. “And that strange younger fighter, the one in black.”

“Bransen,” said Gwydre. “The Highwayman.”

Jameston nodded. “Not sure if he’s dead, but it seems as if he got hit on the head, and hard. He could hardly walk as the trolls led them off. I doubt he made it alive to the glacier.”

“That’d be a terrible loss for us,” said Dawson, who had brought Bransen to Vanguard to fight for Gwydre’s cause.