***
“We should be looking for her, Kervin, she’s been gone far too long,” Ograk said.
Kervin squinted out the grimy window into the small square that lay before the inn. Marthir had been absent for nearly three hours now and despite her prior assurances he worried whether she had been too bold. He idly rearranged her folded green robe atop the table; his fingers toyed with the intricate stitch work of the seam, designed so the garb fell apart when stretched during the druid’s transformations.
“Can you sense her, Ebfir? Form some kind of druid magic link or some such thing?” Kervin asked.
Ebfir, a small balding druid, was meditating in the corner of the inn’s common room. He looked up with a placid expression and shook his head. “The Woodlink is only a skill for a master druid, friend Kervin, and then only in places of nature.”
“Right. Sorry,” Kervin said, rubbing his dry eyes. “Even after years of travelling with Marthir I’m never sure what you druids can do. In fact I’m not certain how you do it either—it’s not as if you have a gem of power jammed into your breastbone.”
“You are not the first to query the gifts that Nolir has bestowed us,” Ebfir replied, with a beatific smile. “The xirande of the four Orders have spent centuries pondering the occurrence. I understand they refer to it as the druid paradox.”
“Aye, even I’ve heard of that,” Kervin said. “Though it was buried deep in the manic twaddle that comes from Ygris’s lips. So the Woodlink—as you call it—is out of the question then?”
“This city that mistress has brought us to… it is tainted with the breath of the dead, not the warmth of nature.”
“Not with nature?” Ograk said. “I haven’t seen this many weeds since I last visited Sir Tinkek’s garden. I tell you, Kervin, if that knight was here he’d have us out looking for her.”
“Onor’s spit! If the knight was here he’d have us charging down the bloody avenue tooting war horns and taking on an army of dark knights, on the off chance he’d get his name in some ballad,” Kervin said. “No, I think Sugox smiled on us when he gave Tinkek the gout last winter.”
“If only it was contagious then I’d not have come on this fool mission for those bloody tree-huggers,” Ograk said. “Me and Iogar were offered a job on a ship bound for South Aquatonia. I’ve never had a girl from the Isles before.”
Kervin sighed as Ograk skulked away, dragging his war hammer behind him like a sullen child with its toy. Ograk, a broad curly haired Feldorian, was more notorious than Ygris for his continual wining.
The Fire-mage hobbled down the stairs from the roof terrace, as if on cue.
“Ah young carouser that I call friend Ograk,” Ygris said. “The gentle rustle of the multitude of blossom trees that echo like a rich Kokisian opera cannot rival the banshee’s lament that escapes from your bee stung lips. Far from me to question the motivations of your pin headed companion but he seems to take more interest in the antique ports and liquors of the bar than the potential doom we find ourselves faced with.”
Iogar, a huge North Artorian warrior, grunted and returned his attention to the rows of dusty bottles stocked behind the low wooden bar. Ivy had entered through a cracked window and grew like a veil before almost half of them.
“I can’t say that five years away from your prattle has conferred me any resistance to it, Ygris,” Ograk said. “How come you are the only bloody Fire-mage in Nurolia that doesn’t spend his days scuttling back to pay his earnings to the higher sashes in the Tower of Flames?”
“This is a laudable query, young Ograk. It is simply a far more powerful calling to spend my days irritating your good self. I luxuriate in a rather unique status, treading the knife edge between palastar and unoristar, assisted by a rather reprehensible collection of documents related to the carnal activities of a senior mage—kept of course in a chest with remarkable fire-proofing.”
“Just my bloody luck—I’ll go to my grave with your gibbering in my ears.”
Ograk stepped gingerly around the charcoal statue of the barman, frozen in a posture of wiping his bar clean. A thick layer of dust sat on the fissured wood.
Ygris chuckled and strode to the black statue, holding his hands out in mock enquiry.
“Kind sir, we have yet to indulge ourselves of your establishment’s hospitality. Pray tell what has the finest city in the Empire to offer us this fell day? I fear my belly so empty that I consider it highly probable that an enchanted tapeworm, confused about its usual route of entry, had slipped down my fiery britches and has worked its way unseen through my tidy hole below. Yet dare I mention my thirst? I see you have a range of vintages, centuries old that I agonise may now be so alcoholic that they would even make my comrade Kervin’s eyes water and encourage him to sing that little ditty about the lass from Aquatonia West with the purple furred br..”
“Ygris!” Kervin said.
The Fire-mage chuckled and approached Kervin.
“Ygris, you should treat the dead with more respect,” Kervin said. “It’s bad luck to fool around with them. This place is dense with the cheated spirits of the Empire.”
Ygris nodded a touch sheepishly and came to sit next to his friend.
Ograk leant against the dusty bar, attempting nonchalance. “What happened here to make them this way, Kervin?”
Kervin peered out of the dusty window again, chewing on some tobacco. He scratched his brown beard as he spoke; this place made him itch.
“No one really knows. Everyone within the city and in the lands for about a hundred and fifty miles around was killed. The last records from Belgo and Keresh detail that a force from the eastern part of the Empire, under the Praetor of the East, had attacked Erturia.”
“That was the Emperor’s brother wasn’t it? He ran Goldoria, Thetoria, Ssinthor and Mirioth?” asked Ograk.
“Yes, I think so,” Kervin said. “They’d snuck across the Khullian Mountains somehow or maybe around through Kanshar and Foom. While the battles were going on in the Straits of Belgo and down the Valley of Shurt between Feldor and Keresh, he obviously thought he’d try come and surprise his brother.”
“Some family reunion,” Ograk said, looking at the incinerated bar man.
“Then some serious magic was let loose and puff the Empire ends with a flash,” Kervin said quietly.
A silence fell on the room and Kervin looked back out on the square. A dozen black statues were frozen in mid stride, their feet now obscured by small bushes that flowered purple in the spring sun. He shuddered and turned to Ygris, who was twiddling with his beaded beard in thought.
“The end of the Empire and the chaining of the magi,” Ygris said.
Ograk uncorked a dusty bottle that his silent friend had passed to him and sniffed it with reluctance.
“I thought you were all towing the line since the Mage Wars? That was donkey’s years ago, before both Empires!” Ograk said, starting to sip the port.
“You surprise me with a knowledge that does not relate to either the chink of coin or pursuits most carnal, Ograk! Indeed your wet maid must have broken you from her teat oft enough for you to recall that indeed the original Codex came about after the Dust Plague of Azagunta, that signalled the cessation of the war. Yet at that time it was not so restrictive: it simply forbade any mage from the rule of a nation or lands. It still allowed us to fight in the armies of kings and dukes and indeed the Empire embraced wizards as it spread its tendrils across the lands. Years later, in the wake of the Empire’s demise, a council met in Belgo. They were formed by the fragments of the shattered Empire. Sadly they bowed to the zeal of the Goldorians and created a code that heavily restricted any wizard from serving in armies or conflicts beyond the miniscule.
“Now, sadly, the majority of the wizards of this world are naught but civil servants with parlour tricks. There remain many tales, agreeably most apocryphal, about straw sucking peasants, brains addled by serial bestiality who were foolish enough to chance their arm against a wanderi
ng member of the Order. Ah, the gamble of slinging goat soil at a baldy you erroneously consider a visaline only to bask in the torrent of lava from the thrusting arm of a ferenge.”
“Well your Codex is a good thing if charcoal boy here is anything to judge by,” Ograk said. He shuddered as he swallowed the antique port. “Onor’s spit! That’s wiped the lining of my throat.”
Kervin laughed and looked back out of the window. In astonishment he saw a galloping horse burst from the far side of the square, scattering the black statues like skittles. He leapt to his feet, grabbed his bow and smashed the dusty window with his elbow. It exploded outwards with a crash and he yelled to the others in the room of the danger.
Eight knights ran into the square in pursuit of the horse. Kervin saw a quarrel jutting from her flank as she galloped towards them. Ygris was at his side as the three others gathered their weapons and he pushed open the door to the inn and began speaking words of power.