Forty-three years ago
Henry Gleamwood’s Manor
Tokmor City
The sound of the downfall thundered endlessly throughout the manor. It masked most other noises, but Breac was still being cautious. His heavy leather boots were wrapped in soft, padded wool to help mask his steps, yet still managed to make the old wooden stairs creak as he descended towards the ground floor.
Just because I can’t see you doesn’t mean I don’t know what you’re doing, Adele.
Recognising the amused twist in his mentor’s voice took the sting out of his works, but Breac still gave a start at the sudden voice in his head.
Adele Gerrywood jumped, dropping the emerald-encrusted necklace she had just managed to get her hands on. “I was just…” she muttered, before grimacing and letting the pilfered display case fall shut, walking back to her post near the entrance to the central tower the manor was build around. She recognized who she was talking to, and there was little point lying to the most powerful telepath in the Guild.
Said telepath – Lord William Bregan, Knight-Captain of the Little Warriors Adventurers Guild and one of its few members who shared a homeworld with Breac Sunfist – was standing about twenty feet away, on the other side of the door to the kitchens. Breac was no telepath himself, but through Bregan’s mind, Breac could sense the location and rough surface thoughts of his three companions, and even gain glimpses into minds of the Skywatch members as his Lord instinctively relayed all this information to his agents. As he walked past Adele to make his report, he waved a non-worded but wry sense of sympathy and resignation towards her. And felt her make a rude gesture at his back in response.
Breac eyed the central tower warily along his way. It was of sound enough construction. Being only two stories high (three including the basement), and calling it a tower seemed odd, but that’s what it was generally called – a transit tower. It contained a stairwell and a central room, and allowed people to move between levels of the manor without being seen through the windows from outside. It was a popular design with the larger palaces of Braeland nobility where the sight of servants performing their business was considered uncouth. But to have such a tower in a relatively small 2-story manor was…interesting. Particularly when there was no sign of the manor’s owner.
Stepping between a pair of Skywatch officers, Breac made his way into the kitchen and up to the chef’s table. The bench was low by human standards, but still reached up to his sternum, sporting two emptied sacks that once contained flour. Pearing under the table, Breac spotted a pair of his fellow smallfolk – two halflings, Prius Tanner and his new girlfriend Narlene ‘Narls’ Penrose – inspecting something closely in a small storage pit they’d opened up on the other side. It was a sub-cellar, accessed from a trapdoor, and it stank of over-ripe vegetables of dubious quality.
Breac turned towards the Captain of the Skywatch officers, Captain Herren, and his Lord Bregan.
“Two upstairs,” Breac reported. “A terrified butler and a kitchen maid. The butler says he knows nothing of where Sarah Potting is, which is a half-lie. He doesn’t want to know. The maid only started working here two weeks ago.” He gave a slight nod to Captain Heren of the Skywatch, then gathered himself and turned his focus to Lord Bregan.
It was always an experience standing face to face with William Bregan. He was an unassumingly built human, slight of shoulder and a good head short of six feet tall, appearing to be about sixty years old. He was dressed distinctively, with his trademark black silk doublet and hose combo, black woolen cape – silvered trim and all – and his straight stark-white hair falling to shoulder length. He had a stern, heavy brow, with sharp angular features, a prominent nose and sharper cheekbones. But it was the eyes that no one ever forgot. They were a bright, electric blue, and they held Breac’s attention in a vice grip. This was not anything Bregan was doing deliberately. Breac knew that if he chose, Bregan could enthrall entire crowds with his gaze alone – or the reverse, disappearing into them so completely as to be utterly untraceable. But even when he was in a passive and relaxed state, there was an unmistakable sense of presence about Bregan. Sometimes it was impossible to look away from him.
Right now, Bregan was leaning back casually against the wall, legs crossed at the ankle, fingers steepled in front of his chest. Breac had come to recognize this as his most relaxed posture. “And no sign of Henry Gleamwood? Or young Miss Potting?” Bregan asked, despite knowing the answer.
“None.”
“So either Adele’s pet owl and the poor Skywatch agents patrolling outside in this downpour have collective blindness, or Gleamwood is downstairs with the girl and the other two thirds of his retinue.”
“Or he’s not in the manor,” Captain Heren objected.
“Still not enough probable cause for you, Captain?” Bregan arched a brow.
“No. Miss Potting’s nightly absence is odd, and I agree she was last seen entering this manor, but she works for Henry Gleamwood. I’m sure it’s explainable. Henry Gleamwood’s uncle is on the council. His family is ancient and noble, and its members are critical benefactors of the city.”
“Yes, and Gleamwood’s butler buying several pouches of Angel’s Trumpet this morning was a total coincidence…not to worry, Captain, the Guild is here to take the legal heat.” Bregan shifted his attention back towards the kitchen entrance. “Adele, maintain the perimeter and ensure no one comes after us. Prius, Narlene, are you two just about…”
Narls gave out a soft, satisfied ‘Ha!’ and Breac received a mental image of a hidden stairwell leading into the cellar below. He glanced over just in time to see her pink hair disappearing into the storage pit, Prius close behind her.
“Good. Sunfist, you take point. You checked inside this tower upstairs, yes?”
“Correct,” Breac replied. “I heard voices below but didn’t enter. But I am certain there is no one on the second floor inside the tower. Unless he’s come up since I just checked…”
“He has not,” Bregan assured him, pointing at the emptied sacks of flour, “and we will be able to prove that. Once you reach the bottom of the stairs, you will see a wine cellar and a door to the bottom floor of the tower. Give a silent countdown, then enter, and expect hostilities. On your signal, initiate.”
Leading their procession to the door Adele was still guarding, Breac wondered for a moment how no one in the cellar below had noticed them. Then he realized with a start – the circular wall around the central rooms and staircase didn’t just prevent anyone from looking in. It worked both ways. It prevented anyone from looking out. Combined with the rain, and the wool bindings muffling their footsteps, whoever was in this tower wasn’t going to see or hear them coming.
The stairs were made of polished limestone. It was dark, and the stairs felt barely deep enough for Breac’s feet, but he could feel his Lord’s reassuring presence behind him even more soundly than that of his goddess. His shield glowed dimly in the darkness, illuminating a chamber with wine cabinets lining the walls, and a stout oaken door at the near end. He raised his shield, held up three fingers with his free hand. I am a cleric of Tymera. I need no weapon and fear no darkness, for the sun itself is my fist.
Two, One…
Inside were 6 figures surrounding a dais of black obsidian, on which a dark-haired woman in a simple maids dress lay. Sarah Potting was not bound, but the veins on her neck were turning a dark maroon and her eyes were rolled back into her head as she thrashed weakly against some invisible force. At her head was a man with a long, curved knife in one hand, and a blood red crystal in the other.
The two figures furthest from them gave a cry of alarm and raised their crossbows. Breac’s shield blazed, and both bolts glanced harmlessly away. Knowing he had a moment before they reloaded, Breac raised a hand towards the three figures drawing swords and running towards him, their eyes widening as their muscles seized painfully. The assailants’ weapons clattered from their hands as they were left straining where they stood against a force they couldn’t perceive.
The man at the head of the dais looked up and began muttering – and then stopped, his face turning ashen as a much greater power first snuffed his spell out of existence, then his mind. He was left slack-jawed and agape, his shoulders slumped with a defeat he no longer had the capacity to understand.
Captain Heren entered third, behind Lord Bregan, and closed quickly onto the two at the back of the room, his own heavy crossbow leveled at them. “Stop! Drop them, now!” Two more Skywatch officers entered and began securing the figures Breac was holding motionless.
Taking care to maintain his Hold spell for the moment, Breac moved towards the dais. He sniffed and smelt the smoky trace of Devil’s Powder and saw traces of the red dust staining the collars of Sarah’s dress. They had arrived in time, but she had clearly inhaled an excessive amount of the poison and had minutes to live without his aid. He placed a hand gently around her face and the darkness in her veins subsided, her eyes fluttered for a moment and then shot wide open.
“Easy, lass,” he tried to reassure her. “Just lie still. I’m a friend.”
Sarah stared up at him, then gasped a lungful of air to scream. Then she fainted, as Bregan’s eyes flicked towards her for the briefest moment.
“What is the meaning of this?” Captain Heren growled at his new prisoners. “Captives, dark rituals…someone better explain what you were attempting here!”
“Oh, I expect that has something to do with it all.” Bregan pointed to the roof.
Above them, in a space directly above the dais, a circle had been drawn into the roof with various symbols etched around the rim. It looked like it had been drawn in blood, and that blood was smoldering, threatening to burst into flame. Within the circle, the faint outline of a huge, horned, bestial head leered down, and Breac felt a slight tear between the planes, a rift in reality that the figure was steadily pushing through. Looking at it all made Breac feel like there were insects crawling beneath his skin, and he saw the Skywatch all shudder and tear their gaze away, beginning to scratch uncontrollably at any exposed flesh.
“What…what is the meaning of this?” stammered a man from a shadowed side of the tower to their right. He was young, Breac would say in his twenties, with rich blonde hair curled almost playfully. His face had the same hard, chiseled look of many of elven descent. He almost looked like he could be a relative of Lord Bregan’s. But there were unnatural dark lines around the edges of his eyes that set Breac’s instincts on edge.
“Lord Henry Gleamwood, I presume?” Bregan spoke with a bright, friendly tone as he turned, but there was a sardonic twist to his smile. “The owner of this establishment.”
“Oh my…demon summoning? Sacrifices? In my own home? Ulric, what have you done? I swear, my lords, good constable, I came in just behind you, I had naught to do…”
“Oh, please,” Bregan answered with disdain. “It’s pouring rain outside, yet your boots are clean and your hair is dry.”
“I mean, I came down from upstairs as you entered.”
“I checked there before we came down,” Breac growled.
“And no one’s come this way after Lord Bregan passed,” Adele sung out sweetly from the top of the stairs.
“The good captain witnessed me mark the tower above with glyphs and pour flour on the floor,” Lord Bregan added. “The glyphs have not been triggered, so I am certain that when the Skywatch check the flour, they will find no footprints.”
“There’s another entrance to this cellar behind me…”
“You mean this one, from the kitchen?” Prius called out from behind a door hidden in the darkness behind Gleamwood. “Nope. You didn’t come this way either. You were down here the whole time, you murderous pr-”
“Henry…” the Captain breathed. “Of all the people who would fall to this madness. Why, boy?”
Lord Gleamwood looked about a moment more, then snarled and unlatched a small device from his belt, pointing it at Bregan. A cloud of flies burst forth, engulfing the entire cellar, sending the Skywatch coughing and flailing about aimlessly in a desperate struggle for air. Breac pulled Sarah off the dais, covering the young woman with his shield while keeping watch that her airway remained clear in the swarm. He clenched his fist, punched the floor, and a bright light burst forth from his gauntlet, causing the air to rain dead flies for a moment – and then the air was clear again.
Gleamwood had reached an empty cabinet on the side of the cellar opposite where Breac had entered. He threw it aside, revealing a small door behind. He made to yank it open – and it did not budge. Bregan’s face was rapidly forming in the wood of the door’s structure, glaring sternly down on him. He turned and grabbed at the dagger on his belt in desperation.
Lord Bregan appeared to cast no spell, spoke no words. But his willpower echoed throughout the basement with a crushing sense of purpose, as his white hair and black silver-lined cloak flared behind him in a wind that seemed to touch nothing else. Breac was certain his own skull would explode from the pressure…and then that pressure focused on its target, and Bregan formed his command.
SLEEP.
And Lord Henry Gleamwood collapsed face-first to the floor.
From the ceiling, the dim shape of the horned face glared down at them in rage. Flames speared out from the sides, grasping at the thick wooden rafters. There was a horrible sucking feeling, like the air in the room being pulled out at pressure, and then a moment of silence.
And then, as the demon’s head disappeared and the rift vanished, the roof exploded with fire. Prius and Narls burst into the cellar, gazing about in astonishment. Adele shrieked from upstairs, “The whole house is aflame! Get out of there!”
Bregan sighed. “Why does it always have to be fire? I trust you to get them out safely, Sunfist.” He grabbed Sarah Potting out of Breac’s arms, turned on his heel, and vanished.
***************
“No, no, what are you…get out of there! You’re just going to dent them if you try to brute-force it like that!” Damien Ironbrand’s voice rang out across the docks at a group of younger and inexperienced dock workers unloading several brewing vats from the Furious. With a downpour imminent the workers had decided not to wait on a block-and-tackle or even a few rollers and were trying to simply haul the heavy equipment onto the pier, but they were in danger of wasting more time with their impatience. Damien had lost most of his memory during Guildfall. He had lost nothing of his intolerance of a rushed or sloppy job.
Breac took a moment to admire the view before muttering a quick prayer to Tymera to aid the workers. He smiled at the slight sense of uncertainty he received as his goddess seemed genuinely confused – did the cleric mean to protect the workers from their own carelessness, or from Damien’s blistering rebuke?
A purple-haired humanoid in a suit and bright pink bowtie was approaching from the Tomfoolery Inn, just a short walk onshore. “Ah…Damien? Gentlefolk? Must be some kind of mistake, I hadn’t ordered any of this…” It was the Kalashtar owner and keeper of the Tomfoolery Inn, Oswald Smith.
Breac roused himself from his reverie and stepped forward to intercept. “No, no. It’s ok, Oswald. Those are for me. We’re, ah…” He awkwardly stopped as he realized how delicate the conversation had become. Oswald had just recently, within a month ago, reopened the Tomfoolery Inn. The same Inn that had famously shut down hundreds of years ago after the Guild built their own tavern within the Hall. Only recently, after the destruction of the Hall at Nathrael’s hands, had the local businesses begun to thrive again with the Guild’s patronage.
“Oh. I see.” Oswald straightened his bowtie unnecessarily. “You’re rebuilding. Of course you are, that was always going to happen eventually.”
“We’re still buying our ale from you, lad,” Breac reassured him. “We’ll just be doing so in bulk on occasion.”
They were interrupted by the air, which chose that moment to turn to water. The downpour sent the workers scurrying for cover belowdecks on the Furious, and set Breac and Oswald to scrambling to the front porch of the Tomfoolery. The ‘porch’ was more like a slight overhang of the upper levels. The sudden gloom of the storm seemed to suck the color from the pair, washing Oswald’s purple hair and Breac’s red braids with a dull grey hue, barely offset by the warmth of a lantern.
“Brrr! That’s colder than I thought it would be…” Oswald shivered. “But yes – I’m relieved to still have the Guild’s business. At least while the World Tree remains, well, deceased…how goes Wintergreen’s efforts to regrow it, by the way?”
“Slow and steady,” Breac assured him. It wasn’t entirely a lie, but it wasn’t a topic of conversation for outside the Guild Hall either. “It will be some time before the Guild will be trading with other worlds again, I can assure you of that much. Honestly, I haven’t even started figuring out how to forge new shield tokens.”
Oswald softly whistled in sympathy. “That’s heavy. I know it weighs on you, the fate of the other worlds we’ve been cut off from. Perhaps I could help, if you might give me a closer look at some of what you’ve recovered from the northern outposts. I understand you came across some of Ironbrand’s old texts?”
“You’re well informed,” Breac chuckled wryly. He looked back at the Furious bobbing in its dock, but couldn’t make out Damien through any portholes.
“Just on good terms with the neighborhood cats.”
“Ah. Tibbers.”
“Well, regardless of why you visit, it would be good to see more of you, Lord Sunfist,” Oswald continued. “You spend so much time tucked away working in the Hall. You carry a wealth of wisdom the younger members would benefit from – and I know, I know, you make yourself available at any time. But it can be intimidating, approaching the High Cleric out of hand. Much less so if you’re gathered together around a fire with your cups.”
“There might just be something to that. I will consider it.” Breac leaned back against the panels of the wall of the Tomfoolery, as together they watched the storm front wash across the river for several minutes. There was a rich smell of loam and leaf, thrown up by the violence of the downpour, but the rain was already easing and settling into a soft drizzle. Spring storms had a way of striking hard and passing quickly here.
“Well,” the old cleric sighed. “It’s good to see you, Oswald. You can expect me down here tonight. You’re right, I could use a wee break. But right now, I have to get back to the Hall.”
“One moment, please, before you go,” Oswald pleaded. “I came across a name back in the Tomfoolery. Tara Mills. It’s been carved into a small plaque on the door of an office in the back. Maybe a former proprietor?”
“She was the Tomfoolery’s last proprietor, before you,” Breac told him. “This was all before I was born. Three, approaching four hundred years ago. Late 700s.”
“The engraving had been refreshed recently. Did you do that?”
“Me? No, I’d never touch anything in there without your permission…” He wracked his brain quickly for who could have done it. Miko? It sounded like something she’d do, but how would she have known about Tara Mills? Rhillaine wouldn’t have told her before she disappeared. He was fairly certain their former Guildmaster had never spoken to Miko, his goddaughter had been terrified of her. The tale of the Tomfoolery Inn was practically ancient history now. Most others who knew it had died or disappeared when Nathrael destroyed their Hall…
Except Lady Wintergreen. Of course, Ruby would have known the story.
“It’s good to remember that name,” Breac assured the new innkeeper. “A good reminder of someone we’ve lost. And it sounds like someone else agrees. But from what I’ve heard, Tara Mills was a regular human, a local woman from south Braeland. I’m not aware of any more significance than that.”
Oswald gave a brief, polite smile. “Of course. It’s probably nothing. But maybe you can take a closer look tonight?”
“I’ll be sure to do that.”
Breac walked back out along the docks, into the soft grey gloom of the aftermath of the morning storm. He passed several more dock workers now headed towards the Furious and its cargo. He did not recall any of their names, but one of them was a Fargothia, one of the nearby Mountain-dwarf clans. The dwarf gave Breac a traditional greeting, running his hand loosely through his beard. Breac felt a twinge of loss and had to hurriedly nod a response before looking away.
He knew the worker had meant no disrespect, but the embarrassment still stung. The High Cleric had been killed almost three months ago – by the notorious murderer, Whisper – and had been reincarnated as an elf by Lady Wintergreen. He was slowly growing accustomed to the lanky limbs, the inability to sleep, the extra height and his tendency to bash his head on half the doorframes he walked through. But the lack of a beard still felt painfully awkward. He scratched his chin with frustration as he walked away from the Tomfoolery and towards the Hall.
