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A Story for Lion
Another Story for Lion
Bright Day, Dark Night
Brighteyes, Sealgair, & Erdian
Choices
Erdian's Tower
Jaret's Quest: 1
Jaret's Quest: 2
Jaret's Quest: 3
Meghan and Xarroch
Meghan & Sissra
Meghan's Journey Begins
More Problems from Curiosity
Rakanor
S'ayad'i & Felis
Troubled Dreams
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Hammer 1, 1399. Almost midnight
Jaret sat in the chair, aimlessly gazing at nothing. He had stopped
feeding the fire in the fireplace some hours before, and only a few
stray embers still glowed in the grate. Jelarthna's long sword lay, in
its sheath, across his lap. The scabbard was exquisitely wrought so
that it looked like a rough rime of frost coated the metal, and Jaret
absently rubbed his fingertips along the surface. He was plainly
dressed to retire for the night soon, and slowly his eyes began to
drift closed, and his chin slowly sank down to his chest. As soon as
his eyes completely closed, they snapped back open, and his head
jerked back up. With a sigh, he stood up and turned to walk down the
hallway to his bedroom, carrying the long sword along with him. He
carefully placed the weapon down on a low table at the foot of the bed,
and then gently ran a hand along the scabbard's length.
"I fear you may just not be suited for me." he said, half
under his breath. "Or mayhap I'm just not suited for you." He
looked up almost unconsciously at the empty rapier and main-gauche
sheaths hanging from a hook. "I'm not suited for anyone
lately." He walked around to the side of the bed and mechanically
ran his hand over a glowing sphere next to his bed, which darkened at
his touch. He climbed under the thick eiderdown comforter and rolled
onto his side, all too ready for sleep.
A few moments later, or perhaps more, Jaret stirred, feeling a cool
breeze waft into the room. He lethargically rolled over, sluggishly
opening an eyelid to see if perhaps he had carelessly left a window
open, or the door unlatched, and the winter wind had blown it open. The
drapes on his bedroom window were fluttering as if in a breeze, but the
shadow cast by the light of the full moon outlined the crossbars of the
window itself quite clearly, and it was closed. As Jaret stirred more,
a somewhat dormant curiosity rousing itself, the drapes majestically
billowed into the room, away from the closed window. Although they
flapped as if in a strong breeze, the cloth didn't make a sound.
Through the window, the moonlight began to sparkle, and motes began to
appear in the moonbeams, drifting and whirling in the light like
snowflakes. The motes spun around each other in a whirlwind. New motes
that appeared joined the ecstatic racing immediately, and soon a wide,
fervent tornado of motes reeled madly in Jaret's bedroom.
Jaret barely moved, unsure of what to do next. Should he leap forward
and seize Jelarthna's sword? It was on the periphery of the maelstrom,
and he might be sucked in. Should he flee down the hallway, and hope
that he could find a sorcerer capable of handling this? Or just stay
where he was, and hope that he survived the outcome? Before he made any
choice, the spinning chaos in his bedroom suddenly contracted in on
itself, then blew outwards in a rush of pale blue-white light. Jaret
flinched back, slamming his head into the headboard, and jerking the
cover up over his face. After a moment, realizing that he was still
quite alive and unharmed, he dropped the covers down from his face and
sat up.
The whole of his bedroom was filled with a pale milky light, and motes
of a whiter light slowly revolved around the room. Where the whirling
fervor had been a moment before stood a woman. She was young, and her
radiant lime-green eyes regarded Jaret cooly. Her ivory-white hair fell
in thick tresses to her knees, and she seemed to almost glow with the
same blue-white light that filled the room. Then she spoke, and her
voice quietly rang as if with the rich clear tones of wolves howling
at the moon.
"Jaret Malkier, I have been watching you lately, and I bring to
you the telling of ill times, for you and all you hold dear, unless you
regain what you lost."
Jaret fumbled for a moment before being able to speak. "Lady, I
know not who you are, or how you came here, and your message is passing
strange, but why do you bring me such unkind news? Why watch over me?
I am but a simple swordsman, in a strange land."
The eyes of the woman darkened, and her voice grew more strident,
"Simple swordsman you may actually see yourself to be, but any
being may be the one who nudges the balance off its delicate precipice
and into blackness. You may have such a destiny before you. As may
some of those you hold dear. But for the moment, you are the key, and
which way you turn can decide great things. But you are incomplete,
and if you do not regain that which you have lost, all will be plunged
into night." Despite her harsh words, the woman's eyes were soft,
and her tone compassionate. She drew in a breath, and began to speak
again.
"If you do not go on this search, your deficit will only cause you
to weaken further, until one day you will not rise from your bed. No
power can stop this but you"
Jaret's eyes narrowed. "Lady, I do think you are most uncouth. You
surge into my bedroom, provide no explanation for who you are, and
inform me that my end is nigh unless I follow your edicts. On my
father's sword and my grandfather's bones, can you provide me one
unshakeable reason why I should believe one word that you have uttered
this evening?"
The lady's voice dropped lower, and Jaret could only barely hear her
reply. "I had hoped that you would believe me because I am a lady
true, and I am in need of a gentleman's aid."
The simplicity of her words, reminding Jaret of his vows to his father
to always help a lady in need, struck him to his core, and he bowed his
head, a flush of shame coloring his cheeks.
"Lady, I apologize. It was I who spoke rudely. Name where I am to
go, and what I must recover, and I will be on my way before day's first
light touches Marsember's walls."
"I would tell you all the minutiae of the tasks that lie before
you if I only could, Jaret Malkier. But this search is such that you
must discover such things for yourself. All I may tell you is that you
must leave Marsember before sunrise, and you can take with you no
weapon larger than your eating knife, and no coin greater than you last
gave for a single meal."
Jaret kept his head bowed, and solemnly nodded. "As it must be,
Lady. I have but one request."
The woman looked at Jaret somewhat sternly. "If your question does
not attempt to lift the veil from that which I must keep hidden, you
may ask it freely, and I will answer as such."
Jaret allowed himself a small smile. "I only ask to know who this
beautiful lady is, who invites herself into my bedroom, and who will
most likely leave as suddenly as she entered."
The lady smiled at the question. "That is a fair question, Jaret
Malkier, so I shall answer it. I am the Lady of Silver. More than
that, you shall have to learn on your own."
The motes quickly sped up and converged on the lady, and as they all
touched, they faded out of sight, and the lady vanished with them.
Jaret sat motionless for a moment, all his senses alert, waiting for
something else to happen. Nothing did, and the room remained dark and
silent.. He rose and ran his hand along the orb, which gradually
brightened until a soft radiance filled the room. The room showed
almost no signs of the visitation that had just blew through it, only
the curtains, hanging open instead of closed, suggested at what had
happened.
For a long time Jaret stood and looked around the room, uncertain of
what to do next. In the end, his legs moved almost of their own accord,
and he began to dress in his traveling clothes, gathering a few
possessions that he could take with him. His eating knife. A few silver
pieces. He looked at his regular accouterments that lay on the dresser
-- a set of bracers, two dazzling rings, the gloves his father had
given him -- and left them there. The mysterious visitor may not have
explicitly forbidden them, but he felt he would be crossing an
unmentioned boundary if he were to wear them. Lastly, his eye fell on
Jelarthna's sword.
"I cannot leave it here," he murmured out loud.
"'T'would be most inconsiderate of me. I should have the time to
return it to the Meade Hall before I leave, if I do not tarry
long." He picked up the sword, but did not tie it to his side. He
sat down at the small writing desk, and hurriedly scripted a letter to
Jelarthna, thanking him for the loan of the weapon, and obliquely
explaining the conditions of his duty. He stood, hurriedly swiped his
hand over the glowing globe, and walked out of the room, the moonlight
providing enough light for him to see his way by.
He hurried into Marsember, and was allowed inside the gates after a
brief questioning from the Purple Dragon contingent manning the gate.
The streets were empty, and he didn't see a single light as he sprinted
through the city, hoping to swiftly reach his destination without
encountering any untoward delays.
He arrived at the Meade Hall unmolested, but when he tried to open the
door, the knob remained still in his hand. He attempted to shake the
door, but it didn't budge in its frame. Quietly, Jaret knocked on
the door. "Moon Dancer? Michelle? Are you there?" The silence
rang in his ears, and just as he was trying to figure out if he could
pull himself up the drainpipe and get in through one of the windows,
the door opened, and through the thin slit, a four foot tall, blue,
noseless, hairless creature peered out at Jaret.
Jaret stepped back, startled. "Oh! Well. I think I've heard about
you. Well, please, see that these items get to Jelarthna this morning.
Don't wake him now, I'm sure he's asleep. Thank you most kindly!"
With that stammering speech behind him, Jaret turned and began to
hasten down the Marsembrian streets, back toward the main gate. He had
made good time getting through the gate, and it looked as though he
would be out of the city and on his way before dawn touched the sky.
But where would he go?
He was so preoccupied turning the question over in his mind that he
almost ran into the Purple Dragon squad. The four of them were gathered
in a circle just beyond a sharp bend in the street, talking amongst
each other in hushed tones, and they looked up as Jaret abruptly
stopped scant inches from one them.
"My apologies to you, good men," Jaret said. "So quietly
were you conversing that I didn't hear you. Well met, but I must be on
my way."
The tallest one pointed at Jaret and barked to his men, "Seize
him! He's the one we were talking about!" Jaret began to
backpedal, but the early morning had dulled his reflexes, and the two
mailed guards fell on him in a brute force tackle. Jaret was lithe and
quick, but he was unarmed and unarmored, and his foes were neither. He
was hoisted to his feet, each of the guards holding one of Jaret's arms
up high against his back.
"I demand to know what buffoonery you are playing at, dutyman!
I have done nothing for you to casually order such a brutish assault
for, and I demand you release me immediately."
"Done nothing wrong? What do you call this, you scum!" the
guard pointed at what the guards had been surrounding when Jaret had
turned the corner. It was the body of a woman. In life she had been
quite beautiful, with high cheekbones and coyly arched eyebrows. It
looked as if she had been stabbed to death by a lean blade, but there
was no blood on the ground around the body. "The wounds are
obviously from a rapier, and I remember you from that duel a few years
ago with Jystal Hartsford. This was a killing done with such ability as
I saw on that day. Until I find a much better suspect, you're under
arrest for the cold-blooded murder of Alathea Skatterhawks."
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