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Post Info TOPIC: Prelude


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Prelude
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    Defiantly, the tree holds tightly to its one remaining leaf. As gust upon gust of wind rips through its branches declaring to the world that winter has come, obstinately holding on, the leaf remains. Many others have fallen this day. They were the last hangers on in a seasonal battle that will inevitably strip the tree bare. But one leaf holds on. It holds on. And it holds on until it can do so no longer. As the north wind batters its breath against this lonely tree, finally the wind gains the upper hand and the leaf breaks free.

    Riding the current of this frigid wind, the leaf floats and flutters far from its home. Now rising, now falling, the curly-edged brown, dancing, and dying leaf paints a lively counterpoint to the bleak, barren landscape that is part and parcel of mid October in the north country. Spinning in its dance, this leaf finally comes to rest along an overgrown, almost unused path about a mile from the lonely tree from which it launched. As is gently touches down, the leaf is immediately ground into nothing by a big back boot.

    "This is ridiculous," thought Gavril. "If I had known they were this far removed, I never would have agreed to this assignment." The fact is, he didn't have much choice, and he knew it. He was the only one who knew this path. He was the only one in the Society to have ever traveled into the far north. But nearly two days back he had left behind Trappers Point. It was as far north as even he had been. Those at the inn had told him that he was foolish for going beyond this late in the season. They tried to convince him that nobody lived out the winter beyond the point. But none of them had ever heard of the exiles he was seeking. His Finder continued to point north and his Finder could not lie.

    As he adjusted the heavy package over his shoulder, Gavril grunted in frustration. The motion had jogged loose the wrap around his neck and a gust of frozen air ran like needles down his chest. While he tightening the fur wrap against his neck he wondered, "If it is this bad now, what must it be like two and three months from now?" If there had ever been a doubt in his mind before, there was none now. Surely Andrei and Yvenna were breaking the rules of their exile. Surely the Council would like to hear that. But then, maybe not. Lately everything had become so unpredictable in the Society.

    He knew what was in the package he was delivering. At least, he had a general idea. But his mind, no matter how hard it tried, no matter what angle it approached the mystery, could not fathom the implications of this delivery. Was his confusion the product of so much that had been unsettled or was it the Cause? These are thoughts that had been going round and round in Gavril's head for the eight days he had been on this journey. He had been wondering about it even before-- when he had first been briefed on what was to come and as he waited for the swords to be delivered to him. And as he continued to trudge onward, ever northward, he continued to try to figure out the mystery of what he was carrying and why.

 

    The distant sound of boot striking against stone broke the silence that had become part of Andrei's existence. No animal would be that loud. Few hunters or trappers, for that matter, would either. None had ever come within a day'walk of his home during the warmer months and all had long since left these parts, anyways. As the footsteps drew nearer, Andrei simply sat back to wait. Just as he had positioned himself comfortably in his sturdy brown chair, he heard the shrill whistle that told him Yvenna was heating water for tea. He smiled. She'd always had better ears than he did. It was one of her gifts -- almost a sixth sense. She had it for seeing other things coming, too. If only he had listened back eleven years ago. But a person couldn't change time. That was a Rule even he wouldn't break.

    "What does this mean?" Yvenna asked him as she walked through the open door to the study.Theirs was a small house they had dug for themselves here on the north edge of nowhere. They slept in the back room. The largest room served as a kitchen and a dining room. It was the warmest of the three because it was built around the heat fissure he had discovered a lifetime ago.  In the front of the house was the study. It was into this study that Andrei's wife had just entered. They had perhaps a couple minutes to wait while the boots, which had just stopped in their steady pace, figured out how to get from the trail, through the small tangle of evergreens, and over to the only entrance of their humble home.

    "Has someone been sent to bring us back?" At this question, Andrei's grin broadened a bit. "I know it is impossible, but" Yvenna paused, struggling to find the words to fit her confused anticipation. "But, so is him being here at all."

    "If they were coming to bring us back, they would have stopped at the Point when they realized more accurately where we were and would have waited until spring to come fetch us. I'm guessing there are complications to what we have done. They must be just now beginning to realize the implications of something even worse than we'd forseen. Either they need our advice or a better understanding of the details of what we did."

    Yvenna nodded in agreement. "That they are here now, let alone that they are here at all, means that it has to be urgent." Her head knotted at the remembrance of long buried pain. "I so wish we could turn back time."

    "You and I both, Yev. You and I both." Andrei, sadly nodded. "But what's done is done. Perhaps now we can help put some of it to rights."

As he was saying this there came a determined shout from someone on the other side of the door both of them were looking at. With a resigned sigh Andrei stood from his chair as Yvenna opened the door.

 

    Gavril, whose outer garment was halfway to being shredded with the cuts and snags from the tight growth of bushes and trees within this copse of trees, had to just stop and pause when he saw the entrance to the "house" he had been seeking. He was only a couple feet from the entrance before he realized what he was seeing. Before him was a sandstone cliff that broke from the ground about twelve feet to the right, rose to a height of a little over seven feet directly before him, and then tapered back down to nothing about twenty feet to his left. Unless someone was looking for it, as he was, they would never notice how the fissures in the rock before him made an uneven outline of a doorway. The hill before him was not a true hill at all. It was an underground home.

    After searching for a few seconds for some lever or trigger to the obviously heavy doorway, Gavril gave up, cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted out, "Hello in there!" Almost immediately the right side of the entrance slide inwards about ten inches and then the entire stone entrance slid to the right. There before him was a woman shielding her eyes from the late afternoon sunlight now filtering through the fog and trees into the house before him.

    Young. She was so young, Gavril thought, as he stood there mouth agape staring at a beautiful petite lady who looked to be in her mid thirties with jet black hair cascading halfway down her back. Her skin tone suggested a nice tan, but a tan would be impossible this far from the equator. There was a gleam in her large black eyes as she broke into a grin that melted him inside even as the heat escaping from the doorway felt just as inviting upon his face.

    Yvenna was chuckling inside as she saw the grey eyes widen with shock. It was only those eyes and a very red nose that she could see of their visitor. Everything else was buried in layer upon layer of dirty, torn, brown fur cloak. "In case you haven't noticed, its cold out there. I'm not going to stand here at this doorway while you stand and gawk. Are you coming in, or not?"

    That question seemed to snap this bundle of a man out of his reverie and with a nod, he stepped through the entrance. As soon as he was inside he turned with curiosity to watch as Yvenna pushed the heavy stone entrance along a track in the ground and then, with a grunt, push the side still jutting out into its place. While every effort had been made to conceal the outer side of the door, from this side it was actually made to look like a normal doorway. The only truly obvious difference was that, instead of having a doorknob to the right, there were grips in the center and upper left of the door which were used to assist in getting the thing open and closed.

    From behind Yvenna and their guest who was still admiring the ingenuity of the doorway, her husband said, "It used to take both of us quite a bit of time and sweat to get that thing open. Now, after so many boring winters trapped in here, I've managed to get it moving quite smoothly. It is one of the problems I hadn't expected when I came back up here to live. As a kid I could just speak it open but now" Her husband raised his hands in a helpless gesture as his words seemed to trail off with an air of regret.

    Gavril stepped back from his examination of the doorway to face the man who was speaking to him. Again, he found himself looking into a face much younger than he expected, but after seeing Yvenna it did not come as quite a shock. Andrei also looked like he was in his mid, perhaps late thirties. He was a little over six feet tall, was slightly balding and had a dark, almost black, well trimmed beard. Thin, yet muscular, he also had the same friendly, almost roguish presence Gavril had noticed in his wife. The slight sadness in Andrei's dark brown expressive eyes turned to amusement as Gavril, turning slowly in a circle, took in the small study.

    There were two sturdy but well worn chairs covered in bearskin. They looked almost identical except that the one on which Andrei had rested his callused hand was slightly larger. Between the two chairs was a pine nightstand upon which was resting, open and facedown, an old tattered book. To the right of the smaller chair was a homemade, three tiered bookshelf containing about thirty more well used books. Above the nightstand was a small mirror backed torch that was the only source of light for the room.

    Between the large chair and the entrance to another room was a writing table with some loose papers, a round stool, and a quill which had a thick, red type of ink next to it. Upon the papers strewn across the table it seemed that some complex mathematical theory was being worked out. Gavril made a mental note to examine them more closely when he later had the chance, but for the moment he did his best to pretend they were of no interest as Andrei and Yvenna were patiently waiting for him to complete his slow, amazed circle.

    On the far wall from the chairs there were wooden hooks containing various sized traps, a bow and quiver, and cloaks that obviously belonged to Andrei and Yvenna. On the ground beneath the traps sat a couple baskets that looked just as well made, and well worn, as everything else in the room. Except for the warmth and with the possible exception to the contents on the writing table, there was no evidence that magik was being used in this house.

    When he noticed that their guest had finished with his short examination of their study Andrei spoke up, "Lets get you out of all those layers before you start sweating too much. While we do have an unlimited supply of hot water, this house is too small for bathing to be very convenient. Even with just the two of us it tends to get a bit crowded around here. What is that you're carrying anyways?"

    Their guest held on to the large, obviously heavy buckskin wrap as he shrugged out of three layers of bearskin. He handed each one in turn to Yvenna, who hung them on one of the hooks that had just recently held a few strung traps. Blatantly ignoring the question, the guest asked, "you have hot water?"

    Andrei let out a hearty laugh. "Boy, how do you think this house stays so warm? How do you think the ground will allow trees to grow this far north? Magik? You're standing about ten feet from one of the seven hot springs that created this small woods. I ummm. 'dug' this house into existence when I lived here as a boy before the Society found me and took me under their wing."

    "But why does nobody else know about it?" their guest asked.

    "It is cursed." Andrei answered. "I wanted to make sure that anybody else who even came close to my woods. So I infested the area with false, frightening memories. The spells have long since worn off, but a legend has been built up around my woods that I have found very convenient for my privacy."

    "So the two of you are completely self sufficient and living alone up here?" The guest asked looking very pointedly at the bookshelf and then the writing table.

    Andrei and his wife both grinned at this question. "Boy, you've got a sharp mind. It is obvious I couldn't get anything by you. It's a good thing I have nothing to hide." Andrei answered just as pointedly. There was a tension in his voice that was partly from dealing with somebody in the society and partly because he simply had almost no conversation with anyone besides his wife for years. "There's a trader from Trapper's Point I knew from before, Sevyrn. When we were first exiled I made arrangements with him. A couple times a year we meet at the lonely Oak you must have passed on your way up here. I give him most of the furs I've caught and he gives me a couple books he believes I might find interesting, some quills and plenty of paper. I stay current with the Society and the theory of the thing but there is no magik being performed in this house."

    Yvenna knew she needed to step in now. Her husband's hand was about to break the back of his chair he was gripping it so tightly. The body language from both men had shifted into an aggressive posture. It was clear that both men were cut from the same mould and an argument seemed inevitable. Stepping between them she looked at their guest and said, "Please forgive my rudeness. It has been so long since we have had guests we simply have lost our manners. You have obviously have come long and far to see us. I have some tea in the kitchen. Let's all go in there and we can continue this discussion while my husband (she shot Andrei an icy glare) starts preparing dinner."

    Both men visibly relaxed as she ushered them into the kitchen. After pouring the guest a cup of tea she continued, "You obviously know who both me and my husband are. Who is it that we have the pleasure of entertaining at our humble home?"

    After a sip of his tea the young man, barely over twenty, rubbed a hand through his reddish brown hair, looked deeply at them both and then down at the package resting on his knees. "My name is Gavril. As you obviously know, I'm a member of the Society. They have chosen me to deliver this to you both."

    With that, he undid the knot on the black rope that was binding the package on his knees. While his eyes never left Andrei, his right hand reached over and pulled back the buckskin wrap revealing its contents as both Yvenna and her husband gasped in shock.

    There before them were two beautifully crafted swords within their scabbards. The larger of the two weapons first drew the eye of all three people. A blood red ruby served as the pommel of the bastard sword. The grip was black leather widely wrapped around ebony rounded out at the center and of a length that would be comfortable with one or two close gripped hands. The cross guard was black steel that formed into the shape of two open mouthed wolves. The black necks of these wolves formed the ricasso that came to an end on both sides in a diamond shaped like an arrowhead. The diamond facing up was reflecting rainbows of light all around the room. This diamond fit perfectly against v shape of the gold locket that began the scabbard. That locket was a beautifully crafted flame that was outlined in red. That outline formed into wavelike streams of red that ran down the black steel scabbard all the way to the chape that was also a beautifully crafted gold flame.

    The smaller sword was a flamberge with a large pearl for its pommel. Coming down from the pommel was a red leather grip wrapped around ivory. A one handed sword, it had a silver hand guard that ended in a serpents head. That hand guard snaked around the cross guard, also made of silver which concluded with two dove's heads. The ricasso of this sword was more red leather that actually seemed to fade into the white steel blade. The scabbard of this blade was a deep red mahogany. The locket was a simple flame made of silver with one line of silver waving down the length and forming into a teardrop at the chape that looked surprisingly similar to that flame.

    For an eternity of minutes all three were silently examining the two swords that had been placed upon the kitchen table. The raw materials worked into the swords alone would make a person rich. When combined with the unparalleled craftsmanship even the simple flamberge was worth more than any living man could ever afford. The bastard sword emperors would bleed their lands dry in a war to gain or keep it and each of their soldiers would fight with unmatched vigor simply on the chance that they could glimpse this weapon of exquisite beauty.

    Gavril sat there enraptured by the two weapons before him. While he had guessed that he was carrying two swords in the package upon his back, he had never imagined that either was anything like this. For days he had been traveling through wild and often dangerous places alone with with this wrapped in common leather and tied with a simple black cord across his back. Did the man who gave him the package know what it contained? Who did? Knowledge of these swords would fragment even as dedicated a group as the Society. For that matter, even the council would become divided as to what to do with these swords, and here he was giving them to two exiles. Two outcasts. These two people, for all their charm and likeability had committed the most atrocious crime ever conceived in the Society. Yes there has been the stirrings of potential chaos among the society of late, but news of this surely he was on a very short list of those that were aware. How long will it stay that way? At that moment he made the same decision that all three of the other men had made when becoming aware of the swords. He will take this secret to the grave. He will not be the leak.

    That decision worked like a charm breaking the magik that had held him in a trancelike reverie admiring the swords. Noticing that both Andrei and Yvenna were both as still as statues gazing at the swords, Gavril loudly cleared he throat. First Yvenna, then Andrei snapped out of it with a shake. Once he had their attention he grinned and ruefully said, "I almost forgot, I was told that when you have been presented the package, er the swords, I was to give you this as an explanation."

    And with that, he pulled out the letter.



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