6th Day of the 4th Quarter of the Moon of
Songs, Season of Wines, Year 766.
Days in Barovia: 9. The moon waxes gibbous.
Off the Beaten Path
Dickie lead their way out of
Berez, following the path of the Luna River. The flies dissipated, and the
earth grew more solid as the Bullingdon Boys come into the shadow of the
mountain and leave the swamp of Berez. The grey clouds roiling above finally
broke in a thick sleet, swelling the river. Further south the sleet turned to
snow, thick and wet and cold. Mount Ghakis rose to the east, a sheer wall
rising from the other side of the river into the leaden sky.
There was no beaten trail. At
times, the mud and wet rocks across the western shore threaten to send them
into the river below; sometimes thick brush or impassable stone impeded them,
forcing backtracks, but Dickie always found a passable route.
At one point the Bully Boys had to
push up against a rock face, shimmying along twenty feet above the river
rushing below. A few pebbles came clattering from the lip of the bank above,
and as he looked up Dickie saw a flash of white and black: a white face and a
cloak? And then the earth and stone above them came loose.
Paris fell screaming into the
river below as his companions hung on to the cliff face. The breath went out of
him as he struck the freezing water, managing to cry “I can’t swi-“ before water filled his mouth as he was swept away
by the strong current.
Without hesitating, Cornelius
threw off his jacket and dove gracefully into the water after his employee;
Dickie fixed his grapnel to the rock face and began to ascend down, while
Clarence simply held on, watching. From just above the water, Dickie turned
with a hand outstretched to see two bobbing headings being carried further off.
Cornelius was thrown off by the
current as he struck the river but managed to right himself, pushing his head
above water, and catching sight of Paris not far ahead of him he raised his
holy symbol up high. Divine energy flowed from him and the waters parted: A
man-sized trench forming a path from Paris, to him, to the shore. For a moment,
Paris flailed as he fell onto clear riverbed, but quickly scrambled as
Cornelius called to him.
The elder Bullingdon reached the
shore first, a narrow beach of pebble, and turned reaching for Paris who
clasped his hand just as the river remembered to flow and smashed into his
flank, almost buffeting him free but he hung on and Cornelius hauled him free.
Paris, soaking, frozen, collapsed on top of his employer, shivering; and after
a long moment, rolled off.
“Dickie!” Cornelius called upriver, to where Dickie was progressing
towards them, “Dickie, bring me a towel!
Clarence! Who threw those rocks at us?”
From where he clung to the cliff
his brother replied, “Whoever it was,
they haven’t shown their face.”
“Someone threw the rocks?” Paris sputtered.
“Seems that way,” Dickie said as he approached Cornelius with a
towel, “pale feller, black cloak.”
“Clarence?” Clarence had, however, been on the cliff face when
Dickie saw whoever he saw above.
Paris, shivering, dried and warmed
himself by waving his wand over his head. Cornelius was unaffected by the cold-
in fact, wearing the ring he found at the Abbey, he felt a balmy warmth. But he
was wet, so he had Dickie towel him off.
“Seems a pretty mild day to me,” Cornelius said, as snow fell
around him.
Clarence shouted down from the
cliff, his voice booming unnaturally, said he was going to investigate, and
stepped off the cliff- stepped into the air, where he did not fall but hung as
if suspended, his arms spread, his robe rippling in the wind.
“Ah, that’s one of mine,” Paris lied as Clarence demonstrated his
new magical ability. “Very good,
Clarence!”
“You should have done that instead of falling into the river, then,
Paris,” Cornelius told him.
Cackling quietly, Clarence shot
up, above the lip of the steep bank they had been traversing, over the desolate
Barovian landscape where a few hundred yards back the forest ran parallel to
the river. In the flurrying snow he saw nobody as he swept back and forth above
the ground; only the few feet of collapsed cliff-edge indicated what had
happened. He collected Dickie, keener eyed than he, flying him to the cliff
top, but all Dickie could find were some footprints- with no tracks leading to,
or from- and a faint hint of brimstone in the air.
It was, in the end, a mystery, and
one they didn’t have enough information to solve. So they set off, south again,
following the river. The next two hours went by without incident; a dull, hard
slog across wild terrain, difficult even with Dickie’s guidance, even with the
Beacon of Argynvost having lifted the fog.
Everything was wet, the river, the
slick rock on the banks, the mud beyond, the sodden underbrush- the Bully Boys.
They were cold and tired and aching, numb of body and mind, when the grey skies
finally revealed the bridge: old black stone, high above them, spanning the
gorge cut by the southbound river. A faint glimmer of orange came from one end
of the structure On the eastern shore the mountain rose sheer above the level
of the bridge, hundreds of feet higher on either side- the road must lead into
a chasm in mount Ghakis. The western shore climbed less steeply, the rock face forming
natural steps leading five hundred feet to the level with the bridge.
This was not going to be the
stroll up the cliff face path in Krezk. There was no path here- it was a
mountain face. At best, it would be a steep hike; likely they would have to
scramble, and climb sections. It would be possible, but it would be hard.
Dickie was a sure climber, and between them they had plenty of rope, and
Cornelius was in peak physical condition; but Clarence and Paris had never been
particularly athletic.
They roped themselves together- Dickie,
to lead, Cornelius at the back, with Paris and Clarence between them- and began
the ascent. Dickie began to flag. He had been navigating them from the swamp,
leading the way for hours, finding the best path which meant finding all of the
wrong paths first, while the others simply followed once he was sure. And the
same was true here: first to test every handhold and foothold, the ones he
failed on the others could avoid; then, whenever the weaker Paris or Clarence
slipped or lost balance, it was Dickie who had to anchor himself and right
them. He was exhausted.
Around half way up the face, as he
heaved himself onto a narrow, outthrust ledge, Dickie heard a heavy snorting.
Looking up he found himself face to face with an enormous goat, black furred
and white faced, crowned with huge curled horns, a black rectangular pupil
staring at him from one orange eyeball. As the others clambered up behind him,
the goat snorted, one huge hoof pawing the ground.
“Oh look, a lovely goat,” said Cornelius, terrified of goats, his
heart fluttering, “Well, let’s move on.” He
furtively began to climb, up and away from the creature separated from him by
his party. Clarence, adjacent, followed after him, flinging a blast of eldritch
energy at the creature for good measure. “That’s
what you get for throwing rocks at us!”
And the goat rammed Dickie. It
hunched back then sprung towards the manservant, Dickie spun away, somehow
keeping his feet while avoiding being gored, and being pushed into the mountain
instead off flung off of it. Paris, suspecting this was some kind of magic goat
given its unnatural size and attitude, attempted to nullify any enchantment
upon it: he clicked his fingers and… “Ha!”
Paris shouted, as the goat transformed into a man swathed in a black cloak
with a featureless white mask upon his face. “I knew it!”
“Heh, heh,” the man laughed horribly as he stood, “polymorph!”
Dickie’s dagger was in his hand,
the blade thick with black venom- it slammed into the masked mage’s side, who
gasped then shuddered as the poison took. Cornelius, from his vantage point
above, saw that the goat was gone- “Clarence!
A badly dressed fiend is terrorizing our servants!” and he leapt from his
perch, pulling Clarence down behind him.
Cornelius fell onto the assailant,
clobbering him with his fists, and then there was a puff of smoke and a stink
of brimstone and the masked mage was gone. Dickie caught a momentary flicker
around the glowing light of the bridge, hundreds of feet above them, but
through the falling snow he could make out no more.
“What a coward!” Paris exclaimed, disappointed, “too frightened to face the Bullingdon
Boys?” He shook his fist in the air.
“He’s probably heard of our fearsome reputation,” Cornelius said, “now come on Dickie, let’s get back up this mountain.”
A Bridge Too Far
Exhausted, Dickie led the
Bullingdon Boys on to where the ground levelled out, five hundred feet above
the Luna river. They climbed without incident. As they reached the top, and an
exhausted Dickie dragged his weary feet towards the road, Cornelius noticed
something odd on the ground before his foremost servant’s feet.
“Dickie! Wait! There’s some sort of sigil on the rock there! Perhaps
some other noble has tread this way?”
And he was correct: in the thin
layer of snow on the ground a small pattern was traced out where the snow
refused to fall, or was diverted, or melted as soon as it hit the ground.
Unsure was a ‘sigil’ was, Dickie
came to a stop inches from the device and sat down heavily. Now Cornelius had
pointed it out, Dickie could see the strange mark.
Clarence and Paris investigated
the mark, which likely was some arcane glyph- indeed, Paris knew it, although
Clarence was not sure.
“It looks something like the teleportation circle Victor was attempting
to make, does it not? Perhaps he used this to escape the fire?”
“Ah, now Clarence, you’re very very close. But that’s not quite right.
Just think a little harder for a second. What kind of spell might you use if
you wanted to lay, say, an explosive trap?”
Clarence opened his mouth to
reply, but Paris spoke over him- “No,
wrong. It’s a Glyph of Warding.”
“Ah, well, now I remember,” and he did, for they had encountered a
glyph of warding on the handle of the door to Victor Vallakovich’s attic
workroom, under a sign saying “KEEP OUT”. Clarence had Dickie, and everyone
else, move away, and summoned a spectral hand which poked the glyph.
A fountain of churned earth and
stone erupted around the sigil, cascading out in a blast that would have not
only bludgeoned and battered anyone caught in it, but likely thrown them back
down the mountainside.
“So, that’s what a sigil is,” said Dicky from where he sat.
To the west, the road was blocked
by a black stone fortification they would have had to pass had they come that way.
To the east was the gorge, the Luna River far below, the gap spanned by the
black stone bridge. At each end of the bridge stood thirty-foot tall stone
arches, and the nearer one held beacons, glowing flames on the end of ropes
dangling from the arch. As they drew close, the nature of the beacons became
clear: bodies, each in unique costume, licked by flickering flame that did not
burn them. There were four, corpses all.
One was held by a noose about its
neck. Shirtless, head shaven, a crude moustache drawn on its face, it’s hands
were painted red.
The second wore a servants garb,
and “THIEF” was scrawled across its forehead.
The third, a woman’s corpse, had
long, straw coloured hair; its face was garishly made up, and it wore a blue
dress. A short wooden shaft had been skewered through one hand to dangle from
the palm.
The final corpse had its hands
nailed to its chest over a thick book. It’s face was enshrouded by the hood of
the volumous black robe it wore.
“The woman is supposed to be you then, Paris?” Clarence said,
catching on to the nature of these grim lanterns.
Paris was affronted. “What do you mean it’s supposed to be me? I
don’t see any evidence that these are supposed to be anyone at all.”
“That one is Cornelius, that one is Dickie-“ Clarence pointed- “it’s got ‘thief’ scrawled on it, that one
is clearly me- which only leaves one.”
“It’s just a coincidence!” Paris protested. “It’s probably meant to remind us of Ireena and make us regretful.” Ireena,
Paris well knew, had raven-black hair and hadn’t regularly worn dresses. “You’re seeing things that aren’t there.”
“Much as I hate to say it, for once I think Clarence has a clearer
grasp on reality than you do, Paris,” Dickie said.
“Thank you! Regardless, shall we cut them down and see if they hold
anything of interest?” Clarence was particularly interested in the book.
“Dickie will handle that sort of thing,” designated Cornelius, “the rest of us deserve a well-earned rest
after all that climbing!”
Dickie, dog-tired, glared daggers
at his master. However, his facilities were not required as Clarence summoned
his spectral hand to take a knife and saw through each rope in turn. The
flaming corpses fell onto the bridge before them, where they continued to
flame, releasing no smoke or heat: the wizards recognized this continual flame
enchantment.
“Someone
is beginning to take our actions in Barovia very seriously,” said Dickie.
“What makes you say that?” Paris asked. Dickie sighed, then stepped
over to kick the corpse he took to represent Paris… and a sound started over
the wind, a delivered from lips of stone that formed in front of Dickie as he walked
onto the bridge, a voice that was harsh and dripping with venom and altogether
unfamiliar:
“Brothers two, of empty claim, their house long fallen silent
Come to save Barovia with bloody handed violence
Followed by two faithful dogs: while one is cutting purses
The other shows off parlour tricks and threatens empty curses
Claiming friendship, faith and trust, all lies while plotting
treason
Unprovoked with fire and steel you slaughter without reason
Vengeful is the spirit that has risen from the ash
Heed this warning, Bully Boys: you can’t outrun the past.”
Paris paused. “I’ll admit that this is pushing on the personal.”
Clarence stared at the space where
the magic mouth had been as his mind raced- who could have risen from the ash,
with a personal grudge against the Bully Boys? “No, no, it can’t be… Him. No, I checked, I checked.”
“Care to share?” Dickie asked, looking at Clarence strangely.
“No- no, it’s irrelevant. It doesn’t matter.”
“That’s a tone that suggests its relevant and probably matters.”
Clarence looked around, and wilted
under the gaze of Dickie, Paris and his brother. “He spoke of fire. And ash. The way that the Vallakovich house burnt
down- it could not be Victor. It’s not Victor!”
“Victor died in the fire,” Paris said.
“Or was horribly disfigured by the flames, forcing him to wear a mask,
then escaping through his circle of teleportation with an acrid smelling ‘poof’
and now seeking revenge upon us?” posited Dickie.
“You’re seeing patterns that aren’t there,” Paris insisted, “first me in a dress, now Victor back from
the dead? It all seems incredibly farfetched.”
“All of the mysteries we’ve faced so far have been revealed sooner or
later,” Cornelius said wisely. “There’s
no point in us standing out here in the snow worrying about it. We should just
head on, and we’ll find out what’s happening once we head up this mountain.
Now, Dickie- put some coal in the fire and let’s carry on riding these rails!
Bully bully bully!”
“Oi oi oi!” called Paris, but Dickie and Clarence didn’t join in-
they were both still mulling over the thought of Victor Vallakovich, alive and
out for revenge.
Clarence wanted to search the
bodies, but found no valuables upon them; the book was a book of prayers that
had been ruined by the weather and having bloody nails driven through it. Each
appeared to have been slain in the same sinister fashion: no wounds upon them
except for two pin-prick bite marks upon each neck.
Clarence drew a vial from within
his robes, and tipped the contents- a murky green liquid and a fat worm- into
the mouth of the shaven-headed, moustachioed corpse.
The corpse drew a shuddering,
gasping breath. Its eyes flickered open, and met Clarence’s. It shuddered, and
weakly, in a Barovian accent asked what was happening.
“What happened to you?” Clarence asked.
“I don’t know… Where am I? What is this place? I was just walking home
and then… Darkness… Please…”
“Did you see who killed you?”
“I was killed? But I never hurt anyone…”
Clarence stood, and stamped one
foot on the ground in anger. “You mean
you got no view whatsoever of whatever killed you?”
“No, I didn’t see… Who killed me?”
“Where were you from in life?”
“I was born in Vallki, I lived there my whole life. This isn’t Vallaki,
is it? It’s so cold…”
“Vallaki’s all burned down now anyway,” Cornelius called over.
Clarence turned to his comrades. “Do we have any other questions we would ask
this… Gentleman?”
“What is the last date you remember?” Cornelius asked the corpse.
“It was only a few more days to the full moon…” which, they
surmised, would have been no more than two days prior.
But as the man answered the fifth
question, there came a deathly rattle from the man’s chest: his eyes rolled
back and closed, and he spoke no more. His lips gently parted as the fat worm
crawled out of them, then shrivelled and curled up dead in the cold, despite
the heatless flames.
Clarence kicked the body.
They crossed the black stone
bridge, the wind howling around them. On the other side, a snow swept gravel
road climbs the mountainside, travelling north form Tsolenka Pass. It is cold,
bitterly cold as the mountain wind is channelled through the chasm.
Eventually, the road fades away
under a covering of snow but the Bullingdon Boys didn’t need the road to
navigate: Clarence was being drawn, like filings to a lodestone, by the bronze
hand.
Finally, they saw the Amber
Temple.
How To Make Friends And Influence
People
Carved into the sheer mountainside
ahead, fifty feet high, with six alcoves each containing a statue four times
the height of a man. Each statue carved from a single block of amber, each
depicting the same faceless hooded figure, hands pressed together in a gesture
of prayer. Between the innermost statues a staircase led down below an archway.
Dickie blew a frigid breath. “Well, this might be the worst place we’ve
seen so far.”
“I can hear something,” Clarence muttered to himself, “the ocean, or… gurgling water…” On the
very edge of his hearing came the maddening beating of vile drums and the thin
monotonous whine of accursed flutes; his comrades heard nothing.
Cornelius dragged his gaze away
from the façade and noticed a crack in the mountainside. “Look over there, Dickie! A natural fissure, and why, it looks just big
enough for a man to squeeze through.”
Glumly, Dickie noted the feature,
pre-empting Cornelius’ next suggestion. He reluctantly approached. A cold
breath exhaled from within, colder than the mountain air outside, and carrying
the faint smell of woodsmoke.
Clarence suggested that this may be an
opportunity to be the ambushers rather than the ambushes, and Dickie
reluctantly started edging through the crevasse, followed by Paris, then
Clarence, then Cornelius. Paris wiggled his wand and bobbing light appeared
above each of their head to illuminate their way but Clarence hissed at him to
cease so they could preserve the element of surprise.
Dickie shuffled through the gap,
blinded now Paris’ light was gone. After no more than a few yards, the floor
fell away before him in a small step and as he lost his balance and fell
forward he was caught: two pairs of strong hands, one either side, grabbed him
by the arms and hauled him into darkness.
“Shit, something’s got me!” Dickie shouted, and from behind him Paris one
again summoned his dancing lights. Two feet ahead the fissure opened into a
large stone room, where wild looking men in caked in grey mud held weapons of
stone ready; two were hauling Dickie into one corner of the room, and three
more were reaching toward Paris. A fourth was dressed more colourfully than the
rest, decorated in feather and bone and wielding a stone-tipped spear; beside
him, a huge beast more wolf than dog crouched in a silent snarl.
Paris had seen the like of these
before, peacefully negotiating a passing in the night while the Bullingdon Boys
camped above Tser Falls. Dickie, from his information foraging in Vallaki, knew
them from rumour as Tergs- untamed mountain folk.
Paris raised his hands. “Friends- we have met before! We mean no
harm to you, release our friend and we’ll be on our way!” The feathered
shaman shouted something back, gesticulating with his spear, and Paris felt
suddenly weak. As he sagged, mud-caked hands closed on him and pulled him down,
two barbarians dragging him over to the eastern wall where they held Dickie.
Clarence stepped forward as the
two companions ahead of him were pulled away across the room ahead of him. He
raised his hands and black tentacles slithered out of the floor, swarming
around the shaman, the hound and the remaining barbarian; the wolf-dog slipped
out of their grasp, scuttling away to the other side of the room, but the other
two were wrapped tight by slimy limbs that began to constrict. Clarence stepped
back in the fissure, happy with his work.
Dickie struggled against his
captors- his dagger found its way into his hand and slashed at either side but
the Tergs kept him at arms length, pushing him into the corner with the hafts
of their crude weapons.
Cornelius squeezed past his younger
brother but stopped short of entering the chamber. He was separated from Dickie
and Paris by a wall of black tentacles, writhing, grasping, crushing. He paused
for a moment, considering his options- there were two doors to the room beyond
the tentacles, and this was not the only way in to the temple, and Paris and
Dickie needed his help.
He pushed back past Clarence,
swiftly wiggling his way out of the crevasse to the mountainside, and sprinted
around past the amber statues to the entrance to the temple.
Paris, held between two burly
mud-coated tergs, raised his hands as best he could. “Now look here- why don’t you let me go? I’m no threat.” Magic
laced his words, and the demeanour of three of the four holding him and Dickie
shifted from aggressive to friendly- they released their holds, smiling
jovially at Paris while the fourth gaped at them in confusion.
“Ah, now you recognise me! Why don’t you get your companions to lay off
my pals, and we’ll all go and gave a drink?”
They friendly Tergs nodded,
smiling, but the wolf-dog barrelled past them and lunged at Paris, knocking him
from his feet. Paris screamed but one of his new friends pulled the hound off
by the scruff of its neck, chastising it as it came away with a chunk of Paris’
shoulder.
The fourth barbarian barked
something in their strange language but his charmed comrades weren’t interested
in what he had to say. He moved away from them, putting his back to one of the
amber doors that lead from the room, then with one last desperate look to where
the shaman was being crushed by black tentacles, he threw the door open and
fled.
The door slammed shut behind him
as two of Paris’ new friends secured them in a panic. The fleeing Terg sped out
into the unlit temple, feet pattering over the cold marble floor, and ran into
something hard that threw him back. Cornelius grinned as he stood over him, his
hands closed into fists.
The tentacles writhed and
constricted around their two captives, shaman and warrior. From the fissure,
Clarence called out “Give back my friends
and you will not be harmed further!” The shaman let out a pitiful moan, but
the barbarian warrior roared, heaving forward, tearing tentacles at the stem
and lunging up into the crevasse. Clarence stumbled back as the savage figure
advanced on him, fumbling in his robes for the Grimoire of the Four Quarters.
A stone axe flashed, smashing into
Clarence’s midrift, then down on his shoulder, and Clarence crawled backwards
muttering esoterically. There was a stink of brimstone as Clarence invoked the works
of the diabolist Devostas, and the barbarian assailing him was suddenly faced
with a huge, black-furred, red-eyed, monsterously clawed hound, smoke billowing
from its nostrils.
One of the friendly Tergs was able
to communicate to Paris that the black tentacles eating its shaman were
somewhat of a concern to him and his companions, and while they found Paris
very charming they would much prefer for this not to be the state of affairs:
as he concluded this explination through hand gesture and sympathetic sounds,
thus overcoming the language barrier, there was a sickening crunch and the
shaman was completely consumed by Clarence’s conjuration. The diplomatic Terg
stopped, sharing a sorrowful look of disappointment with Paris, while Dickie
stood by nervously, hoping for the peace to hold but ready to strike if things
turned.
Fire bellowed into the room from
the fissure, and a flailing, flaming figure flew out from the gap into the
tentacles where it was smothered and crushed. Clarence’s hell hound came
charging through in chase, turning its baleful gaze onto the now peaceful
congregation within the room, but it too was caught by the black tentacles; Clarence’s
cackles were lost under the bellows of anguish from the daemonic beast as it
was slowly constricted.
A voice bellowed from beyond the
door through which the un-charmed Terg had escaped. “Open these doors! I am Cornelius Bullingdon and I will not let
primitives like you stand in my way!”
The two warriors holding the door
closed were reluctant to acquiest, but did so at Paris’ bidding. They slammed
the doors shut being Cornelius as he strode in triumphant, throwing down the
body of the last of the Terg warriors, its head twisted at a horrible angle.
