Draconnic Shenanigans - Episode 41

 Chapter Forty One: Watchers in the Mountains

 

(Artwork not mine, the brilliant work of Alex Henderson

creator of the official music video of 'Keeper of the Celestial Flame'

by Gloryhammer.) 

 Leaving the thoroughly disrupted village behind them, the King's Special and their allies pushed on into the mountains, Kaelin winging in circles before them to check the route ahead for trouble. Despite what Yaga Tuf had said about the Bat Clan elves being persuaded to move on a year or so before, Kaelin wasn't convinced that there wasn't going some nasty surprises waiting on the road for them. If nothing else there were those two raftfuls of Bat Clan elves that had been waiting for them on the under ground river, if they didn't come back for a second go them she was a flying monkey. She did not voice that last description out loud when she explained her motivation at lunch in Yaga Tuf's house, being fully aware that Jeremiah would undoubtedly comment on her wings and the fact that some believed that humans where in fact related to at least the greater apes.

Valodrael padded along in the sunshine, a slight smile on his face as he soaked up the warmth. Alina walked beside him and Estella, listening as Estella explained their problems with trying to find a cure for Valodrael's condition. She studied the bat cat talisman as it perched on her shoulder, purring like a small wind mill in motion. She frowned, considering what she was told, studying the garden that erupted through the skin of the china golem considering if there was anything that she could add to Estella's efforts to create a stable magical matrix for Valodrael's new body. Milena had just announced lunch when Valodrael grunted, stumbling as he missed a step, the first shocks of his condition vicing through his internals like a lance. Alina winced as Estella let him back in, trembling as she watched his form liquefy, pouring down Estella's throat as her back arched, struggling with the force of it. Estella flopped forward from the waist, arms limp, back popping as the bones shifted slightly. Estella straightened and Alina took a step back, eyes wide, hand going to her mouth as she gazed at those eyes that were not eyes but rather tunnels that led into the dark. Then Estella blinked and the black faded from her gaze as Valodrael stepped back from dual control.

"It hurts," Estella answered the unasked question, "Every time but only for a moment. That is my half of the contract and I don't have to endure the pain for long. He endures it all the time. Even when he's riding crossbow it hurts him." She tilted her head listening to a voice none of the others could hear at that moment.

"Yes," she stated, "I have known for years. You sensed my pain when my greatest treasure came into the world, I have sensed yours. It is strange, sometimes, to feel the pain outside of myself. Its like having a black ball of pain that hoovers just beside my shoulder. I don't notice it most of the time." Yaga Tuf called them in for lunch, the hut lowering itself to the floor temporarily so they could mount before standing and continuing to walk as they ate.

As lunch progressed, it became clear that Tikrumpdel was going to become a liability. In the water he had just about kept up the pace but away from the river his only form of locomotion was galumphing, which was neither fast nor graceful. It also sounded as if he was destabilising whole mountain sides as his weight rippled over the ground and it was making the gait of the walking house even more uneven than usual. Thorian was beginning to look more than a little yellow by the end of the meal and he pushed back his plate unfinished.

"Sorry," he mumbled, "It's lovely but the way the room is lurching its..." He didn't finish his sentence, clamping his  mouth shut and closing his eyes, swallowing repeatedly.

Melina stood up and reached for Ulrich's ever full kettle where it steamed on the stove.

"Where did you find that wonderful devise?" Yaga Tuf asked as Melina poured hot water over crumbled dried mint leaves, "It would certainly save a lot of time in the day."

"I discovered it in the Wizard's Tower," Ulrich explained, "And it was due to the bedevilment of a Chest Weasel."

"Chest Weasel? What is a Chest Weasel?" Altan asked.

"A small fae creature that, when it is in its own shape, looks like a white, red- spotted weasel that was crossed with a monkey. The dwarfs call them gremlins," Ulrich smiled as he explained, "They feed off the irritation of  regular folks but they always pay for their meals one way or another. The one who resulted in me gaining that wonderful kettle didn't actually mean for me to have it. She played her little tricks on me and rewarded me with a saddle for my giant lizard but part of her little trick had resulted in me being boxed into the room, literally. There was a heap of boxes between me and the door. In having to tidy it all up I discovered that there kettle and its accompaniments in storage and Elisha the Mastersmith was kind enough to let me kept them. He said that they would be of more use to us than gathering dust in a corner of his tower. He..."

The burp echoed round the hut on legs.

"Sorry," Thorian pressed the back of his hand to his mouth, holding on to the steaming mug with the other.

"Happens that way with my wife's sick-be-gone tea," Altan smiled, "Is it helping?"

"Yeah," Thorian nodded and burped again, a little move quietly, "Seems to be. Thank you."

"You are welcome," Melina smiled.

The rumble of falling stone echoed from outside.

"That is going to be a problem," Yaga Tuf stated and stood up, stumping out on to the balcony of the walking hut, tapping the base of its neck to bring it to a halt. She stamped round to to where she could look back down the road towards Tikrumpdel's vast shape.

 He was wheezing as he rippled and lumbered towards then, the ground trembling under his weight.

"Just give me a minute," he paused and coughed, "I'll get there." He flapped his wings slowly, the membranes flushed orange gold with excess blood as he tried to dump the heat made by his exertions. "I don't suppose there's another river I could follow down to this town we're going to?"

"Afraid not," Yaga Tuf replied, "Not unless you fancy detouring two hundred miles south."

"It would add another two and a half days to our journey," Ulrich supplied usefully.

"Oh pah!" Tikrumpdel blew a pall of smoke over the ground, smelling of cinders and ash.

"Now this is where you witness the power of the One True God," Jeremiah smiled his not nice smile as Nanny Tatters lowered her head to the ground, "And learn that you should set aside your unholy ways woman and embrace the salvation that only comes from bowing, wholly and completely with no boundaries, to the will of the One True God."

 Yaga Tuf raised her eyebrows but said nothing as Jeremiah stepped down from Nanny Tatters' head.

 "Oh gods," Ulrich muttered behind her, "What is he up to now? Quenril, does Trakanhini have any special prayers? Something that can be said as a charm to keep evil at bay?"

"If she does then I don't know it," Quenril admitted, "The worship of Trakanhini is forbidden in the Underworld, her creed a heresy to those that would stay in the dark, in the old ways."

"Guess I'll have to come up with something on  my own then," Ulrich muttered as Jeremiah raised his hands, voice soaring vast as he stood before the gasping dragon.

The was a gale of in rushing air as Tikrumpdel went from the size of a large Physeter whale down to the size of one of the grey skinned beasts of the southern continent, the tusks of which could be longer than a man was tall.

"Wow," he looked up with a grin, "That was tingly, what did you do?" He frowned, peering down at the still praying Jeremiah, tilting his head over on one side. "What did you do? Your bigger than you used to be."

Jeremiah closed his eyes as he did not reply, praying louder, more expansively.

"Oh?" a voice rumbled in his mind, "Do you meant that? Do you truly believe in me, my precious little Jeremiah? Would you truly lay down your soul at my feet in exchange for the power I can give you? Do you truly believe?"

Jeremiah gulped, his heart hammering against his ribs as Tikrumpdel's breath blew stronger and stronger in his face, the still large dragon realising that he had to galumph to get as close to Jeremiah as he had been only a moment ago, still making the ground shake behind his vastness.

 "Oh my God," he muttered, "The Almighty, the wonderful, the awesome, the glamorous Klu'ga-nath! Let your power flow through me to reduce this over sized beast down to what he should be. Render him humbled, diminish his power until he must bow to your glory and might. Dwindle him so that the Witch of the Mountains must see the error of her ways and submit to your judgement!"

Once again the gale of inrushing air tossed the leaves growing on the clay skin of the walking hut.

"What the blazers!" Tikrumpdel demanded, twisting about wildly, gazing up at Yaga Tuf on her balcony. He reared suddenly, twisting his head back in the manner of the massive, trunked seals that barked and roared on the beaches of the northern coast, clashing his teeth at the descending head of Nanny Tatters, his puny wings flaring and flapping in a threat display that was much less impressive than it should have been with his shrunken size.

"Thank you my god. Thank you great Klu'ga-nath!" Jeremiah spoke and the world shook and darkened for a moment.

"Whoop! Whoop!" the walking hut squawked, flapping its wooden wings and snapping its beak at shadows.

"Now my god," Jeremiah smiled, "Continue your good work, humiliate him further, rend him pathetic."

"Oh why should I?" the voice rumbled, "Why should I put the effort in."

"What the blue blazers is going on!?!" Tikrumpdel roared, rearing high, towering higher than some bears Thorian had seen fighting in the mountains. The ground trembled as he toppled down, slamming into the dirt. Probably the only thing that saved Jeremiah was that Tikrumpdel assumed that it had to be some sort of trick by Nanny Tatters. He reared up again, his wings pumping to haul him higher, almost to his back feet, his roar a thunderous sound that echoed from the mountains. Kaelin clapped her hands over her ears. If the village had sent anyone to follow them she reckoned that they had turned back at that moment. The noise was phenomenal.

It also gave Jeremiah time to whip out one of his books, flicking desperately to find something that would sweeten the deal with the One True God. He smiled as he found it, speaking aloud the prayer in the ancient tongue that would siphon off the ancient lava dragon's life force  to feed the books and bring them back to nearly perfect condition.

Tikrumpdel's roar became high and shrill as he shrank further. He flobbered to the ground but it did not tremble this time as the now Great Dane sized dragon coiled and snapped about, eyes wide and rolling in their sockets.

"What? Where? What? What's going on?" his voice was on the edge of panic.

Jeremiah smiled and cast the spell one more time.

Tikrumpdel squealed, sounding not unlike the pigs he had eaten only hours before. His now cat sized body rolled around, squealing and squeaking, wings flapping uselessly because despite his much reduced volume his body shape had not changed one iota. He screamed.

Still grinning, Jeremiah snapped his book shut and stepped forward, enjoying the warmth radiating from the covers of the books as he tuck the one he was holding back with its fellows.

Reaching down he managed to grab the now cat sized dragon's scruff and lift him high.

"Who's a good boy then?" he grinned. Tikrumpdel swelled like an over inflating football and did a fair impression of a cigarette lighter... on steroids. Jeremiah lowered him slightly, wrinkling his nose at the smell of scorched antler, the sigil of his god more obvious under the sunlight, now that it was contained in a cage of blacken bone.

"You," he ordered, pointing at his vigor pack barrier, "Get down here and don't break anything!"

The vigor stood and shuffled slowly down the length of Nanny Tatters' tail. When it stood before Jeremiah he flipped the top of his pack open and deposited the hissing, growling dragon in the opening.

"Do not close this pack and get back on Nanny Tatters' back," he instructed the vigor pack barrier. Ignoring Tikrumpdel's continued growling he turned to the others.

"And now we will be able to make decent time," he smiled at them. 

 "Ah uh, Jeremiah?" Ulrich called down.

"What is it, my good Sir Ulrich?" Jeremiah smiled, "You seem quite concerned about something."

"Um, your moth," Ulrich pointed to the top of his own hat to illustrate his observation, "It is looking a little... singed?"

Jeremiah frowned and then lifted and arm.

"Gerard, step down here," he commanded. The giant, glowing blue moth did so, his wings whistling instead of buzzing as holes had been burnt clean through the soft, dusty structures. Its legs were also jerking back and forth. Thorian was pretty sure that if it could speak it would have been going 'hot, hot, hot!'

Jeremiah studied the damage as the vigor pack barer began its laborious climb back up Nanny Tatters' side and then muttered a prayer. A glow of a different kind travelled the length of Gerard's body and made him fluff his antennae for a moment. When it faded back to his usual blue shade his wings were whole but... changed. Now they were boned and jointed, long fingers supporting a membrane that carried the pattern of his original wings but the base colour under the blue swirls was... not right. It was not silver or grey or white but some shade that was part of all of those colours plus some. Quenril shuddered as he looked at it and arched his fingers in the Ash Elf gesture toward off evil.

"Shall we be moving on?" Jeremiah smiled up at all of them. Without a word Yaga Tuf went and tapped on the railing again, setting the hut to walking down the road once more. Despite any misgivings as to how it had been done, it was true that with the shrunken Tikrumpdel now having been shoved into a pack rather like one of those teeny weeny dogs that rich women breed as a hobby and hand warmers, they made much better time than they had been doing so.

Camp that night was made high up on a rock shelf that was part of the trail through the mountains, the land sheering steeply away down from them and  rearing up in a cliff face above them on the opposite side of the track. The walking hut tucked itself back into the corner made by the turning of the road, as far away from the cliff edge as possible, its clay eyes alert for danger as its head swung slowly back and forth on the end of its long neck. The others just gazed at the view, the mountains marching for ever into the north, stunning in their grandeur, timeless in their presence.

"Now I understand why people come up here to feel closer to their gods," Ulrich whispered. It seemed sacrilegious to speak loudly around the mountains and for once Jeremiah didn't feel the need to buck the trend. Maybe the mountains had managed to work their magic on him too. The three Ash Elves were utterly struck dumb, gazing at the valley below their feet once their bedrolls were spread beneath the wooden wings of the walking hut, the honey glow of evening painting their faces as they stared at a landscape that they had never even considered the existence of.

Kaelin walked to the edge of the cliff, closing her eyes and breathing in the scents of the mountains and the evening, the gathering cool making smells richer, more easy to track. She spread her pinions, the low sun shining through the feathers and then dropped like a stone into the valley. She pulled up out of her wild dive and spiralled down the mountain side, the wind in her feathers quieter as she drifted, eyes looking for her preferred prey.

Thorian watched her go and sniffed. Turning he headed up the sharp cleft where a snow melt stream had tumbled down the rocks in the spring. Up here in the mountains he knew where to go and what to do. As the shadows lengthened he saw what he knew should be there, wandering near the base of another cliff. The mountain goats were heading up to their sleeping places on the rock face, their split hooves clicking on the stone as the males postured and displayed to try and gain a higher perch. Thorian smiled quietly and worked himself into his preferred ground.

The fist sized chunk of rock shattered on the cliff face with a retort like a small cannon. The goats wheeled and bounded in all directions, startled by the unexpected noise. Thorian grinned, waiting for one of them to run in just the right direction, holding still in a way that made him hard to see in the gathering gloom. The goat, a young male, came bounding out of the darkening air, some how more noticeable than Thorian had expected. Thorian threw himself in just the right way, one hand catching a curved horn the other arm pressing into the back of the billy goat's neck so as they went down on the slope a sharp crack rang out. Thorian held on with one hand as the other scrabbled for a hold, the billy's last reflexive kicks threatening to spill them on to the scree slope.

Thorian frowned as the billy stilled, the horn in his hand darkening, loosing the slight shine that had made it stand out all the more. If any of his friends had been with him they would have noticed the fading blue glow that had outlined the animal's curved horns, echoing the spark that had danced in its eyes, an intelligence not of animal origin. Thorian rubbed his chin. There had been something weird there, something he knew wasn't right.

Kaelin flapped her wings. She wasn't sure where she was compared to the walking hut but as long as the others didn't decide to start having baths all of a sudden, she was fairly sure she could find them again. Against the darkening sky she drifted, smelling the scents of earth and sky, the sharp scent of pine, the depth of honeyberry and birch mulch, the musk of animals. She picked up the scent of pain.

The stag was limping, a long gash on his foreleg inflamed and swollen. It wasn't weeping yet but Kaelin knew his fate with one glance; quick death in a wolf hunt or the slower pain of infection. Unless...

Kaelin struck him, claws sinking deep into his neck. Despite that he still slammed back against her, the tine of an antler twisting a hair breathe from her eye. The stag reared as Kaelin's wings trashed the air above them, clinging on as the red pulsed round her claws. The stag bellowed, a constricted rasping sound, twisting his head against the grip of death and for a second they were eye to eye. Kaelin's hackles went up as she saw the blue orb glaring back at her, a human eye in the stag's face as his lips rippled back in an expression that should have never graced the face of a herbivore. Kaelin jerked back and the stag screamed, legs finally giving out under her weight. Kaelin flapped, pulling away, leaving him to topple to the high forest floor alone. The legs kicked, the throat rasped but the eyes where not wide with the last fear of death, instead glaring in fury, rolling to keep her in sight, watching her with savagery, something human, mad, vicious staring at her, weighing her, even as the body died, deciding her threat level, deciding how badly it needed to kill her. Then the head flopped on the end of its neck, the last trickles of blood running out, its breath catching for the last time in the throat.

Kaelin landed and crept close, ready to leap away if it stirred but the blue was fading with death and as the last tremors left the flesh, the eyes turned to the tawny brown that they should have been from the start. She leaned forward and sniffed at its fur. Smelt like a perfectly good piece of venison. She pocked it with a bloody claw but it did not stir. She twisted her nose with a slight sound and then shrugged. Food was food and whatever had been ailing this beast seemed to have left. She bent and picked up the carcase, draping it over one shoulder. She leaped with a grunt and grunted again as her ankles took the slam back into the earth. Blasted thing was heavier than she'd expected. It took a run up to become air born again and then she was pushing herself into the sky, mouth pressed into a thin line with the effort, chest muscles burning with the strain. She needed to work at this more. She wondered if there was something she could practise carrying as she flew, to work at getting stronger.

Thorian walked down the mountain trails, thinking, thoughts like boulders rolling around in his head, crashing against each other as he considered what he'd seen and why the billy goat had stood out more than the rest of the herd.

"I don't suppose you've got any of that tea brewed up yet?" he asked as he reached the camp fire.

"Aye that we do," Yaga Tuf stood and offered a cup as Thorian laid the billy goat down as the sky lost the last of the orange sunset and the velvety darkness of the mountain night closed in around the camp fire.

Tikrumpdel growled quietly, steaming and hissing where he was tucked under Jeremiah's arm, the priest's thick fingers holding on to his scruff. Jeremiah smiled and gave a small squeeze with his elbow again. Tikrumpdel squealed and a jet of fire licked over the wood piled in the circle of stone, stoking the camp fire higher.

The stars flickering into sight above them all as Yaga Tuf held out a cup to the returning hunter as Thorian laid down his offering at the edge of the light.

"Thanks," he grinned and took it but instead of drinking it he turned away, walking back to the end of the trail he'd come down the mountain on. He poured the cup out slowly on the rocks, muttering and grunting something in the language of the orc crossbreeds as he did so.

"What was that for?" Milena asked as he came back to the fire.

"That goat was magical," Thorian sniffed as he held the cup out for a refill, "I reckon we'd be haunted cause I killed it so I thought I'd better tell the goat spirits that Ulrich told me to do it, they'd like him more than me."

"Excuse me?" Ulrich demanded as Jeremiah laughed so hard he lost his grip on the squirming Tikrumpdel.

The rotund dragon popped out of his grip like a greased pig and bounced on the ground with a squeak not unlike a rubber ball. He rolled over, the fire licking harmlessly over his scales as he rolled into the edge of the fire, turning hot eyes on Jeremiah's thick form. The pilot light in his throat flickered.

He stopped, nose twitching, head swinging towards where Altan was already opening up the belly of the carcass and cleaning it out, a messy, cold job that was bloody and sticky but also revealed some things that had Tikrumpdel's nose twitching in an instant. The cat sized dragon bounced on his belly towards the squelchy pile.

"I just hope that the goat spirits don't mind us eating it," Thorian muttered again.

"If you want to eat, there's the food," Kaelin stated, landing with a thump and heaving down her burden beside the first, "Take it or leave it."

"If there isn't enough I'll have Kaelin's," Ulrich said.

"Now that's not fair!" Thorian protested, "We did all the work to get it, you didn't. 'Sides there's plenty for everyone here with both of them."

"Don't worry," Kaelin interrupted, scratching dried blood out from under a finger nail with the point of a knife, "No good deed goes unpunished."

A muffled growling sounded out. The King's Special turned their heads to see, Tikrumpdel up to the shoulders in the pile of  goat offal, growling squeakily as he chewed on a kidney, shaking it back and forth.

"Please don't do that until I am out of the splash zone," Altan held up an arm, dots of red splattering his sleeve. He wiped his face.

"Oh," Tikrumpdel mumbled around a mouthful, "Sorry. Won't do it again." He settled down to chew his way through a tough bit of liver, teeth grinding back and forth, head turned sideways, sticky wet noises echoing through the air.

 "Will he be even hungrier when he grows back up?" Thorian asked. Jeremiah paused to think about it, wondering if he would bother to unshrink Tikrumpdel, ever.

"If he eats well before hand we should be safe," he proclaimed, stroking his beard.

Tikrumpdel muttered something over by the pile of offal but declined to explain what he had said, chewing his way through the billy goat's lights to avoid having to repeat himself around Jeremiah.

Dinner smelt delicious by the time it was dished up, vegetables boiled with barley and herbs over the fire and a spit roast goat turned to perfection. Cool mountain air and days of walking provided an appetite that caused most of the King's Special to be totally engrossed in the spoon and bowl symphony.  Kaelin lifted her head from the bowl, a motion on the edge of her vision catching her attention.

The huge owl ghosted out of the darkness, its barred wings hardly moving as it drifted to the walking hut and settled on the rail beside the gap that let on to the lowest level of the balconies.

"Oh hoot, it's a bird," Kaelin muttered, sounding bored. The owl twisted its head to look at her over its own back, puffed its throat feathers and hooted at her. Yaga Tuf listened to it and nodded. Jeremiah firmly looked away, determined to ignore anything he didn't want to see.

Estella was watching the staff that hovered near to its master. Her talismans still seemed utterly fascinated by it, hoping around it and twittering quietly. The bat cat in particular seemed fascinated by the fact that no matter how many times she batted it with a paw it always returned to the upright position, even with the red cardinal holding on to the top of it chirping and flapping its wings every time the staff tilted.

"I still don't understand how he could have quickened the wood while it was still raw," Estella observed, setting aside her empty bowl. She started as the currently glutted Tikrumpdel crawled into her lap and rolled over to have his belly scratched. She giggled.

"You also mentioned something about your family coming from a world of witch hunters," Tikrumpdel rumbled contentedly as he lay there enjoying her administrations, "I'm not sure that I understand."

"It certainly sounds like an interesting tale," Ulrich leaned back against a rock, "We've already told Alina most of our stories, would you mind sharing yours?"

"Why not," Altan smiled wistfully, "Through you must understand that my grandfather died many, many decades before I was born, what I know of him was the stories my grandmother and father told me." He closed his eyes a moment, pressing his fingers together and tapping the tips of his index fingers together, gathering his thoughts.

"What you need to understand is that this world is not the only world, " he began, "I'm not talking different countries or islands across the sea or the hidden places of the Underworld. I am talking completely different worlds. Consider the question what if our sun is a star? If so then surely it is possible that up there," he gestured at the star studded throat of night above them, "There is another star that is a sun to a world that travels with it in the darkness of the void. For that matter there could be many, many stars that are also suns to their own worlds."

Tikrumpdel rolled over in Estella's lap staring at Altan as he heard his own comments made about different worlds at the doorway of his lair echoed out here in the open air.

"Well," Altan continued, "Those thoughts are true, there are many stars that are also suns and they have worlds that bathe in their light every day and their people look back at us, for our sun is a star in their sky. You cannot walk to those worlds, you cannot fly, you cannot sail but every now and then you can find a doorway between the worlds, small, often unnoticed but there if you step through at the right moment."

Ulrich peered at Altan in the firelight. He was sure there was something else in Altan's heritage, something not human.

"And on some of those worlds magic does not existence," Altan's face sobered, lost its look of awe and joy. He folded his arms on his knees and dropped his chin on to them, "It is known as only rumours, whispers, legends and therefore it is feared. It is feared mightily. Witches, they call any one they suspect of working magic, through it is little more than the knowing of common garden herbs. Witches, demons, devil marked. They use it as an excuse to hurt and punish anyone who doesn't conform fully to what they wanted for their society. They'd stone those that asked questions, hang women who ask for the respect due those that risk their lives to push new life out into the world, even brand children who favoured using their left hand over their right. And it is from that world my grandfather came."

"I'm surprised he wanted to come here," Kaelin grunted, "Seeing as people use magic here all the time. That is assuming that he had a choice about coming here."

"In some ways he didn't have a choice," Altan observed, "You see his eldest brother, his only living kin, had already come here years before and he'd been left in a town that immediately decided that big brother left under the influence of a witch. My grandfather lived his life constantly afraid, constantly having to take central point in witch hunting others because if he didn't, well," Altan shrugged, "The gallows cast a long shadow."

"Him!" Tikrumpdel reared up in Estella's lap, "I knew I'd seen someone like you before! You're kin to Jerome Wright, the one who was carrying the Geneva Bible. But... No that can't be right! I meet him when I still had my original horde, before Gaudis died! That was four hundred years ago. You can't be his grandson!"

 "And yet I am," Altan corrected gently.

"Well you can't be," Tikrumpdel snorted smoke, "You humans need at least five generations to get through a hundred years so you'd have to be..."

"Humans yes," Altan interrupted, "But what about elves?"

Tikrumpdel blinked and then shut his mouth.

Smiling, Altan lifted the walnut dark hair away from his ears. They were not as pointed as an elf's ears should be but it was unmistakable.

"Ah," Ulrich noted, "Forgive me if I have been staring but I did think that there was something other than human in your inheritance. It is interesting to have it confirmed." Quenril and his kin were staring with unabashed interest. If nothing else it did confirm that Lady Zilvra's interest in Ulrich was not a dead end relationship for the clan, there was the possibility of issue from the relationship.

 "That is perfectly understandable," Altan let his hair fall back, "There are not many of my kind in the world and neither race seem to be a hundred percent comfortable with our existence."

"So how did it happen?" Tikrumpdel asked, blind to the invasive nature of the question as only a dragon could be, "When I met him he seemed whole committed to finding his brother and 'saving his soul from destruction'. I'm not sure that I understood the last part, it was something to do with falling to the wiles of a witch and if your left hand causes you to sin you should hack it off. That just seemed excessive to me."

"It was," Altan agreed, "What little of the religion he was indoctrinated in as a child my grandfather shared with my grandmother did not paint a picture of love or even care. And that was what finally broke him free of it. That and a witch." Altan laughed a little at that.

"Oh this just gets better," Ulrich grinned.

"Oh if you are looking for irony then my grandfather's life was a mess of it," Altan agreed, "It was after he had met you, Tikrumpdel, he was laid way at an inn by a pack of scoundrels. He thought humans were safe in this world and they put on a show of listening to his preaching of the word of the one true god, until they beat him to within an inch of his life just outside the inn and left him for dead. He didn't know who passed him by but he knew that it was many people and most of them would have been human. A few even gave him an extra kick for being in the way. He'd been trained from the moment that his big brother left him behind to believe that only humans had the love and blessing of the one true god and they were the ones who nigh on beat him to death and then left him lying in a gutter."

Jeremiah shifted at the use of the phrase 'one true god'. It was galling to hear that these heathens from another world dared to refer to their false god in such a fashion.

"And it was a witch that picked him up out of that gutter and nursed him back to health," Altan looked into the fire and chuckled, "The world has a sense of humour that gods often miss."

"I bet he choked on it," Kaelin stated wryly.

"Oh he did to begin with," Altan smiled again, looking up at her, the firelight dancing in his blue eyes, "The man he once was would have turned in his grave to know his grandson had married the daughter of a witch."

"I take it that he changed?" Ulrich asked.

"Not gracefully," Altan admitted, "It was messy and painful and damn near destroyed him before he could rebuild. There were a few times that hopelessness became a taste he nearly choked on before he could face the climb up again."

"But he got there," Estella stated, hugging Tikrumpdel like a plushy and despite his squeaks he didn't wriggle.

"He did," Altan confirmed, "And it was thanks to that witch asking nasty little questions while she nursed him. Questions like 'if god is love then why does he punish the children for the sins of the father's? Does that feel like love? When they nearly drowned you for your brother's abandonment of you, did it feel like love? When your father beat you for asking questions did it feel like love? If god is love why does his judgement not feel like love? Why does he demand that you obey rather than be happy? When they made you imagine your brother burning in hell over and over again did that feel like love?'"

"I take it that your grandfather found that he had no good answer to any of those questions?" Ulrich observed.

"Them and more," Altan admitted, "By the time he left to continue searching for his big brother he was wondering if he even wanted to go back to the world he left behind. After finding him? He realised he really didn't want to go back. Granted then he didn't want to go forward either but staying in one place wasn't an option either."

"Why not?" Kaelin didn't look at him, staring off into the dark like the answer didn't matter at all.

"Because he discovered that his big brother might have been the be all and end all of his existence but for his big brother, well, he was the duty that he'd never wanted and didn't want to have to carry any longer," Altan said, shaking his head, "Strange isn't it? How you can think that your safety was secure with a family member and it turns out that you were nothing but a burden to them."

Kaelin winced but said nothing.

"Couldn't go back, they would have hanged him for failing to save his brother's soul," Altan continued, "Couldn't stay with his brother and had no idea where to go next. No quest, no purpose, no rhyme or reason to continue to exist, only the fear of hell to prevent him from doing something foolish. About the only thing that kept him moving forward was, well..." He held up his hand and his staff smacked into it, fire light gleaming off its polished length. He laid it over his knees. "Quicken with pain and brokeness and desperation. Quicken by accident because it wasn't even his staff."

"What?" Estella asked.

"He picked up the wrong staff on the way out of his brother's house," Altan smiled, "Though perhaps that was the will of the talisman wood. Sometimes it seems to have a mind of its own."

"So... his brother was the talisman carver?" Estella hesitated, peering at Altan, something ticking at the back of her mind.

"Oh yes," Altan smiled, "My grandfather was better at working with horses, which is how he meet my grandmother. Met a snot of an elf lord who was having trouble with his mount and told him that he would not respect any being who could not tell the difference between disobedience and a pain response."

Thorian nearly choked on his tea with laughter.

"I bet the pointy eared git loved that!" he roared, slapping his thigh, "I bet he looked like he'd swallowed a wasp!" He pulled a face, demonstrating what he thought the elf lord would look like. Quenril and Sabal looked uncomfortable but Tasnar looked like he was swallowing a snigger.

"I'm surprised that the elfish lord didn't skewer him on the spot," Jeremiah observed quietly.

"I think it was because my grandfather showed no fear of that happening," Altan shrugged, "He probably didn't feel any fear of it happening. If you have nothing to live for then why not die? As it is, he didn't. After adjusting just about every joint the horse had it was finally willing to be quiet at the bit and the rein and my grandfather found himself with a job at the sidhbe court."

Quenril and his kin glowered at the mention of their age old rivals above ground.

"I am surprised that despite his usefulness he was allowed to marry a member of the elvish nobility," Jeremiah observed, clearing a third helping of the food, "Elves are noted as being extremely picky over these things."

"That's because she wasn't," Altan didn't rise to Jeremiah's snide tone, "She was a foundling of the Shulmi Elves, the travellers of the great dust plains, discovered injured at the edge of their lands after an orc raid had wiped out her caravan."

"Oh, oof," Thorian winced and rubbed the back of his neck, "That does happen. Not exactly our best moments."

"And yet you wonder why people don't like you on sight," Jeremiah snipped, "It is no wonder that everyone else on the planet do not think much of your brains."

Thorian glared and stood slowly.

"We don't wonder why people don't like us," he snarled, "We know right why people don't like us. It's cause we're big and strong and when its a fair fight we stamp on them right good. What we don't understand is why you can't leave us any where to be on our own. The dwarfs took the underground from us, the pointy ears took the forests and the woods from us, you humans took the plains and the hills from us and now you want the mountains as well. Where every we go, you chase us. Ha! You sodding made my kind and then chased us out when we stood up and said 'No! We are people! We are people and people don't wear chains and get whipped and beaten for no damn good reason!' You chase us out of every damn place we try to call our own and then wonder why we fight back. You make out that we're the bad guys but you give us no where that we can stay away from you. We don't want much. We want land that's big and great and wild like this," his arm swung to the whole of the dark mountain ridge line, "We want big prey that puts up a good fight. We want rivers that run good and fish that leap far and big trees that make big fires and plants that make good beer. We want our damn corner of the world and for the rest of you to leave us the FRACK ALONE!"

His shout echoed back from the mountains. The walking house shuffled nervously where it sat and 'whooped' quietly as the others stared at him with wide eyes.

Turning, Thorian stamped off up the road into the dark, muttering and flinging his arms about, arguing with everyone and anyone, arguing with history, arguing with the world.

 "If you destroy someone's house, don't be surprised when they move into yours," Yaga Tuf said drily. Estella sniffed and hugged Tikrumpdel tighter. The cat sized ball of dragon protested slightly, leaking smoke but only wriggled slightly as the tears start to drip on his head.

"It's hard," Estella muttered, "It's hard to want a home but have no where to go." Alina and Milena sat down on either side of her and leaned against her. Kaelin frowned. There was something, something odd about the scents of the three women gathered there and not because one of them was standing out too much rather that they all smelled... similar. That was odd because it should mean that they were related but that was impossible. The white feathered serpent talisman flicked its tongue in her ear, coiling itself into an amused knot just out of reach as she squeaked and swiped out at it.

"And how did the story finish?" Yaga Tuf asked her son-in-law, poking him with the butt of her staff, "How did your grandfather turn out young man?"

"As I said earlier," Altan smiled, "He learned that when your dreams run through your fingers like dust it leaves your hands empty to find a new dream. And my grandmother, Tsetseg, found someone who respected her ways and didn't try and force her to change them to fit in with a people not her own. She recognised that she owed the sidhe court her life but she also did not bow to their attempts to erase the memories of her people's ways. Among the Shulmi elves women chose their husbands and if he didn't want to be her's he'd better be a good enough horse elf to out run her. Granted he had to be a good horse elf any way to prove that she had chosen wisely. The first part of a Shulmi elf's wedding was always the chase."

"I'm surprised that he accepted her ways so whole heartedly," Ulrich noted, "Considering how hard the religion of his childhood had tried to mould him."

"I think that's why," Altan countered, "He'd realised that what he'd been told was love, forced to accept as love, was a lie, wholly and completely. That it wasn't love at all, just control and power and abuse. He was a prisoner out of the prison and it hurt, hurt like hell, but he wasn't about to rebuild the walls back up. He had found that the religious person will do what he is told, no matter if it is not right whereas the faithful person will do what is right, no matter what he is told and my grandmother was both his guide and his companion on that road."

"A shame that their time together would be short," Quenril observed. Sabal and Tasnar looked at him with concern. Quenril's fingers flicked in their silent language and if anything their paled all the more.

"Not as short as it could have been," Altan corrected, "There are ways of humans extending their life spans and I don't mean the methods employed by liches and other such dark wizards." Altan shuddered at the mention of those reviled magic users, fingers flicking from forehead to heart to shoulder and shoulder.

"And those methods are?" Quenril leaned forward, towards him. Ulrich also sat up straighter with interest, finally falling in as to why Quenril was so interested in what Altan had to said, particularly as Lady Silvra was young for an elf so his much shorter life span was an issue.

"You need to find your heart tree," Altan replied.

"Your heart tree?" Quenril questioned.

"Yes," Altan replied, "The legends of the good wizards and priests who lived for centuries beyond the natural span of humans? They were real and it is a bargain that is both peace and life. It is why the talisman wood exists at all. You have to find a mature talisman tree that is ready to produce its fruit and offer your life to its service. You collect the fruit every year, treat it and plant it far and wide. In return it will allow you to take some of its bark from the living trunk. My grandfather used to powder that bark and smoke it in a long stemmed pipe. Grandmother said that it used to make his eyes glow green for a while. Others are said to brew a potion from it, something like tea but of a thicker, richer consistency."

Estella leaned forward as well, mouth slightly open, Tikrumpdel squeaking in her a moment before stilling, sensing Valodrael moving in there, his swirling black interest coursing through Estella's essence. If a human and an elf would struggle because of the differences in their life span, for a human and a dragon? Tikrumpdel settled and leaned his head in against Estella. He was beginning to see that being this size had its own advantages.

"And what if you tried to take the bark without the tree's permission?" Jeremiah asked, a dark glimmer in his eyes.

"Or if you failed to plant the fruit?" Altan raised an eyebrow at Jeremiah, "Well it is said that if you fail to keep your side of the bargain or if you abuse the privilege that the tree has bestowed upon you then the blessing becomes a curse and rips you apart from the inside out. It is said that first you warp into a monster of unending hunger, constantly hunting, unable to rest, scouring the land for a moment of peace and then the rain turns into acid for you and you alone, stripping your flesh from your bones until you finally succumb to the agony of it and perish. Talismans and talisman wood is not like other wood, it is not just a tree that you can take what you want from. Why do you suppose those of a selfish bent find the bargain that the heart tree offers to be unpalatable?"

The fire crackled between them, a challenge and a caution.

"Time for bed," Yaga Tuf stated, climbing to her feet, "We have a long way to go and not a lot of time to get there so I want an early start in the morning."

"Good idea," Kaelin stood up and stretched, "Who's standing watch first?"

"You can if you want," Yaga Tuf noted, "If it makes you more comfortable but my house has never let be sneaked upon before and I doubt that he'll do so now."

"Whoop," the house agreed, shifting slightly and turning its head in an exaggerated show of watching its surroundings.

"I'll go for that," Thorian stated as he walked back into the fire light, "I think we all need a good night's rest."

"Undoubtedly," Ulrich stood and moved to the shadows for a last private moment before turning in for the night under the wings of the walking house.

That turned out to be a mistake. Ulrich's habit was to sleep on his side, curled up, the foot of his sleeping bag left empty, years of trying to keep warm in a cold house ingrained to the point that he didn't think about it. He was just beginning to drift off to sleep when something grabbed the end of his sleeping and started yanking back and forth, growling and snarling.

"What!?!" Ulrich sat bolt upright, "Who!?! What!?!"

"Whoop?" the walking hut asked, tucking its head under its wing to look at what was going on.

"Some look out you've been," Ulrich hissed at it, grabbing a sword and sitting up as he pulled it from the scabbard. Before he could strike out at what was savaging his sleeping bag the walking hut lifted a wing and let in some extra light from the dying fire.

A cat sized fat dragon had his teeth locked in the toe of Ulrich's sleeping roll and was shaking it back and forth with all the might of his surprisingly strong neck, growling all the while.

"Excuse me," Ulrich said, slamming his sword back into its scabbard, "Would you like to sleep in my bedding as well as eat it?"

Tikrumpdel appeared to need no second invitation, galumphing up the length of Ulrich's sleeping bag and doing his best to dive into it at the top.

"What the..." Ulrich exclaimed as the sleeping bag protested, a wing jabbed him in the chest, a cold back foot was planted on his chin and a lot of wiggling and heaving happened. "Will you..." he tried to shove the dragon off but Tikrumpdel was already too far in, the sleeping bag threatening to tear. "Can't we..." Ulrich grunted as a thick fatty tail smacked him in the face. He grabbed the sides of his sleeping back and started shoving them down, crashing over backwards to manage it. Grunting and shuffling he managed to get out of the bed roll as Tikrumpdel forced his way into said bed roll. Ulrich bum shuffled back and looked at his twitching, shifting sleeping back as it thrashed about. Then is stilled, about a second before the wet, slurping noises of someone enjoying a midnight snack came muffled out of its folds.

Frowning Ulrich grabbed the neck of the sleeping bag and crawled towards the head of the walking hut.

"Out of the way," he muttered to it and then  scrambled through the gap as it withdrew its head from under its own wing. It scanned the surrounding mountains and then turned its long, swan like neck to watch Ulrich as he stumped over to the fire and kicked a new log on to it.

"Whoop?" it asked again, shuffling its wooden wings back into place to keep the others sheltered.

Frowning Ulrich dropped the neck of his sleeping bag, grabbed the toe of it and hefted it upside down, shaking it a few times, tipping out not only Tikrumpdel but also the greasy, blood smeared offal of the deer. Tikrumpdel was in the process of trying to stuff the whole of the liver into his diminished maw at once.

 Ulrich sighed as he watched the cat sized dragon's efforts.

"Tikrumpdel," he admonished, "We have discussed this already but besides the gluttony, please don't do it in my sleeping arrangements."

Tikrumpdel stopped trying to swallow the whole liver in one go and instead pinned it down between his front feet, tearing and ripping until it shredded in half and he was able to gulp his mouthful down.

"Well you shouldn't have stuffed it in your sleeping bag," he looked up at Ulrich, "Hardly my fault that you were trying to keep it hidden. That was a bad idea any way, it was going to have spoilt by tomorrow."

"Wait what?" Ulrich asked after a moment.

"Oh," Tikrumpdel stopped chewing a moment, "Where you planning to keep it for later?"

"No, no," Ulrich was frowning, still hung up on the fact that someone, not him, had stuffed the foot of his sleeping bag with offal and it wasn't for the fact he slept slightly curled up he would have had a squishy foot full. The sounds of Tikrumpdel's continued munching shook him out of his revelry. With a sigh he went and found a plate and used the tip of his sword to skewer and more the lumps of offal left on to the flat wear. Picking up his sleeping bag he turned it inside out and rang it out on to the offering. Tikrumpdel squeaked with pleasure and galumphed so he could pounce on the plate and continue gulping.

Ulrich sighed at such a display of a lack of manners and shook his head. Honestly, he did not know who was worse, Tikrumpdel or Kaelin. It was enough to make you weep. Tikrumpdel gulped the last of the offal and licked the plate clean.

"Well at least you clean up well," Ulrich noted as he picked the plate up. His sleeping bag tugged in his hand.

"Oh come on! Haven't..." Ulrich trailed off. Tikrumpdel's tongue was rasping over and over the fur of the sleeping bag, the blood stains lifting right out. Ulrich raised his eyebrows. It appeared that dragon spit was an excellent stain remover. He wondered if he should add a laundry to his potential wash house. He just needed to not tell people what the preliminary stage of washing their clothes was. There was also still the question as to who had filled his sleeping bag with offal. 

"Thorian wouldn't waste the food," Ulrich rubbed his chin as he watched Tikrumpdel administer to his sleeping bag, "Jeremiah, now he is a possibility but I would say that it is too low brow for his tastes. That and it doesn't use the power of his ruddy god." He shuddered as that horrifying unlight crawled along the edges of his vision. "The new people, well I would say that we haven't known them long enough for them to play a prank and we have just done them a couple of favours, one of them fairly huge. That leaves... Kaelin!" His eyes narrowed and turning he stamped back towards the walking hut, Tikrumpdel muling as the sleep bag was pulled out of his claws.

Kaelin was not in the space under the walking hut's wings. Ulrich turned a couple paces away and scanned the road and mountain sides around.

In a tree below him, Kaelin sniffed in her sleep and her wings shuffled round her again to close out any drafts.

"No matter," Ulrich and hunted through his pack, pulling out a small pocket book and scribbled down a new title in the front cover, "Book... of... Grudges... Kaelin." He snapped the book shut with one hand. "I will have the last laugh."

"Whoop?" the walking hut asked.

"Yeah you are right," Ulrich put the book away and stretched, "You can't come up with a truly beautiful vengeance if you're half asleep while trying to plan. Bed." He crawled back below the hut's wing and shuffled back into his still inside out sleeping bag.

He was just drifted off when a warm weight galumphed on to his feet. Tikrumpdel went back to washing the blood flecked fur. It was only once he was satisfied that even the flavour was gone that he curled up against the back of Ulrich's legs and yawned, settling into sleep himself. Once he started twitching and squeaking in his sleep Ulrich shook his head and settled down to sleep himself.

"Most people have a dog or cat," he yawned himself, "Seems Silvra and I are going to have a pocket sized ancient dragon." As he drifted off to sleep it didn't seem such a bad thing.

Tikrumpdel wasn't the only one dreaming.

Estella stood in the corner of the room, eyes wide as she watched the scene playing out before her, hand jammed against her mouth to stop herself crying out. None of the other people in the room seemed to see her and she wasn't about to change that, the charge in the air snarling like a wounded animal.

The man on his feet had Altan's walnut brown hair and true blue eyes, icy now with something that was anger and pain and sorrow, all wrapped up into a thrashing, snarling bundle that leaked into the air around him.

The couple at the other end of the table stared at him, the woman's hand on the sleeve of the blonde hair man staring back at their confronter, the three bowls and plates of vegetables of the meal forgotten between them.

"So you want your happiness," the man on his feet was saying, "You want all the years you've had here with your wife, the woman who gave you a way out of that place and you don't want to know how much it cost ME? I begged for us to leave that town, I said it wasn't a good place, that it felt wrong and who was it that told me that we had to stay, that I just had to try harder to fit in? That I just needed to be more like everyone else so I'd be wanted, be accepted? I was a CHILD and I knew that place did not feel like love and you made me stay!"

"And where else would you have had us go, Jerome?" the blonde man replied, his brown eyes troubled, "Do you have any idea how hard it was to get permission to settle in a town in that land? Where were we supposed to go?"

"Any where would have been better than there," the standing man replied, "Even among the savages. They didn't need permission to settle where they liked."

"Jerome!" the blonde man protested, hazel eyes wide.

"What?" the standing man, Jerome, demanded, "How are the savages any different from the witch you married?"

The blonde man stood.

"My wife is not a witch," he stated coldly.

"Could have fooled me!" Jerome stated as well, only his tone was filled with fire and scorn but, strangely, Estella did not think it was directed at the sitting woman of the house, "What else do you call a women who made an honest, decent, up right, dependable man forget the twelve year old brother who was utterly dependant on him?"

"You weren't dependent!" his brother shouted back, "You were always running with Thomas Trooper and his gang of ruffians getting into god only knows what trouble."

"I only ran with them to keep your neck out of the noose!" Jerome roared.

The silence rang as his brother paled. On the cupboard behind him a red breasted, yellow throated bird that Estella instantly realised was a talisman cheeped with worry.

"The reason I was always getting into trouble was because if I didn't run the risks, take the fall for what they got up to was because if I didn't, they'd go to Preacher Adam and tell him that you were a witch, that they had seen you riding a shepherd's staff before the full moon, that you cavorted with the beasts of the field and turned them by your magic arts into maidens to lie with. That it was the reason Gilmore's beasts had been affected by a spate of malformed births were that those things they miscarried where your unholy offspring, born of unnatural lust," Jerome's tears trailed into his beard.

"Jerome, I..." his brother began.

"What?" Jerome's eyes glared over a crooked nose, "That you didn't know? How many times did I beg for more work to do? For you to get me an apprenticeship? For you to send me away? How many times did I say that I didn't want to go out? How many times did the town folk turn up, angry, at our door to tell you that I'd been thieving once again, that I had the devil in me and that you needed to beat it out of me when you knew I'd been home all day?"

"I... I thought that you must have sneaked out," his brother was confused now, confused and horrified.

"When?" Jerome demanded.

"But you always confessed," his brother protested.

"Because I loved you!" Jerome yelled, "You're my brother! I wasn't going to lose you to a witch the way we lost mother!"

"I thought you didn't remember," his brother whispered after a moment.

"And why would that have made a damn difference?" Jerome demanded and then bowed his head.

"Would it have made any difference?" he asked, straightening up, lifting his hands from the table, "Would it have made any difference at at all? Ever since I've arrived here you haven't wanted to hear what I've endured travelling on the road in this land. You haven't asked who broke my nose, who broke my shoulder, who snapped my shin. Did you just assume that I'd earned those beatings as well? Not once have you accepted what I suffered after you left, there's always something else to talk about, another job to do, another reason not to face up to the pain you left behind, not to face Preacher Adam's cupboard and what the voices whispered in there. Just how much would it have cost you to take me with you?"

This time the silence didn't ring, it hanged, heavy and leaden, colder than a body on the gallows.

"I see," Jerome said, "Yes, I see and god's knows I wish I didn't. Part of me would like to believe you are still under the spell of a witch, that she's bewitched you and turned your head but we both know that isn't the truth, don't we Silas?" Silas looked away from his brother's glare.

"Lady Meng," Jerome inclined his head to her, "I apologise for impinging on your hospitality this last week, it will not happen again. I wish you long live and good health. May you and my brother be happy, happier than he ever was with me."

Estella nearly squeaked. As Lady Meng turned her head, the likeness smacked her full between her eyes. Her mother's gentle mouth, her almond shaped eyes, the gentle pain in her expression and yet it was the shape of Silas' ears and chin that had come down the maternal line. Those features and the gift with talisman wood. Estella bit her fingers in the effort to not cry out as she finally saw what her eyes had been trying to tell her all this time. The walls, the table, the furniture everything in this room carried the flavour of home. This was her country in another time and place.

"Jerome, please, we can talk this out in the morning..." Silas started.

"No!" Jerome snapped and then repeated more quietly, "No. This is not love, it never was. And it was a witch who taught me that!"

He turned and left the room. They heard him in the hall. Silas looked torn, like he wasn't sure what to do, to stay or go after his brother.

Then Jerome came back. Silas went to smile but that smile faltered as he saw his brother was wearing his travelling coat of Puritan black. Then Geneva Bible thumped down on the table, making the bowls and plates jump. The book, a great slab of weight, sat there, an accusation in paper and ink.

"Keep it, bury it, throw it on the fire," Jerome's blue eyes were cold, "I have no further want of it." He turned and now Estella was tugged along in his wake, pulled by the march of the memory. This was not her dream, it was not her memory, it was not hers to direct.

Jerome didn't slam the door, he closed it quietly, stepping out from under the deep eves of the house, the butt of the walking stage he'd taken from the hallway tapping on the cobblestones. He stood for a moment, face twisting as he sort the strength to tear himself free of the bound that had ruled his life. He lifted his eyes and looked down the hill towards the cluster of the houses that made up the village but he turned and stepped towards the dark, stepped uphill, pushing his way through the night towards the top of the rise, the staff tapping on the cobble stones and then on the dirt as he walked away from people, pushing out into the wilds once move.

At the top of the hill he stopped, breathing hard but Estella didn't think it was from his exertions, more like the entire sky was trying to cram itself into his chest. Estella stood watching him, knowing that she couldn't change this, that she wasn't really here, that this was the past, a memory that wasn't her's but wanting to do something, anything as the sobs that didn't want to be heard forced themselves into the night, as his knees crashed to the dirt and he didn't scream. His fingers gripped the staff so hard he pressed prints into the grain, prints she suddenly knew that four hundred years of palms and fingers and grips would not erase from the wood and still he didn't scream.

The noise was not a scream as he began punching the ground with his left hand, over and over again, punched it until a joint popped, punched it until his knuckles were bloody and the tears flowed. And still he didn't scream.

And then the staff jerked in his grip. He looked up, eyes wide, cheeks lined with tears as it jerked again. Then it yanked skywards, ripping him off his feet. He managed one half cry and then clamped his teeth shut as it twisted in midair so that he was draped half over it and then shot off into the dark, leaving behind the village where Silas had just stepped out on to the street, too late.

Estella sat up with a jerk, gazing into the night, gasping for breath, the warm dark beneath the walking hut's wings holding her as her galloping heart calmed. She looked round and saw Altan's staff hovering by her sleeping bag. She froze and then reached out a hand, running her finger tips over the ridges and grooves half way down his length where Jerome's grief maddened grip had crushed everything within him at that moment into the heart core of the wood.

"Quickened with grief and pain and brokeness." Well Altan had got that right. Estella put her hands to her forehead. It was crazy, it was madness but the certainty hummed in her bones. Four hundred years for the circle to close, for the two sides of the family to meet again but would they believe her? Something pocked her in the side and she looked up at the staff. Her red cardinal fluttered in front of her face, twittering quietly. Thorian grunted and rolled over in his sleep.

"Hush," Estella hissed, lifting a finger to her lips and when her talisman wouldn't be quiet she caught him in both hands, muffling his noise with her fingers.

"Okay, okay," she whispered, wriggling down inside her sleeping bag, "I'll go back to sleep." She yawned, tucking her red cardinal in under her chin but one eye watched as the staff went to hover beside Ulrich.

Inside a tent was not where Ulrich expected to be, at least he thought it was a tent. The walls appeared to be a lattice of wood supporting many light, flexible ribs of wood that came together at a hoop in the middle of the roof, thick cloth draped over the outside of the structure. An iron fire bowl stood in the middle of the room, casting its warmth all round the room. Someone moved at the bedding tucked away among hanging curtains. Ulrich took a step forward, intending to apologise of his intrusion and stared at the floor. It was made of planks of wood, not dirt.

The man dressed in a calf length walnut brown tunic with wide sleeves, buttoned high on the right shoulder, stepped out of the sleeping area but did not seem to see Ulrich standing there, ignoring him totally. Ulrich however, could not help but stare. Beardless, the likeness to Altan was unmistakable but this man was older and did not have the pointed ears of an elf or even half elf. His hair was also pale but not blonde. As he padded over to the oven and bent to light a stick, his turned up toe boots quiet on the wooden boards, Ulrich could see that it was more the colour of a rich pine timber, as if a dark shade had faded or been bleached out by long, long years in the sun.

The long stemmed pipe in the man's hands caught and the smoke that rose from it was a pale, bright green, a colour matched by his eyes as he turned, ducking out of the tent flap. Ulrich was pulled along by a force he could not name and then stood gapping around. The valley was a gentle bowl in the land, the village cradled along the stream at the base. Beyond it, vast herds munched grass and swished their tails in the morning light, the dusty stone of straight sided mountains rearing in the distance. The man sat in the chair of canvas and wood at the railings that ran around the edge wooden platform that the round almost wheel-like tent was stood upon. What really made Ulrich's eyes pop was when he realised that the platform was suspended between massive wheels so that a team of horses could have pulled it. The man was smiling as he watched a younger copy of himself hammer at a horseshoe in a canvas sided smithy, the portable forge and anvil alive with the fire and the rings of hammer on metal.

Ulrich turned his head at the sound of footsteps to see an elf woman climbing the steps of the platform. She was not like the elves that Ulrich had read about. Her hair was black and braided in a thick cheque down her back, feathers threaded into the tight plait. Her skin was a deep copper tone, her forehead high and continuing in a shapely line into her nose and her eyes, though dark, shone with her bright smile as she looked up at the man sat in the chair. He smiled back, green eyes sparkling over his crocked nose.

"Soon be time to move on," she said as she came and stood near him, "Our son has nearly finished his work here."

"He's a good boy," the man nodded, "I had hopes that the young Miss Elena might have caught his fancy but if not, we might as well."

"Oh you," his wife smiled, batting at him with the back of a hand, "Why this sudden interest in seeing him find his heart mate?"

He sighed and smiled at her but there was sorrow in it.

"I don't think that I'm going to be here much longer," he admitted. She looked at him with a frown, eyes concerned. He lifted the hand that did not hold his pipe. The flecks of green winked in and out of sight, their motion flowing through his veins, a nighttime of fireflies caught within his skin. She did not look shocked, instead sitting down beside him and leaning her head on his shoulder. Like that she reminded Ulrich even more of Hartseer's face helm and he wondered if there may have been some kinship in the far past.

"I think that the brighter I glow, the less I am here," Jerome told his wife. They sat in the silence, listening to the ring of their son's hammer as he went about his work. 

"I'm sorry that I can't be here as long as you need me to be," he said, eyes turned down, "But I don't regret the time we've had. Do you regret it?"

Her smile was easy but the tears swam in her gaze.

"Your brother was a fool," she stated, "But I am glad of his foolishness for without it I would never have met you and our time is as the land."

"And the land is sacred," he nodded and the land was there, all around them as far as the eye could see.

Tsetseg stood suddenly and whistled. The horse that ran to the rail was the same colour as her skin, its black mane whipping in the wind. She leapt the rail and landed lightly on its back, ears twitching to the rhythms of her mount.

"Can my husband still out run me, or is he too old for that?" the challenge sparkled with mischief. He smiled and tapped out the spent pipe on the rail, standing. The staff of talisman wood, raw but alive, smacked into his hand.

"Depends," he was air born in an instant, "Can my wife manage to do this?" The staff took off across the plains, five feet off the ground, grass tossing in its wake, Tsetseg's horse thundering after, their laughter a ghost on the breeze. Far out across the grass, Jerome suddenly pulled up, heading for the sky in a twisting spiral that folded back on itself.

"Ea-do-man Turn!" his voice echoed across the sky. Tsetseg reined in her horse to a trot with a touch, peering around, having lost sight of him as he passed between the sun and her. She lifted a hand to shield her eyes and his finger tips brushed hers. She looked up to see him reaching down to her from where he held formation, upside down above her.

"Tell me, my love?" he asked, "Why are you on the ceiling?" She grabbed at him but he pulled away, laughing, twisting upright, curving off to their left as she chased across the turf. Somehow Ulrich knew that eventually he'd let her catch him. This had the feeling of a long and much beloved ritual between them.

Ulrich smiled as he watched them, wondering just how long this love play between them had existed. The breeze blew in the grasses, as timeless as the sun and stars. He closed his eyes, tilting his face to the sun, hands resting on the railing of the tent house that travelled the land with the slow moments of the horses. Life was good.

Ulrich opened his eyes to see the sunlight slanting in under the wings of the walking house but his eyes were shaded. He let his eyes travel up the length of Altan's staff where it stood, casting his face with a bar of shade. It was watching him without eyes. Some where off in the distance Jeremiah snored thunderously.

The staff tilted, an unmistakable question in its position.

"Yes," he said, "I understand." He lay in his sleeping bag a little longer absorbing the message he'd been given. The heart tree would extend his life, possibly for centuries, but eventually what it had given it would call back. Could he make Zilvra as happy as Jerome had made Tsetseg? Well, there was one way to find out.

Tikrumpdel squeaked as Ulrich turned and sat up, flapping a wing over his eyes and blowing smoke out of his nostrils.

"Wake up sleepy head," Ulrich patted him, "Time to be up."

"Gah-humph," Tikrumpdel grumbled.

"What would you prefer?" Ulrich asked, "Get up now and have a ride with someone today? Or sleep in and have to galumph your way behind us? Or maybe ride in Jeremiah's pack again like a little dog?"

"Oh farts and belly dust," Tikrumpdel complained, stretching cat like and rolling off of his sleeping bag, "I'm up, I'm up. On the condition that I get to ride with you today."

 "Okay," Ulrich conceded as Altan's staff left to find his master, "Any particular reason why?"

"You don't think you own me just because I've been shrunk down to this size," Tikrumpdel grumped, "That priest fellow thinks he owns me because he can do this to me and I don't like the smell of his god."

"I have to admit that we have that in common," Ulrich admitted, returning, briefly, to the problem of composing a prayer that could attract the attention of Trakanhini, "Alright why not, just no pooping down the back of my suit and no scorching my hair off."

"Excuse me?" Tikrumpdel protested, "I never foul my own nest and I certainly wouldn't do that to a friend!"

"Just so long as we are on the same page," Ulrich stood and then stooped to pick him up. Tikrumpdel grumbled for a moment and then relaxed in his arms as he wasn't tucked under an elbow like a piece of luggage or a pair of bellows. He sniffed at that thought, looking at where Altan was already preparing the breakfast things with his wife. Altan was  blacksmith and though he had taken all his tools he had still been forced to leave the actual forge behind. Tikrumpdel sucked in a few breathes and then blew a lance of flame, as straight as an arrow, as hot as lightning at the wood piled in the fire and causing the rocks around it to glow with the back wash of heat.

"Wow," Altan stumbled back, shielding Milena from the sudden ignition.

"Tik," Ulrich warned, "That wasn't a nice thing to do."

"That's alright," Tikrumpdel grinned up at him, eye whirling with mischief, "I just wanted to help out as we are in a hurry this morning. I promise I won't do it again, Ul."

"Did you just shorten my name?" Ulrich demanded.

"Didn't you shorten mine?" the miniaturised dragon asked back, "And as for you," he turned his head to Altan, "How would you like a portable forge that doesn't take several hours to come up to temperature?"

"I don't..." Altan started and then stared at Tikrumpdel, "Are you suggesting what I think you are suggesting?"

Tikrumpdel sucked in several breaths until the steam rose off his scales and Ulrich had to put him hastily down, shaking his hands.

"I'll charge a very reasonable rate," Tikrumpdel beamed up at him as the dew steamed around him as the grass charred.

Altan rumbled his chin, considering it.

"It is a possibility," he smiled, "Let's talk working rates sometime. Not at the moment, I'm not sure what the market rate is where we are going and I doubt that you will be happy if the going rate for a days work is half a cabbage."

"Not likely," Tikrumpdel snorted.

 Estella hovered around the edges of the morning, trying to weigh her options. Did she tell them what she had learnt last night? Would they believe her? Had Altan's talisman ever dream sent memories with Altan or his father? Would he even consider the possibility? Would he laugh at her?

She could barely eat over breakfast, her stomach churning and her throat tight. How did she even start something like this? Valodrael swirled, unable to help. He'd never had a hope like this. He was the last of his people, there were no others. He had accepted that and left grief behind years ago, his sworn vengeance on the Domilii helping to drive him on, rather than pull him down. Besides he was dragon, they had always had a looser idea of society than the small people did. Faced with the possibility of having family, Estella dithered, rehearsing and rehearsing in her head how she wanted to open the subject.

"Ready to move out?" Altan asked, stepping passed her towards the walking hut.

"Yes Uncle." Estella clapped a hand to her mouth. Oh of all the damn stupid things to do! It had just spilled out without her proper brain getting a chance to edit it, all her careful rehearsal going down the sink.

Altan stopped and turned back, looking at her, really looking at her as Estella stood there, biting her lip and trembling.

"What did you just say?" he asked, shock stamping its way across his face.

"I..." she faltered, swallowed the lump in her throat and tried again, "I said 'yes uncle'."

He blinked and then his staff whizzed passed, nearly clouting him on the ear. It dipped its end and drew a circle around Estella's feet, tapping its end as if it couldn't believe just how thick its owner could be. Her talismans took flight, ringing her like a halo, singing their hearts out, the kirin practically dancing in the air, its tiny hooves flashing in the morning light.

"You mean... Silas?" Altan asked. Estella squeaked and nodded, the tears bubbling from her eyes.

Footsteps echoed on the walkway of the walking hut. Milena looked down at her with a smile.

"Welcome home," was all she said and Estella covered her face as the tears flowed. Then Altan was there, his strong arms about her and Alina. Valodrael wriggled into dual control.

"It seems I need to spread my wings wider, " he whispered from Estella's mouth. Altan and Alina looked at her, eyes going wide as they saw, and in Alina's case more than saw, the black totally engulf her left eye.

"You're meaning?" Estella frowned, apparently answering herself.

"They are your family," Valodrael answered, "They are precious to you. Therefore they should be precious to me. I think they will make excellent additions to my horde."

"Oh celestial lord," Estelle groaned, closing her eyes and resting her head against Altan's strong chest, "Could you have saved that idea until a little later? You might scare them off."

Thankfully Altan laughed. 

"Which side of your family?" he asked, tears in his eyes also.

"My mum's," Estella sniffed, "She and Meng could have been sisters. You do know about Meng?"

"I don't," he shook his head, "As I said what I know of them, I know through the stories of my grandmother and father."

"That isn't fair," Estella glared at the staff, "If you are going to bond with the bloodline then you should commit properly. What is the point of sharing that memory with me and not with your own partner?" The staff managed to look abashed with no face to abash with.

"I think I just missed something," Altan admitted. 

"It can be discussed inside while the house walks," Yaga Tuf said sternly but there was a smile on her face as she said it, "The sooner we start the sooner we arrive and there are places we need to be today so shivy yourselves."

"Coming mother," Milena called and lead the way up the vanes of the walking house's wing. Alina held out her hand to Estella.

"Hello cousin," she whispered and smiled shyly.

"Hello cousin," Estella smiled back.

"You coming?" Yaga Tuf called, sounding more annoyed now. Estella chuckled and lead the way up the vanes.

"Do you reckon that we'll sound like that when we are her age?" she asked in a stage whisper.

"Lords and ladies, I hope not," Alina whispered back, rolling her eyes. Estella smiled as Altan followed them up the vanes. The house stood up, cackling to itself and shuffling its wings into place before turning and walking on down the road, Kaelin swooping passed it as she took off to scout ahead. Ulrich glowered darkly at her from Peter's back but then settled back to enjoy the ride. There was time enough to come up with a suitable reply to her low brow high jinx of the night before, he could wait. That and he had the weight of a some what tubby, if miniature, dragon sitting on his shoulder, tail draped down his back. Somehow, he managed to keep his face bland, as if this arrangement just happened every day. Around him, Quenril and his kin kept a sharp look out, especially as Nanny Tatters paced along the road behind them all. On her back the vigor pack bearer and Jeremiah's ash elf puppet sat, insensible to their surroundings but Nanny Tatters paused every now and then and turned her head, her single great eye watching the mountains, absorbing the changing view.

Jeremiah did not see his minion's disturbing level of self awareness as he was stretched out in a lounging chair on the highest point of the walking hut's dome like roof, one of his trio of books open on his face, his snores drifting out from underneath the pages. As for where he had managed to procure a lounging chair? It was not made out of wood but rather bone, twisted and warped together in a bleached echo of his black antlers. Thorian was just glad that they were the bones of the deer and the goat they'd had for dinner the night before, not the bones of anyone in the King's Special. He had counted very carefully and made sure of that.

They pushed on, walking hut in front, Ulrich and his collection of creatures and friends next and finally Nanny Tatters padding along at the back, her eye fixed on where Jeremiah slept when she wasn't watching the countryside under the lowering sky. In the walking house, though the door was propped open, Estella shared more of her story with Yaga Tuf and her extended family. Altan rubbed his face and leaned his elbows on the table as he listened to how four hundred years had changed the society his great uncle's descendants lived in.

"People think that society is linear," Yaga Tuf observed from where she sat at the doorway, keeping an eye on the goings on outside, "That because our grandmother's earned certain respects we will have them and our grandchildren will be able to earn even more respects. It is the same with knowledge. We know that we stand on the shoulders of giants and we assume that our grandchildren will stand on our shoulders but it is not the certainty we like to think it is. It only takes one person spreading the poison of non-thinking, of blind obedience and the house of cards all comes tumbling down. I wonder how much knowledge and how many respects died in that cupboard of that Preacher Adams of your grandfather, my boy."

"I dread to think," Altan replied soberly, "All I can say in the defence of my family is that grandfather refused to go back after he learned to think. He preferred to live as a stranger in a strange land than go back to not asking questions."

"Whereas mine were 'nice people'," Estella looked down into her cup of tea with a grimace, "They were quiet, didn't make waves, where silent rather than question their neighbours, focused on having a 'good reputation', looked the other way when things became ugly and married their daughters off to families where they would be taught that love was earned, that safety required obedience and that they must shrink themselves down to be palatable enough to be wanted by a man. Not to mention that their only value was how young and fertile they were."

Milena looked at her gently and then refilled her tea cup. 

"You are safe to stay with us as long as you would like," she stated.

"That would be good," Estella said and nobody mentioned the shadow of doubt that lurked in her eyes. They all understood that trust took time to build. The conversation moved on to other things as they sort to get to know each other, giving Estella the chance to form her own observations. The one she decided on the most as Altan described the yurt where his earliest childhood memories were found, was that, though he was the younger brother, Jerome had been the stronger. Silas had been a nice man but he had been weak, bending easily to the expectations of those around him and avoiding conflict instead of standing up to fight, both for himself and his brother. Well she had strength enough for both of them. There was strength of a different kind in the willow branch that bent and bent with the pressure until it had opportunity to snap back and stand up how it wished to. And she now had people who encouraged her to be strong, to stand and be herself. She had the feeling that Silas had lacked that for a long, long time.

Perhaps it was because of the gloomy weather that it took them all a while to realise that they were being watched.

"Whoop?" the walking hut came to a stop, things inside sliding down the tables as it straightened up taller, wings spreading as it eyed the black unicorn and its rider staring down from the ridge line across the valley they were passing through. The walking hut shook its wings, clattering the vanes together as it glared with clay eyes, the others coming to a stop behind it, Kaelin swooping in to land by the door of the walking hut, her wings unfolded and ready. Jeremiah shifted on the lounger and snorted in his sleep. Yaga Tuf stomped out of her house and came to a stop beside Kaelin, her family behind her, Alina and Estella in the doorway.

In a strange way the daylight seemed to make the unicorn and rider even bigger than when they had seen them in the Underworld, the black ink of the unicorn's mane flicking in the wind, its tail blowing in the air to match the curl and snap of its rider's cloak. The rider was definitely taller than Thorian and possibly even broader than he was, with arms that bulged more than Altan's. This guy didn't look like he wielded a hammer, it looked as though he wielded the whole anvil, the red glow of his eyes pin pricks beneath his hood at this distance.

Thorian stomped to the edge of the road and glared right back, arms folded, legs akimbo, a big, green slab of muscle that wasn't impressed with the attempt to frighten his friends.

"Hey, Thorian," Kaelin tilted her head without turning it so she didn't so much take her eye off the rider as give him the side eye, "Why don't you wave to him? You know? A really happy wave?"

Thorian thought about it for a moment with a frown and then his expression cleared and he grinned, hugely, as he lifted his hand and...

Wiggle waggled his fingers as cutely as possible.

The rider's shoulders dropped and his head tilted over as his eyes narrowed, a whole body expression of 'seriously?' with as many question marks as possible.

"Perhaps you should blow him a kiss?" Ulrich suggested, grinning at their observer's discomfort.

"Go on then, Ulrich," Kaelin called down to him, "Give him your best smoocher. Show us what Zilvra is going to be treated to."

"Go on then Ulrich, pucker up!" Thorian grinned fit to crack, "After all you need the practise if you are going to please your pointy eared princess."

"I'll have you know that I am fine enough as a kisser," Ulrich replied with dignity, "And unlike some I do not feel the need to put on exhibitionist  displays to prove my prowess to those outside of my relationships."

"Oh?" Thorian questioned, "Oh does Ulrich not want to admit he doesn't know how to kiss? Has little Ulrich gone all shy."

Grinning Kaelin tucked Haggis' blow stick between her lips, adding her mocking piping to Thorian's attempts to goad Ulrich into proving that he could do a big, wet kisser. Unfortunately for them, Ulrich had grown up in a house where any sign of affection or friendship he had shown to anyone else had been met with derision and ridicule. As such he could promptly disengage his emotions from such a situation, slamming up mental walls at distanced himself from the situation, even if he could not move his body out of the event.

That and it was apparent that their voices had carried across the distance as the rider of the black unicorn had tilted his head the other way. That and the fact that Alina had withdrawn in back into the house only to angle a mirror in the window to reflect a beam of light towards his hood. At such a distance it didn't reveal much but the twist of the mouth between the sharply pointed short beard and the thick moustache plainly said that he knew that they were doing it deliberately to try and provoke a more aggressive reaction out of him. Apparently he also had a fairly thick skin against the provocations of others.

 "Tikrumpdel?" Ulrich asked the shrunken ancient dragon, "Tikrumpdel, you are ancient and powerful, even if you have to bare being physically diminished at the moment. Do you have any ideas who our strong but silent friend is?"

Tikrumpdel beamed at being so recognised and reared up on his back legs, pushing the brim of Ulrich hat until it bent up, placing a clawed hand on the top of the crown and peered at the unicorn and rider. The unicorn peered back and then tossed its head, the long scimitar of its black horn flashing midnight under the late morning sun. It pawed the ground, the long feathers cascading from its knee in an ebony waterfall. The rider laid one shovel sized hand on its neck, calmly his beast without a word.

"He's a copy," Tikrumpdel stated. They all stared at him, even Yaga Tuf, Estella wiggling out of the walking hut to scurry round the walk way to listen more clearly to him.

"So he's a construct?" Ulrich asked, mind boggled at just how much magic that took. 

"No, he's a copy," Tikrumpdel repeated, "Human with... something else mixed in. I'd say his creator was improving on the original." He sniffed. "He's tied to the land, a life force bond, not here though, some where far away, different, hard." He sniffed and snorted smoke. "Smells of crystals."

"Hum," Ulrich nodded, "That sounds interesting. Softy, any chance you know any more about our visitor?"

"Will you stop calling me that!" Valodrael's voice snarled from between Estella's teeth.

"This from the dragon who was pledging his eternal protection over her family earlier this morning?" Ulrich asked, smiling.

Valodrael's growl ripped through the air but then he thought better of it, both of Estella's eyes turning black as her head turned to glare at the rider and his red eyed mount. There was still something about that unicorn that made the guts clench and the mind shiver. There was something unnerving about it, something... Kaelin would have called it uncanny but it was not like Jeremiah's summoned horrors, there was nothing obviously wrong about it but there was something to the feel of it that made Kaelin's hackles stand up.

Valodrael stared for a longer moment than Tikrumpdel had done, although the little red dragon continued to survey the stranger, sniffing the air, nose twitching.

"He's as old as I am," Valodrael rumbled, "But he is not a survivor of the Burning Continent. Of the original that he is a copy and a sharing of, it is not near here. The original that he reports to is somewhere north of here and the thread of awareness that ties them together is stretched thin. He is a long way from home and Tikrumpdel is right, he is tied to that land but it is hardened, crystallised. He feeds off that land, as does the original but they feed the land in turn."

"So it's a symbiotic relationship?" Kaelin asked.

"Yes," Valodrael nodded Estella's head.

"Like having a heart tree," Altan noted.

Ulrich was staring at Kaelin, both amazed and aghast that Kaelin knew that word.

"If you know words like that why do you act like a complete savage?" he asked flabberghasted.

"Why would knowing words like that mean I'm more than a savage?" she asked back, still keeping an eye on their watcher.

"Your education should have included basic table manners for one," he protested.

"Who said I got an education?" Kaelin demanded.

"Because if you hadn't you wouldn't know words like..." Ulrich started.

"Ulrich!"she snapped, "I'm a career thief and bread isn't all I've stolen. Believe it or not I was allowed to learn to read, it was the one skill my grandfather did allow and on occasion I have stolen books, usually because someone was paying me too. Books, research papers, study notes. There are a fair number of arcane students and professors who curse my name. Granted there is an equal number who paid me for ruining the careers of others. That's how it works, Ulrich, academia can be as cut throat as a battlefield, only the weapons used are words and the death of reputations means ruin for whole families. Count yourself lucky to be out of it."

Ulrich sat in silence for a while and then nudged Peter closer to the edge of the road.

"Excuse me, my good sir," he called, "But I regret to inform you that we don't talk to copies, only originals. Unless you are on our side against the big bad that is undermining society and the world right now."

The rider straightened up in the saddle, eyes narrowed but then he lifted a ham sized hand and performed a fist to collar bone punch before wheeling his mount and applying his heels. The unicorn leapt into a full gallop, plunging towards the mount side, black mane flying, tail streaming in the wild.

Just before it crashed into the solid rock of the mountain... The edge of the shadow cast by the over hang rippled like a vertical pool of water, the black unicorn plunging into it, its rider not flinching as it carried him into the dark, the shade closing over him, swallowing him whole. The ripples washed across the edge of shadow and stilled.

"I'm dead," Ulrich stated, wondering just why his smart mouth kept dumping him in trouble.

"Nice knowing you," Kaelin's tone was wry, then she launched herself from the railing of the walking hut and swooped across the valley aiming for where the rider and his mount had stood. She sniffed around the ground for a while, passed her hand back ad forth through the murky edge of the shadow and then came winging back.

"Absolutely nothing there," she reported, "No scent, no marks, not even a tingle of magic. Whoever he is, he's not giving us any way to follow him or know him."

"Not quite," Ulrich called up from where he was frowning on the back of Peter.

"What do you mean?" Tikrumpdel asked, nearly falling off him as he tried to go back to being on all fours on Ulrich's shoulder. Ulrich winced and helped him adjust his stance so that it was done with as few claws digging in as possible.

"What do you mean?" Tikrumpdel repeated, once he was comfortably settled.

"I mean that I recognise that salute he gave," Ulrich explained.

"Salute?" Thorian frowned.

"Yes, when he did that," Ulrich mimicked the fist to collar bone punch the rider had used, "That is the traditional salute of Sushnomi and it confirms that he was a very long way from home."

"You do you figure that out young man?" Yaga Tuf called down.

"Part of my education, good grandmother," Ulrich bowed in the saddle, so to speak as Peter didn't have a saddle, "Before I read the writing on the wall, I was a trainee in the King's Own Northern Cuirassiers. As such I had to learn to recognise the salutes, uniforms and modes of address common to the known countries and races of the world just in case we ever went to war with any of them. Granted that it was always considered an unlikely prospect with Sushnomi."

"Why's that?" Thorian asked.

"Because they are too far away," Ulrich stated, "We have the dwarf mountains between us and them, as well as the bulk of the Elf lands, several other human kingdoms and their own mountain range, not to forget your own people as well. An over land assault would be nearly impossible and an ocean born assault would be nearly as bad. Their coast is guarded by a series of islands and currents that make the passage of large groups of ships nearly impossible, including a narrow sea passage that is blocked by a near continuous whirlpool known as the maelstrom. That and their society is rather isolationist."

"Isolationist?" Estella called down, "How so?"

"Well, if I were to take a bet," Ulrich said, "My guess would be that your great uncle wasn't the first follower of his religion to make it to this world. That or the attraction of religious power is a universal truth. They do not like or want to accept that their religion is not the only religion in the world. What makes it even harder to understand that attitude is that they had a more open religion once upon a time. It changed about six maybe seven hundred years ago. Now it is every extreme of holding on to the keys of heaven and judging who is going to make it through the door."

"Unfortunately, I think that is a universal truth of religion," Estella nodded, "It seems that the pattern of human thought goes though a cycle, from being more forgiving to less forgiving and back again."

"It depends how much power those in authority want," Yaga Tuf stated, "It is easy to have power when people won't think for themselves and the easiest way to make people not think for themselves is to teach them that thinking makes their god angry."

"So why do we bother knowing about these people?" Kaelin asked, "Why not let them stay in their little corner of the world and not think until all their brains rot out of their skulls."

"Because every now and then a trader does come down from that way," Ulrich stated, "They trade lumber, furs, salted and pickled fish and walrus ivory for dried fruits, cloth, spices, wine and oils. Why a sorcerer, wizard, whatever he is, from there is suddenly interested in our country, who knows?"

"Have you ever thought that all the trouble we've been having recently might not be limited to just your own country?" Yaga Tuf asked, "You have headed off an invasion in the land of these dwerg people and you have helped save what is left of the Ash Elves before all the clans fall. Has it occurred to you young man that this goes far beyond your little lives? There is a power stirring in the world that goes far beyond what you see. Why you seem to be the ones that are the focus of these events, well that's you're own work."

"I beg pardon?" Ulrich asked.

"There are no such things as chosen ones," Yaga Tuf stated, "That is a silly idea of legends and stories. In real life there are just people, people in the right place at the right time or the wrong place and the wrong time. People making the decisions, people choosing to build up or tear down. People walking along with their heads down and their brains empty or people with their heads up, their minds open and ready to ask questions, I thought you would have learnt that from the history of my son-in-law's family. If that witch hadn't made the decision to pick his grandfather up from the gutter, well, I could see it ending in murder, murder of his sister-in-law, murder of his brother and then making his own little corner of hell for all eternity, bowing to an angry, selfish god who wanted obedience not love. Loving the child who will question you harder but it takes more love on the part of the parent."

 "So you're saying that we've brought ourselves to the attention of this thing, what ever it and whoever it is because we've made the decisions to do so?" Kaelin asked, rustling her wings into place.

"No, you made the decisions to do your best," Yaga Tuf corrected, "You were given a stinker of a job and instead of running away or leaving it half done you got on and did it. You could have just murdered and maimed your way through the Ash Elves, you made allies of them. You could have left the dwergs to their troubles, you fought for them. You could have left Alina laying in the river, you saved her. Every force has an opposite and equal reaction but too many people leave the work up to someone else. They want the view but not the climb, you made the choice to make the climb. And that makes you dangerous to whatever it is that is trying to bend the world out of shape. You've started the road, now girl your only safety lies in walking to the end. You try and run out of this one and it will just give it a chance to work out how best to get at you." She turned and stumped to the base of the walking hut's neck, giving it a gentle tap to set it walking again.

"Both Elisha and Hartseer spoke of a power rising in the East, the Domilii," Ulrich noted as he set Peter walking again, "Maybe that is what is trying to bend the world out of shape."

"Don't you mean who?" Kaelin replied. 

Ulrich shook his head.

"No, if the Domilii is still alive then he left his humanity behind years ago," Ulrich said, "And not as a sacrifice for his people. No, from what Hartseer told me, the Domilii murdered his own family to start his political career so I doubt he's improved with keeping any."

"So any bets that guy just watching us is the Domilii?" Kaelin said.

"No," Valodrael's voice came from Estella's lips, "That was not the Domilii, not even a copy of. An extremely powerful wizard, yes, though I hesitate to say wizard, the power had a different flavour to wizard magic but not the Domilii. If nothing else, the Watcher's magic tasted more of life than the energies the Domilii worked with. The Watcher is feeding the land as much as feeding off it, if nothing changes it is a balanced relationship that speaks more of stewardship than domination. The Domilii always wanted more, more and more. Power was not enough for him, not ever, he was a hollow pit, ever hungry, never filled."

"Well that is useful to know," Ulrich noted, wondering about Valodrael's appetite and Hartseer's need to replace his last remaining organic components. It seemed that a fair number of the Domilii's works had that flaw, although they seemed to be more capable of controlling it than he was. Or maybe they just fought to be better than he was.

"Are we going to go any where today, good people," Jeremiah asked, lifting the corner of his book off his face, "I thought we were supposed to be making progress today?"

Ulrich was going to make a comment about people who sleep through the main event but a rumble behind him made both him and Tikrumpdel turn their heads. Nanny Tatters' expression was a careful blank but the source of the sound was unmistakable. Ulrich and Tikrumpdel looked at each other and then Ulrich put his heels to Peter's side.

"Let's be pushing on people, no time like the present," he called as he streaked off down the road.

"Why are you in such a hurry?" Kaelin frowned.

"Places to go!" Ulrich's voice came drifting back on the breeze as Peter rippled over the ground, Weatherall doing his crabby best to keep up, Quenril tapping his shell to encourage him, Thorian and the other Ash Elves jogging along to match them. Kaelin scratched her head, wondering what they their problem was and then she looked up and saw Nanny Tatters' expression. An undead puppet shouldn't be capable of such twisted hatred but the glare she was directing at Jeremiah was blow torch hot; Kaelin was surprised that the book draped over his face didn't catch fire.

"Don't worry," Yaga Tuf whispered, "We'll keep an eye on her." 

 "I'd just like to know how come she's suddenly got this much in the way of a mind," Kaelin whispered back and twisted her head as she sensed the movement in the corner of her vision. Nanny Tatters' indrawn breath had bracketed a rabbit. The bundle of fuzz leapt away but its bones turned soft before it had gone three bounds. Its joints stiffened, its fur went lank, its eyes dim. It stumbled and collapsed to the ground in the shade of the scrub at the side of the road, breath stilling, fur falling out in clumps as its flesh withered and skin drew tight over the bones that showed through opening rents.

The cyclopean dragon swung her head back round to peer at them and something in that gaze chilled the breath. Without a sound, Estella ducked below the railings, fingers scrambling for a pencil in her pocket. With quick strokes she started drawing the runes of protection on the wooden boards and railings. After a moment she pulled a pocket book from her other pocket and looked up the runes for projection and shielding. The runes of Kronzyn, graceful, beautiful things, spiralled across the wood and began to glow with a sweet, green hue like grass sprouting in the hurry of spring.

"And those are?" Yaga Tuf asked, keeping an eye on Nanny Tatters.

"A gift from a friend," Estella replied, still drawing, "The power of a god who wants to protect his people so that he will have many fine stories to collect when we walk with him over the black sands. It may keep that thing off our backs."

"I don't think we are the ones that need to worry," Yaga Tuf noted, watching where Nanny Tatters' was glaring. Jeremiah gave no sign of realising that his servant was nurturing a fine crop of despisement. Kaelin shuffled nervously and then swooped off the railing to go circle the way ahead, checking for trouble, though she was sure the real trouble marched behind them.

The road rolling ever on and on, even as the scenery changed, no enemies in sight and the way clear to the horizon.

The road had dipped into a valley and had begun climbing again before they made their evening camp, coming to rest on a plateau that was doted with ruins. Dinner was a quieter affair, the story telling of the night before absent as the evening mist started curling around the ruins. Estella's talismans hugged close to her, tweeting and chirruping in  subdued voices, Tikrumpdel seeking shelter in her lap again. Kaelin rubbed her arms and rattled her pinions as the meal progressed.

"Whoop?" asked the walking hut, "Whoop?" The great eared owl drifted out of the gathering gloom and landed on the railing of the walking hut.

"Whoooo-woe?" it asked, head swivelling back and forth, back and forth, "Whooooo-woe?"

"Come," Yaga Tuf instructed, standing up as the last spoonful of the evening meal disappeared, "There is something that you need to see." She thrust a rag wrapped stick into the fires and waited for it to catch. Lifting it high, she lead the King's Special and their allies through the ruins, the walking hut shuffling nervously as it watched them walk off into the mists.

They steps were muffled as they passed between the half tumbled walls and fallen doorways. Ulrich suddenly realised that the edge of the plateau as actually the outer walls of this once thriving settlement, the ground built up within the walls to add defence against any invader. Despite that defensive measure it did not have the feel of a defensive site. There were spaces between the houses, measured squares and the pattern was off. There wasn't anything that looked like the remains of a barracks or a training square. There wasn't even a space that would have been considered for a market square.

Estella tugged at his sleeve suddenly and pointed. It was a building slightly more complete than the others, some how holding up the weight of aeons despite the cracks that spiderwebbed across its face. It was also, ever so slightly off, the angles of it some how not quite square, the lines not quite straight and not in a way that spoke of shoddy workmanship but rather a deliberate choice.

"I see it," Ulrich whispered and the seeing brought him no comfort.

"Tell me, my good witch," Jeremiah's voice boomed in the silence, "What in Hestia was so important that you are dragging us through this place of desolation?"

The others flinched at his strident tone but Yaga Tuf seemed unaffected by his disrespect of this place of time and stillness.

"You'll see," she told him, "Not much further now and then you'll see most mightily."

At the back of the ruins, built by the shins of the mountain there was a shallow cave, little more than a grotto. Yaga Tuf stood to one side and gestured them in, angling her torch so that the light flickered and licked across the curved back wall of the space. Quenril and his kin sucked in a breath as one, hands lifting to their faces in identical gestures of deference, Quenril's skin turning a sickly shade of green.

The light picked out the raised forms of the base relief carvings, making them appear to move as it flickered and writhed. Figures with skulls too broad and elongated to be human, their eyes set too far apart to be comfortable to look at, beards carved in such away that they didn't seem to be just beards, forking and waving in ways that was contradictory to hair.

Jeremiah tugged his beard, recollection tugging in turn at his mind, his brow furrowing as he tried to narrow down what his thoughts were trying to tell him. Then the shifting light drew his eye to the next panel where orc and man, dwarf and elf were tumbling from the hands of these beings to bow before their creators and the connection was made. He had seen these beings before. There had been that painting in the Wizard's Tower that had been some what interesting, depicting the massed armies of human, dwarf, elf, orc and dragon beating these beings into submission. There had been something written on the painting, he seemed to recall. What had it been? Oh yes, that was it.

"In a single day and night of misfortune, the city of Locutus disappeared into the depths of the sea, never to rise again."

Interesting that the depictions had been repeated here.

Kaelin as recognised the long skulled figures from the relief she had spotted carved into the wall outside the temple where the spider dragon had hatched, only there it had only been one of them rising from the waves, staff in hand as the stone carved Ash Elves had bowed down and worshipped it. Kaelin peered at the carvings and then Quenril and his kin who were still muttering and mumbling what sounded like prayers of appeasement behind their fingers. Her ears twitched and swivelled as she began to consider that these long skulled, long fingered beings just might be the Begetters that Ulrich had read about in the book Risgath had given them. Especially as, when she looked at the next panel of carvings, the tall, long skulled beings were being cast down by two great dragons at the head of a massive force of dragons and members of every lesser race that there was.

Kaelin's mouth flopped open. Even as uneducated as she was, she knew good workmanship when she saw it and the time and effort that had gone into this panel so that it was still understandable after the gods knew how many centuries boggled her brain. The horror and destruction and violence of war was there in all its blood soaked pain, the creators falling and being trampled under the feet of their creations.

Ulrich rubbed his arms, feeling goosebumps ripple over his skin as he studied the panel. What it depicted would have been intense enough if it had just been a piece of history hammered into stone but what was making his skin crawl was that one of the two great dragons was carved in such a way that it was a match for the emblem embossed on the front cover of the book Jeremiah had let him borrow just before they had met Quenril and his kin. That could never be good as far as he was concerned. Anything to do with that dragon had to be bad news at best and terrifyingly dangerous at worse.

 It seemed that some of his fears were founded because in the next panel that dragon had turned upon the lesser races, raking through the rakes of the small people with a breath weapon that wasn't quite fire. Estella shivered, the expressions of terror wrought in stone were too damn real, some how more real for the fact that the artist had rendered them without eyes, just the basic body shapes, hair, ears and open, screaming mouths.

Then the war spiralled into the air, dragon against dragon, great dragon against great dragon, flame and lightning, acid and ice scorching across the sky, searing the ground below, Hestia herself weeping as destruction rained across her face.

Then finally the sky was quiet, the dragons dispersing, the small folk coming out of hiding, going their separate ways through a world that still smoked and smouldered but of the two great dragons neither were to be see, both had vanished from the relief, the absence their presence both a void and a silence, asking not if they would return but when.

Jeremiah had folded his arms not long after they had started looking at the carvings, face dark and manner darker, dragon tail lashing and twisting behind him. Ulrich looked at him and then looked away, the unlight of Jeremiah's god crawling in his vision. Suddenly he was fighting to keep his dinner where it should be, trying to prevent it coming up or going down in a rush. Milena and Alina were stepping away also, stepping back behind Altan, who held his staff at the ready, Estella beside him, Valodrael's darkness sloshing in the bottom of her eyes, her talismans poised and ready, silence for a change. Something hung in the air around Estella, a hazy image hanging on the mist, a form over laying her own, the long, noble face of a horse with the scales of a dragon, foggy antlers crowning her brow as the sparkles followed her hands.

Only Yaga Tuf seemed impervious to the aura building around Jeremiah, as solid as a tree that has weather avalanches and freezing cold. This one had seen good seasons and bad, triumph and tragedy and her heart wood did not shake in the face of what was to come.

"It is false news," Jeremiah sneered, "As is often the way with those who are wrong, they try and spread their lies far and wide to cover the truth. My god was betrayed by his brother and falsely imprisoned. The followers of the false dragon spread their deceitful words for a long time after their fraudulent victory but we will set this right."

"We? Who's we?"Kaelin asked bluntly, mouth a sour twist. Jeremiah glared at her and Kaelin glared right back, unafraid. Yes she could see the unlight of his god, she could see it lighting him up like a candle, flickering round him like an aurora of some sick and waning sun, gasping its last towards oblivion but she wasn't going to look away. She clenched her fists, nails lifting as the claws pushed out of the ends of her fingers, digging into her palms. She was not going to look away.

 Ulrich took a quiet but deep breath and pressed the first two fingers of his right hand against the inside of his left wrist. Closing his eyes, he started speaking in his mind.

 "Lady of Moonlight Grace," he began, "Dancer of chance and change. Protect us from that which would see us remain in the dark, in selfishness and in cruelty. Help us reach forth for light and generosity and kindness. Give us the strength to stand against that which seeks to tear down, the baleful and malign, shine your light upon us and protect us from that which would feed the wilful fool. So may it be!"

The moonlight cut a bright shaft across the turf, casting sharp shadows among the ruins, shifting with the dance of the clouds and then it shone back from something on the mountainside, beaming in a brilliant finger to shine into the grotto, lighting up the base reliefs in steady light, making Yaga Tuf's torch look pale and stripping the power out of Jeremiah's aura.

Jeremiah glared round at the sudden disturbance, feeling his god's influence wane as the night became bright and glad. His mouth twisted and puckered. Growling with displeasure, he stamped out of the grotto, stalking off back among the stones of the ruins. Nobody bothered to check to see if he knew the way back to the walking hut and their campsite.

Quenril, Tasnar and Sabal gazed in wonder at the bright lance of moonlight, staring at the way it shone across their skin. Kaelin stared at it as well, an almost childlike look of wonder crossing her features as she realised that despite its radiance the wolf was quiet and calm, that she felt no need to fight the beast within, that this gentle light was not stirring it to rage. She didn't notice as the twin tears tracked down her cheeks.

Yaga Tuf looked at Ulrich and nodded once, a gesture of profound respect.

Ulrich closed his eyes and breathed a sigh of relief.

"Thank you, Trakanhini."

The moonlight didn't falter until they had made their way back to the campsite and settled in for the night but none of them spoke, not even to gripe that Jeremiah had almost aggressively taken most of the space below one of the wings. Even, no, especially  to complain about him would have been a profanity in this holy place. Ulrich smiled as he curled up in the dark, Tikrumpdel tucked into the back of his knees. He would have to see about commissioning an amulet, something graceful, in silver. There was a lighter feeling in his soul, as if something that had been taking up far too much space in his head had been finally drained out, an easement of pressure in his mind. Tonight sleep came easily and promised rest, true, unafraid rest for the first time in weeks. He no longer had to guard his soul on his own. Something else was helping, watching over him in the dark. Why did so many religions reject the mother figure when she was the guardian who watched over her child in the night?

Ulrich floated out over the waves of sleep and tonight there were no sharks swimming in the depths.