Kellehendros
Eternal Wanderer
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The City of Palora had stood for ten thousand years. Her foundations were sunk deep, her catacombs hewn from living rock. In the fullness of her time marble walls sixty-foot tall ringed her, and her battlements were wide enough that a column of horsemen riding four abreast might canter along that smooth expanse. All of alabaster were her towers, but for the onyx spire of the High King’s palace, which rose sheer and slender two hundred feet to transfix the sky itself. Four were her gates, each wrought of adamant, and set with precious stones and scenes of majesty.
Palora, Queen of Cities, unburnt by the fire of her foes. Though a hundred nations had raised a thousand armies, and a million men had besieged her, still Palora stood, her towers tall, her gates strong, her people untroubled.
Palora, Regent of the South, unsullied by the trammels of the bickering princes. A hundred lesser kings sought her hand, for she was rich in trade and resources. And all of them she turned away, for they were unworthy of her glory.
Palora, Empress of Civilization, unbowed by the passing of ages. Others diminished, yet she endured, growing only brighter. Others faltered, yet she became ever more glorious. The light of Palora waxed, until to look upon her was to behold in the mortal world a place such as the gods would fain have called home.
Until the wyrm.
Until Vermonox.
Vermonox, the Eternal Blight, descended from the north, withering all that fell beneath his gaze. Almira, Tilinshce, Mermonat, each was despoiled, cast to pieces as the wyrm drew south, until it came nigh to Palora.
And so the High King put on his helm and took up his spear and, gathering his men about himself, rode forth. And never was there a ride like that of the High King and his Ten Thousand Saints, for the sun upon their armor was like the light of dawn that heralds the end of the Longest Night, and the sun upon their spearheads was like the unquenchable fire that burns at the heart of the earth, and from their eyes shone the fire of their spirits, bright and fierce, dedicated to the protection of Palora.
The people gathered on the walls of Palora, Queen of Cities, cheering as her champions rode forth. They were certain of victory, for no force could withstand the Ten Thousand Saints, and Palora was at the height of her glory and her splendor. Thus they stood upon the walls and watched from afar as their champions rode forth to do battle with the greatest evil ever belched forth from the recesses of the Blackest Pit.
Thus they witnessed, and thus they wept, for on that day the pride of Palora was broken. Her High King fell, crushed beneath the bulk of Vermonox. Her Ten Thousand Saints perished, extinguished in the fire of the great wyrm’s blast. Her tall towers were thrown down, razed by the vile strength of the defiler. Her people were consumed, withered by the horror of the Eternal Blight.
Vermonox trampled the marketplaces and smashed the dwellings, burnt the palace and despoiled the temples. Palora’s people fled, seeking shelter in the hinterlands and weeping that their home, so proud and fair, was no more.
But Palora, Queen of Cities, had one last champion to defend her.
Agemon, acolyte of the temple of Baan, refused to abandon his post, though all the city was reduced to ash and ruin about him. Taking up a spear cast aside by a fleeing guard of the palace, Agemon lifted his prayers to Baan, that he might avenge the desecration of the temple and cast down the vile wyrm that afflicted fair Palora.
Baan heard, and Agemon’s prayer was answered, and of the duel of the Acolyte and the Wyrm many ballads tell. Yet in the end, Agemon plunged his spear into the heart of Vermonox, and the great wyrm loosed a scream that shattered what was left of the walls of Palora, and the throes of his dying ground the palace into dust.
~The Book of Agemon
Palora, Queen of Cities. The very name rang with majesty. Palora, Baan’s chosen city, defended by the faithful. The faithful, led by the Paladin, who took up the Acolyte’s Spear and shepherded Palora in the name of Baan.
Once, or so said the Book of Agemon, Palora’s walls were of marble. What they were now was quarried stone, two great barriers backfilled with rubble and solidified with mortar, wide enough for three men abreast. The walls were crenellated, surmounted with pilings and towers, with great bastions like miniature fortresses over the gates. They were scarred walls, for like the Palora of old this city was no stranger to conflict.
Palora sat upon a confluence of sea and land routes blessed with trade and natural resources. Rich with trade, Palora was a target for conquest by kingdoms both less fortunate and more ambitious. Perhaps it was luck, perhaps the blessing of Baan, but Palora had not fallen. Protected by her Paladin and Saints, guided by her Conclave of Archons, she made her way as best she could, humbled from her legendary glory, but still beautiful.
***
The day was overcast, but Cendra watched the sun rise over Palora, and she had never seen a sight so beautiful in all her days. The traveler was energized despite the long miles of dust upon her cloak and boots. Eyes the color of sapphires peered out from beneath the hood of the cloak, leaping from one tower to the next, caressing the dear skyline of the city with a hungry longing.
So it always is, when an exile returns home. The thought soured her mood, and the woman schooled her expression to neutrality. Cendra was tall, for a woman, and slender. Her skin was fair, under the layers of dirt and dust, though little of it could be seen. Beneath the gray cloak she was clad in a rough homespun shirt and trousers, with leather boots and long gloves that vanished beneath her shirt. At her waist the flash of a sword’s hilt could be discerned, though she kept her cloak curled about it for the most part.
Though she might have lingered to watch the sun climb over fair Palora, might have sat all day in quiet contemplation of its beauty, she roused herself and walked down to the road, joining the flood of people and carts making for the Ram’s Gate.
At the gate Cendra stopped to wait with all the others, heart beating faster in her chest as she drew closer to the guards, closer to the gate, closer to that line over which it was death for her to set foot. She might yet run, turn aside and flee, fighting back up the tide of humanity and running back to her exile. But no, she could not. Not now, not here. So close to her home, the city of her birth, she could not turn back. She had cast the die, and for good or for ill she would go on. Turning back now would be to cut out her own heart.
She could not turn back. Cendra knew that now, looking up at the Ram’s Gate towering above her. She could not turn back, could not deny the siren call of the city, her city, after coming so far. And so she continued on, and when the guard stopped her at the gate she met his eyes fearlessly, though a lesser woman might have quailed.
The guard frowned slightly, looking her over. “What’s yer business in Palora, miss?” His eyes roved the area, perhaps curious why the woman was here alone.
“Pilgrimage,” Cendra replied, keeping her cloak held carefully about her sword to conceal it.
He squinted at her, and the exile was acutely conscious of the cheap dye of ash and oil that served to darken her hair. “How long you stayin’?”
“A week, sir.” From the pouch at her waist she drew a single coin of heavy milled gold. Taking the guard’s hand, Cendra pressed the coin into it, smiling sweetly. “I am staying with my uncle, in the milliner’s district.”
Curling his fingers about the coin, the man hesitated a moment, and then relaxed markedly. “Right you are, miss. Welcome to Palora; enjoy your stay.” The guard favored her with a gap-toothed smile and waved her into the city.
She made it through the gate and stopped, overcome with a flood of memories. So many years gone by... The exile took a shuddering breath as the crowd flowed around her, a few people giving her sidelong glances before moving on. Letting the breath go slowly, Cendra wondered how it was that she had come to be here. She had just bribed her way into the city. The city, of all places, where once she had walked tall and proud, head held high as the adoration of the people had washed over her.
She heard his voice again in her mind, smooth as oiled silk and faintly amused. The memory swept over her like a tide...
Cendra was leaning on a bar of dark, scarred wood, the bottle before her half-empty, the glass as empty as her future. That was when she had first heard his voice, cutting her to the core. “You were luminous, once. They say that you glowed as bright as the sun, your wrath was terrible to behold, and all fled before your blade.”
The exile had turned, and the man she would come to know simply as the Magister was there, cloaked and cowled, features nigh invisible but for the faint hint of unsettlingly luminous blue eyes. “Go away,” she growled, turning back to the bar and reaching for the bottle, only to blink in surprise and find it gone.
There was a sloshing sound behind her, and Cendra turned back to find the man swirling the bottle with a lazy hand and a sardonic smile. “I know why you left.”
“You don’t know anything.” The exile swiped at the bottle. Taking it from the man should have been easy. She had always been fast, blindingly so, but the bottle danced out of her reach. Embarrassment reddened her face and she made another grab, only to suffer further humiliation with another miss.
“You fled,” the man said as Cendra tried a third time, but the bottle was no longer in his hand, instead her wrist was, gripped hard enough to grate her bones together. His free hand reached out, touching the long leather glove that covered her left hand, her sword hand, up to the elbow. He ran his finger down it slowly, a disturbing giggle of mirth slipping out. “I know why.”
A bolt of fear lanced through her, the drink forgotten. “I have no idea what you are talking about. Let me go.” She hated it, the sound of her voice, once strong and commanding, now weak, pleading.
But he did not, and she was helpless in his grasp; she, who had once held an entire city in her hand, and in reaching out to grasp it, lost all. His voice speared through her, transfixed her in place. “Some stains never come out, Paladin. Some stains seep into skin and bone.” The exile glared at him, hating him for the words he spoke, for the history that he was privy to, for knowing things he had no business knowing. And yet, she was unable to tear herself away. There was something compelling in those blue orbs, something that demanded she attend his soft words as her eyes stared into blue pits that went down and down and down into the depths of madness itself. “I know, and I understand. I see the reasons you had, the logic that led you to your choices. Would you not be free of it?”
“There is no freedom,” she hated the weakness in her voice, the uncertainty. There had never been uncertainty before. She had known her place, her purpose. But that was long ago. Cendra knew what she was, the fate to which she was sentenced. Was it not written of old in the holy scripts? Was it not written into her very flesh? “There is no redemption, not from this.”
The Magister giggled again, as though this was all some great and terrible joke. “And that is where you are wrong, Paladin.”
“Don’t call me that!” The exile hissed, taking refuge from fear and uncertainty in fury. Wrenching herself free she staggered away from the bar, aware that the few other patrons were staring, watching the altercation unfold as the man moved after her. “Get away from me. I’ll call the guard.”
“You don’t want that sort of attention.” He followed her relentlessly, his voice leaving her no refuge. “There is a way. They’ve fallen, all the king’s horses, all the king’s men.” The man let out another giggle that grated against her senses, amused by the nonsensical prattle. “You’ve heard the rumors. I am here to tell you they are true.”
Cendra stopped, staring at him; the shudder running through her flesh was nothing compared to the horror spearing through her soul. “Vermonox…”
“Yes, you begin to see, Paladin. ‘All things are burned away in wyrmflame.’ That is in your book as well.” He smiled, the expression more a show of teeth than a sign of mirth. “Your book… and mine.”
“Who are you?” The exile whispered, shuddering again at the expression faintly seen on his hood-shadowed face. “What do you want?”
“I am many things to many people,” the man replied, “and I want many things. You may call me Magister. Of you, I want only this: that you take up the mantle of Agemon and the Blackwatch, and lead my chosen against Vermonox.” He slipped forward, close enough that she could feel an intense, sickly heat radiating off his body as he slipped a coin into her gloved hand, folding her fingers around it. “This will get you through the Ram’s Gate. The Inn of the Third Burning, a fortnight hence. If you would redeem yourself, they will be there.”
And with that he had left her, left her to stand in the common room of a dingy inn, hand clutched around a token that might be a path to the reclamation of all she had lost, or a coin to pay her passage across the river of death.
Of the two, it still seemed more likely to Cendra that the coin would only win her a visit to the ferryman, but she had paid her way through the Ram’s Gate with the Magister’s bribe, and here she was, breathing the air of the city, her city, again. Ten years… Ten years, and the exile could feel the city flooding back into her veins, embracing her like a lover longed for and remembered.
Death, life, redemption, damnation, any of it was worth it to stand here again, to breathe this air and hear these sounds. For the first time in a long time Cendra truly smiled, and made her way to the Inn of the Third Burning.
The Third Burning was not, by any stretch, a reputable inn. Swaying over the street, its sign depicted a trio of cackling witches bound to flaming pyres. Common rumor held that the name actually sprang from a former proprietor’s propensity for torching the properties of his competitors in the district. Whether or not that was true the exile never knew, nor really cared. All that mattered to her, as she pushed through the battered door and surveyed the thankfully dim interior, was if the Magister and his recruits were here.
Shouldering her way to the bar, Cendra flagged down the bartender and asked if the Magister was in residence. She received a surly stare in reply and was directed to a back room. Turning away, she pressed her way through the ragged patrons, slapping away a hand that reached for her purse absently, and slipping into the back room.
What met her eyes was a surprisingly cozy room set with a table and seven chairs. Upon the table was food, a simple spread of meat, cheese, and bread, along with pitchers of drink. There was a banked fire in the fireplace near the table, but no sign of the Magister. Cendra looked back and forth, but found no sign of anyone else, and so she resigned herself to waiting, taking a seat at one end of the table.
The exile had waited for this moment, whether she knew it or not, for a decade. What were a few more hours compared with more than a decade’s heartsick longing?
< Message edited by Kellehendros -- 1/10/2016 18:31:07 >
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