Category: Other Page 136 of 177

The Cuatrian would lie on his back and picture an Opening to a Dark place. Each person’s entrance was different; Chiara herself envisioned a cave, but the imagining could be a temple, a closet, a ‘fairy house,’ or a fountain. As long as the opening leads below the surface of the world, it is acceptable.

Next, the seeker would listen closely until he began to hear a faint ringing noise: the “Voice of the Swallows,” who are sacred to Antuor. Eventually the would will become a two-syllable ‘word,’ similar to a Hindoo “mantra.” The Cuatrian would then begin repeating this word, internally, as though a chant.

As the word was repeated, the visionary would slowly be drawn into the darkness of the Hypogeum and a series of colors would begin to appear. This word and series of colors became the ‘key’ to the Hypogeum, through which he could access this state at any time. This key would only work for the individual Cuatrian.

Source: Entering the “Hypogeum”: A Method – Quatrian Folkways – Medium

Benda Betrayer took to his new-found responsibilities with ease and grace. Though he knew not the Quatrian tongue prior to his arrival, the minstrels who trained him to complete his role in the Dark Dance Cycle said he had a natural gift of wa’ata. They went so far as to theorize that this is likely why he was able to pass through the veil during the storm-at-sea in the first place, which no other Pentarchs had done in countless ages.

The compatriots of Benda, Tendar Trustless, and Ofend Fool, had a harder time adjusting to their new positions in Quatrian society. While they were treated by all with great honor and respect— as participating in the cycles was considered one of the highest achievements of the culture — they struggled personally to wrap their tongues around the Quatrian lyrics. Their tutors called them arwat, tone deaf, and literally laughed out loud when either of the two tried to emulate even the simplest melodies which all Quatrian children could sing perfectly before they even learned to walk. So they were reduced in rank quickly to performing simple recited lines, cued mainly off Benda’s parts, and simple comedic segments.

During the time of their training, the Dark Dance Cycle continued, but with extended interludes of minor tales which did not require the Betrayer, such as the adventures of young Delrin in the Cyric forests, and the visits of Delrin and Elum among the many Forest Peoples before landing in their present predicament at the stone circle.

Returning to that narrative now, Benda soon after his induction learned the mythic rules of performing the role of the Betrayer, of the first level. According to legend, it is known that in addition to projecting his apparition insubstantially at a distance (as when he first appeared to Elum and Delrin in the depths of the Great Forest), the Betrayer has the ability to switch appearances with his victims, such that others mistake the victim for the Betrayer, and vice versa. Though he understood it not at the time, this was the theatrical convention which actor Jan Re was in the midst of executing when he was accidentally mortally wounded by Benda’s blunt costume sword.

That is, the Betrayer-performer begins the Ritual of Transfer, by roughly gripping the shoulders of his intended victim, face to face. The victim is then enthralled by the depthless void found within the charred empty eye sockets of the Betrayer. The two then twirl about in a dance, which to Quatrian audiences signifies the struggle and flight of the victim’s soul to the Outer Darkness. And the Betrayer takes the role on-stage of and replacing his victim, who remains as though lifeless crumpled to the ground.

When Benda upset this natural way of things by mortally wounding Jan Re, he incurred both a blood debt to support Jan Re’s family, but also a ritual debt, for having changed the pitch of the tones which make up the Octave of Time. The cycles performed in Quatrian Society under the priests of the Hypergeic Temple Mount had as their intended function the harmonization of these Octaves in the present moment with the mythic and historical root tones (which were one in the same in this society).

This was not, to those people, idle speculation, or merely a symbolic conception of time as cyclical. This was, in a society still wedded to the Hypogeic powers, a concrete experience of how the present could impact the past. Thus atonement was also attunement, a continual re-tuning of the very stuff of existence.

For this reason, the ascension of Benda to the role of Betrayer was a natural progression of the way of things, since the epics told that the battle between Delroy’s Best Men and the Betrayer at the stone circle, was already one of deception and displacement of identity. It was thus only fitting.

Tendar Trustless and Ofend Fool still continued to double in their roles as Ayar and Ayad, the two brothers who were Best Men to Delroy, and watched over young Delrin. Their lines were few, and mostly comic. Due to Benda’s promotion to the role of Betrayer, it was determined that a local replacement would be found to take over the part of Andal, the captain of the Best Men, especially since it was a singing part. For reasons related to both ritual debt, and for his known skill as a performer in his youth in his own right, Garth Al Elum (former host of the three Pentarch sailors, and one of the headmen of the village where they landed) was chosen, and performed admirably.

We return now to the slaying of the brother Best Men pair. Ayad, played by Ofend Fool, was first to die, being considered weakest, and most susceptible to the deceptions of the Betrayer. Benda Betrayer, as the stone circle scene opened to the dissonant braying of trumpets from the orchetra, caught Ayad unawares while urinating on the rock of Acho (his character, comically, understood not the importance of the Holy Rock — and he, as a performer, did not actually urinate on stage, only mimed it). As he turned from his act to face the Betrayer, he was taken up roughly by the shoulders, and spun about by Benda Betrayer, who sang the opening lines of the Ritual of Transfer.

“I and thee, thee and I,
together are we, together.
Enter the void of my eyes.
Bathe in the Outer Darkness, revealed.
I take thy place, thee mine,
until one die, and the bond be released.”

With that, Ofend Fool as Ayad slumped dramatically to the floor, and Benda Betrayer took his place, miming too urination on the great boulder, as his brother Ayar, played by Tendar Trustless approached, calling out:

“Ho, Ayad,
you have found a new place
to relieve yourself, I see!”

The audience erupted in laughter. After it died back down enough, the Betrayer responded in song:

“You know me,
fair brother,
to whom I would never lie.
Who knows my inmost heart.”

Though he dropped accidentally the concluding line, “whose sight cheers me in this dark place,” Ayad took the cue anyway, and clapped the back of the Betrayer in brotherly love, “Aye, aye.”

Then Andal entered, played by Garth Al Elum, and sang a short tale of their voyage lost in the wood, and how they tracked a dark figure they spotted far off in the forest, and who during the journey appeared to them in restless dreams. And how, as they tracked him, he increasingly began to fear that it was truly they who were the hunted.

The Betrayer, in the guise of Ayad, replied in sing-song chant:

“You worry too much, o captain.
Rest a while by this great rock.
You and my brother both.
I will take the watch.
And the morning will greet us
with fresh eyes.”

Being gravely weary from their sojourn in that dark wood, Ayar and Andal did sleep, and dream, to the tunes of strythis played offstage, the Betrayer standing watch. As the night lengthened, and the torches illuminating the stage were dimmed, the reeds thrummed from the orchestra, a quiet sound, against a plunking, as of rain, from the violins. And onstage, the Betrayer produced a length of silver rope. He approached on tip-toe the sleeping figure of his would-be brother, Ayar.

With a clash of cymbals, Ayar suddenly awoke, and in the space between dream and waking, was able to see the Betrayer for what he is. As that dark figure closed on him, the rope was dropped, and the dark hands covered the mouth of Ayar, muffling a cry, as he sought to scramble to his feet.

All at once, the Betrayer cried out, and lurching up to his full height, and turned. The trumpets blared his terror. A sword plunged into his back, and Andal standing in his fury behind, hilt broken off in his hand.

With a cry, the Betrayer crashed to the floor, and the now forgotten body of Ayad which had lain all this time not far away, roused itself, echoing the fury of the Betrayer’s cry. Lurching to his feet, and whirling, the audience saw clearly the sword, hilt broken off, which is where Elum and Delrin would find him thus, near death, a few moments later in the next scene of the cycle, which has already been related here in the previous installment.

Returning to the Great Forest, the brave and handsome woodsman, Elum, and Delrin, merchant’s daughter of Abdazon, have given chase to an apparition which appeared to them near the place where her father’s Best Men were lost in the wood. The owl familiar of Elum, named Lux, has accompanied them in this quest, and the three paused for a time to catch their breath, and sup lightly on some forest crackers. Lux stood watch, shuffling softly on a branch nearby, preening her white feathers.

“The trail has gone cold,” Delrin said, despairing.

“I can still see the lights of their passing,” Elum said. “And the shadow that follows them. They’ve a day’s lead on us yet.”

“Then they’re alive!” Delrin said, hopeful.

“They were when they passed this place, at least.”

At this, Delrin’s hopes sank once again.

Elum, seeing this, comforted her, “We’ll find them.”

And so another day they passed in tireless flight, in the manner of the Forest People, touching almost not the ground, leaving no trace but for the light of their passing, which only one trained in the Way could sense. Elum, a native in this wild land, could. Delrin could not — at least not yet. That night, they huddled close together, in a hollow beside a stout old trunk, and Delrin fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. Elum did not sleep, however, and watched her gently breathing, and with Lux, they kept guard until the early morning hours, when he roused her from slumber.

“From here we will walk. It’s a short way to the stone circle.”

“What happens there?” Delrin asked, brushing the sleep from her eyes, and straightening her hair.

“We find your father’s men.”

The forest canopy was lighter here than in the depths of the Great Forest, which Delrin had come to know in her travels with Elum. And as dawn broke, rays from the morning sun came through red and soft. They traveled in silence, Elum in the lead, wary, and Delrin following close behind. Lux flew sorties, arcing out ahead and back, tutting signals to Elum, who cooed occasionally in return.

Thus they reached the first stone, blueish in hue, longer than a man, taller, were it standing upright, but it was not. It lay, as though asleep, on the forest floor across the path, moss curling up along its dark faces.

“The Sleeping Lookout, we call him,” Elum indicated quietly. “Who appears at rest, we still pass round with caution.” He pointed to the side, and they skirted carefully round the edge to continue on their trail.

Elum explained, as they continued on, that the stone circle was built at the dawn of time, by a people before the Forest People, when the Great Forest was still young, before Abdazon, Ederron, or Old Qisuth. It was a great open air temple to Acho, the Older Brother, firstborn, whose enormous boulder stood at the center of the ring. When Anthuor first stepped out of the Hypogeum, his hoof struck the back of Acho, who supported him and who still bears the hoof marks high up at the place where Anthuor first came to Quatria, and nibbled the lichen growing there.

“The stones stand watch around Acho, their father. It is a holy place, making it all the more troubling that our trail ends here.”

They came then to the ring of stones, which girded a clearing in the forest, central to which was the giant boulder of Acho, which stood as tall as the largest building in Abdazon, though smaller still than the Foot, or the Stair, or the Great Bridge.

Delrin looked up at it, marveling. “Have you ever gone to see them?”

“See what?”

“The hoof-prints of Anthuor.”

“When I was a child, yes. In happier days. We must now be on our guard.”

They crouched then at the edge of the clearing, and Elum signalled Lux to fly out — carefully — for a better view. She did, veering in a wide circle, before disappearing out of sight behind the great boulder.

From far off, they heard a cry. A man. Delrin recognized it as the voice of Ayad or Ayar, one of the two brothers who comprised her father’s Best Men, who had kept watch over her nearly her life long. Without another thought, she took off running to find him, somewhat to the dismay of Elum, who of course leapt out to follow her.

As they rounded the giant boulder, there was a flash of white somewhere high up, and Lux cried out in warning. A man clad in mail, leather breeches, and a short helm staggered out from the cover of the boulder. He was quite unwell.

“Ayad!” Delrin exclaimed, rushing to him, before Elum could stop her.

He stumbled, and fell to his knees as she approached, and his two gauntleted hands gripped with fierce strength her wrists.

She saw suddenly then that his eyes were not his own, and with horror, tried to pry herself loose from his grasp, and could not. Ghoulishly, he looked up at her, uncomprehending, in time to catch the arrow of Elum, which passed in through the eye socket, and penetrated his brain.

Delrin cried out, as the form of the man slumped away from her, grip on her wrists loosened at last. Elum ran up, and kicked the corpse away, turning it over with his foot. Bloodied was the back, where a short sword had been laid to rest, its hilt broken.

What follows are excerpts of the proceedings of the trial of the three Pentarch sailors for the death of the performer Jan Re, in portrayal of Assenzju, the Betrayer, as part of the Dark Dance Cycle. Adapted from the original, c. 1642 ‘Quastrish Tales,’ (Lepnom)

Notes on language:

Lepnom asserts that certain of the Bards were conversant in a form of ancient Kremellian, such that the Chief Bard was able to speak in plain enough terms that the Pentarch sailors could understand and respond roughly in kind, enough that the proceeding was considered legal, under the Quatrian Consensus System.

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In attendance:

• The High Augur, titular head of the House of Song (in reality, subject to Bardic Council)
• The Chief Bard, chieftain of the Bardic Council, and current Protector of the House of Wealth in Exile
• The Archpoet, a dedicated Subservient of No Rank of the House of Sorrow
• Not in attendance: an attendant of the House of Silence, who was elsewhere officiating over the funeral preparations of Jan Re, but the quietude of whose spirit did participate silently in absentia, and was considered sufficient to make the hearing binding
• Benda, leader of the Pentarch sailors, whose blunt costume sword had fatally punctured the gut of Jan Re, during a performance
• The other two sailors: Tendar the Tall, Ofend the Round, who accomplanied Benda during the incident

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Proceedings

CHIEF BARD: (to Benda, in ancient Kremellian)

We have established that you all understand why you are here, and the significance of this proceeding.

I have only one question: did your sword enter the body?

BENDA:

The sword I held, sir.

CHIEF BARD: (who translated to Quatrian the responses of the sailors)

The sword you held?

BENDA:

I claim ownership of my actions, sir. Not of these accoutrements. The sword was thrust into my hand in the dark. As were we helmed, and clad in mail — myself, and my countrymen.

ARCHPOET: (to the Chief Bard, who translated)

Were they not aware of the nature of this ritual?

BENDA:

I take you to mean, sir, the theatrical performance we witnessed in the Grand Plaza on entering the Temple Mount, with our hosts from Elum.

HIGH AUGUR: (in reply to the Chief Bard, who translated)

Theatrical performance?

CHIEF BARD:

It means a kind of public entertainment.

(He repeated this as a question to Benda in his halting ancient Kremellian)

BENDA:

It does, sir. An entertaining fantasy. The delight is in the knowledge it is not real.

ARCHPOET:

Oh, but it’s very real.

HIGH AUGUR: (in agreement)

Quite.

CHIEF BARD: (to the sailors)

Granted that, in your understanding, the events into which you were thrust were a kind of play-acting only…

(Benda nodded.)

It would follow, then, that a man of sound mind would lower his sword in such a situation, to avoid inflicting harm on his fellow player.

Are you not a man of sound mind?

BENDA:

I am, my lord. I claim no feebleness after our storm-at-sea. The people of Elum have restored me, body, and spirit in my brief time with them.

HIGH AUGUR:

Then how came you to murder Jan Re?

BENDA:

I claim ownership of my actions, sir. I am at fault. But murder it is not. Caused by an accident, a confusion in the moment. I, we, bear him nor any of your people any ill-will or malice.

I am aggrieved by the harm I have caused, and accept your proper punishment. I beg leniency for my fellows, whose hands were not bloodied.

ARCHPOET:

Death bloodies all in equal measure.

CHIEF BARD:

We have heard your testimony, Benda the Pentarch, sailed over seas from Kremel, ancient lost ally of Quatria.

The Consuls will now deliberate. You may respond if you are asked to do so.

We begin.

HIGH AUGUR:

The crime is murder.

CHIEF BARD:

A case was made for accidental death. The merits are compelling.

It is argued that these men, though they acted the part wrongly, had not full comprehension of their role in the pageant.

This lack, coupled no doubt with nerves, and little experience in the physicality of Quatrian religious ritual, caused their leader to respond improperly, and without actual malice, resulting in grave injury to Jan Re, playing the Betrayer.

ARCHPOET:

Malice or not, there is a blood debt to the family of Jan Re.

CHIEF BARD:

Blood debts are the prerogative of the House of Wealth, and will be considered in due course.

Is lack of malice conceded?

HIGH AUGUR:

It is.

However, in difference, at least one compared value is lacking. It was this detected difference which the Bell-ringers transmitted to the Pillar of Song, and which the High Augur heard, all the way from Raggath and Yagar. It is the sound which initiated the Dark Dance Cycle, a ritual rarely performed this time of year, but which the omen suggested, and with which the ancient tables corresponded favorably.

ARCHPOET:

In difference, too, may be surplus. Not only lack. We dwell on lack in time of loss or suffering, where we would do well to re-assign our surpluses.

CHIEF BARD:

The House of Wealth proposes to absorb the blood debt owed to the family of Jan Re.

HIGH AUGUR:

It is seconded.

ARCHPOET:

It is accepted.

HIGH AUGUR:

Let us turn, then, to the ritual debt.

ARCHPOET:

Aye, the legends speak not of the Betrayer dying in such a fashion. Harmony needs be restored.

HIGH AUGUR:

The tales speak not of Betrayers dying. They cannot die. They can only be transformed, until the deviation is recalled by the one we need not name.

CHIEF BARD:

When one speaks of deviations, one speaks of turning away from the normal and expected. That is precisely the nature of this case.

In the epic, the Betrayer captures Delroy’s Best Men, besting them one by one in single combat, using his powers of deception. The goal is to draw Delrin out of the Great Forest, and into the waiting arms of the magician Morbat, and the culmination of their betrothal.

ARCHPOET:

If your point is that a deviation is at hand, it is well taken. The Betrayer may already be in our midst.

HIGH AUGUR:

Indeed, the Betrayer is at hand.

Which is why the Dark Dance must not be further delayed. For it is only in the full and complete performance of this ritual may the land be expiated another cycle from his dark influence.

CHIEF BARD:

It is agreed, the pattern will continue. Who will pay the ritual debt?

BENDA:

I will pay the debt.

CHIEF BARD:

Would that you could, but you cannot without a sponsor.

HIGH AUGUR:

By initiating this cycle, it is the High Augur who effectively put the swords into the hands of the Pentarch sailors.

ARCHPOET:

It is fate, though, that brought them to the role.

HIGH AUGUR:

And I am but its instrument.

It is proposed the House of Song pay the ritual debt.

ARCHPOET:

It is seconded.

CHIEF BARD:

It is accepted.

It is proposed that same Good House undertake the sponsorship of Benda the Brave, Tendar the Tall, and Ofend the round, Pentarch sailors from Kremel, in measure equal to their crime.

ARCHPOET:

It is seconded.

HIGH AUGUR:

It is accepted by the House. Is it accepted by the Pentarch sailors?

BENDA:

As it please the Lords and Houses, we do accept.

CHIEF BARD:

It is witnessed herewith that these three sailors enter under sponsorship and protection of the House of Song, and that they will pay the ritual debt by assisting in the full and complete performance of the remainder of the Dark Dance Cycle.

---

It thus came to pass, that Benda the Brave was renamed Benda Betrayer; Tendar the Tall, Tendar Trustless; Ofend the Round, Ofend Fool. And the three were quickly educated as to the roles, chants, recitations, and dances they would be expected to play during the remainder of the ritual. After its completion, it would be decided as to their final fates.

Proud men, with caution, were the Pentarch sailors. In crossing that great storm-at-sea, which blew them to these far shores, as in their present role, chosen by Fate (and the High Augur, its chosen instrument), to play Delroy the merchant’s fabled Best Men, bested by that Great Forest, in that Dark Dance Cycle which tells, in part the tale of fair Delrin, and the demise of proud Abdazon, the anti-node of the Hypogeum in an age before this one.

Helmed, mailed, and armed with dull blades, the sailors took cautious steps deeper onstage as the orchestra died down to the barest whisper of a bowed dulcimer and a lonely oud calling out a sweet fragrant tension. And then, as from far off, a low rumbling. It seemed, at first, as if the city shook, a trembling of earth, rising up to a low clear note, a tone of great gravity, and a growing alarm. The Sailors felt the hair stand up on their necks.

Somewhere from offstage, the horrid sound of a death whistle, a clever cruel emulation of the song made by living beings under torture. An instrument never played in Quatria, in effect forbidden, but for this ritual introduction to the Song of the Betrayer. The crowd turned to hissing, as an effusion of smoke burst from the far wing.

And from that haze, a dark clad figure strode forth with an eerie slowness. In tatters of dark cloth of indeterminate color, it seemed to walk with a limp. From the orchestra, the sound of rattles, and the clackrum player turned the wheel of the wooden clapper, watching the dark figure move across the stage, and syncing his turn to the thump thump rhythm of the performer’s limp. The sound of death approaching.

The Pentarch sailors dressed as Best Men knew not what to expect, but, acting naturally, simply responded to the situation, falling into a triangular formation, Benda in front, Tendar and Ofend in the wings. The Betrayer approached them, as the clackrum turned to a halt, stopped, and lifted up a weathered arm to them. The rattling died down, and the Betrayer cried out, in sing-song atonal recitation, unaccompanied:

“From the depths, I rise.
Called forth by the Master,
A shape to the formless.
Who has form, I relieve.
Reckoning for man’s pride,
Cities fall in my wake.

Be ye three, I the Fourth.
Be ye four, I am Five.
I pass always silent.
I am that which burn not.
Cares of men are nothing.
All will sleep in their time.”

A hush fell over the assembled crowd, and a long pause was broken only by a baby crying somewhere, and then a light viol picked out a soft tune in response to the Betrayer’s harsh cries. It surprised Benda that he recognized the tune, and moved as he was by the moment, and the sheer terror of the figure of the blackened and burnt Betrayer standing there before him, he sang out in his own tongue.

He knew it as a lullaby for children, and a chant sometimes used by drovers’ wives over sick animals. He sang it thus, and though the Quatrians gathered in that Grand Plaza could not understand all the words of the Kremellian tongue, the meaning of the lyrics had evidently crossed into that language without much modification. They understood it clearly enough, and wept at the beauty which Benda brought to the role.

“You who are restless, be calmed.
There is no new thing today,
Which has not been seen before.
As our ancestors passed through,
Will we follow that same road.
Fear can wait another day.
Cry until you have finished.
Rest we in peace and safety.
In Anthuor, we withstand.”

In fact, Benda had sung exactly this song on his boat, his compatriots, and to the storm itself while they were lost at sea. And he sang it now with that same gentle power which he had then. The Quatrians were greatly moved.

The Betrayer then began to circle slowly round the Sailors dressed as Best Men, who naturally shifted into formation, mailed backs turned toward one another. The Betrayer lifting up both arms, cued the sound of a lonely zither, which accompanied him slowly, sorrowfully, as he circled round waving his arms menacingly at the three men, whose swords waved in rhythm, glinting in return.

The Betrayer sang out, and a flute accompanied his shrill chant:

“I bind thee, three to me.
Where I go, will you go.
Prisoners of silence.
The Changer is at hand.”

The crowd took up a sharp hiss, which, combining with the rattles of the orchestra, created an unholy ruckus.

The Betrayer rushed forward, seizing Benda roughly by the shoulders, who, unthinkingly, and in the heat of the moment, raised his dull sword, such that his would-be attacker fell upon it, the point sharp enough to penetrate his gut, causing the performer to gasp in shock and wonder.

The performer gripped his shoulders tightly then, as Benda realized what had happened. He retracted the blade in horror, as the performer squeezed out his dying words, which Benda heard as a muffled stage whisper amongst the cacophony. Being in the Quastrian tongue, he understood not the words, though could guess at their implications:

“You should have dropped your sword-”

And with that, he slumped to the floor unconscious, Benda gripping the blunt short sword, which dripped with real and unintended blood.

Though our focus of late, has been in recounting the sad tale of Delrin, which plays the central part of the Dark Dance Cycle, we enjoin the reader to return presently to the plight of the three Pentarch sailors, newly arrived in the Temple Mount of the Hypergeum. They have watched with great amazement the staged reenactment of these legendary episodes from Quatrian history, at times with tears in their eyes, and at others, with joy in their hearts. For in the hearing, and the seeing, all with the performer and composer are one.

Though they understand not more than scattered words from the Quatrian tongue, they have recognized in the forms, costumes, and songs, even junctions with their own inherited mythic traditions. In Kremel, and the Far Reaches, the tale of Ederron survived, though the personage has been altered slightly to suit local languages, and they know the name more properly of that great lord as Aldron, who came over the sea, gravely wounded, and died shortly thereafter on the foot of that hill upon which the city of Kremel would later be founded. His sepulcher was said to lie buried in cavernous tombs far beneath what is now the Hall of the Five Kings.

Upon the first appearance on stage of the ghoulish Betrayer, too, the Pentarch sailors gasped in fear and awe. For they recognized in him dark and terrible beings from their own tribal histories, the wars against which originally drove the Five Tribes and their kings into mutual aid and later strong alliance. In the Pentarch common tongue, they were known as Deviants — a root in common with the deviations unleashed by Wormwood, and his supplicant servant Morbat, neither of whom Kremellian legends recollected.

After the appearance on stage of the Betrayer Assenzju, the leader of the village entourage which had brought them to the Temple Mount, Garth Al Elum, indicated then that the three should follow him. The sailors did so blindly, with utter faith in their host, and wound their way out through the crowd, and passed through a portal near the side of the stage. They found themselves plunged into darkness, to which their eyes soon adjusted, seeing they were in a small chamber from which stairs ascended up to the platform of the stage.

Three women approached them with halberds of mail, insisting the sailors don the apparel, which they did. The women strapped broad leather belts around their waists, and placed short metal helmets on their heads, and thrust unsharp short swords into their hands. The sailors wondered at the significance of this, but did not question what seemed to them to be a ritual of great importance.

Garth Al Elum then escorted them to the foot of the stairs, and pushed them bodily up those steps til they stumbled out uncertainly onto the stage. Dark chords struck up from the orchestra nearby out of sight, and they walked warily out into the middle. They did not understand it yet, but they had been drafted, costumed, and pressed into service of the Dark Dance Cycle (a great honor in that country) by the High Augur himself. They were to play the Best Men of Delroy, lost in the Great Forest on their way to retrieve Delrin, as the Betrayer approaches.

As a certain purple flower grows wild and strong best in the wood, so did Delrin feel at home in the Forest Villages. And she tarried there an untold number of days with the fair woodsman, Elum, the two (that is, three with owl) traveling from village to village, learning the lore and hospitality of that great land and those many peoples beneath the leaves, a world so unlike the one she grew up in.

In fact, the outside world grew somewhat dim for her, and guiltily, she let it. No more rules or missions from her father. No more Best Men following her every move. And still she missed them slightly. They’d shadowed her in her sylvan adventures as long as she could recall, and kept a watchful eye out for danger. She did love them as uncles or cousins though, perhaps.

She assumed they wouldn’t be foolhardy enough to follow her into the Great Forest, and that they would return home to her father. But she under-estimated their love for her, and the impossibility for them of returning to her father as empty-handed failures. And she knew not the fate which had befallen them.

That is, until traveling softly through the wood one day with Elum, she heard some birds talking, singing of strange men lost in the woods. It was in a dialect different from that of the birds of the wood down in the Cleft, but still the same tongue and she understood it well enough. She thought it was in reference to herself and Elum, a mythic tale of warning, to not stray from the path.

“I’m no man,” she told them back in the bird language. “And we’re not lost.”

Elum responded softly in the human-tongue. “They don’t speak of us… they speak of -” he broke off, listening to the birds. “They speak of your father’s men. Come,” he urged her, suddenly serious. “There is danger. The gate has been opened.”

They ran through the forest for what seemed like days and nights. Delrin lost track of the hours beneath the great boughs of that forest. Twinkling starlight bled into dew dappled patches of weak sunlight filtering through from the forest crown somewhere far above. They ran fast, but lightly, leaving almost no trace. Delrin had learned from Elum this manner of travel, and she felt no fatigue — a good thing, for they ran without pause to sup or sleep. And they did not speak, though the forest spoke to them at times, and the birds, and animals, urging them on, sending one urgent message:

“Hurry!”

When finally, they reached the original place where Elum and Delrin met, on the edge of the Great Forest, and where her father’s Best Men the following day had entered the wood to look for her, Elum tracked them easily. In fact, it was still fresh. Their trail led to a place deep enough into the wood for outsiders to get lost, but for Elum not very deep in at all. He knew the place, though, as one of treachery. For it lead out to a trail to the mountains, and to Traitor’s Gate.

Even in the Forest Villages, so apart from Abdazonian culture and history, the people still spoke of sad Ederron of ages past, an angel who fell from the Hypogeum when the earth and the sky were still one, and such things were still possible. At Traitor’s Gate, he was attacked by three masked men, who would have out of him the secret passwords to enter those Upper Realms.

In the combat which followed, he was gravely wounded, and fled toward the sea. And in his passing rose up treacherous mountains, and steep and difficult terrain to obstruct his pursuers. However, they crossed over greedily and with great haste — the idea of the treasures of heaven nearly in their clutches consuming them.

On the way, one of the pursuers succumbed to injuries sustained in the assault on Ederron, and died on one of those mountain slopes. A second fell to the cold of those peaks, and sleeps still today in a tomb of ice. The third reached Ederron, who lay dying on a pallet of straw on a boat. The vessel was helmed by a proud mariner in a sky blue cloak which matched his fierce eyes, and oared by people from that city by the water. It shoved off as the last surviving pursuer ran up to the docks, his mask falling from his face. He watched the dying god lift up the first and second finger on his left hand, pointing them toward heaven, and with the first and second of his right hand, touch his lips. The first password. Silence.

And a strange silence greeted them too in that place in the forest, Elum holding up two fingers to Delrin, a sign of the Forest Peoples to be still. As they stood there watching, a black and burned human form shuffled into view among far off tree trunks. The hair on her arms stood up, and a strange fear overtook her. Despite herself, Delrin cried out.

The form turned, then, slowly, to regard her with that foul eyeless stare, and all in that same instant, Elum notched and let fly an arrow. His aim was true, and the arrow as it flew would have pierced the creature, had it not vanished as the arrow approached it. Without a second thought, Elum set of running after it, and Delrin followed close behind.

A saying existed in Ancient Quatria, which has survived down through the ages: magicians enter not into contracts lightly. And when Morbat long years before promised the wealthy Abdazonian trader Delroy a child in exchange for her eventual hand in marriage, it was no different. Delroy, as humans are wont, believed that by stipulating True Love as a condition in the marriage arrangement, he was getting the better of the deal. The truth would prove to be somewhat farther afield.

While the child Delrin matured, exploring both the streets of the thriving city of Abdazon, and the wilds of the forest, Morbat employed many spies to track his investment, and to ascertain — and neutralize — any threats to its eventual return.

Thus was he well-apprised months in advance of her father’s intent to send her to far off lands, ostensibly to strengthen trade relations, but in actuality to send her far from where Morbat’s magic might be able to reach her as she attained marriageable age.

Being a magician is knowing who to supplicate, and with what offering. It was the power of Anthuor, in his role as Sustainer, which Morbat drew from in procuring the child’s soul in the first place from the Cauldron within the Hypogeum. Delrin thus, was a child of Anthuor, in every way that mattered, and it was evident to all who spoke with her in her delight for the creatures of the wood, and on account of her gentle demeanor. And given this sacred source as the root of the underlying agreement, there was precious little Morbat could do to directly interfere with its unfolding. But Anthuor is not the only Power which dwells within the Hypogeum.

The terms under which Delroy agreed to give away his child-to-be in marriage stipulated that it be for True Love. To Morbat, this was but a trifling challenge. If such a love rose up, there were myriad ways in which it could be stifled and struck down, and in its place employed a course of potions upon the unwitting bride until familiarity finally gave way to something which might be mistaken for love, or at least acceptance.

It was with this manipulation in mind which Morbat withdrew to Edthcheb, the place of the Broken Vessel to seek the Changer. For thirteen days, Morbat attended to the Ruined Altar, where he engaged in ritual sacrifice and mutilation of birds and small forest creatures from Delrin’s woodland retinue which had been captured by his spies. And on the thirteenth night, Wormwood the Changer arrived.

He appeared as a smoke without fire, spiraling up from the Ruined Altar, to a terminal point of a bulbous expressionless mask, which hovered and changed subtly as it spoke, cycling through phases of existence.

“Who summons me?”

“A nameless petitioner,” Morbat replied.

“Nameless, what do you seek?”

“A favor, endless one.”

“Know ye, nameless, that I care not for the affairs of men nor magicians.”

“It is known.”

“Then ask. And if it please me not, your very life shall be the price upon this Altar of Shame.”

“If it please thee, o lord,” Morbat replied, “I seek a deviation.”

“All things in their time. It is not scheduled.” The mask of smoke puffed and sagged then, as if to disappear.

“Hence my petition. One need not seek what is alloted, only wait the allotment.”

“And yet impatience has brought you here. Or is it impertinence?”

“Not impertinence, my lord — or at least, not my own. And my patience is indeed stretched by those who abide not in the Order.”

From the smoke issued forth a laugh, “And now we come to it.”

“Indeed, lord. For while you have lain slumbering, men have abused your gentler brother, and grown proud, storing up riches and treasure which by all rights belong to this Dark Land.”

“Thus you seek the Broken Vessel be poured out upon them.”

“Aye, it is so. As it was in Old Qisuth, in ages past, during the last deviation.”

The smoke brightened and stretched out vertically. “I dwell within my Inner Fire. My name is Rockmelt, and Killing Hail. In the deep and submerged places, that deviation still sleeps.”

“Call it forth, lord. Against the city of Abdazon, the city of man’s greed. Though you care not for the affairs of man, you are a lover of vengeance.”

The column of smoke flashed from white to black, to green, and then red. And the visage of the mask became terrible.

“Indeed, I am.”

The smoke vanished, and in the empty space of the altar, a tiny golden key had appeared.

And the voice of the Changer resounded, “Take then this key. And open the Way. The deviation is loosed.”

Morbat took the key, and hastened from that charred place of Edthcheb, going straightaway to unlock the Traitor’s Gate in the Ederren mountains. Far away, across the Vast Desert, where once lay the Cleft of Suth (now underwater), a form bubbled up from the deep, and crept inexorably toward the land. Making landfall on the rocky beaches above New Qisuth, this seaweed and slime covered form became, in stages, gradually more humanoid, if not quite a man. And though lacking in food, drink, or garment, it wasted no time in setting off into the Vast Desert. To the unlucky few of the fishing village of New Qisuth who happened to glimpse it sloping off thus into the desert, this figure appeared as a blackened and burnt wraith, an apparition. Though they knew not its name, they crossed arms instinctively in the warding sign of Anthuor, and Assenjzu the Betrayer slipped out of sight.

Warnings and promises to the side, Delrin did then venture into the Great Forest that night with Elum, the dashing young woodsman, and Lux, his owl companion. Somehow, miraculously, the three Best Men of her father — who were supposed to be guarding her — did not wake up, and were not aware of her disappearance until the next morning.

Meanwhile, Delrin slipped away into the woods with Elum, and Lux fluttering by occasionally, sweeping out ahead, disappearing, and re-appearing later from the sides, the rear, in silent reconnaissance. Neither spoke. And though it was dark, Delrin’s eyes adjusted readily. It was like the forests outside Abdazon down in the Cleft, for the most part, but everything was older, huger, filled with mystery and silence. Despite herself, without realizing, Delrin began humming.

Elum stopped ahead, turning, smiled, and held a finger to his lips, and pointed upward. Delrin was aware then of a myriad of eyes in the dark, looking down at her from the canopy. She stopped humming. Lux appeared, hooted twice, and flew off again.

After a time, they came out into a slight clearing, open to the night sky. Delrin looked up, and was surprised to find, mingled among the familiar constellations she knew, others which she’d never seen before — which… shouldn’t be there.

She was about to remark on this to Elum, who cut her off, saying softly, “Almost there.”

They crossed the clearing, and plunged back into the wood. After not long, Delrin began to notice a peculiar phenomenon. Sometimes she swore she saw a spot, line, or even edge of light issuing forth from the base of trees. Were they glowing from within?

As they went deeper into the wood, she saw it more clearly. Tiny doors into the base of trees. From which, occasionally light issued forth. And then one with a window, into which Delrin peered into, trying not to intrude on whoever — or whatever — might be lurking inside. Tiny people! An old man and a woman. She felt giddy.

At last, Elum lead her into a what would be a clearing, but for the thick canopy which arced across from all sides, covering most of the sky, with its strange constellations hidden from easy view.

Round wooden, hide, and thatch structures were nestled in amongst the trees, many of which themselves had little doors and inhabitants.

“The Forest Villages!” Delrin exclaimed.

Elum smiled, “Only one of many! And welcome!”

Though night still reigned where Delrin had withdrawn to deep within the Great Forest, her father’s men camped in the meadow were rising to the first rays of dawn, and the chorus of bird songs it brought.

Each awoke groggily, looking slowly one to the other, counting, with sudden awareness they were missing the fourth member of their party. Delrin!

Being trackers of some skill themselves, they easily found her trail out of the meadow, to the edge of the Great Forest, and — to their credit, as well as their foolhardiness — readily plunged without a moment’s hesitation into that dark wood.

And though no man could best their skill in their home forests within the Cleft, they were not on familiar turf, and were soon lost. What they perceived was Delrin’s trail (their craft was not subtle enough to detect the passing of Elum), wound deeply into the forest, lightened by stages, and abruptly dropped off. When they could not pick up further traces, they tried to press back the way they’d come following their own trail, and in spurts and stages, that disappeared too, swallowed by the forest floor.

At that same time, not so far away, the Assenzju the Betrayer passed the Traitor’s Gate in the Ederren mountains, above the Hypogeum, putting him a few days march from the outer edge of the Great Forest on the other side.

As the procession from the town of Elum bore the three Pentarch sailors up the Grand Path toward the walls of the citadel, watchers on the walls greeted their party in song. The song was a minor optional part of the Dark Dance Cycle, often not played at all in the Grand Plaza or Temple Chambers, but was a favorite of the waits. It told of young Delrin in Old Abdazon watching the loading of her father’s caravans, and of the several times she disguised herself to try to stowaway.

The townspeople of Elum, of course, sang their parts in response, knowing all the songs and tales, serving so closely the Temple Mount as a function of their lives since immemorial generations — since Elum swam across the Bay of Erasure and founded the village; a tale to which we soon return…

On passing the Tonic Gate of the Citadel, the Pentarch sailors became aware of a thrum just below the level of consciousness. A held tension, a barest audible vibration, as of a bow drawing slowly, slowly across a string — a note sweet, and rich, but at once full with sorrow.

And as they rounded a corner within the first wall of the Citadel, and passed through the Minor Gate, that tone of sorrow broke forth as if buds in thawing spring, into a sweet sadness of memory. At the far end of the Grand Plaza, was an elevated platform, behind which great acoustic curves framed a young and beautiful female singer, dressed all in black, with flowers pinned throughout her voluminous gowns. The voice of Delrin.

Where we last left Delrin and her company, they had passed the Threx Gate, whereupon the animal familiars who had played such a vital role in her youth bade her farewell as she left the Cyrcic Cleft to find a fate far away — or so her father hoped — from what cruel destiny might have in store.

Delrin was always the kind to make her own destiny though. And despite her awareness, knew nothing of her father’s mad marriage deal with the magician Morbat on the Great Bridge in the year before her fortuitous birth. The task now set out for her by her father, as she knew it, was to visit Threx, and negotiate a trade deal and safe passage with certain mariners heading for the Buorth.

The Forest Road though, which connected Threx to its gate down into the Cyrcic Cleft was a long one. It skirted most of that time the Great Forest, the largest and oldest growth in all of Ancient Quatria. It was a wild, untamed land, not formally allied with Threx, Sheb, Abdazon, Centuria, nor any other that Delrin had ever heard of. There were only the autonomous Forest Villages, of which there were an uncertain number and unknown diversity.

For the woods were inhabited, some would say haunted as well, by not only humans, but by other entities born — or wrought — in the far reaches of time. Not all of them friendly. So despite her deep woodlore and love for sylvan creatures, her father had forbade her from singing as they passed along the edges of that forest, in order to prevent any undue attention. They were not to venture into the forest, under any circumstances. This sounded utterly boring to her, but she did promise to her father to humbly obey as they embraced in farewell.

“It’s for your own good.”

“I know,” she said, and waved both he and her mother goodbye.

The first three days on the Forest Road were uneventful. Delrin and her three companion-guards walked at a brisk, but leisurely pace. They did not tarry long for meals or breaks, and spoke precious little among themselves in the shadow of that great wood. They kept simple camp, and the weather was good.

On the third night, Delrin awoke to a sound from the wood. An owl, calling soft and low. She looked round at her three guards, who had all fallen asleep, and got up from her bedroll. They did not camp close to the wood edge, but off aways in the meadows where they could see more clearly approaches from all directions. So Delrin had to steal away quietly and make her way closer to the wood’s edge. The owl hooted again. She squinted to try to see it, held her hands up in front of her in the dark to try to sense it. She let out a low, barely audible hoo of her own. She was quite close to the edge of the trees now, and not afraid.

All at once, there was a rush of movement, and a flash of white, and the bird was almost upon her. She held up her arms out of instinct, as the giant face floated for a second in front of her, huge round orange eyes, and whooshed up high above and away. She was so caught up in looking after its moonlit flight through the starry sky, that she was caught unawares when a human voice greeted her.

“Sorry about that.”

She startled and turned to see a handsome young man, dressed in the greens and browns of a hunter, a bow strung across his shoulders.

“I think she likes you,” he said, pointing up to the bird, who circled back then, as he let out a low call. It came and alighted on his gloved arm.

Delrin smiled.

“Her name is Lux, and mine is Elum.”