VIII. Vael

            “I try to be reasonable,” said the man the Fencer was quickly beginning to identify as Lord Vael, ruler of the steam city of Nock, master of the fortress that surrounded them.  While the despot spoke in his silken-sharp voice the Fencer struggled against his captors and himself, with equal parts failure.  Against the guards he was ineffective because his strength required a sword in his hand, and with himself he was in turmoil because the well-spoken man of the keep was making a claim on reason, and that was supposed to be his attribute.  The concept that others might share this value for rational thought enraged him.

            “I let you wander about Nock with a magic blade at your side without being brought in by the lamplighters,” continued Vael as they passed through galleries and passages illuminated by the lingering enchantments of their former master.

            “You are most kind,” said the Fencer, calming down, focusing on the memory of his cold weapon, currently held by a worried looking guard who kept it wrapped in cloth and held away.  “If you wanted to continue along that line of courtesy I wouldn’t complain at all.”

            “You are my guest; I wouldn’t think of abandoning you until the proper social forms have been observed,” said Vael, obviously enjoying himself.  Up and up the lord took them through the dungeons and into the keep proper. 

            The Fencer wondered what these ‘forms’ might entail.  There was little precedent for torture back in the village of the narwhal hunters.  If you had a grievance with someone you either worked out your problems or there was clear, simple violence.  Life in Ahgren, and now in Nock, added whole new layers of complexity to human interaction. 

            He sighed audibly as they entered a prominent room of extreme cold; an ornate throne molded to the far wall added a familiar touch.  The thing seemed grown from some peerless white stone, the surface of which showed a collage of snowflake-feathers and icicle veins.  The arctic breath of Winter sailed in through the open arcades which made up the walls on either side.  Through these portals distant mountain tops graced the cloudy night sky, giving some sense of altitude.

            Here they let him redress in his sealskins while Vael explained things.  The alabaster girl’s eyes danced with excitement as she played with the Fencer’s old iron collar.

            “The world is empty,” the young lord began.  “There is no magic left, Sol saw to that.”

            “Who is this Sol that you addled northerners talk about?” spat the Fencer.  “Everyone with a spark of memory knows that the Red Demon took all the witches and monsters and dragged them to a place beyond the stars.  The Uplifting.”

            “Everyone doesn’t know that and I’m not sure you do either,” pressed Lord Vael who seemed a good fit in the snowflake throne, his bleached pet sitting on the floor at his left side, grinning. 

            It was true; his reason demanded he treat it as such.  The Fencer had been very young when the event occurred and only vaguely did he remember that green-haired witch who lived in a cave halfway up the Wondering Mountains.  There came tales of the red demon casting down gods, enslaving magi, causing the earth to swallow up priests.  Yet, considering how isolated and xenophobic the village was, it certainly didn’t fit.  Still, the witch vanished at that time. 

            “Nobody does,” the man on the throne finally pronounced.  “Each city and village, each band of nomads and tribe of brigands, they all have different stories to tell of the Uplifting.  All, as far as I determine, mix truths and falsehoods to varying degrees.”

            “That means not all the magic is gone,” stated the Fencer feeling the lean of the conversation.  Lord Vael opened his mouth, not out of surprise but more because this southern outcast had jumped ahead of his finely choreographed reasoning by several steps.

            “Which brings me to this weapon,” said Vael, catching up.

            “Of mine,” continued the Fencer.

            “It’s a thing of magic,” Vael said.  “Though I don’t know much more.”

            “I don’t understand it,” said the alabaster girl, speaking at last.

            “It’s cold,” smiled the Fencer.  The guards had let him go at this point, but stood just outside of easy reach and yet close enough to draw and be upon the prisoner should he abuse his liberty.  “I call it Dhala.”

            “If it was of cold, I would be able to understand it,” stated the girl who looked up at Vael.  “He lies.”

            “Not much we can do about that,” responded the man in the throne who smiled in return.  The girl closed her eyes.

            “Where did you learn to swing a sword?” asked Vael.

            “I ate a butterfly, or so the scholars in Ahgren tell.  Looked like a snowfly to me.”

            The guard closest to the Fencer had been having trouble with the cold and now a full body cough wracked through him.  In one motion the fencer drew the doubled-over man’s sword and was out the closest arch in the arcade. 

            Once again he returned to the familiarity of Winter and its freezing breath.  He clambered down a facade of archway-laden floors, there being many more layers to the fortress than he remembered seeing from his journey into Nock.  Shouts from the guards followed on one side, night stars shone on the other. 

            Men in armor waited at the cubic tumble of roofs that was the architecture of Lord Vael’s fortress.  A ledge nearby them looked out over the hundreds of meters leading down to slumbering Nock.  Strange, they seemed to be two of the men he had left dumbfounded back in the throne room.  The Fencer leapt the final few meters, much to their surprise. 

            The first opponent tumbled off the edge after a few savage swings; the second attempted a vicious lunge but merely charged off under his own power.  Their screams fell away into the steam clouds of the city below.

            From above, framed by the blocky strength of the palace, Lord Vael laughed.  The Fencer glanced down.  The city was suddenly concealed by a boiling veil of steam so potent that it seemed the whole palace floated on clouds.  A similarity to Summer rung out in the adventurer’s mind as he jumped from block to block and roof to roof, looking for some path out of the crazy jumble of towers and balconies.  Lord Vael simply receded back into the throne room, and stepped out of a darkened portal next to the Fencer.

            “Sorcery!” exclaimed the swordsman, readying his stolen blade to meet the steel his captor brought down on him.

            “Oh, quite,” said the ruler of Nock.  “So this is the cold you spoke of before?”

            Indeed, the world was growing colder and stranger ever second.  The stars glared from their heavenly perches and grew red and hungry as the sky froze.  A terrible cold, that cold which the Fencer felt when he grasped his Dhala, tightened around the throat of the world.  In this absolute and unnatural temperature he could feel his movements slow, his thoughts freeze. 

            At first he played the game of swords perfectly with the lord of the keep, meeting strike for strike, but as the affliction progressed he went increasingly on the defensive.  Vael never weakened, never faltered for a moment.  His was an experienced hand, always a smile on his face.  Victory was as certain as the chill in the air.

            Then a cry from above.  There was the girl and the Trumpeter, smiling while he pushed the struggling witch out the high arch.  Her scream was silenced when she hit some buttress of masonry and shattered.

            The Fencer blinked back to the throne room, Lord Vael seated, the girl at his side, all the guards and all their swords in proper hands.  Night time shone deep blue outside the arches of old Glym’s fortress.

            “The mad musician is in the keep, find him!” shouted Vael as the same illusion which had overcome the Fencer melted from his mind. 

            “He was close enough to be a part of the Diorama,” added the girl.

            The Fencer felt he should be thankful to hear that the Trumpeter was still alive and causing trouble but the potency of the hallucination he had just experienced filled him with dread.  Every breath, every cut and bruise felt true, even now he rubbed at the place on his arm Vael had cut open in the duel.  Even more frightening was the cold, the sensation of Dhala which had filled him so utterly.  It was as if reality itself was being undone and remade. 

            “So that is what you meant by cold,” said the girl thoughtfully.  “You have many words for that phenomenon, which is why I didn’t understand the sword before, but now I do.”

            “But do you understand it fully?” the armored lord asked.  To this the girl was silent and thoughtful, a bit petulant by the look in her eyes. 

            “Just as you accused,” continued Vael to his guest.  “Sorcery.”

            “You keep dangerous company,” said the Fencer, gauging the position of the guards once more.  He walked over to the arch and saw that the scale of the keep had been much exaggerated by the dream he had just experienced.  “I understand it is customary to behead witches and bury them at crossroads.”

            “Why do you say that?” asked Vael.

            “How many mages do you keep in your employ?”  The Fencer met the man’s cold eyes with his own.

            “Icle accompanies me for now, that is all,” responded Vael trying to feel around the Fencer’s question.

            Strange, thought the swordsman, the despot seemed to be telling the truth.  Clea’s death was making less and less sense.

            “She is not like us, not in the normal sense of the word, not even like those from Summer.  When I claimed the keep after Sol destroyed Glym I pulled her from a vat deep in the laboratories.  She is made from snow and her heart is ice.  Along with these attributes she has certain talents.”

            “Who was Glym?”  The Fencer had to buy more time for the Trumpeter; at this moment he had to trust in his friend’s capabilities, it was the only way to freedom he could envision.

            It was at that moment that a frightfully tall man, head shaved clear, wearing a garment of frost appeared in the room.  He moved his hands and with a shrieking sound the guards, Vael, and closed-eyed Icle froze, along with the very air around them.

            The Fencer didn’t miss the chance.  Careful to avoid the jagged protrusions of ice he snatched up his sword and spun to face the legendary Glym. 

            Under the focused attentions of the long lost mage the Fencer felt an intense fear.  The air screamed as all heat bled away from the man’s very presence and a countenance both serene and jagged played upon his face. 

            “Once I was abandoned but the cold that was supposed to kill me became me,” said Glym with a voice balanced and hypnotic.  “I lived as a wild beast for a time but then the master came.  Over the decades he taught me some portion of the signs and motions of the Art, then I killed him for the rest.  I built my home in this place because a great power was here, one I intended to harness, though the process would take centuries.”

            All the while the magician spoke he moved with slow steady steps towards where the Fencer stood.  The swordsman gripped and re-gripped his blade many times.  He could feel the words worming into his mind, chilling him.  Only some stubborn quality within himself or the black sorcery of his weapon kept his mind from growing cold and still.

            “Now you have something most curious,” said Glym.  “I would have it.”

            Sensing the sorcerer’s tug on the blade before the effect could fully coalesce the Fencer took the telekinetic momentum and pushed forward.  A sudden wall of ice stopped the cunning lunge inches from Glym’s heart.  With a swing the Fencer collapsed the whole barricade and circled about his foe.

            An upraised hand and a bolt of alabaster frost crackled through the air, sending the swordsman reeling back, out of the room and down a grand stair.  The energy of the attack wriggled, bending and lashing out like a venomous serpent.

            The castle grew deathly cold.  When the Fencer at last rested at the bottom sounds of ice forming filled the air with shrieks.  Glym looked down from the top of the room.

            “What you hold is most unprecedented; a bit of Winter’s nature which eludes my classification,” he said.

            A trinity of desire struck the Fencer as he scrambled weakly on the icy floor.  First Wolgloss had wanted Dhala, then Vael desired the weapon, and now this ancient sorcerer, the master of the very heart of Winter demanded the thing, this cursed thing.  So often he wished to be rid of it and yet he could never bring himself to lose such a useful item.  With it he was the Fencer, without, well, he had no thoughts on the matter.  There was even a hint of gratitude as he considered how it had saved him from the Lemur-men back on the Wondering Mountains.  What a curious place the object occupied in his heart while it seemed such a covetous treasure to those with ambition in theirs.

            The fortress of Glym contorted as it grew by the power of the mage’s will.  Outside, the sun rose early, reflecting off a thousand new spires of frozen glass.  Fell creatures wandered the hallways where the icy remnants of Vael’s men stood in silent, impotent sentry.  Glym was returned.

            “Sure, you can have it,” said the Fencer, at last getting to his feet where he tested to make sure his head was still on his shoulders.  An idea had formed and he wanted to be sure the gamble he was about to take was sound.  “For my freedom and that of my musician.”

            Glym nodded and the Fencer handed it to him.  If he believed in any gods or demons he would’ve prayed to them at that point; instead he bit his lip and cursed the Trumpeter for getting away.

            “How interesting,” said the ancient mage as the icicle sword touched his waiting hands.  “Like the immaculate cold of the space between stars but contained, crystallized, of Winter, yet...colored by something else.”

            By now the Fencer was up the stairs and heading to the throne room.  Some portion of his psyche wondered that it would be the same when he returned, but the frozen court which attended the room waited as they did upon the advent of Glym. 

            “There is something curious too,” continued the sorcerer’s drifting voice as the Fencer went to his gruesome task.  He now struggled to break free a resident of the throne room.  “I see a lady of rainstorm hair and golden eyes.  She holds the words of the world in her mouth and the mountains fear for their truth.”

            Lugging his frozen burden down the stairs to where Glym stood enraptured by the enterprise of discovery the Fencer saw that a change had undergone the mage.  The man of brilliant whites and pale blues was now stained by the frozen nightmare of Dhala.  An entity of amethyst tentacles and golden proto-eyes boiled from the mass of his form while his lips kept chanting with the exuberance of knowledge.

            It wasn’t a moment too soon that the Fencer hefted up the frozen form of Icle and hurled it upon the unsuspecting archmage.

            Like a puzzle being unsolved the pieces of shattering Icle and molten Glym scattered across the great hall of the fortress while outside the arched portals spires and minarets tumbled.  The sun cracked, the tundra heaved and in a hurricane of violence the world of Winter ended in the blinking of an eye, Icle’s eye.

            Again the company stood in the throne room.  The lord of the keep, thawed and thoughtful, leaned back in the seat of frost.  The guards congratulated themselves on not dying this time as Icle’s sorceries melted from the minds of those in the room.  The girl herself removed her slight hand from where it touched Dhala in front of her.

            “It’s too much for me,” admitted the alabaster girl with a sigh.  “Cold is the power which is locked inside the sword, but the matter itself is that of a nightmare made physical through some form of alchemy which is beyond my experience.  The nightmare is potent, strange, personal, in this proximity there is a pathos which trembles with a strange strength.  I feel hints of a woman of power.  If I knew whose nightmare it was...”

            “I do,” said the Fencer, another gambit on his mind.  “But first, tell me how you work this enchantment of yours.”

            “It’s a simple thing, for me at least,” began Icle after a nod of approval from Lord Vael.

            The Fencer did his best to soak in the girl’s words, though the topic was strange, difficult to grasp.  He considered it necessary though, on my levels.  He hoped for the illumination of certain mysteries which had dogged him ever since he was chased from his village.  Also there was a chance that he might win his freedom or buy enough time for the Trumpeter with this ruse.  And then there was Winter’s Riddle itself; he could never ignore some path of esoteric knowledge which might lead to a solution, either personal or global, to the cold, with no better example evident than his nightmarish weapon which lay on the ground in front of the throne.

VII. A Legacy of Steam

            An ocean of clarity.  A sea of thoughts.  The Fencer drifted, shipwrecked over a surface of silver-flecked liquid.  In this place he could see everything, what little there was, which made understanding everything all that much easier.  There was something in the depths.  No darkness clouded the sea floor, which was clear as glass, and there he saw a skeleton.  He had seen many similar ones after a successful hunt, such bones being ubiquitous in the village of the narwhal hunters.  Only this whale skeleton was much larger and had no prominent tusk.  Maybe everything wasn’t so simple after all.

            “What are you doing here?” demanded Firo as he accosted the Fencer who had come to the staging yards to stand in front of the Heart while plumbing his own.  In his hand he held one of Clea’s vials, a tiny whale skeleton resting at the bottom.  He put the potion away but didn’t answer immediately.

            “I’m feeling a lot better,” said the Fencer at last.

            “That’s just great; you can help drag this thing up to Vael’s fortress.”

            “Clea’s dead,” said the Fencer, looking the Driver in the eyes, searching for some hint of guilt.  There was none.  “Wait, you said the Heart is going to Vael?”

            Firo chewed on his beard thoughtfully as he worked out this new development.

            “Yeah, made me a real honey-coated offer.”

            “Which doesn’t make sense,” said the Fencer, continuing the thought.  “I can understand murdering a foreign merchant to cut down the competition just fine.  I can allow for the insanity of the city-minded to reason killing one’s own lieutenant as a pragmatic way of diverting suspicion.  I can even accept a cunning lord who would hire an agent of Summer to assassinate another resident of that land in order to obtain his desire.  If these conspiracies are true then why bid higher in the end?”

            “Worries me too,” said Firo.

            “What kind of man is this Lord Vael,” asked the Fencer, attacking the idea from another angle.

            “New.  Lean.  Hungry, but not like a lot of these despots and brigand kings which pop up wherever there’s enough people to build a house.  He’s a thinker.  Nobody knows where he comes from.  Took over Nock shortly after old Glym met his end against Sol.”

            Firo guided the conversation quietly as they walked to the far side of the sledge, away from the guarding ruffians.

            “Have you seen the Trumpeter?” asked the Fencer.

            “Not since he wandered off after Yogo.”  Firo began to fuss with the chains around the Heart.  “Talked to some merchants who saw him walk out of town.  Must’ve thought now was the time to get out while he could.”

              The Fencer frowned.  This also didn’t make any sense, but then again, that was the Trumpeter.  He’d have to track him down when all this Nock business was finished, which would be soon.  The heat was beginning to get to him.

           

            Though all heavens and hells were supposed to have perished with their gods and devils the Trumpeter was sure of his place in the underworld when the centipedal thing felt its way into the chamber.  All the signs pointed to hell; heat, demons, the dead come back to life.  Horrified, he gaped like a fish, to which Yogo just laughed.

            It was all white, this thing, and very, very long, stretching out of the entryway and out of sight.  Its segmented body was the color of bleached bone, along which a great fan of hair-like legs rippled with hideous industry, propelling it forward.  A spray of ten meter long feelers directed its course, searching for the man who had gotten away, back at the cave pool.

            The Trumpeter backed up, which brought him closer to the ledge and the mud pot down below.  Glooping noises shrouded the creature’s movements.  Yogo didn’t notice as he meticulously considered which of his sharp things to use on the Trumpeter.  The thing paused, tasting the air, and then dashed for the kill.

            A mad look flared in Yogo’s eyes as he whirled to face the multipede.  His selected knife burrowed between a segmented plate as the creature’s body coiled shut around the one-armed man. 

            From the Trumpeter’s vantage he could see the venom-dripping fangs of the creature punch into its victim, blood spattering from the force of the attack.  Yogo wasn’t to be undone so quickly.

            Staggering, the weight of the subterranean hunter dragging him down in a frantic chorus of legs, Yogo tipped backwards and stumbled.  Again and again he stabbed into the thing as he fought to free himself and the monster responded with more frantic and horrible action.  With a laugh he at last pitched over the edge, dragging the two of them into the molten pool of white mud down below.

            The liquid bubbled into sudden purple; the Trumpeter fled.

            He was lost now.  Galleries and halls flooded by all filled with fear and pale light.  Occasional dead cries and red splashes greeted him.  After a time he had to rest and some sense returned with each gasp of the chemical-laden air. 

            A wide circular hub of a room radiated out in all directions.  Arched portals led like spokes into the continued vast holdings of Glym’s laboratories.  Chutes and ducts from other levels channeled certain unseen and sublime energies into this conflux.  The Trumpeter would’ve spent a bit more time gawking but the white-haired girl sitting still as a statue of enlightenment at the center of the room distracted him.

            Cold and snow once more.  Along the perilous path up the less severe side of the cliff overlooking Nock the Fencer journeyed in secret.  He was bundled up with an extra tarp around the Heart; certain ploys managed the feat without the laborers and ruffians pulling the sledge knowing anything about the man getting the free ride.  Firo, animated as ever, talked the men up the mountain.

            The hidden man never looked out, not daring to spoil the ruse, so he didn’t see the frozen corpse of Illem as the troupe made their ascent.  It was the custom of her people that they should be left where they fell, so the warrior woman lay where Yogo stuck one of his skewers underneath her arm and into her heart.  Those dragging the giant’s Heart did their best to look away but none of them could help wondering at the strange allowances Vael made for his servants.

            The sledge stopped and the shouting of chilled men made it clear they had arrived at the fortress.  There was a fuss over the placement of the cargo as Firo whined about payment.  The argument grew heated when the conspirator flung snow at Vael’s sallow bursar.  There was a tromping of booted feet on the snow and the signature cough of the Driver; now was the time for the Fencer to make his move.

            In the near dark he slipped from the bundled position he had painfully maintained the whole trek and crept into the warren of Vael’s palace.

            It was a stark place with many yawning passages and shadowed portals.  The former tenant was quite indifferent to the cold, even welcoming in Winter’s breath, as was shown by the many airy windows.  The various cubist openings and doorways spoke of the strange occupants which once shambled, wandered or oozed at the whim of the mighty archmage.  Most chambers now lay abandoned.

            The Fencer skulked through the cold, nighttime blue of this labyrinth, his fingers guiding him.  A few times he stumbled down a set of steps cut for limbs a factor larger than his own, and at others was forced to climb ascending stairs of the same magnitude.  He followed the left wall and at last slunk out onto a frozen terrace.

            Down below, along the way to Nock he saw the furtive movements of the laborers making their best time away from the fortress.  This surely was a testament of Vael’s hospitality, or at least his severity.  A last light dwindled in the west, to be echoed by the twinkling of stars and the blind, open eye of the moon gazing down thoughtlessly.

            Turning to head back into the maze he saw a watchman on a nearby tower.  The shadow of the guard dove into his gatehouse with quick intent.  Cursing, the Fencer quickened his pace.

            There were already men on the chase; he could hear them barking orders and shuffling.  Lantern lights spread through the dark like yellow ghosts.  Haste replaced all caution as sound and discovery loomed. 

            Quickly one, then another, then all of the passages available to him were cut off by the sounds of approaching of searchers.  He was lost and all the windows offered only empty sky.  Drawing his sword, the Fencer thought about how he would do this all much better next time.  Then an idea caught him.

            Stepping out onto a dead-end balcony which overlooked the far northern mountains he cycled through his pockets.  He passed over several of Clea’s potions, each a fearful unknown.  One to make him great and one to make him dead. 

            At last the one he selected showed silver.  Inside the vial a tiny whale skeleton drifted at the bottom of an empyreal sea.  Shouts of confidence and discovery sought him as he downed the liquid, whale and all. 

            They would fine his seal skins, they would find his sword.  The few possessions he carried in a coarse sack would be pawed through and some stolen.  Even the potions he took from Clea would be left behind, but the guards would discover no trace of the Fencer as they charged out onto the moonlight balcony only to find air and cold night.

             She was quite young, probably near the Fencer’s age, and likely just as boastfully mature.  She wore light garments woven from alabaster snows; her hair was wild and gave the impression of feathers.  Overall the Trumpeter likened the girl to one of those Winter owls which he had seen on the long trek from the Wandering Mountains.  She would be unfriendly if disturbed, her white eyebrows said as much in their arch, and so the musician waited.

            Finding a portal leading away from the giant spoked room he made himself comfortable in the shadows, but soon returned, too agitated to sit still.  Lost to distant spheres she never took any note of him.

            He spent several minutes only a meter away from her slight frame.  Part of him wanted to reach out and touch her shoulder, get her attention, but he always withdrew the questing hand.  He had learned better, but oh how his curiosity burned.  So he looked closer at the situation.

            Certain incomprehensible elements in the room puzzled him.  Questions of utility and context loomed in his mind.  This grand axle certainly wasn’t a living space, despite the balmy temperature afforded by the steam, and there was no evidence of its use as a chapel to some long gone religion.  Perhaps it was simply a grand hall and served as the hub of transport back when Glym was alive, but he doubted it.  Mages were strange entities and each had a strangeness unto themselves.  Magic, that was probably it.

            This thought came into consideration and it sent the Trumpeter scampering with realization as to the girl’s nature.  This was just as well because the movement of men in armor grew close and he only just returned to hiding, in fear and torment, when the first guards walked through an opposing arch, followed by a man who soon expressed a voice familiar and chilling.

            The Fencer found himself in a cyclopean world of plateaus and bottomless pits.  He fought over the right angles of his environment, climbed cliffs and dropped into basins.  Huge sounds, expansive and thundering, echoed.  He was quite thankful when he found the needle.

            It must’ve been a fine thing in its day, composed of whalebone and topped with a wicked point.  It made a fine pike.

            Clea’s magic had left him free of pursuit as well as naked and weaponless.  The Fencer now stood an inch or so tall.  The world towered.

            After skirting around the general confusion that his disappearance left behind the Fencer stuck to the corners to avoid being trampled and set off in search of Lord Vael and answers.  In a way he was glad to be free of his nightmare weapon, and yet he felt more naked without it than he did being actually naked; little attention was paid to embarrassment in such a close community as the village of the narwhal hunters.

            With the needle he found some remnants of ancient gold thread.  This he wound around himself into a sort of harness or burial knot, then set off, looking for a way down.

            At the top of the giants’ stair he was beset by a spider.  This predator, to which he would normally never give a second thought, suddenly charged from the dark as a behemoth.  The Fencer drove the needle up to the eye in the arachnid’s head, but never before had he been left so jittery by a struggle.  The strength and flutter of those hairy legs shivered him to the bone. 

            The trip down the stairs was exhausting and interminable.  Perhaps time went differently in such a state, he sighed at what he might never know.  Perhaps he would never even return to his true size; such was magic.  Still, he was grateful for his liberty, provided by the dead once more.

            Descending into the depths he discovered a world of pale lit rooms and corridors, all part of a grand and echoing dungeon of sorcerous architecture.  The light made him feel vulnerable but at least it was warmer down here.  The rats agreed with him.

            A fat, white fellow appeared at the far distant horizon of the Fencer’s current room.  It sniffed the air.  Hastily attempting to leave only excited the vermin and by its movement the man was certain he would never be able to outrun this adversary.

            It was a funny, if disconcerting, spectacle to see the activities of a familiar rodent puffed up to monstrous proportions.  The twitching nose pulling at two fans of whiskers stopped short of confrontation, considering.  The Fencer readied the needle just in time for the rat to suddenly lunge forward. 

            So used to swinging Dhala around he brought his miniature weapon across the rodent’s nose but the point did little to slow the rat.  Then it was on the man, scraping with its pink claws and gnashing its shovel-like teeth.  Using the needle as a bar the Fencer did his best to keep the thing’s bite away while it savaged him with its claws.  At last he gripped the rat’s throat with one hand while the other drove his tiny weapon into the rodent’s belly. 

            A flurry of movement dragged the man into a whirl of blood and claws and fur and death.  He was deafened by squeaks.  Then, just as suddenly, he scrambled clear of the dying rat, which thrashed in its last throes of life, the needle still in it. 

            Retrieving his pike, covered in cuts and bruises, the Fencer continued his trek into the laboratories of Glym.  In the distance he thought he heard the booming voices of giants.  About that time a strange, indescribable feeling came over him.

            The armored man who entered the room didn’t wake the alabaster girl at once.  The Trumpeter would call him a thoughtful sort, like the Fencer but without the temper.  There was something of Clea about the man too, a kind of practice and nobility to his movements.  And did that guard have the Fencer sword?

            The Trumpeter’s thoughts concerning the armored man froze.  Indeed, the weapon, held in a cloth by an uneasy guard who entered behind the rest, was the Dhala thing of black crystal and crimson eyes.

            Such was the viewer’s confusion that he didn’t notice how the armored man walked once around the sitting girl, observing the invisible focus of her concentration, appraising the progress of her meditation, until he finally reached out and touched her shoulder.  At the moment her pale blue eyes opened he snatched something from the air in front of her as it winked into existence.

            “We have the Heart,” he said before she could get a word out, “and company.  We’ve a guest loose in the palace by means of some witchery, though he left his things behind when we he escaped.  Puzzling.”

            “Things?” she asked with a voice somewhere between a sigh and a cold breath.

            The man gestured the guard carrying the Fencer’s blade over to the girl.  The Trumpeter had calmed a bit now that he knew his companion had a chance of living.  He sympathized with the guards who shifted uneasily in the girl’s presence.  Certainly they were thinking what he was; that she was a magician or a witch, someone with the talent or the curse or whatever you like to call it.  The musician sunk further into the slight alcove where he hid.

            All at once there was a cry from which the party had arrived and familiar shouts.  Sounds of violence brought the company’s attention and at last the source was dragged into the room.

            A naked Fencer was brought in by a half dozen guards, most showing signs of abuse.  The swordsman’s body displayed deep scratches from some unknown beast but his eyes still had that reassuring madness. 

            He shouted at them, trying to be heard above the confusion, but the echoes of the chamber only distorted what he was trying to say into incomprehensibility.  The alabaster girl giggled at the absurd tableaux while the armored man commanded the whole group from the room. 

            When he was sure it was safe and quiet, the company moving several rooms away, the Fencer chuckled a bit to himself as he snuck after the party.  As he began work on several gambits for the Fencer’s freedom the Trumpeter was already savoring the fact that he wasn’t the one who needed rescuing after all.