Author: Old Pieter

I have not updated this journal for many days. I’ve told myself that I’ve been too occupied, which is certainly true enough. There is also the fact that there is only this single leaf remaining in this book, given to me by my mother. I’ve waited, I suppose, to reach some point of finality. Some conclusion to the swirl of events that I could record here to give the use of this last page its due.

There is no conclusion that looms, no grand finale. I have spent the past week involved primarily in bloodshed and darkness. I am assigned to the Darkmoor Morwynne Brigade, which at this point controls the High Way from its connection to the Port Road southwards to the bend where it fords that unnamed tributary of the Elran to the north, before it runs west into the Twisty Wood. The Virelle Brigade is responsible for the area west of us and the Moat House Legion, as they call themselves, patrols the Port Road and the area neighboring the fens. No force loyal to the Grey House controls the great heartland of Darkmoor, and only the forces of the Cult travel south of Anthracite. We have a strong force at the cathedral I am told, but only sufficient to protect our people, if even that.

These glasseyes come in ravening swarms, indifferent to death. They are entirely undisciplined, but the Cult’s other forces, largely fey beasts of the wood in this region are nearly as well-controlled as we try to be. Our force is small, relative to the foe, and I weep for every man and woman who has fallen. I fear that my tears run dry when I consider those who I have seen slain on the side of those who oppose us. One day, once all of this is settled, should I live to see the sun rise on a peaceful Darkmoor once again, I may find it in my heart to grieve for those who have fallen prey to the Cult’s lies and promises. For they who have turned their back on their own conscience out of some sense of aggrieved misfortune and in a desperate attempt to return to a past where “they” had a higher station and nobler status — a day that never existed. One day I hope to make space in my heart for them. That lies beyond my abilities as I stare out this evening on a field of impromptu gravesites marked only with simple stakes.

The route to the South is entirely cut off. And, according to the Sorcerer, somewhere beyond this iron wall of orcs and the roaming unliving lies the Temple to which the Cultists seek access. Our Circle has gone its separate ways; Aldmaar organizes the Peoples of the Wood and serves as the Druid’s envoy to our force. Lady Sparrowhawk leads a small, mobile force that carries out the most dangerous of excursions into Cult-held territory, scouting and attacking supply lines and hunting down the Cult’s messenger squads. The Chief Investigator, I am told, has joined Lord Grey in exile in Eregore, in Gwinned, supposedly.

And what of the Sorcerer? I last saw him on the evening that we went our separate ways, upon learning of the attempted assassination of Lord Grey by, San Nicholas help me, Barnabus Rey. I asked him, as I surrendered my Aldermane to Aldmaar, likely for the last time, what he intended. “Will you travel to this Temple? Will you attempt to stop this Targeta?”

He looked at me, his angular head appearing more inhuman than ever. His expression changed, almost comically. As if this was an idea that had never occurred to him. “You ask the best questions, follower of San Nicholas.” And he said nothing further.

I will get what rest I may. And I hope, in the days to come, to find a new journal so that I may continue to compile my thoughts. It is a meaningless and minuscule’ exercise, I know. But it is the only way I can find peace, even for a handful of moments.

I close this journal here, exhausted, damp, cold but clinging to a flicker of hope.

The morning was spent in slaughter. My vestments are red with blood and my heart is heavy. When we entered once again the gates of Greensward, the Sorcerer gave no warning. The guards, previously smirking now peered cautiously over their battlements. The Sorcerer with sweeps of each hand cooked them alive.

Almost immediately, the peoples were out on the streets, running at us as if a bell had signaled the arrival of dinner. Yet they found no feast. These Cultists possess some magical prowess, even the meanest of them. They have learned in their secret, underground rites witchcraft. We were beset by spells and as the fight continued, manifest elemental beings of air and earth and — yes — even the fire with which the battle had begun.

They continued to engage our horses until Aldmaar insisted we dismount and free the beasts so that they might survive. So we joined the fray afoot. The Knight of Darkmoor, as ever, waded in, her shining armor and great axe glinting in the meager morning light. Aldmaar sent volley after volley into this black host until, his quiver empty, he unsheathed his twin swords and joined the Knight, nearly back-to-back, in a knot of the Cultists.

They fought like cornered animals, these Elementalists. They asked for no quarter. They were willing, even eager, it seemed, to die. As they rushed out of homes and shops, each with curved dagger in hand, they did not hesitate, despite the growing pile of their allies in the filthy streets of Greensward.

I did what I could manage, to keep the mob at bay, disoriented, and, when necessary, I imparted healing magics to my allies. And to myself. I gave a good accounting in the rolls of the downed, though the Knight and Aldmaar stained the registers crimson.

And the Sorcerer… I have rarely seen him smile, but he was grinning like a carved harvest pumpkin throughout, hurling spells into knots of Cultists. Moving through the fray, never staying still long enough for the foe to reach him. He toyed, it seemed, with the great stone beast the Cultists had summoned, like a kitten with a ball. I could not spare the attention to track him, nor did I take any joy in observing the glee he took in his wholesale butchery.

The Cultist throng dwindled. Aldmaar and the Knight, exhausted, unrecognizable in their gore-spattered state, cast about for any new foes. I fell to my knees, hoping for a moment’s respite.

“Where is the Sorcerer?” I heard Aldmaar call. I could only shake my head, not glancing up. I heard a final, crunching blow from the Knight on the Cultist before her, who, just as I, was on his knees, unable to rise. My pulse was a roar in my ears. I feared that my breathing would never compensate for the deficit of air in my blood. My vision had collapsed into a narrow tunnel directly in front of my nose.

There was a rumble — distant but surely loud — and I found myself on my side. For a moment or more, I suppose, I lost consciousness. Then Seralayne was there, stirring me gently. She looked ghastly, but concerned. “Pieter?”

“Was there… an explosion?” I managed after a second, able to rise on one elbow, the world oddly canted as if I were perched on its very edge.

She nodded. “The Sorcerer. The Thalass Engine.”

I just stared, uncomprehending.

“He destroyed it,” Aldmaar said, just entering the limited scope of my vision. “I suspect that’s what this was all about. For him.”

Among the many reasons I have come to like and love Aldmaar Wynnrowan is that when he arrives, he rarely fails to bring an Aldermane that I may ride. I am no great horseman, and these great beasts all appear the same to me, but I believe the one I rode today is the same as when last Aldmaar and I rode together. I have not asked Aldmaar out of embarrassment. He has no difficulty in distinguishing one horse from another. Nor one squirrel from another, I suspect.

Lady Sparrowhawk, of course, has her own mount, “Spears,” as she calls him. No Aldermane, but fine and fearless in his own right. As the three of us approached Greensward, astride these majestic beasts, riding side-by-side, I felt that we must have appeared like something out of myth arriving at the mud-and-stone walls of the small town.

Such foolishness is pride.

As we made our way through the gates, past the mean-faced guards in their wooden towers and through the slick alleys, the eyes that turned our way showed not awe but fear. And, perhaps, hate. We arrived at the village’s tavern. No one took our horses, though there were those reclining on the shoddy porch who might have. “I will stay with the horses,” Aldmaar offered. The Knight of Darkmoor and I entered the dark establishment.

Inside were half a dozen villagers, dirty, most drunk though it was not yet noon. They sneered at the mark of San Nicholas on my armor and leered at Lady Sparrowhawk. When I asked for rooms, I was told by the innkeeper, a corpulent woman who seemed to care little for her hygiene, that no rooms were available.

“You have other visitors in this shithole town?” the Knight asked.

“Not very kind there, lady,” the innkeeper responded.

“Just turn around and go back out the way you come,” one of the drunk men shouted to laughs and acclaim from his friends.

One, unfortunately, could not refrain from making a lewd suggestion to Lady Sparrowhawk. I imagine they could put his nose back into place, after she was through with him. But what about the scattered teeth? I might have helped him, coughing and vomiting in that broken chair. I did not.

When we returned to Aldmaar, it was to watch him firing arrow after arrow into the earth, inches behind the retreating heels of a young, shirtless man. The man, running for all he was worth skewed in the mud, and slid face-first. Aldmaar laughed with that whole-body mirth that so rarely makes an appearance.

“What did he do?” I asked.

“Thought I wouldn’t notice him slipping a hand in your saddlebag.”

“Goodness. What did he take?”

Aldmaar shrugged. I followed the line of fine-feathered missiles while the youth struggled to his feet. As he attempted to flee, I commanded that he stop. Weak of mind, he could not resist my order. I pulled the fingers of his right hand open while his eyes alone moved to follow my actions. Clutched in his filthy hand, still rolled up in a stout leaf for freshness, was a golden apple I had purchased from a vendor at Anthracite.

I bade him keep it.

I prised one arrow after another from the earth on my return and handed them to the ranger. “No rooms,” I reported.

“Just as well,” he responded. “But let us have a look about town before we seek lodging elsewhere. The Sorcerer said there was some secret here, did he not Lady Sparrowhawk?”

She nodded. We continued. We walked the horses through the small community, past the cemetery on the hill, past the several mills powered by a great machine that, with its promise of consistent work must have drawn many of these residents here. We made our way, almost to the shore itself, entering at last that great barn-like structure with steel tentacles snaking down into the water and a massive chute emerging from the front where torrents of water extracted from the depths fed the network of aqueducts known as the Seaspill.

The Engine itself is a mechanical wonder — awesome and terrible. It belches smoke and produces a noisome ooze like niter infused with lampblack. The racket of its many spinning wheels and clashing cogs is unbearable. Without a word — at least that I could make out, Aldmaar stopped in his approach. He would go no further. We entrusted our horses to him and the Lady and I continued.

We spoke to the Engine-master, a clever fellow from Anthracite name of Thoren Calthex. We shouted to each other, truth be told, over the clatter. Lady Sparrowhawk wasted no time with niceties. “We have spoken to REDACTED. We are investigating cult activity in this region. What can you tell us of this village?”

The man’s eyes narrowed and he cast about him. I nearly laughed from the theatrics. “You mean the Temple,” he replied. There was no hint of a question.

“What have you seen?”

He gestured back into town, in the direction of the cemetery. “There’s a shack, yonder. Past the gravedigger’s. Looks like the others but has this symbol cut into one of the posts..”

I described the symbol. His eyes widened again. Nodded. “Down inside, they do their… rituals. Used to keep it secret, months ago. Now they don’t seem to care who sees. Their robes and their masks. Their chants.”

“Mela torum, vena sela…” I recounted.

He hissed at me, made a slashing motion with his hand. “Don’t want to hear that! Stop it, I say!”

Lady Sparrowhawk calmed him. “You’ve seen them? The cultists? Do you know which of the villagers might be participating?”

He made a broad sweep with that self-same hand. He took in the entire town with that gesture.

The Knight of Darkmoor and I could only lock eyes.

We camped near the water, between Anthracite and the swamps, the wind whipping at our meager fire. Lady Sparrowhawk had joined us, up from Anthracite. She shared with us a story she had gleaned from meeting with the master of that dark tower.

There was a plague, she recounted, even adopting a bit of the sorcerer’s creaking voice, with a glint of humor in her eye, in times past. Generations past, she waved her arms as he is like to do, that afflicted, first, the wheat and barley of the field.

This pestilence (she continued) caused whole crops to fail and a fear of famine swept Darkmoor. Worse, however, was that the bread made from the wheat and the ale from the barley caused those to consume it to be likewise afflicted. Those suffering from this blight could eat their fill, enough for two or three men, and remain starving. They grew gaunt, with their skin hanging from their bones regardless of how they fed. Their eyes seemed to grow huge in their narrow faces. And they hungered.

The only satisfaction they could achieve was in eating the flesh of their fellows; sipping on their blood, cracking their bones to feast on the marrow. And this frenzied feeding made the afflicted powerful and manic. The hair of their heads and bodies fell away and they eschewed clothing; indeed even boots on their feet as they chased after the only herd animal they valued: their neighbors.

“This story, Knight of Darkmoor,” I intervened, “is not the sort I prefer immediately before retiring for the evening. It does not prefigure a full night’s rest.”

They laughed, though I made no jest. Why was she telling us this tale?

“The sorcerer felt there was some lesson in this for us, Brother Pieter.”

“And how does this legend conclude, in the sorcerer’s telling?”

“He states that, in the end, an accord was reached between the living of Darkmoor and these cannibals. There was insufficient food, given the blight, to feed the entirety of the realm. And there were these ravening Glass-eyes, as they were called, who cared not for wheat and barley.”

We stared at each other across the fire.

“I can guess the rest,” Aldmaar was the first to break the silence. “These Glass-eyes, well-fed and satisfied became the noble classes of Darkmoor.”

I joined them in laughter. We took up our thoughts, in silence and the waning light until Lady Sparrowhawk spoke up again. In her own voice.

“The Sorcerer says, rather, that they founded their own church. And the children of this church have kept its nature secret for generation after generation. That they built a Temple, under the guise of the church of Zuggtmoy, and until that Temple is discovered and finally brought down, the Glass-eyes will always return.”

To my shame, I was summoned once again to Wolf Hall. His Lordship asked for an update on the matter of the caretaker. I could only honestly reply that I had not, as yet, taken up the matter.

He was very cross with me. I could not argue.

“I am told that you… picnicked on the green?” I admitted that it was true.

“I will summon my Inspector and ask him to look into this mystery at the cemetery, since the Royal Confessor has no time for such matters.”

It stung, hearing these words. I promised that I would delve further into the murder of the caretaker forthwith.

“Do no disappoint me again, Pieter.”

I am not sure how I have allowed things to come to this state. I must make amends.