The following day, the companions continued along the road towards the capital. Most of the day, they'd seen few fellow travellers, but now a movement off to the north had attracted their attention. A body of horsemen was approaching from the direction of the mountains, heading towards the road in a manner likely to intercept them.
After 
ten minutes or so, the companions could see more detail, and recognized the black tabards and red star of Tarlanor on them - another patrol then, though not coming along the road. There were twenty soldiers, ten archers and an officer, all mounted and all humans. They moved slowly forwards towards the group, and then, thirty feet away, the officer stopped his horse, letting the troopers move forwards around him. Behind, the archers stopped as well.
The officer dropped his reins, raised his hands, and began to cast a spell. Méabh looked at this, wondering if it was a hostile act, and then caught sight of the archers beyond removing strung bows from their shoulders and nocking arrows. Question answered, she thought, and counterspelled whatever he'd been casting with a Dispel Magic. As she did so, an explosion of upflung dust and gravel announced the launch of a charging warg-riding Gorfang in the direction of the officer. Shamlakh's reflexes were excellent, for the orc had reacted well ahead of anyone else - by the time Lynien was ready to get a shot off, Gorfang had already slashed a terrible wound across the officer's chest at the end of their charge.
Why the hell are Skufruss' soldiers attacking us? wondered Gorfang as he fought. We've done nothing wrong since yesterday!
This was Lynien's first chance to use the magical shortbow she'd traded from Gorfang, and she made the most of it by using some of her enchanted arrows as well. She couldn't half tell the difference; her first volley of arrows tore into the groin of an unfortunate trooper. His eyes crossed and he toppled off his horse.
A swarm of arrows came back the other way as the dragonarmy archers let fly. Lynien, Méabh, Bog and Eloy were all struck, Eloy in particular suffered a nasty head wound and his face was soon covered in blood. Méabh was annoyed, and reacted with extreme prejudice; a 
Maximized Fireball into the heart of the enemy. The only slight drawback with this was that this was where Gorfang was.
Gorfang gritted his teeth as the ball of flame arced towards them. The officer he was fighting had just tried another spell on him, which had failed, and he was preparing to hit the fellow again. Hunching down, he curled himself into his armour as much as possible. Flames erupted around him as the Fireball struck.
The effect was devastating. All their attackers were caught in the blast, and most were killed outright. Four of the archers survived, but with their bowstrings incinerated they were no longer a credible threat, and they broke and fled.
Eloy 
returned fire with Varlan, and one of the surviving troopers catapulted backwards off his horse in a shower of ice crystals. Trailing smoke, Gorfang struck again, carving the officer in half. As the body fell away from the horse, it changed; from a human warrior in mail it became a much bigger lizardman in hide armour. The orc glanced around; the carbonized bodies scattered around him were all those of dead lizardmen... He blinked and stared, seeing through the magic; all around him, the few surviving fighters were lizardmen as well. What the hell was going on?
Such considerations didn't hold his attention for long. Snarling, he launched himself into the remaining troopers, khopesh and longsword flying. Four of them surrounded him, but they were no match for the blood-mad orc, and went down one after another. The next-to-last one actually survived his first attack, but Grofang turned very deliberately back and slaughtered him where he lay helpless.
With the opposition down, Bog scuttled forward to heal Eloy before easing his own injuries. Gorfang wasn't particularly hurt, but Shamlakh was badly burned, and was very grateful to be fed a bottle of Boom Boom. Lynien was already off her horse, searching the bodies both for loot and for clues as to where on earth this attack had come from. Death had erased the illusion that portrayed them as Dragonarmy troops, but their actual origin was even more of a mystery. They had a few coins each, a water-bottle and some trail rations, but no camping gear or equipment for an extended journey in the field. Strangely, despite the weather, which was pleasant enough for Tarlanor, 
they all had well-worn cold weather clothing in their saddlebags. Their equipment was far too standardised for a troupe of bandits.
Despairing of a clue as to their origins, the party burned the bodies, and scouted around until they located the tracks leading north. A blind rabbit could have tracked forty-one horsemen across the rough and slightly damp grasslands, and they had no trouble following the trail for five or six miles; at which point they discovered a place where the tracks simply stopped, as if cut with a ruler. They examined the place carefully, rode around it, even rode in the tracks across the line, nothing. "There's residual magic here," contributed Eloy helpfully, "but no secret doors." Forty-one horsemen had simply appeared from nowhere. They returned to the road.
The mountains had been getting closer all day, and now they were at the mouth of the Versate Pass. As they approached, they became aware of ruins at the end of the valley. Once this had been a large castle, with three concentric walls, a massive keep and a large number of outbuildings; typical of the sort of fortress held by a fighting order. Now, it was a tumbled ruin, fading into the grass.
A horse stood quietly near the remains of the main gate, tethered to a scraggy bush next to a small campfire which supported a
billy containing tea. Nearby, sitting on a broken block of masonry, was a peculiar-looking individual. Less than five feet tall, he had shoulders nearly as broad as Gorfang’s and bare arms packed with muscle. His face was grotesque; large nose and ears, with scaly skin and a heavy black beard. He wore a mailshirt and a surcoat with the Red Star blazoned on it, and bizarrely had a heavy two-handed sword strapped across his back – at an alarming angle so as to clear the ground.
He looked up as the companions came into speaking distance. “Hail, travelers! I am here to escort you to the palace of my master, Lord Skufruss. My name is Shados Slyrryn, but my Lord calls me The Boggart; it’s your choice, I answer to either.”
Lynien looked wary. "Have you been sent to take us into custody or something?" she asked, perhaps betraying a guilty conscience. The Boggart laughed merrily. "Lord Skufruss knows a great deal of your kind and deeds," he commented, "if he wanted to take you into custody he'd send overwhelming force." He spread his arms. "Do I look like overwhelming force?" he asked. Gorfang lifted an eyebrow at the massive sword. "But you can fight, can't you?" he said, only half a question. The Boggart looked into his eyes, and for a second the deep dark eyes went flat and cold, the eyes of a killer. "Oh, yes," he said quietly, all bonhomie gone from his tone for a moment. Then he was back to his jovial self, answering questions from Méabh about the laws and customs of Vorsand - quite possibly in more detail than she had wanted.
Lynien mentioned that they'd been attacked by a 'warband' of lizardmen. The Boggart seemed only politely interested, until the details of the magic involved in the attack became clear. Then he started asking for more details. "We must bring this to my Lord's attention," he declared. "Imposters in Dragonarmy livery is bad enough, but this was a serious attempt to prevent you getting here - not bandits, these. Odd. Very odd."
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Three days later, the travellers came into sight of the city of Vorsand. First built to guard the Versate pass and moderate trade with the lands to the north, it was the first city in known Alair conquered by the Dragon Varkar. He made it his capital, and it was there in the vast palace he had built for himself that he was killed by the group of heroes known subsequently as the Wyrmslayers. It was largely ruined in the fighting that followed as rival Kin struggled to sieze the empire, which ended when Skufruss took control with the aid of his dragons. In the years since, the city was rebuilt as the nation of Tarlanor took shape around it, with the Dark Tower built where the Dragon Palace had been. Now it was the capital of the realm that Skufruss ruled, controlling a third of Varkar's old empire.
The city filled the narrow pass from cliff to cliff between two massive walls at the north and south end. The walls were forty feet high, with strong towers and a barbican shielding the gates. Inside, the city was laid out to follow the terrain; the further up the slope towards the cliff walls one went, the higher status the district and vice versa. Or, as Lynien put it, 'the shit runs to the bottom'. The valley sloped upwards as one went northward through the city, too, but socially the slope was the reverse; the most well-to-do were as near to the south as possible - as near the Tower as possible. As a result, the seamiest districts of the city were ranged across the northern wall in a region known collectively as 'Backwall'.
Near the north wall and built out from the cliff itself was the Dark Tower itself. Three soaring towers dominated the city, standing in the middle of a cluster of buildings which formed the rest of the Academy of Magic.
Atop the cliffs to the east was a single structure, pinnacled and lonely, which the Boggart pointed out as the tomb of a hero, Gozan Vraspan by name. Further along the cliffs were some flattened ledges, atop which the travellers could see a number of dragons perched, curled up or moving around. All were impressive, but none a fraction of Setram's size. Presumably the distance away up the cliffs reduced the effects of the dragonfear.
The gates stood open, for this was the capital and trade and information flowed constantly in and out. Gorfang watched carefully to see how the guards reacted to them - and their guide. Not to his surprise, the black-liveried men looked over him and his companions professionally, but then turned their attention to the Boggart with considerable deference. "Welcome back, m'lord," said one with a nod - not fawning, but respectful. Shados nodded back, and he and his party continued into the city unimpeded.
Inside, they found a bustling, lively city. The constraints of the cliffs and the walls meant that the activities of the city were compressed into a limited space, and as a result the place was as full of life as a kicked anthill. "Lord Skufruss requested your presence as soon as possible," commented the Boggart, "but if you'd prefer to refresh yourselves before attending on him, that can be arranged." Gorfang shrugged, but Méabh and Lynien indicated that they'd prefer to wash and change. Shados therefore guided them past the gates of the Academy of Magic and around the walls to the Embassy quarter. There they entered a building the Boggart referred to as 'the Palace' which - he explained - was where Skufruss carried out diplomatic and political business, although he actually lived in the Tower itself. A structure against the far cliff he referred to as the Council Chamber, where the more municipal business of running Vorsand as a city was managed. The Palace had guest rooms, for visiting dignitaries without a national embassy to stay at - and after stabling their mounts, he led them to five of these.
Lynien 
and Méabh independently discovered that the door and window of their nicely-appointed rooms, while unlocked and with keyholes in both sides, were equipped with magical bars and locks that could be shot remotely - whether to lock down the room against external attack or to imprison the occupant wasn't immediately clear. Gorfang didn't care much; his room had a chandelier, and he relived happy memories of Bardrum's office swinging around on it while the others were doing strange things like washing. Food was offered; Gorfang requested 'elf' only half-seriously, and even he was rather taken aback when the response was; "I'm afraid there may be something of a delay with that, but I'll talk to the Master of the Kitchens, sir."
All four, for their own various reasons, chased out the polite servant assigned to the room. An hour later, though, these were back, to announce that the Lord Shados Slyrryn was back to escort them to their audience with Lord Skufruss.
They followed him back around the walls - noting as they did so that there was no direct access from the 'Palace' to the Dark Tower - and in through the main gates into the Academy. The outer precincts of the greatest school of the arcane arts in known Alair were much like the Mageguild of Lossal, reasonably enough as that was a satellite of this, but on a vastly bigger scale. Workers of magic of every conceivable stamp were everywhere, walking, talking, working magic everywhere one looked. All races and creeds were represented, almost every race any of the companions knew, and several they didn't; although they saw no fae mhor, there were likely to be some. Gorfang saw no other orcs but the place was huge; there might be some somewhere. Only elves were nowhere to be found. The structure of the building itself showed that it had been built only partly by conventional means; there were arches and columns and balconied walkways that could never have been created without magic.
They were led up stairs and down corridors until they came to a massive pair of double doors, standing open and guarded by powerful-looking Dragonarmy soldiers. Inside, they discovered a vaulted hall of incredible size. Dwarfing the visitor, it receded away through dimness to the far end where a mighty throne stood amidst a glow of magical radiance. More guards lined the walls, interspersed with the columns that supposedly held the roof up - surely they were not strong enough! - and a little knot of courtiers and officers were gathered around the throne. The whole place was skilfully designed to make the visitor feel shrunken into insignificance, and to feel that sensation increase as he trod the long path to the other end.
As 
the party approached, they got a good look at the people there. Behind the throne and off to the left bulked a huge figure, which at first they thought was a statue, until it moved. It appeared to be made of stone, and moulded in the appearance of an armoured man of excessive size. It held a stone maul in one vast hand and its head turned to view everyone with palely-glowing eyes. This (the Boggart informed them) was Kenric Blackstorm, Skufruss' chief bodyguard. Near to him was a slim, dapper grey-haired human in Dragonarmy uniform, nothing special to look at; but this was Zanjalla, the tactical genius who had won the Battle of Silnarl and stopped the Kordasan push in the war twenty years ago. A scatter of courtiers and functionaries surrounded the major players, but there was only one person the eye was drawn to in that vast hall. Tall, gaunt and alien-looking, Skufruss of the Kin, master of dragons and information, had a power of presence beyond that of normal mortals.
As they neared his throne, he finished his conversation with a courtier and gestured the man away; he bowed and withdrew. Then Skufruss turned his attention to the new arrivals. When he spoke, his voice was dry, low and rustling, but in some way commanded attention. "Ah. You have brought them. Well done, my faithful Boggart." Shados bowed deeply, looking pleased. Skufruss looked at Méabh. "You have even brought the young sorceress; my information indicated she was unlikely to come. Good. I look forward to shaping her talents." Méabh said nothing but behind her impassive face her mind was whirling. What did he say?
"Do you have some despatches from Governor Linril for me? So. Good. Though not my main reason for summoning you here. You are, I believe, acquainted with one Thykon, styling himself 'The Blood Snake'?" He waited for them to respond. "... with my brother, Thykon, styling himself the Blood Snake," he clarified. This was news - Thykon was Kin?
 
No mosquitoes were harmed in the making of this session! |
"As with all the Kin, he is powerful, ambitious, unpredictable; Fateless. Thykon, though, for whatever reason, hates me and grudges me my inheritance - " a thin arm waved around to encompass the hall, Vorsand and Tarlanor. "For years he has been trying to destabilize my realm. Bardrum's corruption was partly his doing. The war with the Korsdasa would probably never have happened but for his meddling. And had you not interfered in lost Khabra, the Lifebreaker would have been returned to working order and provided him with a weapon even I could not have defended against."
"He now hates you nearly as much as he does me. We share an enemy, therefore, and that raises the possibility of common cause."
"I will aid you in finding him, in his last retreat and stronghold, to which he has returned to re-think and plan again. I will aid you in defeating him, if you will take on the task of assaulting him and either capturing or killing him."
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