Kendath would have carried her, but one of his own arms was rendered useless by the wretched mage's lightning bolt. Glancing down at her, he felt his heart wrenched with sympathy. He'd suffered his share of broken ankles, but none were as terrible as Merrin's. One more twist and he couldn't help but wonder if the ligament might snap entirely and drop her foot right off.

Pleasant thoughts. Always.

His arm tightened around her as he staggered along down the tunnel, following the congenial light. Presently they came upon a small circular chamber, adorned only by a threadbare rug and a basin of the same colorless glow. A hunched figure, cloaked in drab gray, sat on a wooden stool. Simply sat there. No table. No implements. The figure bore the uncanny air of someone who'd wait patiently until the end of time.

Kendath wished abruptly that he'd drawn his hood. But as soon as the crone raised her cowled head and leveled him with that penetrating gaze - that gaze that seemed ubiquitous yet sightless simultaneously - he knew it would have been useless. Her eyes, mantled in shadow, glinted from underneath the cowl. "I know you," she rasped, with a hint of strange glee. "Did Lord Greyshire send you again? Another complaint concerning that enamor potion?"

Dammit. Long memory.

"Ah, yes." Her dry cackle lacked mirth. "You nearly died, didn't you? Truly wasn't just of me, to punish the messenger." Her eyes scanned over their battered frames, Merrin especially. "We can't have this fair damsel suffering, now can we?" She ducked her head, spoke a hissing word of magic. Warm light suffused Merrin's ankle, then floated towards Garthag and Evlyn, then drifted over to creep under the sleeve of Kendath's blackened arm.

He experimentally jerked his fingers. They obeyed.

"You're welcome, my dear," the Seeress said. Her face was still shadowed by her cowl, but he had the impression of a daunting rictus of a grin. Her wandering gaze alighted upon Garthag. The grin died. She seemed pondering as she spoke softly, "You really must be more careful, my mageling. I can't have you dying on me, you know."

And suddenly, as the words escaped her, her stature heightened from the bent and wizened hag. For one fleeting instant she was radiant with unutterable beauty, ethereal, robed in misty enigma. The moment passed as quickly as it'd come, revealing the old crone once more and leaving Kendath to wonder if it'd been a trick of the light.

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((Last post until I'm back from Costa Rica on the 17th))

Merrin didn't think she'd ever felt such blessed relief from pain as the sudden warming sensation that seemed to put her back together like a broken toy. She couldn't suppress a shudder, shivering as she tingled with that strange feeling warming its way through her. Almost fearfully she looked down at her ankle, stood on it. Oh gods, thank you! She wasn't sure whether she'd breathed the words or not.

No longer fighting to stay conscious Merrin slowly released her death hold on Kendath, now that there was no reason for her white-knuckled grip. She still felt cold and shaken and battered but it was a sight better than what she'd been a moment ago.

Still pressing close to him, even if she wasn't clinging like she had, Merrin raised her eyes to whoever - whatever it was that they were somehow talking to. How had they gotten off that rain-drenched battlement? She drew the first breath in what seemed an age that wasn't a shaken gasp.

"Who - who are you?"

Her voice echoed strangely. Merrin found herself wanting to shrink backward, afraid of what she couldn't name, but held her ground. Perhaps Kendath beside her held her there.

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During the chaos of the battle Garthag had remained invisible with no intention of joining the battle at close, but destroying the guards from a far had not come to pass either. His magic had been suddenly cast down by another force and left him to face two guards on his own, without any protection and they closed in, fast. Garthag had been able to conjure up a spell that when he was able to grab a hold of the first guard he sucked the poor man dry out of his life force.

Yet such spells usually left him open and the other guard was able to almost decapitate him had he not been able to throw himself aside just in time. Still despite failing to do the desired effect, the guards sword cut into his neck causing it to bleed. Garthag crawled backwards with his other hand trying to block the precious life spilling out of him, it was not serious, but it was no easy wound either. Garthag felt slightly dizzy as the whole combination of bleeding, death and the thunder impacted on him.

Just as the guard seemed to be ready to make final strike Garthag raised his twiggy fingers and muttered in exhaustion, a stone bullet whirled with great speed at the guard, hitting him in the face. The guard stumbled backwards in confusion before falling to his back, allowing Garthag a chance to join the others. But at the moment the an unknown yet somehow familiar force grabbed a hold of him, of him and his `companions`. He had felt the same kind of power once before and was taking a very strong guess as to who was behind this all. At that moment he felt rather light and the whole situation was unreal, what kind of magic was this? Then he connected onto the hard and very real stone floor, he heard Kendath ask whether anyone was alive and Garthag only smirked.

"For your misfortune, yes."

After moving into the tunnel and upon reaching the chamber GArthag kept muttering curses as he held his neck with his hand. At the camber Garthag calmly stood aside and nailed his eyes on the figure, her voice was familiar and it did confirm his suspicions as to that she was the one whispering in his skull. Garthag chuckled at her words and threw an amused glance towards her after she had healed their wounds, twice now she had saved him, really she was his saving angel or something.

"I know, but then again as you have such power you can apparently afford to heal me whenever I come to the brink of death you hag."

Garthag answered with a dry and yet amused tone.

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Let him curse my name
On these blood stained pages of misery
Let him call me a tyrant so cruel
Let him curse my name, but remember the truth!

(Odd, the forum seems to keep deleating my posts. This is the fourth time i'v tried, oh well, here we go again. )

Evlyn said ntohign to the woman in front of her. She didn't trust her one bit. Not like she didn't trust Garthag, Sage, the Renagade's, the Meiltha, the Prince and his court, her sister...she didn't trust a lot of people. But this woman was diffrent, it felt like she was completly helpless in front of this woman; which wasn't something she relished.

Her mind flicked back to the battle with slight dificulty. Unlike other battles it came in flashes, as if memory's had been erased. 'Shadows, and shadows of shadows. Blood; her own of others? Being carried away from her freinds?' She tested the word, and then left it. 'Carried away by the fighting with nothing. Pain, pain like she'd never felt before, a light crackling though her so that it blocked out thoughts, the smell of ozone...lightning? But surley not, no one was ever acctualy struck by lightning, it was just a myth.
And then being stabbed repeatedly as she lay prone of the flagstones as she blacked out slowly.

Evlyn looked at the trail of blood leading from her down the tunnle; that at least had been real. The pain seemed to begone, but the memory of that electic pain; for she had decided it must have been lightnig; would not leave her. She shuddered slightly at the thought as she stood waiting for the woman? to reveal where they were and why.

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Made by Lembas

The Seeress's head swiveled at Merrin's words and then at Garthag's. Her penetrating scrutiny could be felt even in the shadow cast by her hood - a gaze that somehow saw more than it pretended to.

Merrin glanced from one to the other, suddenly almost as wary of Garthag as she was of the hunched figure before them. Perhaps it was exacerbated by the fact that she'd never met a old woman who gave off such a strong aura of being something other than what met the eye. "Whenever you come - ?" she started, frowning in Garthag's direction, but the Seeress smoothly interrupted.

"Speak not of what you know not, mage." Merrin could have sworn it was not mage she heard in the sibilant hiss but something other...mageling, it sounded like? "Many have called the Seeress a hag. Many have acquired an answer they did not seek thereafter."

Merrin looked sharply back from her perplexed scrutiny of Garthag when again those piercing eyes, nothing but a fleeting glint in the dim light, moved to her. Questions died on her lips. Who was this Seeress, really? How did she know Kendath, Garthag...and why were they here? Merrin resisted the temptation to look down at what had, minutes before, been a wound the likes of which she doubted she would have come out of unscathed. Somehow she thought its healing was no courtesy done out of kindness...a notion no doubt given proof by the set expression on Kendath's face. Hesitantly she ventured to look up at him - but the pressure of the Seeress's eyes was not something Merrin wanted to feel without her own eyes returning it.

"You'll give us...answers?" she began falteringly. Why could she recall nothing of moving from a walltop drenched in rain to these dim corridors? Merrin pressed down the beginnings of a shudder, wanting nothing less than to remember the agonizing moments of feeling blood leaking into her boot, feeling the terrifying sensation of having black threads creep across her vision. Gratitude was owed to this Seeress but somehow she could not summon it.

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(yay!!! it worked woooooot!)

Evlyn stepped foreward. Whay had they been brought here, how had they been brought here, who and what was she, how did she know who Kendath and Garthag were, and what hold did she have over Garthag? But she had a feeling this woman would deal only in riddles and half answeres. She decided to cut to the most important question.

"Seeress, what do you want from us?" Her tone was respectful, but her look and stance was anything but. She stared into the womans eyes with unveiled anamosity and distrust. She stood tall, chalenging, her feet evenly spaced and her hand on the hilt of her sword.

The cowled figure turned towards her, and a dry laugh crackled acrose the room. "Lady Corbie, it is a long time since I talked with one of your clan."

Evlyn visibly flinched backwards at her words. How...how? No one knew her parentage, apart from her familly, how did this woman know? A trill of superstitios fear shot through her.

The Seeress turned to Merrin, and Evlyn had the distinct impression she was smileing. "It depends on what you call and answer."

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Made by Lembas

Kendath subconsciously rubbed his healed arm and glanced from the Seeress, to Garthag, then back to the Seeress again. He sensed something amiss, but knowing them both, it'd take a cataclysm to make them talk. He released his hold on Merrin and took a step forward. "You never served the Meiltha, whether or not the Bloodstone Court believed it. You serve yourself, so you must have a reason for saving us."

The Seeress rose from her stool and moved to a shadowed alcove on the far side of the cavern. Turning her back to her visitors, she seemed to be rummaging around. "You were seeking the Seeress's guidance anyhow, were you not? But you are correct. My motives are my own. You may ask, but I will not reveal. Now. About your quest?"

The basin's glow was growing, warming the chamber. Kendath unclasped the maroon cape, letting it drop to the ground in a pile of drenched fabric. Staring at the back of the Seeress's cowled head, he took another step forward. "Then you know about the Shard. The Shadowers have it. Where is their citadel?"

"It is not so simple." The Seeress drew away from her alcove, bearing a dagger and a stone tablet. She looked directly at Garthag. "You will find it if you are worthy. This is the last time I help you, mageling, though you will serve your purpose in the end. If you fail, your perdition will be quite painful." She raised the dagger, its serrated edge gleaming, and flashed a crooked grin. "Quite painful. Now, which one of you will sacrifice the blood?"

Kendath's fingers brushed the hilt of his falchion. "Excuse me?"

"You did not presume a divination of this nature requires nothing in return, did you?" she sneered. "A few drops of life's blood is all I need. Who will it be - dragonrider or mage?"

He hesitated, but a glance over his shoulder at Merrin made up his mind. "Dragonrider. Me."

Cackling softly, the Seeress threw him the dagger and slithered forth holding the stone tablet. "Your wrist. Let your blood fall here." Kendath complied, drawing the blade across his left wrist. Three drops of blood dripped onto the tablet. The Seeress shrieked, "More, you imbecile, more!"

He eyed the dagger's wicked serration and grimaced. Clenching his teeth, he sliced it across in one quick motion. Steel bit in, releasing rivulets of crimson that flowed from the jagged gash and tattered flesh. Falling back, he clutched his wrist and watched, with morbid fascination, the blood gather on the tablet, etching out figures... words...

The Seeress smiled and held it out for all to see:
Within the Four Winds you will need,
Encased in amber, an obsidian key.
Beneath the moonstone of a now tainted temple,
A portal, in three, to the citadel of shadow.
Satisfied that her visitors had committed the words to memory, she dropped the tablet. It struck the ground and disintegrated to dust.

Kendath felt the warmth drain from his face, though not only from his throbbing wrist, still bleeding under the grip of his other hand. Most of the phrases made little sense, but one of them... He moistened his lips and was about to demand an explanation, but he blinked and the Seeress was gone, vanished to leave the four of them alone in the cavern.

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Garthag quietly stared as the divination took place, little did he have to say about what happened or the riddle that had been passed onto them as a clue, which would aid them to find the shadowers. Garthag grasped his hood and pulled it back over his face, his thoughts wandered off to the riddle that the Seeress had presented to them. Garthag began quietly muttering the words over and over again as, if to memorize them as there was no room for wrong steps or misjudgment at the moment. The witch had made her standing clear and Garthag was surprised that she had even now appeared to help them, but then again it fit her ends.

What those ends were, Garthag didn`t know, but he would not help anyone else get their end of the deal, only what he needed. He would defeat the damned lich and take back what was rightfully his, that was all he needed, the rest was irrelevant to him.

"Let`s move..."

Garthag muttered after a short while of repetition of the riddle and he brushed his way past Kendath, avoiding his eyes and questions by simply ignoring him almost completely. And even, if Garthag would have been willing to reveal Kendath as to how he knew the Seeress then it would only lead to more doubt. Yet all tough Garthag had come to the conclusion that once the shadowers were beaten then they would automatically become enemies, like defined by some unannounced law as their alliance of convenience would come to an end.

Encased in amber, an obsidian key.
Beneath the moonstone of a now tainted temple,
A portal, in three, to the citadel of shadow....

Garthag repeated the words in his mind, it was obvious that they required the means of entering and to find the place of entrance to the shadowers citadel, but the rest was annoyingly mysterious. Garthag cursed the witch in his mind, but didn`t stop from pondering a solution to their problem.

"Within the Four Winds.... the four winds... where have I heard that before?... Wind... element..."

Garthag thought before he stopped in his tracks and a smirk rose to his face as he had a clue as to what the first words implied to, but kept the information to himself thus far. He leaned against the cavern wall and gazed at the rest of them.

"Might someone amongst you nitwits have a suggestion as to what the hell she said, surely she didn`t drop those words to us, if she knew that we couldn`t translate them into some sense?"

Garthag asked with a rather annoyed tone as he pretended to be completely clueless as it was usually he who was most aware of things around them.

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Let him curse my name
On these blood stained pages of misery
Let him call me a tyrant so cruel
Let him curse my name, but remember the truth!

"You could have let me," murmured Merrin for Kendath's ears, pressing her own fingers over his. They came away wet from where blood seeped through his grasp. My quest, my gods...my responsibility... she shook the thought off more easily than she otherwise would have, for the others pressed in. The poem past the first line meant nothing to her, but its initial line rang bells.

Three years since she'd listened to lectures from dreary retired dragonriders on history - what was that fragment of knowledge? And what had Garthag been muttering about? Four winds, winds, elements - elements, that was it. Merrin glanced once at the place the Seeress had occupied only a moment before and started falteringly, conviction growing somewhat stronger as she remembered. "Elements - Grave - no, Tomb of Elements. Aye, that was it - when I was a page - the Tomb of Elements was where Kylera told me - " she stopped, realizing she was making very little sense. "It's - a tomb. In Thyrault, the Renegade stronghold before Vryngard. Dragonriders go there, heroes, to be buried. It's guarded - somehow - " she abandoned the last nagging thought and shot Garthag a glance to make sure his suspicions were not radically differing from hers. As usual, his expression was quite unreadable. Not loftily skeptical and all-knowing, however.

"I don't know what the rest of it means," she added, realizing she still pressed her fingers over Kendath's and removing them, "but the Tomb of Elements - Tomb of Four Winds - is easy enough to find."

It was with some relief that she clung to this one direction, a clue in the tangled mess of past and present. Now, perhaps, she could summon gratitude for this Seeress.

Suddenly recalling, Merrin was very conscious of her healed ankle. She shifted her weight onto it, hesitantly, and slid on hand down the smooth leather of her boot. Even it was unbroken, the slice through weathered material repaired as though it had never existed. Somehow Merrin couldn't quite suppress a shiver as she straightened, and not entirely from the damp cold.

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Kendath snapped his attention from the Seeress's vacant spot to Merrin, who'd unexpectedly waxed knowledgeable. A healthy flush of color was returning to her cheeks. His eyes slid to her ankle, no longer bleeding beneath her boot. The feeling of being in debt to anyone, the Seeress especially, was not a pleasant one, though he could not deny his gratitude.

He knelt to tear a strip off the maroon cloak and, snagging one end of the impromptu bandage in his teeth, proceeded to wrap it around his wrist. He nodded at the cavern's mouth, to the tunnel beyond. "It opens to a forest south of the Mountains of Tarn, not far from where I first cap - never mind. How many days to Thyrault by foot?" Apathy became habit, letting him brush away the familiar pang of losing his second dragon. He cursed silently and stared at his fingers, fumbling with the bandage.

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That gave Merrin pause, to calculate a distance she'd only ever traveled by dragonback. She struggled a minute. She knew the spot he was referring to - it held no inherently pleasant memories, though the assassin she'd seen then was certainly not the one she saw now. If that was three, four days from Vryngard, and Thyrault was...twice the distance? Three times the distance? And even that might be generous -

"Two weeks?" she offered hesitantly, and interrupted Kendath's attempts to bandage the jagged gash in his wrist one-handed by removing it from his grasp and doing it herself. "Nobody lives there now, it's been abandoned since Vryngard became our capital. At least - I don't think so."

She mentally and indignantly denied the accusation that she was spending more time on Kendath's wrist than strictly necessary and denounced it as being unfair when she was merely being careful. If I like to be close to hi - Gods, that hit far too close to the mark. She promptly tied off the makeshift bandage.

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"Thanks," Kendath said, rising to his feet, then followed it with an incredulous, "Two weeks?" He racked his memory for an alternative. South of the Mountains of Tarn... he knew a trade route ran through the foothills, passing by a Meiltha fortress and leading all the way to the coast, a port or other called... Port Dragonhelm, in fact. He unslung his pack and pulled out his customary dark cloak, speaking as he clasped it on, "Three days' walk to Port Dragonhelm. Would a voyage down the coast take us closer to Thyrault?"

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"I think so," responded Merrin tentatively. "Aye, it shouldn't be more than four, five days' walking if we were to sail down the coast far enough." She followed suit, extracting her silvery cloak from where she'd stuffed it into her pack and fastening it. As she did so she noted that the clasp, the little gold sun of the Renegade insignia, was missing two or three of its rays.

A last cursory glance about the chamber, now silent, showed nothing more that might be worth examination. Merrin let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding and moved toward the dark mouth of what appeared to be a corridor sloping steeply up. She still felt shaken from recent events...one couldn't hope for miraculous rescue in every instance of injury, and she hated to think what could have happened. And then there was the customary nagging guilt.

Even she realized that it was ridiculous to expect herself to do what needed to be done alone. But surely she hadn't needed to cling to him like she had? Merrin still insisted adamantly, mentally if not vocally, that it should have been her blood on that stone tablet.

_________________

The tunnel kept sloping upwards, the damp scent dissipating to allow a whiff of fresh air. The tunnel opened, revealing a verdant forest - stark contrast to the oppressive darkness of the Seeress's abode. Sunlight filtered through the leaves, striping the underbrush in gold. A break in the forest canopy suggested noon, the sun's position directly overhead.

Squinting in the sudden light, Kendath waded through an ankle-deep trickle of stream and glanced behind him, expecting an aperture in the stone. Nothing. No tunnel. The bare rock face behind him was solid and unbroken, as though the entire encounter had never existed. One never entered the Seeress's lair uninvited. He turned his attention back to the surrounding forest, scanning the woods for some sense of direction. To his right, a palisade of mountain peaks stabbed into the cloudless sky, which meant the road had to be to his left. Beckoning Merrin and Garthag, he started off.

His conjecture was right, as indicated by the dust cloud and clop of hooves observed through the trees. They broke out of the woods and found themselves on the edge of the road, facing a stretch of farmland. A wagon driven by a single rider and pulled by two heavy draft horses was just rumbling by. It was headed east towards the coast.

Thinking quickly, Kendath sprinted ahead to intercept the wagon. The driver, a scrawny man, yanked on the reins and scowled down at the obstacle. "Can I help you, stranger?"

"Your wagon," Kendath replied, making no hostile moves. "It wouldn't have some spare room in the back, would it? My companions and I need a ride to Port Dragonhelm. We could offer protection from brigands in return."

"Your companions?" The man squinted backwards at Merrin and Garthag, standing a little ways off to the side. His appraisal flickered over the former's silver cloak and the latter's white robes of magecraft. At length he grunted. "All right, hop in. It's a day's ride to Eastguard Fortress. I'm dropping off some goods there. Another half day to the coast."

"Eastguard Fortress?" If Kendath made a habit of raising his eyebrows, he would have right then.

The driver's scowl deepened. "A man has to make his trade, you know, be it with disciples or atheists. You might have to cover that pretty cape of yours." He nodded at Merrin and glared at the others in general. "Well? You coming or not?"

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Before she could talk herself out of it - they did need to get to Thyrault as fast as could be managed - Merrin scrambled into the bed of the wagon after the other two. But - "Eastguard Fortress?" she questioned anxiously in an undertone, once they were moving and the creak and rattle of the wagon and its cargo could cover conversation somewhat. "Isn't that - ?" a Meiltha stronghold. Aye. An instant list of possible things that could go wrong sprang to mind, not to mention the glaring fact that while Kendath and Garthag could pass for Meiltha, Merrin was not so adaptable.

Her hand went to the little golden sunburst clasping her cloak. That was the first thing that would have to go. But the cloak itself - Merrin was keeping it, no matter if they had to go three days out of their way to get around the fortress. She had nothing left of Wyvern besides that.

Thinking with some annoyance that she really should stop dwelling on the inevitable, Merrin let her hand fall. Her expression twisted into a worried frown and resolved itself after a brief moment. "Isn't it a little - risky - to go through there?" she added tentatively.

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"We can always ditch the ride before we reach it," Kendath pointed out, drawing his hood against the glare of the noonday sun. He shifted aside a few bundles of coarse fabric and leaned against the side of the wagon, letting his head drop against the wooden planking. A particularly hard jolt almost cracked his neck. Grimacing, he forced himself into a more rigid sitting position, settling in for a long ride. He idly watched the driver pull out a long pipe and light it. In the field across from them, a herd of cows munched grass in blissful contentment. The wagon jolted again, and one of the bundles fell loose. A hiss of steel, and the wicked head of a flanged mace poked out.

"Well," he noted, picking up the mace and tapping the Meiltha insignia etched on its handle. "Explains a lot." He threw it back into the bundle with its fellows. The entire wagon likely held enough weapons to fill an armory. "Eastguard Fortress is a big place. Plenty of patrols lining its perimeter and beyond. The quickest way is through the fortress or risk another few days stumbling through the wilderness." He shrugged. "I suppose merchants pass through it frequently. If you don't cause trouble, it's about as dangerous as Port Dragonhelm. I hear its a neutral city nowadays."

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