Chapter 3
Berryshire
Nearly midnight, Aronvi, 3 Nédiïn 3884
The light of the full Vialru, and two-days past full Onalru, illuminated the road into the warm, dusty Avel village of Berryshire Town in Ethary of Vaensal; the town streets were quiet this late at night. The alru lights were dimly dancing across the sky, and Illek seemed to be enjoying another feast of stellar dust and gas that found itself too close to the soul-eating black hole which guarded the night sky ever apart from the Roia during the day. The tall grass plains which stretched for many elics, glittered under the lights of the night sky. A man in a deep blue, dirty cloak, riding a tall horse, which looked brown in the darkness of night, slowly made their way into the quiet town.
Past wooden and stone houses along a cobble stone road, the clacking of the horseshoes echoed through the the empty streets; to a large wooden building with stables near the town center, they walked. The only light in the town seemed to be coming from a thick sprawling tree in the park at the center of town. The trunk of the this tree started in one place and spread in three directions and wrapped back down til it was half buried in the grass before rising up again in a new direction. Hanging from the tree was a single lantern--a light for the dead.
The garden along the path towards the Inn was unlit, and the windows dark. The cloaked man dismounted the horse, and wrapped its reigns over the gate post, and drew one of his blades. A sign over the door reading Aurie View Lodge swayed in the breeze--Berryshire was, however, not within any view of any Aurie. With sword in one hand, he slowly pushed open the door with the other. The Healing symbol above the door glowed as he passed through the doorway, shedding light across the entry way hall. The large painting of a beach was now lit just enough to think the waves rolling in and crashing on the shore, and the rustling trees.
"Hello?" a small, tired, concerned voice came from behind the shell covered counter in front of a board of room keys; there seemed to be tears in the voice, as if in the middle of a sad nightmare. "M...m..Mr. Capita? MR. CAPITA!!!!!!!!!! You're alive?!?!! YOU'RE ALIVE!!!!" The lights came on, the young Hobb was now standing on the counter top, screaming with excitement. The sadness completely gone.
"Ârûn?" Putting away his sword, Griegg Capita looked very confused, as he removed his hood and helm.
"You're alive!!!" Jumping down, Ârûn Bwein leaped through the air to his friend he'd believed to be murdered two months earlier.
"Griegg? So this is going to be a happy birthday, and not an unexpected memorial." A woman with long red hair, and incredible beauty, and strength, dressed in red robes came down the stairs behind the bar.
Setting Ârûn down, Griegg Capita turned to the woman, looking even more confused than before. "What did I miss?"
"Getting murdered, apparently." Came the deep voice of Talur, the overweight Avgar bar tender, "Didn't lose the limb, either. The alru were on your side; come here, you can't deny me a hug this time, we thought you were dead; Raain was a wreck."
Giving into the embrace from the much shorter Avgar, Grieg looked at Raain, "D'you end up losing a brawl?"
"Couldn't even start one, and your stables got dirty" she said as she hugged the stable master.
"I'll take care of it tomorrow, its tough work not getting.....did you say something about losing a limb? What happened?"
By this point, with the noise of the excitement, and there suddenly being lights on in town, a crowd was starting to arrive. Mostly humans and hobbots, but there were also two Vulswyn, and a Chyas~fox.
As the fox came down the stairs and saw Griegg, his eyes widened, and his tail and ears raised, "Lemon?" he said in a manor that only comes from being unexpectedly awoken, but finding that the reason is completely worth it.
"She's out front, Tedd, she's a great horse." And with a new energy Tedd, the fox, bounded out the front door, still in his night wear, and embraced his horse.
"I was so worried, Lemon; I thought you were killed along with Mr. Capita. So glad to see you, my girl!" Lemon, the horse, was even more confused than Griegg had been. He unlashed his horse, and led her back to the dirty stables, and gathered some moderately fresh food and water, kicking over a trough of dirty water.
Inside the Inn, Talur was having to reopen the bar now that there were actually people wanting to drink for a good reason.
A low bell sounded outside; "Happy birthday, Griegg!" shouted Ârûn; Illek had passed over head, it was a new day.
Several rounds of drinks, and cheers followed.
"Ok, so will you guys tell me already, why am I supposed to be dead?"
"Two months ago," Raain began, with a bit sob somewhere between the memory of a terrible loss and the overwhelming joy of not having lost it, "We got a bird scroll report of a murder where you were supposed to be, and you had gone missing. An arm and shoulder were found, and it was believed to belong to you."
"They could tell that just from an arm and shoulder? Well, obviously it wasn't mine, what made who think that?" Griegg asked, as he lifted a drink in one hand and a piece of the cold giant-frog steak in the other.
"There was a sleeve with your crest, though cut in half, with the arm." Talur piped in.
"Green sleeve?"
"I don't think the report said, why?" Raain asked.
"I lost my green coat."
"Interesting," Raain rubbed her chin, mocking Griegg's and Talur's beards.
"the report said you had gone missing." Talur said.
"I left nearly a month before I had originally planned. Wanted to get home in time for today."
"You worried a lot of people," said someone in the crowd.
Raain looked at Grieg, and he knew he should have let someone in Kaillic know he was leaving early. "Well, time for bed, for everyone," she stood and turned to the bar room. "Breakfast will begin 75 minutes after the roia are up."
With a few grumbles, and last swigs, the crowd began to clear the hall, and return to their rooms in the upper levels of the Lodge, and back into the dark town that no longer felt dismal, and to their homes to share the good news. But the third person out the front door looked out to the streets which were almost completely dark, except for the lantern hanging from the tree in the middle of town, also just in front of the lodge, turned back to the inn and said, "Hey, he's not dead, he can't have a Lantern. He needs to come out here and put this thing out!" The crowd was stunned for a moment, then all turned to Griegg, and spoke at him in agreement.
"Well, I couldn't agree more to that!" Griegg said, as everyone who had been going to bed, came back down to go outside.
Griegg lead the cheering crowd out the door, and all gathered around the tall, sprawling tree.
Someone called out "Nabal, light the street lights!" An awkward looking man gave a solute, turned on his heels, and began running down the street towards the nearest lamp. He grabbed from his small belt pocket a long pole with a wick at one end--the pocket, though very small on the outside, could hold very large things on the inside; there were several pockets of this sort on Nabal's belt--and he began lighting the street lamps, which were nearly three times taller than Nabal, who was not a short man.
"Well," Griegg said over the crowd at the Tree, "this is a thing unheard of: the lights of the dead being put out, not because its floated off beyond the Kæa, and into the Illek, but because, there was no death." The crowd cheered with laughter and applause! A few more buildings began turning on lights, those inside trying to figure out what the commotion was. The town was beginning to look almost festive. "So, I don't know what kind of ceremony we're supposed to have here, so, I think I'll just take it down and blow out the flame." About thee quarters of the crowd laughed out loud, the other quarter was still tired and trying to figure out what was going on.
Griegg stepped off of the low brick wall which surrounded the grassy area around the Tree, he walked towards the branch which his Death Light was hanging in. He paused for a moment, pondering the oddity of seeing his own Light in the Tree, and the surreal feeling of it, an etching of his face in the rice paper, before reaching up with both hands to pull it down.
Griegg had barely touched his lamp when the town was suddenly illuminated and filled with the sound of rushing fire, from a little way down the street. The crowd spun around to see a towering fire where Nabal should be.
A few seconds later the fire had put itself out, and their lay Nabal, dead. A few fluttering blue ribbons of light began wrapping themselves around him, emanating from a ring on Nabal's finger, he began to glow gold.
As the crowd watched, Nabal's body shifted and reformed itself, but not as he was before. He was shorter and stockier, and a beard began to grow on his face. Nabal awoke with a great gasp of breath as the ribbons and glow faded.
Cheers erupted from the crowd.
"Talur!" shouted someone from the crowd, "He's a Gar now! You've got another one in town."
Talur came over, reached down to help Nabal to his new feet, "Welcome to the race. Good thing you remembered your ring tonight."
"Iy nwever leaf wifout it. Gwar you say?" Nabal would need to get used to this new mouth.
"Yup," Talur laughed, "But don't ye worry, you've still got your old eyes. And nice beard."
Everyone went back to Griegg's lantern, without much more about the reincarnation of Nabal: it wasn't the first time, or the hundredth time, it won't be the last. At least this time, he wasn't a rodent.
It wasn't as easy to untangle as Griegg had hoped, and he struggled for a moment to release it from the tree.
"Oh, just cut it down!" Raain shouted at him. With a slightly irritated, but amused look over his shoulder at her, he drew his short sword and cut the lines. The crowd's chuckles turned back to cheers.
He carried the wood and paper lantern in front of him back to the wall in front of the crowd. He stepped up, held the lantern high in the air, and shouted at the top of his lungs: "I'm not dead yet!!!" and then he snuffed out the flame.
Grieg looked around the now empty barroom, Talur was putting away the last of the glasses to be washed, Ârûn was attempting to levitate the trash bin but was having difficulty keeping it steady. After crashing the bin into a wall, knocking a small painting of another beach from it's shelf, Ârûn decided he was too sleepy to maintain focus; he strapped the rope harness around him and dragged the large trash bin out the back of the bar to a compost pile beside the stable back wall.
"Matthew's not here?" Griegg said to Raain as they extinguished the candles around the room.
"No, he hasn't been here since before you left, it's not like him to stay away for so long."
"That was two months before I left."
"Exactly; he's been away eight months now. We've had a drop in visitors. And Jerricho has been away for a couple weeks, too. It's been quiet. And then you were dead!" She punched him, Griegg staggered a few steps. Raain is one of the strongest monks at the Mayheart Sanctuary, and even a light punch from her was equal to any normal man's best try.
"Well, I'm not dead," rubbing his shoulder as he felt a bruise growing. "Heshtoredd," he muttered, and the pain eased.
"Jerricho out on tour?" With a bit of a chuckle, Griegg returned to the conversation.
"Sorta, he and the band were invited to play for Merran Kluh Ehs in Ayal."
"Really?" The surprise, astonishment, and a touch of concern, were unmistakable in Griegg's voice. "She can be one of the Avel's best leaders, and one of its cruelest; have you heard form him?"
"Yeah, his music pleased her, and he was careful to not cross the line, or make it obvious that he was trying."
"Jerricho Twist and the Hurricanes, performing for a Merran, its about time they got their break."
"But it's tough to lose the house band."
"When are they due back?"
Raain stopped wiping the table she was cleaning, and walked over towards the front counter, and calendar. "Should be just a few more days. I don't think they know you were murdered."
"Nor did I!" Griegg was starting to feel more uneasy about the situation as he gazed back to his empty glass and snuffed out another candle.
The fog was starting to roll in as Griegg left the Lodge by himself to check on his stables before going to bed. Raain was right, the stables were a mess: dirty feed was rotting in one corner, and a few water troughs had almost more food and mud than water, spider webs had developed in the upper beams, and many of the animals were unkempt. Giregg stood in the door way, scratching his head, and rubbing his face with the palm of this hands, "Tomorrow's gonna be fun......and Ârûn will be in trouble..." He turned around to leave for bed.
"Griegg?" Came the voice of Tedd from the far corner, he was laying a few feet from his horse, Lemon.
Pausing for a moment at the sound of the unexpected voice, Griegg responded "Tedd? that you? why are you still in here?"
"Yeah, its me; figured I'd stay with Lemon for the night. Since it's been a couple months, and I thought I'd never see her, either of you, again." He chuckled, "but don't worry, I don't feel the need to sleep with you."
"Good." Griegg laughed as he walked towards the stall which they were in, and knelt down to rub Lemon's gold-colored nose. "She's an amazing horse; nothing else could have performed as well." Tedd gave a proud but curious look between the horse and the man. "I had a few adventures on the way home, I'll tell you, and the others, about it over breakfast. 75 after the rise."
"As always. I look forward to hearing the story of your journey, my friend. Glad you're still with us."
"As am I, my friend, as am I." Griegg walked away with a nod and three fingers up, Tedd returned the gesture, and laid back down to sleep.
Griegg unlocked the door to his cabin behind the stables, "Home sweet home." As he opened the door, the smell of dust filled his nostrils. The room was small, with a bed on one end, and a desk at the other; there was no chair, not enough room. There was a chirping sound; a small bird was sitting on the desk looking up at Griegg as he entered. "What can I do for you?" Griegg asked with trepidation, and the bird burst into blue and white flames. The bright light in the darkness required Griegg to cover his eyes for a moment. A moment later the flames died away, leaving behind a white scroll with blue ribbon, "Work's never done."
Sitting on the edge of the bed, he opened the scroll carefully, and read:
To:
Griegg Captia
Stable Master
Aurie View Lodge
Berryshire Town, Ethary, Vaensal Avel
From:
Matthew Clevell
The Eternal
White Tower
Kaillic Kæav, Kyshraom, Vaensal Kæa
It was a relief to discover that you are, in fact, alive. I'm sure you have by now heard a few details as to what took place on Ithonvi, the 22nd of Hìlñdà, an arm was found at the docks of Kaillic, and it was wearing the sleeve of one of your coats. Latest news is there was green blood mixed in with the blood of the arm's owner who was a humon. Also a grey feather which would otherwise seem to belong to a Kaarln, but even in my travels I have not seen a grey Kaarln; though I suppose if there was a mix of Kaarln and Valswyn, that might cause this, but that has never been done to my knowledge. It remains to me a mystery. We have also not yet been able to identify the arm's owner. It is believed that a True Death Blade was used, we have been unable to return life to the limb, or rebuild the body it came from, or even identify it beyond it being a hūmon male. I will be making a few other contacts and requests for travel for further assistance. I know you just left here, and arrived home, but it would be appreciated if you could make your way back. I would like you to head to Quagloria to catch an airship, I know you don't like to fly, but if you could come some swifter way other than by road. Its not often I say that I'm confused, but this could be one of those moments. I don't see why there should be any cause for concern for the safety of your journey, but I'd suggest not traveling alone. If someone wanted it to look like you were dead, they might actually want you dead.
May the chaos of your existence be beneficial (though, it seems it may not be).
--The Eternal Matthew Clevell
"Airships...talk about chaos." Griegg rolled up the scroll, and set it on the desk. He removed his cloak and leather jacket, and stepped out the back door to relieve himself. The large white shell glistened in the lamp-light; everything at the Aurie View Lodge was themed to a beach. It only took a few minutes for him to fall asleep once he'd finished disrobing and laid down in the very comfortable water bed after his five months months away.
