At dawn the magi went into Council. Dorianne and William, steward and bailiff, anticipating a call to defense, set to preparing the castle. Within Daria’s laboratory, Renaut went to work with the Brother Christophe, ever cautiously, hoping to discover the secrets of the black egg. Shortly into the morning Pietre entered the chamber, boldly striding into a magus’s sanctum unbidden.
“I was put in charge of this motley group,” he stated. “I am the senior apprentice, and I have skills in these matters you lack. Where is de Animalus Veneficus? How will you discover anything without basic research texts?” Renaut sent Christophe to the library with a note for the librarian, unwilling to leave Pietre alone with the egg. Satisfied, apparently, that Renaut was making progress, Pietre left.
It was just a short while later that he found Rutger and Edgard in the bailey, attempting to tame the horse taken from the raiding knight Friedhold. “Don’t go into the forest again without me,” he demanded.
Meanwhile, Renaut and Christophe moved to the library to further research demons. Renaut found several brief and alluring mentions of a demon that might lay eggs, but despite his efforts and those of Horst the librarian, no direct text could be located. “But see here!” Christophe pointed out, upon a third search through the Commentarium Malas, “A page has been removed from this volume. Look how carefully it has been cut, so that one doesn’t even notice it is missing.” “Pietre was searching many of these same texts recently,” Horst commented. Renaut and Christophe left the library with few answers but much to think on.
As the hour of sext came and went, Renaut was sent on another task. “The egg will have to wait,” Daria instructed him. “William is busy with the village. Go to the hamlets and tally their losses, if any.” The companions set out once again through the Hog Wood. Still suspicious of Pietre, Renaut brought the egg along, in an earthenware bottle in his purse. No-one had been lost at Bar du Sud, but a toothless old cotter told them that her grandson, the goatherd, had been missing for several days. Edgard tried briefly to track the boy, who was said to be a simpleton, but with no success.
A heavy, wet dusk was falling when the group trudged back toward the castle. Just upon entering the wood a loud crash and flurry of darkness threw Renaut to the ground. An enormous black creature, hunched and clawed with an eyeless face, crouched surrounded by the remains of Renaut’s bottle and purse. For a brief moment it seemed to regard the shocked group of people around it. Then Rutger drew sword and closed, and Edgard moved in with his axe. Despite its ferocity, the creature did not stand, but quickly burst into four of its kind, each of which fled in a separate direction. Edgard struck as one of the creatures passed him, but it vanished, nothing more than a figment. Quick action dispelled two more figments, but by then the real creature was disappearing among the hedges as it headed across the field.
“If it gets to the village, no telling what havoc it will cause,” Albrecht said. “It may be headed to the village, or to Ville de Haillot,” Christophe answered. “Follow where its tracks lead.” The tracks did not, in fact, lead to the village, but almost studiously avoided it before doubling back toward the castle. There, in the woods not 200 paces from the gate, was another body: Marten, the huntsman. And in his mouth another egg.
Thursday morning Daria sent Renaut to Aline’s deep vaults. “If this egg becomes another creature, perhaps he has some chamber in which to contain it.” Aline replied in the positive, but also revealed that he hadn’t seen Pietre in some time. With a little investigation, it became clear he hadn’t been seen in the castle since the previous evening. Even worse, the egg had disappeared from Daria’s lab.
“Remember the tracks at the Pool of the Stone Horse,” Albrecht suggests. “If Pietre was there once, perhaps he has returned.” Sure enough, at the pool it was clear someone had entered the water recently. The spring issued from a small cave below the surface. Edgard prepared to swim. No sooner had he disappeared into the cave, though, than the black horse was seen in the bracken not far off. Renaut conjured a powerful spell and the vines and branches came to life, entrapping the beast.
But a beast it was no longer. A dryad or fearie of sorts took its stead, shy, beautiful, and forlorn. “Why have you come to my home? Leave it, and take the darkness with you.”
Edgard had swum into the cave to find it empty save a few coins, polished stones, and gleaming white skulls. He swam back out—but the world was not the same. He found the pool engulfed in an evening darkness, with clear skies and a powerful sense of tranquil beauty. But there was also a foreboding, a feeling as if a thundercloud hovered just out of sight, and none of his friends were in sight. As he stepped from the water, a movement caught his eye: The form of a boy—a goatherd, perhaps—rising from the bushes a few paces off. It babbled and cried as it limped his way, reaching plaintively for him, its eyes sightless and chest dripping blood and gore from snapped and broken ribs.
Edgard swam back into the cave, but when he reemerged, he was still in this hidden realm. Within minutes, however, the others swam through, joining him. They set upon the creature, and it fell quickly to their steel. In the silence after, they searched carefully for any sign of Pietre. Someone had been here, certainly, hiding things among the trees, but whoever it was had departed and left nothing of value. Eventually, as the companions moved further from the pool, they returned to the daylight and drizzle of their own world.
The glow of fire against the sky was familiar, but this time, on their way back, it did not come from the village. It came from the castle.
Wednesday 14 November 2007
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