They were all dazed and bone weary as they made their way out of the underground ruins of the Naventhülian temple. Only Devrik’s young wolfhound pup, Brann, seemed to have life and energy in him when they reached the entrance where he’d been tied. He leaped and whined at Devrik, who carried the young boy, Borin, still asleep in his arms. He tried to calm the pup, but to little effect.

Mariala had insisted on carrying the body of the boy’s sister, wrapped in the pale blue nimbus of Vulk’s stasis field. She snapped a single word at the puppy, and he was instantly quiet, heeling at his masters feet. Devrik raised an eyebrow in surprise, but Mariala was clearly in no mood to talk, and he let it pass. The group waded into the water next to the causeway, and headed for the shore, Drake carrying the pup.

He was the last one to reach the shore, as he stepped out of the water a shadow detached itself from the darkness under the bridge, in the shape of a man. Before the others had a chance to react, Devrik had set Borin down and drawn his battlesword, in one fluid motion. By the time Drake had dropped Brann and grasped for his own sword, the figured had moved into the pale light of the setting half-moon, chuckling.

“Easy my young friends,” said Master Vetaris. “From the look of you all there’s been enough action this night. I’ve come to offer what aid I can in this dark hour.”

Devrik lowered his sword, and Mariala stepped forward. The old mage looked sadly at the body of Mirial Baysiron, and shook his head.

“I knew death would stalk the town tonight, but I had yet hoped…” He looked beyond her to Borin Baysiron, laid out on the ground, the puppy curled up next to him, muzzle resting on his chest. “The boy yet lives, though?”

“Yes Magister,” Mariala replied, her voice thin but unwavering. “In that much at least we did not fail.” As she spoke Vulk suddenly dropped to his knees, a hand held to his head.

Drake hurried to his side to steady him and help him back to his feet, but Vulk waved him off, though he swayed slightly as he faced Mariala’s mentor.

“How came you here so timely, Master Vetaris,” he asked. “We hardly knew our destination tonight even when we arrived at it… how did you…”

“I have not been unaware of the disappearances in town this past tenday, Cantor,” the older man replied calmly. “And I have been making my own inquiries, especially once the child went missing. Though to little enough avail… I felt almost blocked…

“Tonight I turned to divination, casting the Star Runes, and at last I had some success. The signs were clear enough, that this would be the time and place where answers would be found.”

“So you came alone, unarmed?” interjected Devrik in his grating voice, sheathing his sword at last. “That seems foolish.”

“Bluntly spoken, young man,” Vetaris replied. “But I am hardly unarmed.” A faint glitter of violet light caught the eye as he pocketed something long and slender in his voluminous sleeve.

“Now quickly, the night moves on and I fear we have little time to spare. Tell me what has transpired, that we may best divine a correct course of action in the coming hours.”

After the briefest hesitation, Mariala gently set the body of the girl down next to her sleeping brother, on the opposite side of the dog, and began to relate all that happened since they had set out from their inn – was it really only a little over a watch ago? It seemed so much longer…

Devrik and Drake added few comments to her narration, while Vulk sat down on a rock and seemed to doze. When she was done Master Vetaris looked grim, all trace of amusement gone from his usually kindly face. For the first time since she had met him, Mariala thought she saw the dangerous mage behind his avuncular façade, and was a little surprised at her own surprise – after all, one did not rise to his exalted and powerful rank without becoming very dangerous indeed!

But his wrath was not with his new pupil or her friends, he soon made clear, pacing up and down a strip of sandy beach.

“I knew it was bad, but I had not realized how bad – the Undead, here under our very noses… a cursed demonic artifact… and a renegade mage…” He looked at the companions intently for a moment, and shook his head. He then knelt down beside Vulk and tilted his head back, looking into his eyes for several minutes, muttering under his breath.

“Yes, our young cantor will be fine, given a few days rest and proper nutrition.” He stood back up and gathered the group in by eye.

“Please do not be insulted when I say it amazes me to find you all still alive and relatively unscathed. A zamora, perhaps two, I could believe… but to defeat a fully mature gülmora… and a moderately powerful renegade T’ara Kul to boot…”

“Yes,” Mariala sighed, “we were lucky. The zamora seemed easy enough, Drake dispatched that with almost a single blow. The gülmora was another question…” she shuddered at the thought of the Shadow that had touched her own mind before being rebuffed and wondered how much worse it must have been for Vulk.

“It seemed to have been… not itself,” she went on. “From the ramblings of Polus, or Fornat, or whatever his name truly was, I think that Joran, the gülmora, was possessed by the spirit of the poor boy Golhan sacrificed into the Orb centuries ago. All those years alone, trapped… it was clearly insane, and just as clearly in control of Joran’s undead body. Thank Shala the little ghost didn’t know how to fully control his host’s powers… in essence, we didn’t really beat a gülmora at it’s peak, but rather the insane ghost of a little boy.”

Mariala shook her head as Devrik started to object, and went on.

“As for the renegade mage… well, he had us from the start! We were all entranced by his spell, and if he hadn’t wanted us all alive so he could drain our life force, he could have killed us all quite easily. And if the damn Orb hadn’t been cursed, or broken, or whatever, he would have succeeded in draining us and gaining a couple more centuries of life…

“We were lucky. But we still couldn’t save a little girl.” She sat down next to Vulk and put her head in her hands. She was damned if she’d cry in front of any of them…

“Don’t discount luck, my dear Mariala,” Vetaris said gently. “And take your victories however you can get them – I can assure you, your enemies will! You can’t always save everyone… it’s a cold and cruel world sometimes, but that doesn’t mean you stop trying, eh?

“But what are your next steps, that is what I must know now. The town is a boiling beaker right now, almost at the saturation point, between the recent Korönian scare and the disappearances. One more ingredient thrown in and the whole thing could explode, violently!”

“But the Earl, at least, and the Church, need to know,” said Vulk firmly. “There can be no question of keeping this to ourselves!”

“I quite agree, it’s too big for sweeping under the rug. But I would encourage discretion. Certainly the Earl, or at least his son, should be informed, and the Archcantor of the Temple. If you’ll take my advice, limit your contact to those two, and let them take matters from there.

“But if there is any other in the Earl’s household you feel should know of these events,” and here the old man looked innocently across the water at the castle, “perhaps that would best be left for after Earl and Archcantor are informed, eh?”

He then turned to look at the bodies of the two children, the quick and the dead, and laid his hand on Mariala’s shoulder.

“I know you’ll want to return the children to their parents, but you would do them no service to tell them the truth of their daughter’s death. Rather than force them to imagine the terror and fear she must have faced under the Shadow, let them believe she simply wandered off and drowned. The boy will remember nothing, I think. A blessing, really…”

“But what about the other bodies, the disappearances –”

Vetaris sighed and shook his head.

“With the girl’s disappearance explained, and no further ones occurring, the townsfolk will draw other conclusions… in a surprisingly short time this will all have faded into obscurity. Remember, no one was much exercised about the disappearance of a drunken sailor, a street tough, or an orphan apprentice boy, until a beloved child, of solid family, went missing…”

Unable to argue with that, the group pulled themselves once again to their feet, and set about getting their stories straight. Master Vetaris agreed to take the unreadable grimoire of Golhan Zhanul, to see if he could break it’s encryption, promising to share whatever he learned with those who had uncovered it. Once he was assured his young friends knew what they were about, he prepared to depart for his sanctum across the river, until Mariala drew him aside.

“I wanted to show you one other thing I found within Golhan’s treasure room,” she said, pulling the brilliant shiarez crystal from her girdle. The older mage’s eyes widened briefly, and he broke into a great smile.

“Congratulations my dear woman,” he said, peering closely at the stone, but not touching it. “Not a few T’ara Kul goes their whole life without finding a Matrix Crystal, and this one…” he looked suddenly more sharply at the stone, and snapped his finger, causing a small, pure white light to flash into existence above them. In it, the gem sparkled in a prismatic rainbow of colors.

He stepped back and snuffed the light, shaking his head, but still smiling.

“I told you earlier not to discount luck, Mariala, and I can only reiterate that advice! For this is no ordinary Matrix Crystal, attuned to only a single convocation – it is a Prism Matrix, capable of channeling all convocations with equal facility!

“Once you have attuned yourself to it, I’ll be fascinated to know how strong a boost you’ll gain in your spell casting. Assuming you wish to share that information of course,” he added hastily. “A very private matter, I’m afraid I sometimes let my curiosity get the better of my manners!”

With that he turned and disappeared up the road into town.

–——————————————————

While Mariala had spoken privately with her mentor, Vulk and Drake had taken Mirial’s body down to the water’s edge, where the cantor released his stasis field. Drake gently lowered the body into the water, allowing it to soak into the girl’s clothes and hair. When Mariala returned to them she took up the girl once again with a nod to her friends, and headed silently off down the beach, Devrik following with the now restless, but still unconscious, Borin in his arms and a subdued puppy at his heels.

They turned inland when they reached the cemetery, making their way past the spot where Borin had been darted by the possessed Joran, and then turning back towards town. When they arrived at the butcher’s home/shop, they were surprised to find it ablaze with light and the young couple arguing on the doorstep.

“I’ll rouse a few of the men, Elana,” the butcher was saying. “We’ll find the boy, I promise. But you’re not going out there; I won’t lose you too!”

“I can search as well as any, Marik,” he wife replied vehemently, “and I’ll be damned if I’ll stay sitting inside going crazy while my remaining child is missing!”

“But what if he returns, darling, and no one is here? I’m sure he’s looking for his sister, and he’ll return on his own. You should –”

He broke off as he saw Mariala and Devrik step into the light spilling from their open doorway. For a moment both parent’s eyes went wide with relief when they saw what they carried, but relief quickly turned to fear when they saw that neither moved, and their daughter’s dripping clothes.

“Oh no, not both of them!” cried Elana, running to Mariala.

“The boy lives, he just sleeps,” Devrik assured her. It was a sign of their distress that neither parent flinched at the harsh harmonics of his voice. Marik took his son from the warriors arms, then turned to pull his wife to him as she sobbed over the body of their daughter.

The ensuing hour was torture for Mariala, as she had to explain how Devrik’s wolfhound pup had led them to find Mirial’s body in the surf, and how they had stumbled across Borin asleep under a bush as they had returned from the beach. The lies pained her enough, but having to accept the thanks of the grateful, though bereaved, parents was almost unendurable. But as they finally left the butcher’s house in the pre-dawn darkness, she had to admit that Master Vetaris had been right… as bad as this had been, the truth would have been so very much worse for those poor people.

–——————————————————

As Mariala and Devrik made their way through the darkened streets to their inn, Vulk and Drake were also headed home. As their two friends had headed down the beach with the children, they had climbed the embankment from the beach to the road. Crossing the water once again, but this time on the causeway rather than beside it, they pounded on the postern gate, demanding entrance on the Earl’s business.

Vulk’s Herald’s Baton and Cantor’s sigil eventually battered down the resistance of the drowsy guards, and after repeating the performance at the gates of the main keep, they were eventually shown into a private sitting room. There they cooled their heels for a good two turns of the glass while varying levels of servants tried to avoid the responsibility of waking their masters.

Eventually a bleary-eyed Ser Dalan confronted them and demanded to know what all the fuss was about. He seemed even less happy to see them than he usually was when acting on behalf of his lord, Ser Owain, but perhaps the late hour explained that.

“We have dire news to report Ser Dalan,” Vulk stood and gave the other a half-bow. “And while I intend to speak with Ser Owain, I’m afraid this is a matter that must, in propriety, be first put before his brother the Earl.”

Drake had noticed, in the past, that Vulk tended to get very formal and Herald-y sounding when he was tired, angry or hurt, and he was all three tonight. Or this morning, rather. He decided to keep quiet for once… must be pretty damn tired myself, he thought.

“Nonsense, Cantor Vulk,” Ser Dalan sniffed. “I’m sure you can pass on this “dire” information to me, and I’ll see that both Ser Owain and Ser Ronalt hear of it in the morning. They can decide if the Earl needs –”

“Ser Dalan, I’m not here to argue with you. If you can’t be of assistance in getting Ser Ronalt down here, then get the hell out. This news is not for you, unless his Grace or his regent (or Ser Owain) decides otherwise. And frankly, I’ll be surprised if they do. Now help or go back to bed!”

Well, so much for formal and diplomatic, Drake grinned inwardly.

Ser Dalan was momentarily left speechless, mouth agape, but quickly pulled himself together. Something in Vulk’s eyes, perhaps, convinced him this was not the time to push…

“If this isn’t as important as you claim Elida, it’ll be your ass nailed to the wall. I’ll get Ser Ronalt.” With a spooked glance back at Vulk, he left the room, and within five minutes had returned with the equally sleepy looking son of the Earl, his Grace’s regent in most affairs of the earldom.

“Cantor Vulk,” he began, “I hope you have a good reason for waking half the castle at this unseemly hour!” I –”

“I do your lordship,” Vulk interrupted. “It involves the disappearances in Devoktown this past tenday, a buried Naventhülian temple practically beneath your very feet, two flavors of the Undead, a cursed demonic artifact, and a renegade T’ara Kul…”

Vulk thought about asking Ser Ronalt to send Ser Dalan out of the room, but decided that indulging his pique would just mean having to tell the story again later to Ser Owain. This way Eristern could tell his master himself, and Vulk could kill two birds with one stone, while never letting on that he had any kind of “understanding” with Ser Owain…

As it turned out, he was able to kill three birds with his one stone. As soon as Ser Ronalt understood the full import of what Vulk was telling him, he stopped him and called for a servant.

“The Archcantor was here for a banquet this evening, and decided to spend the night here in the castle,” he explained to Vulk as he sent the servant to wake the cleric and fetch him thither. “He’ll need to hear this as well, best to get it done all together, eh?”

So Vulk had only to tell the story of their recent adventure once, and was saved from the trip to the Great Temple and another round of convincing servants to wake their masters. The regent and the Archcantor asked few questions, but cogent ones, and Ser Dalan merely listened. To his credit, he acknowledged to Vulk with a look and a seated bow, that he had been right to rouse their lordships.

Eventually Vulk and Drake were allowed to depart, while Ser Ronalt and the Archcantor bent over a desk discussing what steps would have to be taken to destroy and sanctify the buried complex, and how to keep it from the general knowledge. Ser Dalan saw them out, offering them rooms in the keep for the night, but they declined, parting rather more amicably than they had met.

The pre-dawn air was bracing, and a relief after the stuffy closeness of the castle’s sitting room. The stars burned like a myriad of diamonds against the velvet blackness, the milky double-band of Arial’s Girdle stretched from horizon to horizon, and Vulk realized just how good it was to be alive.

–——————————————————

At the Inn of the Cloven Shield Vulk and Drake found Mariala and Devrik apologizing to a sleepy and rather cranky innkeeper for waking him at such an unholy hour, but insisting that they really needed to get to their rooms. It took a few moments, but once he understood that they had been searching for the missing girl, and that she’d been found tragically drowned, he quickly unbarred the door. He even offered to start the fire and prepare an early breakfast for them, but said he understood completely when they claimed exhaustion.

Once Master Grennan had seen them to their rooms and again retired to his own bed, the four companions quietly met in Devrik’s room, which was closest to the stairs to the third floor. That was where Fornat, or Polus, had taken a suite earlier in the tenday. They all agreed that there should be no delay in searching his rooms for his grimoire, if it hadn’t been destroyed with him, and any other artifacts or items that might connect him with the T’ara Kul. Mariala was quite vocal about not letting news of a renegade mage become common knowledge – people were wary enough of magic, even when they demanded the fruits of its practice, without giving them a villain to fear. Devrik agreed with her, but since no one was objecting, he said nothing.

Drake impressed everyone, and himself most of all, when he managed to pick the lock to the suite in almost nothing flat… two twists and a click, and the door swung open! Inside, in the dim glow of Kasira’s Light from Vulk, they quickly found the renegade mage’s saddle bags, apparently his only luggage. The chest provided by the management was unlocked and contained a few clothes, but nothing of value or import.

But the saddle bags did contain a large, leather-bound book, locked with an iron lock, four glass sphere’s, each about 2” in diameter, seven sealed vials of various materials and sizes, and a money belt containing two gold Darikazi crowns, 12 Arushali pennies, and six copper bits.

“Well it looks like we hit pay dirt,” Drake quietly crowed. The other two suites on the floor where currently unoccupied, but somehow skulking seemed to require whispered voices. “These glass sphere’s look interesting, I wonder what they do… and could these be potions? Certainly this is the infamous grimoire we seek, no?”

He pulled the book out of the bags last, laying it on bed next to the other items.

“Yes, it certainly looks like it,” Mariala agreed. “Not many other books require such security.” She tapped the lock with the nail of her index finger.

“Allow me, milady,” Drake said, pulling out his lock picks. “I’m on fire tonight with the locks!”

“No Drake, the book is almost certainly–”

“No you fool!”

Before Mariala or Devrik could stop him, Drake had inserted one of his picks into the iron lock of the book. With the first twist of the pick the whole book suddenly burst into a searing glow of white light and Drake’s face twisted in a rictus of agonizing pain. He fell back from the book with a strangled scream, his hands and face an angry red and already beginning to blister.

“Damn!” Vulk barked, leaping forward to catch his friend as he fell. The book tumbled back onto the bed, it’s brilliant glow quickly fading, seemingly unharmed.

As Vulk laid Drake gently on the floor he immediately began reaching out with his healing sense, assessing the damage. It was bad, but if he acted quickly… he laid one hand over Drakes folded ones, and another on his forehead, saying a quick prayer to Kasira. Then he concentrated.

In his mind’s eye he saw the spreading damage in Drake’s tissues – burns always continued to cause more damage, even after the heat source was removed. He reached out and… absorbed… the damaging energy, channeling the remaining heat up and out of the body… the burns would get no worse, at least. He then set his power to repairing the damage already done.

For twenty minutes he labored over his friend, until he finally sagged back against the bed, more exhausted than he could ever remember being. Between the encounter with the Shadow and this attempt at healing, he felt twenty years had been sucked from his life… but at least Drake would live, and unscarred at that.

Miriala and Devrik had silently watched as Vulk had worked his healing, seeing the blisters slowly reabsorb into Drake’s skin. And while that skin was still red, it clearly was much better than it had been. When the cantor finally slumped back, Devrik lifted Drake up.

“Can you get Vulk back to their room?” he asked Mariala. “I’ll take Drake. And we’d better take the book, vials and glass balls with us.”

Mariala nodded agreement and quickly gathered up Polus’ arcane detritus, leaving the money and mundane objects where they lay. She then helped Vulk to his feet and , with one arm around his waist and his arm over her shoulder, guided the stumbling cantor down the stairs.

When she eventually got him to the room he shared with Drake, she found that Devrik had retrieved his own medical kit and was further tending to their friend’s burns.

Vulk collapsed onto his own bed, and almost instantly was asleep. After checking to make sure he was breathing properly, and not in shock, Mariala pulled Drake’s pack from under his bed and rummaged through it.

“Ah, here it is,” she exclaimed, pulling a red leather tube, sealed with wax, from the depths. “I knew he still had some of this stuff!”

She handed the tube to Devrik, who instantly recognized it.

“Ichor of Korön! I’m surprised to see it here in Arushal. But it’s very good for burns, especially, and it should help prevent infection…” He broke the seal and began apply the pungent paste to Drakes wounds.

Mariala sat down on the chest under the window, sagging in exhaustion herself. For the love of Shala, would this hellish day never end?

–——————————————————

But it did end, and the four friends slept throughout the day. It was evening before everyone but Drake, who was still in some pain, met in the common room for a much needed meal. It was then that they learned, from their enraged host himself, that the “gold” Polus had paid him for his accommodations had overnight turned to mere copper!

So much for keeping magic out of this, Mariala thought to herself with an internal wince. But as it turned out, the innkeeper’s anger was mollified by the money (“real money this time!”) he’d discovered just laying on the bed when he’d gone up to confront the man in the late morning.

“He obviously knew the jig was up, and was packing to flee – must have heard me coming and fled over the rooftops!”

The money more than compensated him for his losses, with a little extra for the pain and suffering, so he was content to merely report the would-be theft to the Watch, in case the rascal dared to show his face again. No one explained to him that he was, in fact, very lucky not to have encountered the man, or that he would not be making any future appearances in Devok or anywhere else.

The next day saw Mariala at Master Vetaris’ home and sanctum, meditating and preparing to attune to her new Matrix Crystal. At sunset she felt she was ready, and Kiril left her alone to perform the ritual. When it was over, she attempted to cast the Violet Eye, and was impressed at the increased power and control she felt in the casting.

She had no qualms about sharing her success with Master Vetaris, who was duly impressed with the level she had achieved. It was a tired but very satisfied woman who made her way back to the inn that night.

While Mariala was busy with arcane matters, Vulk and Devrik spent the early part of the day converting the old silver coins and the rubies recovered from the Naventhülian temple into more convenient forms of cash. Mariala having claimed the shiarez gem as her share, the men each chose one of the rubies of approximately the same size, and then converted the others into silver. When they were done, each of the three had five new gold coins and 35 silver pennies.

During lunch a messenger from the Temple found Vulk and asked if he and his companions would be willing to accompany the Archcantor’s men into the underground temple, as they prepared to examine it, seeking the best way to exorcise and destroy it. Drake was in no shape, of course, and Mariala was otherwise engaged, but Devrik was more than happy to accompany Vulk on the errand.

And so the early afternoon found them once again walking the dank corridors of the ancient demonic temple, this time with a large party of clerics and temple soldiers of the Cult of Cael. The areas to the south, with which Vulk and Devrik were familiar, seemed unchanged, save perhaps that the bodies were even more decayed and rotting than before. The clerics blessed and purified them, and they were taken away for proper Eldari cremation.

The area to the north proved disturbing but unoccupied… a long hallway lined with statues of hideously masked figures, one of which lay shattered across the floor… a huge room whose walls, pillars and large alter were all carved in grotesque figures and faces, which seemed to writhe and twist in the shifting light, as if in torment… and a sea cave, with an underwater tunnel that clearly led to the outside. This latter area was sealed by a heavy bronze door that seemed to have been smashed and battered by huge fists, or something, from the cave side…

It was dusk when the searchers again resurfaced, sealing the secret cliff-side door behind them. The lead cantor thanked the friends for their help, and assured them that the Temple would soon set the place to rights. A pity they couldn’t simply put it all to the torch…

Mariala rejoined them back at the inn later that evening, just as the three men were finishing up supper in the common room. Drake was finally feeling, and looking, well enough to leave his bed, but was still weak from his injuries. And while Vulk seemed fully recovered from his psychic wounds inflicted by the gülmora, the day’s activity seemed to have left him in a funk. Everyone agreed that tomorrow would be soon enough to discuss what to do about Colith and the possible danger he and his men were being led into by this Ardath fellow that Mariala so distrusted.

They agreed to meet in the morning to discuss it over breakfast, when everyone was rested and sharp…