"So how did it go, Grella?" asked Legum as the rest of the party gather around.
Grella shook his head in amazement. "Many things have changed in Nol, Legum. I don't know how many of them had anything to do with your group, but I must also tell you that you are rather... well known in Nol at the moment. I had seven separate people ask about your group or members of it when they found out that I was from out of town."
"Seven!?" asked Legum, startled.
"Seven" Grella said definitely. "One was looking for a person named Anthrax, who you described as a recently deceased friend of yours. One was looking for Templar." Templar looked surprised, and shrugged when Legum turned to him questioningly. "The rest were looking for any member of your group."
"What else is new?" asked Legum grimly.
"There is an elvish ship at Nol, but it is not docked. In fact, there are no ships docked at Nol harbor because there is no Nol harbor any more. Apparently the ship that called itself the "Goodie Bag" that was taking people to Kethem at inflated prices was in actuality a pirate ship, not a old Kethem light merchant pulled out of mothballs as they claimed. They would take the passengers out, cut their throats, deep six them and keep the cargo. A Kethem Light Warship, the "Pith's Hammer", and a Kethem Heavy Merchant, the "Golden Harvest" surprised the Goodie Bag in port. In the ensuing battle, enough of the dock was taken out to render it useless. The Elvish ship, the Granessian, is moored about a hundred yards out."
"That makes things a little more difficult for us, I'm afraid" mused Legum. "It will be almost impossible to get to the Granessian without being noticed, since we will have to take a row boat out to her. I wonder if Plellelan is captaining it?"
"There is further news" continued Grella. "The Tuga and Myshavar tribes are at war. Apparently the Myshavar sent a large raiding party through the shadow land and attacked deep into Tuga territory for no obvious cause. The reason we have not seen anyone even this close to Nol is because everyone is worried about leaving the traditional peace area surrounding Nol. There are many Myshavar and Tuga under the trading truce, but if they meet outside the old boundaries, hell will break loose. If I remember correctly, my friend, did you not say you had travelled from the Myshavar Gate to the Tuga Gate?"
Legum looked alarmed, glancing at the rest of the party. Could the letter they lifted from Pedwar actually have started a war? "I'm sure it had nothing to do with us" he replied to Grella's implied question casually. Grella looked at him suspiciously, then sighed and went on.
"I checked on the Ibisi as you requested. There are nothing but a few older Ibisi watching the tents. They appear a bit depressed, but otherwise completely normal. They do not know or are unwilling to tell me when they expect the rest of the Ibisi back. And, finally, there is some news from Kethem. The troops in Kom have been almost completely withdrawn. Kethem is now preparing for a counter invasion by the trolls." Grella was cut off by a guttural grunting noise... Hammerhand laughing.
"Glassond Hraggle" he said mysteriously. "Calling of ancients" he translated. "Our ancestors return to crush puny humans." Hammerhand stopped laughing and frowned instead. "I hope they no crush friends".
The group spent the next few hours deciding on a plan. They obviously needed to get to the elves. It did not take long to reach the conclusion that a large group would be too cumbersome, and the discussion turned to who should go. Once again, Guido's special skills made him the obvious candidate. With his new fourth level clerical spell that allowed him to fly for an hour, he could make it to the Granessian without needing a long boat.
Guido left at sunset. He carefully avoided the scattered tent encampments that formed the outer perimeter of Nol proper, then cast hide in shadows as the tent villages became too dense to skirt around. A short while later, the first real structures came into view as he reached the Kethemer's area near the docks. He could smell the acrid reek of old smoke, and even in the dark the waterline looked different, the faint phosphorescence of the surf and glimmering starlight visible through gaps where Guido remembered buildings. With a deep breath, Guido cast his spell. It was knew to him, and although control of his direction and speed seemed natural, he still felt uncomfortable when the ground dropped away under his feet.
Guido reached the elvish ship quickly. The long, clean lines of the Granessian looked broken up somehow. It took a few seconds before Guido realized that a long boat was tied up alongside her. He approached low, close enough to the waves that he felt the spray of salt water on his legs. As he approached the ship, he executed the classic "pop up" maneuver used by the harpoon anti-ship missile. "I'm friendly! I'm a emissary for Hotherial! Don't kill me!" he cried. A number of Tawhiem barbarians were on deck, clearly Kirander... or, as Guido was to learn later, Nyselan, the ex-Kirander that served the elves.
The Nyselan were cautious but not overtly hostile. One ran below decks, and a few moments later Hotherial arrived on deck. It was a welcome sight. Hotherial ushered him below decks quickly. "We need to be wary" Hotherial said, "you and your friends have become very well known in these parts". Guido nodded grim agreement.
In a small but lavish cabin which Guido surmised was Hotherial's private quarters, Guido rapidly explained what had happened since they had last parted ways. Although Guido had talked with Hotherial with the semi-telepathic ring he had carried in Smagaen, due to the limited time duration of the spell he had been forced to skip many of the details that were not directly pertinent to the issue of Pedwar Pythaen. Guido made up for it now by starting with their departure from the Granessian. Hotherial was extremely interested in the Guardians, the undead they had run into in the swamps at the mouth of the Kubera river, but bit back his questions. He was disturbed at the news about the conspiracy between Pedwar and Montor suggested by the letter they had stolen while at Myshavar gate, and more disturbed by the description of the black dragon they had encountered at the icy lake north of Nol. When Guido asked what he knew about dragons, Hotherial paused.
"There are dragons native to this world" he began slowly, "although we have only rumors of them. They are domesticated to some extent... or in some kind of symbiosis with a humanoid race... because they have riders. From what we know, however, they are not in the same class as Veskavar or this new one. They breath, yes, but they are not particularly intelligent. They can't polymorph, or cast spells, or any of the other capabilities that Veskavar obviously has. Veskavar is from... someplace else. Somewhere on the other side of the world gates, I know not where.
"Perhaps they can't get through to their own home" suggested Guido, "or perhaps something is wrong there". Hotherial appeared deep in thought. Guido waited for a few minutes, then said impatiently "perhaps we should attempt to get the rest of the party."
Hotherial nodded. "Fortunately, we have many spots in Nol mapped out and marked with TP beacons to facilitate teleportation. We can teleport there, and then teleport your group back."
"What is a TP beacon? I've heard you mention them before" asked Guido, curiously.
"Teleporting is a hazardous method of transportation" replied Hotherial, "unless you take appropriate precautions. These fall into several categories. One is a teleportal, of which there are two varieties. One is self contained, and a simple operate teleportal spell will activate it. The other is simply a guide. You cast the teleport spell, but it provides the proper coordinates for you to transport to. The problem with both of these is that they are locked into a set number of destinations. The self activated teleportal must link with another teleportal. The guiding type of teleportal can be set up for several different destinations, but the complexity of the guide grows exponentially with the number. A second category is simply knowing the area you are teleporting to very well. With an area that you have purposely memorized, you have about a one in ten thousand chance of a mistake. We actually have spells to assist with memorizing a location. With these, our failure rate is less than on in one hundred thousand, but the spells have to be renewed regularly, about once a year. Finally, there are the TP beacons. TP beacons provide a psychic "map" of an area that can be used to teleport to any area in the region. The problem with TP beacons is that the "map" must be updated regularly, and this gets very time consuming with large areas. As a result, there are only a few locations where we have TP beacons placed."
"Is Kethem one of them?" asked Guido.
"Areas of Kethem" Hotherial replied, smiling. "Not as much as you might think. Kethem is developed enough that it is hard to determine where we might need fast access to any part of an area. We would need TP beacons in every major city if we were going to really cover Kethem adequately. In Tawhiem, Nol is really the center of all inter-tribal activity. And generally, we aren't all that interested in tribe's internal affairs."
"How do you recognize a teleportal? Or a TP beacon?"
"TP beacons you can't... they are generally permanent fixtures of the local geography, since they must remain perfectly positioned to keep the magic map aligned with the real terrain. They are also generally screened against D mag to keep people from playing with them. Teleportals tend to be circular pedestals about a foot high and five feet in diameter. They are usually a white marble-like stone. Gems may be set on the circumference that correspond to other teleportals to which it is linked. Many of the old teleportals have a two overlapping squares inscribed in the center."
Guido thought for a second. Two overlapping squares? Where had he seen that before? It came to him suddenly. After Nial had died in the Urakai attack, they had searched the body. They had found a parchment inscribed with a floor plan that included the glyph of the local Hectlac temple in Bythe on it. Recalling Nial's previous occupation as an architect, they had decided that it was some piece of his old work that he had been fond of for some reason. But Guido recalled that the center of the room had indeed carried such a symbol. He would have to check it out later. The floor plan was back with the other group.
"We should retrieve the rest of your party". Hotherail's statement distracted Guido from his thoughts. Hotherial left for a few minutes in order to make preparations, then the two of them bamfed to the rest of the party. Excited babble from the group at the surprise appearance gave way to a quick explanation, then they were all teleported back to the Granessian. They were taken to a larger room than the one Guido had first been in. The room had a simple but beautiful wood floor and walls, with large, soft pillows scattered about for seating. Intricately sewn designs made the functional pillows a work of art; it almost seemed sacrilegious to sit on them. Nyselan brought in a bottle of something smooth as silk that packed an amazingly strong whallop, and everyone began to relax. They had been on the move for too long a time.
To everyone's surprise, they were joined by Rocky and Legum, who had been asleep below decks when Guido arrived. After a short period of bringing each other up to date on their various adventures, they gathered in a circle around Hotherial, who sat with the liquid limbed grace of his race.
"Can you get a letter to the Hectlac priests?" asked Legum.
Again, there was that odd pause, a thoughtful expression passing over Hotherial's face. "I'm not sure that would be the wisest course of action" he started, raising his hands to quite the sudden babble of confusion. "Acting hastily with this type of information can lead to more harm than good. It is generally better to find out what it is you are dealing with. Otherwise information may have an effect other than what you desire"
Legum looked at Hotherial strangely. "Hotherial, that just doesn't make sense. We have Montor, a lord holder, possibly in line to replace Kursko as the major holder for the Bythe area, acting directly against Kethem's best interests. We have the Admiral of the Bythe fleet in Mentor's pocket. We have Pedwar Pythaen, who killed our friend Antrax..."
"And took my wife" growled Tallow.
"And took Tallow's wife, clearly up to no good," continued Legum, "and in some kind of odd relationship with the Myshavar. The facts are plain as day. These guys are evil, and they need to be nailed to a cross!"
Hotherial shook his head slowly. "In good time. You know I have an extensive information gathering network. Let me try to find out how wide spread this 'conspiracy' is. Then we can determine the appropriate action we should take. I know it is a little frustrating, but it is for the best."
Despite argument from the group, Hotherial was adamant, and finally, they relented. It was quite possible that they would be able to catch more of the nefarious group if they allowed Hotherial to trace Montor's visitors.
"All right, Hoth" began Galrog on a new subject, "what do you know about this?". He held up the crystal ball that had been recovered from the Salsenhain and Chen Kunda battleground. Hotherial looked at it in amazement.
"Let me see it" he said, reaching out. Galrog let the ball fall into Hotherial's hand. It immediately began to pulsate with intense red and blue and orange colors, faded to a deep blue, then slowly became clear again. "An evowna" Hotherial said, confusion coloring his normally self assured voice. "It must be very old. I cannot find its mivowa" he said. "Where could it have come from?"
Templar glanced at the confused expressions on everyone's face. He turned to Hotherial and said"Hotherial, I would swear if I knew no better that you thought what you just said made some sort of sense." Hotherial looked at him with some surprise, then laughed.
"An evowna can show you things up to about five miles in any direction" said Hotherial in a lecturing tone. "Although it is a permanent item... well, reasonable permanent, it has a half life of about a thousand years... it is useful for only half an hour or so a day. It is also limited by solid substance... walls or rock prevent it from working properly. You may, however, position it at the top of a hill and see what is on the other side, or at a window or door and see inside a building. There is a similar device, although it is much rarer, called a evowa. The only real difference is that the evowa allows you to hear as well as see. A mivowa is a evowna or evowa concentrator. It is linked to a set of evowna and evowa, and any images or sounds recorded by them are available at the mivowa. There is also a mivowa concentrator, an uvowa. The uvowa is a translator or linker of sorts. It allows mivowa images to be mixed with other things in order to provide additional information. For instance, Guido, the map you saw on Lentenela Hollen was maintained by a set of elves with uvowa, in this case linking mivowa with a geolocation translation spell and a focus attentive variation on a simple pyrotechnics spell..." Hotherial stopped at everyone's puzzled expression. "Suffice it to say" he continued dryly, "it allows us to utilize the information gathered by the lower level crystal balls more effectively. Finally, the link is two way in that the mivowa, and in turn the evowna and evowa are guided by the desires of the owner of the uvowa. This makes it something of a two edged sword. We can use it to gather information, but if one falls into enemy hands, they can in turn use it to gather information on us."
Hotherial frowned at the crystal ball, slipping it unconsciously from hand to hand. "They are carefully guarded as a result. We have not lost one of these... in centuries. I wonder how a Salsenahain came into possession of it... and why he did not tell someone of it. Regardless," and Hotherial shook his head, "this one is no threat to us, since it appears to have no mivowa, and thus cannot be turned against us." He shrugged. "You may use it as you see fit." With a unexpected toss of the wrist, Hotherial tossed the ball to Ziwa, who caught it. The ball flashed a bright green, fading almost instantly back into its normal transparency. "Stranger and stranger" said Hotherial, looking mystified. Despite prompting, however, he would not tell them any more than he had.
Finally, they told Hotherial about the five brazers they had found in Nostrilia on the ill fated journey to capture the STAM crystal. Hotherial looked at the items, cast a high level detect magic, frowned. He called Besancalthien to the room, showed him the brazers. Besancalthien went out and returned shortly with a lens, a figurine of a hawk, a long tube, and a wand. He began to pass the wand over the brazers, pausing every once in a while to look through the lens. On one pass, the hawk suddenly raised it wings and squawked for a moment, while Besancalthien looked attentive as if it meant something to him. He held the tube over the collection of brazers, and it emitted a low musical tone. Besancalthien frowned at this. Finally, he shook his head.
"I don't know Hotherial. It is emanating on the K band, which suggests some tie to the Sul Vodal, but it is very weak, and these are obviously not Sul Vodal manufacture" he said at last.
Before anyone could pipe up with the obvious question of who or what the Sul Vodal were, Ziwa broke in. "You could try putting them in a pentagram arrangement" she said tentatively, hand on the hilt of Facinalethvree. Hotherial, noting this, nodded to Besancalthien. Besancalthien quickly drew a pentagram with a piece of chalk, then placed a brazer on a point. He added a second, then a third, and the hawk suddenly squawked again, more loudly and insistently this time. He held the tube over the brazers, and there was a sudden undulating tone full of interesting but disturbing harmonics. Besancalthien grabbed a brazer and jerked it out of alignment quickly, alarm showing on this face. The noise from the tube died down to the original simple tone.
"That was... interesting" said Hotherial, brows furrowing. There was something here that he did not like at all judging from his expression.
"Sul Vodal tech" said Besancalthien, his voice shaky. "But not Sul Vodal manufacture. Complex, very complex. More complex than a teleportal. More complex than a phase gate. And that's without finishing the configuration or keying it. My guess? A portable worldgate."
Hotherial was visibly shaken. "What? I don't believe it. It isn't possible."
Besancalthien shrugged. "A worldgate or something equivalent. And obviously K band, definite Sul Vodal tech... you know it isn't a naturally occurring phenomena on this plane. Otherwise your D mag would have at least picked it up. This is nasty stuff, Hoth. Dangerous stuff."
Hotherial glanced at the rest of the group as if suddenly remembering that he and Besancalthien were not alone. "Perhaps we should discuss this more fully later. For now, I think we had better lock these up on the Granessian. And I'm sure you want to rest after being on the trail for so long" he finished, addressing the party directly. "Tomorrow, we can talk about what you would like to do from this point on" he added.
Despite the warmth of the alcohol they had imbibed, sleep was the farthest thing from anyone's mind. This had the makings of an interesting story. But it was also clear that Hotherial wanted to discuss this issue in private with his friend, so they reluctantly agreed to his suggestion.
They settled down in cramped but comfortable quarters, and the soft down mattresses worked magic after days of sleeping on hard earth. They were asleep almost immediately. Ziwa collapsed into the blackness happily, unaware that she had a tight grip on the hilt of Facinalethvree. But then, that was becoming second nature anyway.
Rocky watched Ziwa toss and turn. He hadn't slept much since the last encounter with the Guardians, although he was at a loss to say why. The few times he had slept had been troubled with the sounds of distant voices that he could not hear, no matter how he strained. But they were not threatening at all. In fact, if anything, he found himself wishing that he could hear what they were saying. They sounded... knowledgeable, full of wisdom beyond the grasp of normal beings such as himself. Once again he wondered if it had something to do with that weird dream he had in the swamps. He thought about the Guardian named Ganwain and shuddered. Ziwa moaned slightly, and then seemed to settle down. Rocky tried to do the same.
Ziwa was in the dark again, Facinalethvree glowing in front of her. But this time, there was something else, a bright green light circling around the sword at dizzying speed. Sound suddenly penetrated the blackness.
"Portable worldgate tech? Even the Sul Vodal never had a portable worldgate." It was Hotherial's voice.
"Not as far as we know. But, Hoth, face it. We never knew that much about the Sul Vodal. Only what they left behind on Heredil." That was Besancalthien.
"True, but there's nothing Sul Vodal on this world other than what we brought with us."
"We know the Sul Vodal were here at one time. We've never found the central gate, but if it wasn't here, you know the other worldgates would be dead. As far as we know, no one but the Sul Vodal has ever determined how to build a Seagate."
"The Seagate is nowhere nearby. We've searched too long and hard for it to be. Wherever the Sul Vodal did end up, they didn't deposit gate tech around here. You realize the implication here. If you are correct, we have to assume that the humans developed this on their own. That they have - or at least did have - a better understanding of gate tech than we do after using it for five thousand years."
"Not necessarily. They may have just gotten lucky, found some combination that provided this capability. It may be a stationary gate that is somehow linked to these brazers, an inherent capability of the worldgates that we've never come across before. It won't be the first time; look at the Myshavar."
"That was different. We knew that worldgates might be open to straight teleportation or phasing even if locked against casual world porting. We just never realized that the shadow land is accessible through phasing, or that you could use phasing to do the joining. This is an entirely new capability. And I don't buy the random luck option. The chances against it are too remote. Do you realize that if this is what it looks like, and we miscalculated the human's capability with the world gates back before the fall, there may be other gate tech around that we don't know about? The old Greattroll copy of our version of the Sul Vodal gate is easy to pick up because we know where in the spectrum it radiates. Variations like the one we have here... well, if these people hadn't brought it to our attention, we wouldn't have noticed it until it was too late. There could be a hundred unwarded gates out there, waiting for someone to open a hole straight to hell."
"Hoth, you know what will happen if you make these kind of statements to Emseltai and the rest of the council?"
"Yes. Which is why we are both going to keep our mouths closed on this issue." "Are you sure that's wise?"
"No. Yes. No, but, Bes, the truth is that we are dying out. The humans may be childish, emotional, even evil at times, but they have potential. If we are going to leave something behind, we could do worse than these people."
"What about the particular humans and others in this group? You certainly haven't been completely up front with them."
"True. On the other hand, I've been much less up front with the high council. I'm not doing it out of choice. I like this group. But there are larger issues than any single, or small group, of lives. All I can do is try to prepare them as best I can and hope. If they don't make it, I'll be very sorry. If the worldgates open this world to the kind of havoc they did five hundred years ago... well, there won't be much of anything to stop the chaos, and then I'll be dead, along with all of them. These are times for hard decisions, and I've been trained to make them."
"What if they find out?"
"It depends on what they find out. If its something that I can't risk getting out... well, I'd only kill them if I absolutely had too. Maybe a stasis field until the information is overcome by events, even though that would require expending quite a bit of power. But I don't anticipate they will."
"What about Ziwa and Facinalethvree? That episode with her eavesdropping on the high council is rather disconcerting!"
A pause. Then "Yes, I'm a little disturbed by that too. But I think we have to assume that Facinalethvree was trying to home in on our unknown advesaries, and that there was enough commonality between our conversations concerning renala and the worldgates that our conversation was swept up as well."
"I still think you should take that sword away from her. Its the only thing we've ever seen that has actually been able to pick up on this other group."
"I know" replied Hotherial with some irritation, "but we've gone over this before. Facinalethvree never demonstrated that kind of ability while I carried it. By their nature, the elf swords have insights and perspectives that are very different from we the living. Consequently, Facinalethvree may have very good reasons to show this to Ziwa and not us. Additionally, it may be something about Ziwa herself that allows this capability. We know she was tampered with by these people. Perhaps they left enough behind that her mind, with the sword's capabilities, can find them somehow. Besides, you know I have... certain guarantees in place. If Ziwa, or for that matter, Facinalethvree, are playing games with us, it will become obvious before long."
The voices faded. Ziwa looked at Facinalethvree in confusion. "I do not understand" she said. "Why are you showing me this? Why are you working at odds with Hotherial?" There was no answer. The green light spun dizzily through the blackness, arcing around the sword in oddly disturbing patterns. It was scintillating, but cold, a gem of sharp, unalterable beauty, absolutely set in shape and purpose, harder than steel. Harder than Facinalethvree. Ziwa felt a sudden chill. Then she went to someplace darker, but warmer, more comforting. Her last thought was of Baldar. She really did miss him terribly. She heard a laugh somewhere in the distance, then finally settled into real sleep.