Pearl in the Hilt, Part 3

The horsemen moved closer to the cage. "Scrawny looking fellow, isn't he?" Markelhay the Fourth said, looking closely at the cage. The scaly creature growled as loudly as it seemed its frame could manage. Markelhay IV moved his hand to poke the kobold. It turned to him, its eyes glowing with a power that hadn't been there previously. Markelhay IV managed to muster enough of his own sense of self preservation to toss himself to one side, as a burst of flame filled the place that his body had once filled. "What in the name of Erathis was that!" Markelhay IV said, partially exasperated. The man standing next to the cage smiled, his scarred face more apparent up close. "Best catch we've had all year. Just the thing we needed to spice up your first hunt, Master Markelhay."

"Mount up!" The call came down the line, and the horsemen all stood ready, Markelhey IV scrambled to get himself mounted upon his horse. "Ready?" the man by the cage called. There was a chorus of assenting cries. He moved to face the cage, and looked the kobold, the scaly creature, square in its eyes. "Now friend, we know you don't like us, and we don't like you. But if you can get it through your brain, we want to give you a fair shot at getting away. So, we're giving you a good two minutes to get clear from here." The Kobold just growled at him. The Guard lit a rope that when burned the whole way through, would cause the cage to open. Once the rope was burning through, he ran to his horse and mounted quickly.

A Pearl in the Hilt, Part 2

The group of horsemen began their ride to the keep, rounding the hillock that marked the start of the ascent up towards the large walls in the upper tier of the town where the Upper-class, and their servants were resident. Their course wasn't as straight as they'd like to imagine, and their control of their mounts was less than ideal, showing their lack of true combat experience, in the last five decades of peace, before the reclamation of hte outer stretches of the Glimmer. They wore the heraldry of the Lord Warden of Fallcrest, Lord Markelhay, as every guard in the town did. As they reached the gate of the keep, it's large wooden entryway looming above them, one of their number pulled a large horn from his saddlebag, and let loose a blast from its wide mouth.

Sire Markelhay the Third, Lord Warden mounted his charger at a run, his blood pumping in his veins and his armour clanging on his body. This was the feeling he loved, the feeling that he was sure his grandfather had felt as part of the large army that left Lorinan to conquer the wastes from the savages that had roamed there. His horse snorted, and reared its head. His son, Sire Markelhay the fourth, walked out, the armour that ill-fitted him so much clanking about his frame. "Where's my sword, father?" he asked, "You promised me a sword for my eighteenth birthday." His father wheeled about on his horse, his forehead glinting in the mid-morning sun. "That I did. And you promised me that you'd practice with your trainer each and every day until today." His son snorted, "You didn't expect me to actually do it, did you?" As the gates opened, the page rode in, his arms full with the recently acquired sword. He dismounted, before Sire Markelhay the Fourth and knealt, presenting the sword to him. His father eventually responded, his eyebrow raised, "Evidently I did not."

The horsemen passed forward through the town, passing over the river and northwards up towards the plains, where another of their number stood beside a cage, in which a small reptilian creature squatted through clenched teeth at anyone that came close to it. "Ready for the hunt?" The man asked.

The Pearl in the Hilt, Part 1

As he took the sword in his hand, the runes upon his hilt flared into light. He snorted, Of Course, he thought, that's what it was supposed to do. He lowered the blade, and sheathed it in the embossed leather sheath that had been supplied by the leather-workers down at the mill. He had spruced up the sheath with a golden leaf, and a stalk that ran around the sheath. He put the weapon aside, and sighed. It wasn't always like this. Once, heroes, or at least warriors wielded his weapons. Now, it was only the rich nobles that bought his swords, because they wanted a piece of shine when they readied their weapons for a last charge on their hunt.

"Sire Markhelay sends his regards," a man entering through the door said, his talbard bedecked with the signs of the Markhelay household. "He is eager for news on the progress of his sword, Telderhorn." Telderhorn looked up, his aged feet finding their purchase on the floor as he stood. "Sire Markhelay will get his sword, page, when it is ready."


The page looked disheartened. "Would it help if he said that his son would not be seen dead with a sword that was not made by Telderhorn's capable hands?" Telderhorn shook his head. "These things cannot be rushed." The page raised an eyebrow, and leaned to one side. Telderhorn lifted the sword, and handed it over. "If he wants the next one more promptly, perhaps he could ask for a Proper enchantment upon it." The page nodded, "Well," he said, "He says they're too expensive." Telderhorn shrugged. "If he can show me another maker nearby that has a comparable price... I might do him a deal." The page nodded, taking the sword. "I'll let him know."

As soon as the page left, Telderhorn sagged slightly. He looked over to the wall where there was a wide variety of weapons hanging off hooks on the wall. He walked over to them and took an opaque black staff off the wall. As his hand settled into a well worn groove on the staff, a small white pearl revealed itself like clouds clearing from across the face of a moon. As his hand left the slot, as he put it back on the wall, the pearl disappeared back into the black surface of the staff.

A Door in the Wall

The light filtered down from the skylight, the dust of the attic spiraling in its wake, and alighted upon the dark polished wood of the carved and engraved edifice. The attic was filled with relics, the wrinkles of time showing upon the features that encapsulated a time gone by. The week before, such things were open to the air, but now the air in the attic was still, but for a slight breeze that drifted in from the stairs that lay beyond the door that sat, illuminated, in the dead center of the wall. It guarded the past from the future, but couldn't save the shrouded and huddled shapes from the dust that billowed and tumbled around the small space, nor the piercing ray of light that escaped around it's bulk, and through the small skylight.

A chair sat by itself, in a corner, representative of a tie that had long been left to itself, but for penpushers and students who's interest could never compare to that of those who could not see beyond the world of their birth.

A uniform hugs the last body that would ever fill its skin. The dusk holding it close in its hollow emptiness, a belt hanging round a waist, that missed but one leg that it used to stand. Its owner, long gone from thoughts of glory and light, beyond the veil that words imposed upon them. A cold night years earlier, papers sorted told the tale of husbands, brothers and sons returning only in the hopes and thoughts of their relatives.

A flag draped a small chest, its contents taken, one by one. Other packets and cases of glass consuming them, their importance shifted from a personal to a historic. The era becoming them far more than their owners could ever bestow.