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Dear Diary, It was easier than I expected to sneak Amber and Ariel out of school. We just went right past the Cephalous and used the Blue Lodge gate that is part of the foundation of the school. I'll bet whoever built the school did not expect a blue lodge assassin to ever sneak in or out. We were careful, though. After that surprise Wolfie and I had, I can tell you we were not going to take any chances. Just a quick view from the mountain, go to the center of town -- during the day -- look around at the market and then back. Maybe a visit the ocean if a caravan was going that way. But careful would me our middle names. "Parade" is more like it, is what Wolfie told me when I told him the line about "careful" -- he seemed to think that with Tindalasse, Parakile, Amber, Ari, and the two of us, and all of our familiars, etc., that it was going to be a menagerie or a parade more than a careful, quiet visit. He didn't quite sigh, but I could sense that he was holding it in. The trip to the mountains was fast. We went from the school to Amber's house. From Amber's house to the gate in the mountains where I left a mark. We went through the gate between the worlds, with Wolfie in the front, this time focused on his ability to detect traps and ambushes and on the alert for strange smells. Then we spread out on the hillside and looked around. It was beautiful, though night was falling, so we set up a camp and took turns with the fu dog, being on guard. It never sleeps -- I didn't' know that -- but it likes company when it is guarding. Come morning I focused on the gate in the middle of town and we were there. Amber thinks that with a little tuning we can reach it straight from her school. That would be nice. Sure would save some travel and the less we travel around, the less likely we are to get caught. So, we were walking around the market, eating fresh pies, when one of the weaver's spotted us. The weaver's wear linen and cotton, woven in a seersucker sort of cloth, in many colors, usually in pinstripe sorts of patterns. They all look vaguely spider like, thin and moving kind of sideways. Some of them have faceted eyes. There is a group of about twenty master weavers in the town, with apprentices, spouses, children and everything else they total about two hundred. I couldn't imagine what they would want with us, and I wasn't sure I wanted to find out, especially as the weaver who approached had mandibles and a twisted face. I forgot to mention the lesson we had about elves. Guess since Tindalasse is around, I might as well. "Class, what do elves, seelie, sidhe and sharassee all have in common?" "No, not the letter "s," gods save me from wise acres in my class." "What they have in common is that they are native to the dream realms." "Regardless of what you have been taught, reality comes from the shadow matrix and consists of the mortal, dream and spirit realms. The final state lies beyond that." "Elves, as some call them, and the related beings, are all native to the dream realm. Dream realm creatures are either enduring, temporary or unfinished. Elves and others who come back from being killed are enduring. Temporary creatures are dissipated by death or other trauma and have temporary spans, even so. Unfinished creatures are both the chaos tainted ones or chaos spawn and other dreams which never are completed. Strong emotion can spin them off, and most ghosts are actually unfinished dream creatures, not spirit creatures." "Humans who have died may linger with their dream selves in the dream realms, but most pass on quickly. But while humans visit the dream realms in their sleep, elves and others are native there." "Are all magical creatures dream beings?" "Of course not. But when magic recedes from a world, it usually remains in the dream realm. So, in this world, for example, the most common magical creatures are all dreams of one sort or another, or at least live there." "How can you tell the difference? Well, a mortal creature, such as a manticore or a scorpionman, dies permanently if killed, even though they seem quite real. They rarely leave a dream residue, even if sentient." "Also, dream creatures change and mature much slower than mortals. There are other issues as well, but those are beyond the scope of this class, but mortals tend to touch power differently, and seem to find more of it in their short spans." "Well, I'm sure I've disagreed with what many of you have been taught. No, you don't have to believe me, yes, it will be on the final and you have to answer it my way. No, you don't have to remember it after this class is over, though knowing this will help you understand the shape of reality better. Yes, I am an adept, and yes, you should know that is considered a very impertinent question, though no one engages a forfeit for questions asked in this class. No, I won't answer questions about the mysteries. Class dismissed."

That school Ari and Amber attend is really something. It is in what I was told is a "Tudor" style -- rockwork and timbers, with timber and lathe upper structure, three to four stories, with older, French provincial style towers as a part of the building. It is very, very big and rambling, as it includes stables, a huge kitchen area, several dining halls, offices and suites for each of the teachers, and about fifteen hundred students, each with their own suite or a shared suite (Amber and Ari share a suite there, Jean and Marie share a connected suite). Jean and Marie, the "twins" are different. They used to be cousins, in their twenties. As the result of the magic that affected them, they are now twins, just turned sixteen this Christmas (2002). But they are still the two who sought each other all over Europe and he is still the warrior who led the Seelie host into battle. Imagine a thirty year old man in the body of a mature fifteen year-old and you have Jean. Marie is contemplative, but deep. I'm not sure I can explain her well, but I like them both. They were very Norman French, though the magic that twisted their past has made them almost Jamaican in appearance. It is a nice look, "blended" is what someone called it, but their looks have changed as much as everything else. It was strong magic, some parts of it slower to affect them than other parts of it. As an aside, Wolfie liked the gauntlets I got him. I'd found them earlier, and just knew that they would be perfect for him. Oh, I sent Ducks a set of scriptures I bought at a place called Deseret Books, they had extra books and I figured dealing with "the" Hetari, he would need as many scriptures as he could get. Anyway, the school is huge, I think it was built for more than three thousand students. It has everything, chemistry labs, several different libraries, indoor riding arenas for the horses, a great climbing wall, and about two thirds of it is closed off and not in use. They have a teacher for about every nine students, plus some staff and some others. I'd say about two hundred teachers and about ninety staff people (not counting the servants -- including servants some students brought with them). They've also got some Swiss Guards. They look really, really cute in those outfits. I've never seen halberdiers before, and didn't expect they would look so darn cute. Ari said not to tell them they looked cute, so I won't. But that didn't stop me from looking at them. The guards don't go into the closed areas much. While there are about sixty of them, they tend to watch the gates, drill with some of the students, cover the grounds and stand at attention in the halls. The Kephalous are in the back of the school, where it sets into the mountainside. I think they originally had some of the school built into shallow caves that were part of older buildings. Anyway, there is the gate, the Cephalous anchor, and a star path that all are rooted in an older part of the building that doesn't seem to have much except for old dust in it. The central heating doesn't reach that far and I've never seen the guards patrol in the back. As tough as the Cephalous are, I don't think that anything or anyone else really would go back there, except to renew them, and it is obvious they don't need it. As long as something of the blue lodge remains, they will be strong. Guess I need to watch my health to make sure the school stays safe. It is a pretty neat place, and their winter ball is an exchange with another school that is very similar. Both schools get together and they can invite friends, which is how I got invited. The school takes kids from middle school to finishing school age -- it is a prep school as well as a boarding high school sort of place. I'm not sure exactly what they meant, but they were very proud to let me know that their students go to ivy schools. I asked about little bush schools, but they didn't understand me and I decided I was missing something.

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Ariel was excited to see the weavers, but they ran straight to me. You can guess what came next.

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The weaver didn't want to talk around everyone, so I let her pull me aside, with Wolfie in case something happened. Since she just looked at him and acted like he was a big dog, there wasn't any problem. I think he likes walking around, letting people think he is a wolf, though he isn't fond of being told they think he is a large dog. The weavers had heard how I had saved the one child for that poor lady. They wanted more help from me now. The one I talked to was almost incoherent, though trying to talk around those mandibles didn't help. Turns out that they travel as a group when going for dyes, often as many as half of them -- children, parents, guards and all -- especially when they go into the mountains to get the roots that make the brilliant saffron and other colors they can't get from shells. (And yes, they make colors from shells, you can smell the factory where they process the shells when the wind is wrong -- I'll bet that is another reason they are here instead of somewhere else -- it is hard to find a place to hide the stinks dyes can make -- at least it is out of town and the smell repels the concealed ones like nothing else). When they were in the mountains, something had attacked them, killed several guards, but stolen probably thirty children. They hoped that in the confusion and rush that it had stolen that many and that none had been lost or eaten or, then she broke down sobbing again. They had the start of the trail, but no way to pursue. She was trying to find help, but not having much success. Who could help if it was beyond them?. She knew I wouldn't be enough to do the job myself, but perhaps if I could gather other of the druids to help? Which was about the time I broke it to her that I was not an animal master, but that we would help. You can bet I wasn't going to let a mother lose her children while I could do something about it. She didn't hear me try to explain, only the fact that we would help registered. Amber and Ariel, of course agreed the moment I told them, and Parakyle began to spin his axe, with a grin that said all it needed to say. Tindalasse thought we were crazy, but he was going to go wherever Amber was going. Wolfe just winked at me. Sometimes it is hard to tell if the spirit of chivalry or the spirit of ironic cynicism rules that boy. Guess both do, at the same time. The big thing was that the weavers had a gate in the mountains, a secret.-- but of course since she knew I came from the mountains she figured it was something I probably knew about -- she had seen us come in through the gate in town, with the smell of the trees on us. I didn't think now was the time to tell her about the marks, and a link to that gate would be useful, if it wasn't a trap. We drew power to ourselves, bringing our familiars out and calling every aid we had available to us. We did it on the run, as she led us to the gate in the center of town and from there down the paths to the one in the mountains that they used. Everyone noted it and we all had the waypoint firmly in mind before we went on. As we cleared the gate, ready for anything, she showed us where the attack had taken place and Parakile and Wolfie were on the trail. Much to my surprise, she didn't turn back then. That weaver was going with us, though I'm not sure what use she would be. Probably just one more person to keep out of trouble.

The escarpment was beautiful. The rock face was sheer, but stark and the view went on forever over the plain. I didn't get much chance to look, but I plan to come back sometime when there isn't an emergency and lives hanging on how fast I'm going, so I can look out over the plain and savor the view.
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The pursuit was fast. First, we followed whatever it was through the forest. Some sort of chaos creature, that was obvious from the spoor it left and the things that the wake caused to manifest. I was amazed at some of the things that arose in the spoor's wake; spindle trolls, giant insects, centipedes, scorpions, mantacores and green men (think of an unwrapped mummy, inhuman, made of something like wood, in green and brown). It was if it had left a crack in the world through which chaos infected things seeped. Sure was nasty, whatever it was, though an event like this will call evil out of hiding. We probably emptied the forest of just about everything malign that was in it. After the forest, we climbed the escarpment. There was a trail up it and luckily whatever we were following used that trail. As disused and ill-repaired as teh trail was it was a lot better than chasing something that had flown up the cliffs. There were cliff toads (ick, Ari had told me about them, but ick, did I have to stumble into a nest of them myself? Luckily we hit only one group of them), cliff spiders (they all obeyed the weaver with us, so finding them was a benefit, though they sure made me nervous) a few more mantacores (the spiders swarmed all over them) and a few rock trolls. You could have almost trailed whatever it was just by the wake of chaos creatures and disruption it left in its trail. At the top of the escarpment, nine thousand feet up where the trail broke through, it was a desert. It was rugged. The fading light caught the sand and cast it all in violet undertones. We had to stop to rest for a short time, and then we were on the trail again. That darn desert had more of the concealed ones. Is every desert place in this land going to have some of those?  I hope not, or I'm keeping away from deserts. Come to think of it, I prefer to stay away from deserts anyway. There were also deformed and chaos tainted molten centipedes -- melted brass golems of some sort. More spiders and some trap spiders (hiding under the sand, waiting for someone to step on their traps). The weaver was able to control both types of spiders, and the giant desert scorpions we met were swarmed by the spiders the weaver had bound. She was proving out to be useful, though quiet and kind of spooky. Speak about spooky and nasty, this desert also had devil whirlwinds and succubae. I don't like either kind of unclean spirit, but they fell quickly to our spells and curses. We almost caught whatever it was, there on the plain. It had taken time to rest as well, longer than we had, but it had a lead on us and reached the fortress before we did. I guess you could call the broken ruin a fortress. It didn't spot us, whatever it was, and went in the front. We went to the side (we had been trailing it, but not directly behind) and hoped it had not seen us. I'll say this about broken fortresses, you can usually just walk through the walls, if you pick the right place. We did, though almost any place you wanted to enter the lower levels would have been the right place. No wonder it hadn't fixed the walls. The lower levels were overrun with undead creatures and wraiths. We fought our way up in silence as the undead died again. Then we broke through to the levels that were being used, and the defenders came to meet us. From the taint on what we met, it was obvious that the creature we were chasing was a necromancer.  Strange, he started by sending mantacores and golems at us. Parakyle assures me that Necromancers often summon golems, though I'd thought those were more the province of other sorts of mages. But mantacores, even if they were scorpion/man combinations rather than chaos tainted lions? Then it hit me, he must be breeding them by merging scorpion-lions like we had been told roamed the desert (we just hadn't seen any, thank-you very much), and needed the children for making more of his manticores quickly by transmogrification. He was holding himself in reserve, working more magic in case his golems failed. From the number of golems, he must have had a factory going, with all the rejects being tossed out on the plains -- which explained the things we had met out there, at least some of them. Then it was just us and his chaos minions and captains, who had been leading from behind -- the golems had failed him. The children were bolted behind them. At least they were out of the fight. We were in a great courtyard on top of the fortress. He was there, with room to try to bring all his magic to bear, rather than fleeing to his keep where the children were. When I saw what he had summoned, a lot made sense. He had a giant glowing centipede golem -- a lot bigger than the ones we fought before, of molten brass. The other ones we had met were obviously ones that hadn't worked out. Rather than dismissing them, he had let them loose in the desert. He also had the lesser master of whirlwinds summoned and an hetari succubae, it was their by-blow that we had fought in the desert. The filth, he was bringing demons into the world and letting them loose, albeit minor ones. Otherwise, in his final reserve he had two barbarian captains, a couple-three green men he had summoned, his revives and himself. He was riding a great undead manticore and surrounded by the things he had revived, including several spiders. He hurled curses at us and I sent some back, while Amber neutralized his. We cast spells and summoned what help we could, and vines rose up from beneath, where they had grown strong on the dead below. His inner courtyard was awash with magic, walls of fire, globes of ice, spirits summoned and magical creatures of all descriptions. I think if we not used all the magic we had, or if we had not drawn weapons to meet the charge, we would have been overcome. Our magic weakened them just enough that we could take them in combat, not to mention the weaver was able to take control of even undead spiders -- which pretty much took the green men out of the fight. Wolfie took the necromancer on one-on-one at the end, mindblasting him into a stun-lock and then clawing into him in a fury, while the battle raged. When the necromancer fell, the rest were broken and those things bound by his magic faded or fell. The barbarians saw all was lost and surrendered. We took their parole, and the weaver rushed to the children. Wolfie pulled me aside. "These aren't the same mantacores that we faced before" Wolfie said. Somewhere, still out there, was the real manticore master. This one was just someone trying to emulate him. We warded ourselves and camped that night. I wouldn't risk the children calling myself with them to the marks. Come morning we ate and then began the trip back with thirty children to watch out for. Unbelievably, not one had been lost. That necromancer valued them almost as much as we did, though for different reasons, and we got to him before he could bespell them or taint them with chaos. The return trip went faster going back and down than it did going up. The weaver had herbs that repelled the concealed ones (not a lot, so she had saved them for when she had the children with her) and there was little else in the desert except for a few more spiders. We followed our own path down the cliffs of the escarpment and little had come to infringe on it for the short time we were gone. The weaver released the spiders when we were at the bottom and the forest was calm once the chaos trail was gone. That twisting had pretty much exhausted everything vile, which made things much more pleasant when we came back. You could feel it in the air and I could tell Ceres was pleased. We met a couple scorpions and a few giant insects, but it was nothing like the trail out. Then we were at the gate and in moments the children were safely home. It was great to see the children with their parents, even the ones with eight legs. I felt bad for the three guards who had died, but the two captive barbarians we had took employment to replace them and to earn their ransom. That was fine with me. They were rough, but not evil, just sell swords, or I would never had taken their parole. We were ready to get back, that was more than enough adventure for what was supposed to be a quiet visit, when the weaver who had been with us came forward. "We will weave or embroider for each of you, even him" (pointing at Wolfie, with a wink). "We have not silk to spare, but if you bring the silk, we will weave." Now that was something. I'd always wanted to have an embroidered spirit shirt like I had seen on the queen's champion in Thera. Those with the skill to embroider an existing shirt are rare, though the moon spider, sister of Ceres, has blessed the hands of some. That was a princely gift (or would have been, if they had offered us the sea silk necessary for the weaving), and one we might yet take advantage of. Time to get back to school. Guess I'd visit the great market in Vancouver, the one Ari talks about, and talk with Ducks about where to find the right kind of silk ... Until then, I've got a ball to go to with Wolfie. Oh, I forgot to mention, we all broke it to Wolfie that he was going to the ball with us just as we got back through the gate. Parakyle will take Ari and Tindalasse will take Amber. Now that Tinda isn't afraid of Amber, he will make a great escort. Amber told me she would rather have him at the ball than one of the guys she goes to school with. She feels too young to date, but this way she gets to go to the ball, keep some distance, but not offend anyone. Ari has the best of it though, since Parakyle knows how to dance. What is a friend for? I bought Wolfie a tux and he did alright. He actually bought me flowers -- I didn't know that was part of a formal dance, and Tinda made sure I had the right kind of dress (in the back of my mind I knew I had my belt, wasn't that all I needed for a dance?). Much to my surprise, I had forgotten that Wolfie was part of a noble family and had been to formal dances before. When he is a wolf it is easy to forget he has court manners. It was really fun, I hadn't been at a dance like that before and we danced together for hours. It was much better than jogging. I almost kissed him when we got back to school, even if he is "just a friend" but Major Dragon was there. She was getting worried. I'm not her responsibility when I'm not on campus, but she worries about me and I'd been gone, without a trace, for too long. Wolfie smiled at me, bowed, and wished me a pleasant rest. Really, the most exciting part of the whole adventure was the dance. I've got to do this again. Wonder if I can get Wolfie to go along?  Wonder when the next dance is (do they just have them once a year? I've got to ask next semester when my seminar starts up again).

[3 credits] Intro to Classical Studies 2 (it is about the Roman era and other classical topics, includes Sardinius and Pyria). MWTh [3 credits] Greek II (more written and spoken "classical" Greek -- I'm learning to like Greek and it seems to like me. I may get a minor in Greek. MWTh [3 credits] Ancient Military formations, tactics and applications. A history class, intended to help us understand history. Wolfie is in this class with me. TF [3 credits] Algebra and Trig. I'm excited. These new style numbers make math so much easier, not to mention calculators. I just bought my first one. Wolfie is in this class too nd we have a tutorial and tutor we share. TWTh [.5 credits] Physical Education: Rock Climbing II (I really like it). MW [.5 credits] Physical Education: Jogging. I'm doing a lot of running with Wolfie, might as well get credit for it and learn how to do it right. Class meets TThSat [2 credits] Special Seminar (I have lots of questions for this semester). TF

The day after the dance, Wolfie dropped by. He had a present for me, a diadem made of crystalline diamond. He wanted to give it to me as a twelfth day present, which for him meant the twelfth day after Christmas. I have never seen anything quite so beautiful. It glows with fire, casting the light, yet is so graceful. It is like diamonds mounted in diamond, though he tells me the diadem itself is a magical crystal that holds the diamonds it is made of. It was one of two treasures he brought with him from the Fir Bolg, one of the other hostages had given it to him before she decided to pass on from despair. It can disappear, but even when invisible it casts light and glamour around the wearer. It is beautiful.

Copyright 2001-2004 Stephen R. Marsh and Heather N. Marsh E-Mail comments and suggestions to: story (at) adrr (dot) com We would love to know how you got here and what you think about the site All Rights Reserved Terms of Use / Story Index

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