Swordmage

TEN

21 Ches, the Year of the Ageless One

Geran decided to head for the farthest barrow first, then work his way back toward Hulburg. After provisioning themselves from the castle kitchens and choosing new mounts from the Shieldsworn stables-a strong black charger for Geran and a big, shaggy Teshan pony for Hamil-they rode again. This time they rode better than eight miles up the valley before climbing into the highlands west of the vale. After a short rest and a cold lunch of dried sausage and sharp cheese, they ventured up into the moorlands proper, and the Winterspear Vale fell away behind them.

During their previous ride into the Highfells with Kara, they’d traveled north and east from Hulburg, heading toward the Galena foothills. This time, they were heading west and north, more or less straight into the open, rolling upland of Thar. These lands were drier and less boggy than the eastern Highfells. Rain sweeping in from the west usually passed over the barren hills on this side of the Winterspear Vale as a wet, windy mist that didn’t really turn to rain until it met the mounting rampart of the Galena Mountains. Barren sheets of rock began to appear underfoot, gray and damp, and the ground cover grew sparse and wiry. Geran pointed out two of the old marker cairns to Hamil as they rode past. The whitewash of the old stones was weathered almost completely away.

Three miles from the place where they’d climbed out of the Winterspear Vale, they came to a serrated fault of fluted rosy stone that marched across the land like a crooked, titanic step ten feet tall and miles long-a ribbon of changeland dividing the moor. The trail led to a spot where the natural rise and fall of the ground brought them within two feet of the top of the winding pink wall; Geran and Hamil dismounted to lead their horses carefully to the top. The alien stone ran for miles like a sloping causeway or road, but it was not more than fifty feet in width. Carefully they picked their way across and back down to the natural moorland on the far side, their sodden cloaks flapping in the strong, steady wind.

“I find that my determination to follow you all over these dismal moors is rapidly waning, Geran,” Hamil called against the steady, mournful moaning of the wind as they remounted. “At this point I frankly don’t care what the Verunas want with old barrows.”

“It’s not much farther now,” Geran answered him. “Four or five miles, and then you’ll have an opportunity to get out of the rain and the wind.”

“By clambering around in some musty, dank, foul-smelling barrow, likely filled with hungry wights or soul-stealing ghosts.” The halfling shivered. “What in the world do you think to find out here?”

“If I knew, I wouldn’t have to go look.” The swordmage allowed himself a small smile at his friend’s complaining. Hamil was riding at his back and couldn’t see it anyway. Geran twisted around in his saddle to address his companion, but something else caught at his eye. Atop the rose-colored rampart of changeland receding behind them, he glimpsed a dark shape, something large and catlike that bounded quickly over the alien stone before leaping down out of sight.

“Behind us!” he hissed to Hamil, reining in his horse. He pulled his mount around to the right and turned the animal in place to get a better view of their backtrail.

“What?” Hamil quickly glanced over his shoulder and then shifted his eyes back to the front and swept the area around them for close threats before following Geran’s gaze back the way they had come. He reached down and freed his shortbow from the holster by his knee. “What did you see?”

“I don’t know,” Geran said quietly. Nothing but tatters of mist lay behind them now. He stared for a long time, allowing himself to look past the landscape without really focusing on anything, letting the scene sink slowly into his eye-to no avail. Whatever he had glimpsed, it was no longer in sight. But he thought that he could just barely feel something on the moor with them. “It looked like a big cat of some kind, perhaps a red tiger or a rock leopard. But it was black, and I thought it looked longer in the leg than a tiger or leopard.”

“Are they common out in the Highfells?”

“No, they’re not,” Geran admitted. “Red tigers favor woodland, and the leopards hunt in the high valleys and passes. I’ve seen a tiger or two closer to the foothills, but not around here. This isn’t their kind of ground.”

They waited and watched for ten minutes more, anxiously searching the moorland around them. Nothing more appeared. Finally Geran sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Maybe I was seeing things.”

“I don’t believe that for an instant.”

“Nor do I. Well, let’s continue. If something’s caught our scent, we’ll just have to keep our eyes open and hope that it loses interest soon.” Geran shook his head. When he closed his eyes to go to sleep tonight, he knew he’d be thinking about a quick catlike shadow slinking over the moors toward him. If they didn’t find a shelter or hut with a stout door, they might have to think about keeping watch.

They rode on another hour more without catching any more glimpses of dark shadows on their trail, and then they found the marker cairn Geran was looking for. It stood near the edge of another old barrowfield; a score of low, grass-covered mounds stood scattered at odd intervals for hundreds of yards around. The swordmage consulted the notes he’d taken in the harmach’s study, carefully marked the direction from the cairn, and rode slowly toward the north. They passed several old, crumbling mounds and found the one that had been broken into, exactly where Jarad’s notes had reported it.

It was a relatively large and intact mound, round and dome-shaped, with a steep stairwell in its center descending straight down between large plinths of stone. Muddy heaps of damp earth and loose rock surrounded the stairwell, attesting to its recent excavation. The two travelers dismounted and rigged a picket line for their horses, and Geran decided to take down the saddlebags from his mount.

Hamil noticed and frowned. “Are we planning on staying here long?”

“I don’t know what I saw back by the stone wall,” said Geran, “but if something scares off our horses, I’d just as soon have my bedroll and my dinner with me instead of bolting off across Thar.”

“Point taken,” the halfling replied. He followed Geran’s example. The two travelers left their saddlebags by the stairs leading down into the barrow and descended into the gloom, feeling their way down the narrow stone steps.

“Aumie,” Geran said softly, conjuring a simple globe of light to illuminate their way. The steps led them to a small antechamber, muddy and damp after lying open to the weather for months. The air was dank and stale, but the swordmage ducked down under the low arch and pressed forward, one hand on his sword hilt. Since the barrow had been plundered already, it seemed unlikely that any watchful undead waited there-but he didn’t intend to be caught off his guard just in case he was wrong.

The barrow proved to consist of three cramped chambers joined by low doorways. Little in the way of funereal wealth had been buried with its occupant, who rested beneath a heavy sarcophagus of stone under the dusty symbol of Lathander, the ancient deity of the dawn. He was still widely worshiped under the name of Amaunator, though Geran had always preferred Tymora and Tempus-deities of luck and battle who looked favorably on adventurers. He moved closer to the stone crypt and glanced inside. The moldering bones of some long-dead person of importance stared sightlessly back up at him, still wrapped in the rotting remnants of a shroud.

“The tomb-breakers didn’t take much,” Hamil observed. He stood on tiptoe to peer down at the old skeleton. “Look, there’s still a couple of rings on the fingers. Why did they leave those?”

“They’re only copper. No precious stones.”

“Yes, but if you go to all the trouble of excavating the stairs, why leave a penny behind?”

“There could be a curse on the treasure. Or perhaps there’s a ghost or something else equally unpleasant around,” said Geran.

Hamil frowned and quickly backed away a step. Geran decided to examine the floor more closely, just to make certain that he wasn’t missing anything. He tapped on the old flagstones underfoot, listening for any hint of crypts hidden beneath this one, but the ground sounded solid enough. He turned his attention to the walls and determined that there simply wasn’t anything more to the barrow. An old inscription was carved into the wall above the head of the sarcophagus. He moved closer and brushed his hand over the runes.

“Is that Dwarvish?” Hamil asked.

“The runes are Dethek, but it’s not Dwarvish, it’s old Tesharan. They were the first humans to settle the lands north of the Moonsea. They used the dwarf alphabet.” Geran studied the markings carefully. “I think it says, ‘Here sleeps Evanderan, High’-councilor? Prince? I don’t know that word-‘to Thentur, Keeper of the’… something… ‘servant of Lathander.’ Then there’s some sort of prayer to Lathander. That seems to be all.”

“Well, Evanderan is a cryptic fellow, and I don’t feel that he has been very forthcoming with his secrets,” Hamil said. “What else are we looking for, Geran?”

The swordmage shook his head. “I don’t think there’s much more to see here. Let’s head for the next barrow. It should be about three or four miles to the northeast.”

They climbed back up from Evanderan’s barrow, found that nothing had troubled their mounts while they were inside the mound, and saddled up again. They rode to the next barrow and found it more or less similar to the first-a round, dome-shaped structure with a steep stairwell cut into the roof. This one stood alone by a small hillock, with no other mounds nearby. Again, they carefully picketed their mounts and descended into the mound.

After an hour of exploring the second barrow’s cramped passageways and musty chambers, they found nothing more than they had in Evanderan’s tomb. As before, Geran and Hamil carefully searched for secret passages, but the barrow was unremarkable. The Highfells were littered with examples of similarly plain burial mounds.

Geran climbed back out. The rain had finally let up, but the sky was still sullen and overcast. Two very ordinary barrows, neither with any appreciable wealth for the would-be thieves to remove… and neither haunted by fearsome specters or hateful wights. He supposed that most of the unopened barrows on the Highfells were likewise uninteresting; legends of barrow gold and barrow wights were probably greatly exaggerated. “Maybe we’ll find something more interesting at the next barrow,” he muttered to himself.

When they’d gone a little more than a mile, they passed a small herdsman’s hut in a sheltered declivity. Geran reined in, looking the place over. The afternoon was growing late, and the ominous shadow he had seen earlier still weighed on his mind. “Let’s make camp here,” he suggested to Hamil. “We don’t have much daylight left, and I’d rather have a roof over my head than sleep out in the open tonight.”

The halfling eyed the small structure distastefully. It was made of stones piled crudely in the rough outline of walls, chinked with old mud, and roofed with squares of turf. “If you say so,” he said.

They picketed the horses near the hut, built a fire from a small bundle of wood they’d brought along, and cooked up a simple supper as the sun was setting. Then Geran carefully drew warding sigils and spells around the hut. He’d learned a few such things in Myth Drannor, and while he was not very confident in his efforts, he figured that it certainly couldn’t hurt anything to try. With that attended to, the two travelers secured the hut’s door and stretched out their bedrolls on the bare wooden frames inside the shelter.

The night passed quietly, though Geran found himself starting at every gust of wind or unexplained sound in the darkness. Once or twice the horses outside caught a scent they didn’t like and whickered uncomfortably, but nothing drove them off or tried to eat them. In the morning their mounts were still there, whole and unharmed. Geran cooked some bacon over the coals, and they broke camp. The morning was misty and wet, but the wind was not blowing, and Geran had some hope that the overcast might burn off during the day.

“More barrows today?” Hamil asked, yawning.

“Three, I hope.” Geran stretched, then slowly turned in a circle to study the barrow’s surroundings and get his bearings toward the next tomb-breaking. Then he frowned.

“What? What is it?” Hamil asked.

“The first barrow was on the edge of a whole field of burial mounds,” Geran said. “There must’ve been a couple of dozen within a mile or less of the one that was opened. But there were no other barrows around the second mound. It was alone.”

“Is that unusual?”

“No, I suppose not. There are plenty of barrows in the Highfells that don’t have other barrows nearby. Only… why ride an hour to find another barrow to open, when there were many others close at hand? Why skip those mounds and go on to the second one?”

“They opened that one first and then moved on to the field we visited first?” Hamil guessed. “Perhaps they meant to open more of the barrows in the big field.”

Geran pulled out his pocket-journal and checked the notes he’d taken in his uncle’s study. “Possibly, but the first barrow was found opened before the second one. The tomb-breakers started with one barrow in the big field, then went to a different one several miles away.”

“You know, the Mulmasterites might just be looting random crypts. It could be pure happenstance that they chose either one. For all we know they might be throwing dice to see which mound they open.”

Geran looked down at his friend. “Do you really think so?”

Hamil sighed. “No, not really. Let’s go back to the first barrow and have another look around. There must be a reason why they chose it out of a field of dozens.”

“I admire your conscientious attitude.”

“I’ve decided to charge you for my services. I expect to be paid by the hour; take all the time you like.”

Geran laughed and clapped a hand on Hamil’s shoulder. “In that case, you’ll be disappointed to learn that the third barrow I intend to visit is back in that general direction. Evanderan’s tomb isn’t too far out of our way.” Then the two travelers saddled their mounts again and spent the morning making their way back toward the first barrow they’d seen.

As they approached, Geran paid more attention to the other barrows around Evanderan’s mound. Some were very old, little more than crude heaps of fieldstone and turf that had long since fallen in on themselves. Others were long, rectangular mounds that looked almost as if someone had long ago buried a barbarian chieftain’s hall in its entirety-the barrow where Jarad had been ambushed was one of those. They returned to the Lathanderian’s burial mound and dismounted, gazing around the landscape. The morning was growing late, but the skies showed signs of clearing-a bright wall of yellow sky showed to the west, marking the trailing edge of the rainclouds. “Clear and cold when the clouds pass, I think,” Geran observed.

Hamil didn’t reply immediately. He was studying the closest of the barrows, staring at it intently. “Geran,” he said, “is there any significance to the different styles of the mounds? That one over there is a big rectangular affair, but the next one past it is a tumbled-down heap of fieldstones like a giant cairn. Did different people raise them?”

“I don’t know.” Geran scratched at his chin. It was plain as day now that Hamil had pointed it out, but he’d never really given it a moment’s thought before. “It seems likely. Some are clearly much more weathered than others. I’d guess they might be centuries older. For that matter, they might not be human at all. Some of these might hold dwarves, or orcs, or even ogres.”

“This is the same type of barrow as the second one we saw yesterday. Look, they’re both round, not too large, finished with dressed stone, and they both have entrance stairways near the middle of the mound.” Hamil glanced up at him. “The Veruna men might be looking for barrows of that type.”

Geran nodded. “For that matter, this was the tomb of a Lathanderian, and there was Lathander’s symbol on the sarcophagus in the second barrow, too.” He pulled out the pocket-journal and checked his notes on the remaining barrows, then measured the weather with a quick glance at the sky. “The next barrow on the list is another five miles or so. If we hurry, we can visit it and still have a little time to move on to the next one before dark.”

They headed south, angling indirectly back toward Hulburg across the open, trackless moorland to save time. For the moment, no more mysterious black shadows dogged their trail; perhaps whatever it was had given up the chase, if in fact it had ever been pursuing them. Around noon they halted to make a quick lunch from the provisions they still had on hand. The cloud cover had drifted far to the east, and the wind was beginning to pick up. It might have been wiser to rest their mounts a little more, but curiosity gripped Geran. He wanted to see what the third barrow would tell them.

Another hour of riding brought them to the third barrow on the list. This one sat in a small hollow, not far from a tumble of old stones that once might have been a circle of menhirs. The instant Geran caught sight of the old burial mound, he grimaced and reined in his mount. Beside him, Hamil did the same. They exchanged glances, then slowly rode closer.

It was a circular mound, small, with sides of roughly dressed stone. Someone had excavated the old stairwell in the middle of the mound, leaving heaps of damp black earth and small stones to mark their digging. “Well, well,” Geran murmured. “Perhaps you were right, Hamil.”

“Best go inside and make sure,” the halfling replied. As before, they picketed their mounts then scrambled up on top of the low mound. Geran summoned his light spell again, and they descended into the mound. This one showed more signs of damage; several old doorways had been sealed with fieldstone and mortar by the mound’s builders, and the rubble of freshly broken rock showed that the intruders had knocked them apart with prybars and sledges.

They found the sarcophagus lying open, the bones it contained scattered haphazardly in the burial chamber. The stone lid of the crypt was lying to one side, broken into three pieces… but the sunrise emblem of Lathander was still intact on the largest piece. More of the Dethek runes graced the broken stone; Geran knelt beside it and ran his fingers over the engraved letters. “It says, ‘Sister Kestina Ellin,’” he read aloud. “‘Born Thentur, Year of the Keening Gale; died Thar, Year of Slaughter. She fell in battle against the Burning Fist horde.’”

“That makes three,” Hamil said quietly. “Your Mulmasterites are searching for a specific barrow. It’s the tomb of a Lathanderian. Do you want to check the fourth and fifth to be sure?”

“They’re on the way back home, so no reason not to,” Geran said. “But at this point, I’m inclined to agree, Hamil. I certainly wouldn’t wager against you.” He rocked back on his heels and looked around, frowning in thought. “This tomb seems to have been plundered more aggressively than the last two,” he observed. “There’s a lot more damage here.”

“Perhaps there was treasure worth carrying away. Or maybe we’re looking at the work of two different gangs-one’s more careful, and the other more concerned with speed than with safety.” Hamil peeked into the room’s antechambers and shook his head. “Not much left in here now, that’s for certain.”

“It’s not a good idea to carry off barrow treasure anyway. I wouldn’t want to explain to Kara or my uncle how your pockets came to be stuffed with gold. They might not expect much of me, but I’m sure they expect at least that much.”

“Well, the Veruna men seem inclined to flout the harmach’s law. What about barrow gold they’ve already removed? If we take it from them, we can hardly be expected to put it back!”

“First we’d need to find the men who broke into this barrow. And I remind you, they might not be House Veruna.” Geran nodded at the stairs leading back out of the barrow. “Come on, Hamil. I’d like to see one more barrow to be sure of things.”