[Terquem]

Chapter 1 part 7

Alan crossed the floor to the large door and using his right foot he lifted the latch out of its hole and then with his left hand he pulled the ring set in the door.

The door swung open again with a groaning sound and five people came rushing in out of the rain. The first three were huddled under a blanket held over their heads while the last two came in a little slower and were uncovered and seemed unconcerned with the rain.

“Thank you,” a woman in the group, one of the first three, said. She was traveling with two small people. They were eshians, Lisa knew, but Alan mistook them for children. Alan recognized the other two as Drasbians, one an elf and the other a young, female lizard-folk of the kind with a human like torso and arms with a long reptilian lower body ending in a blunt tail.

Lisa moved toward the woman and helped her shake the water off the blanket she had been holding over her head.

“Hello, and you’re welcome. I am Lisa Wainwright,” Lisa said, “and this is my traveling companion Alan Roberts. We also sought the protection of this tower from the storm. I’m sorry we bolted the door. We were just getting ready to build a fire and settle in for the night and thought it was a good idea.”

“Lisa Wainwright?” The woman asked as she folded the blanket over her arm.

“Yes, I am. Do you know the name?”

“Lisa Wainwright, of Callinwitch. The Aben Moor sorceress,” she said. “Of course, I know the name. We heard in the village you were in the area. Isn’t that right, Fairlyn?”

The Drasbian elf came forward. The elf was dressed in armor, leather reinforced with small iron rings. The armor covered their body from just below the neck to just above the knee and was patterned after a garment Lisa and Alan both knew as a Garmaleen, a type of man’s dress normally worn with high boots and thick socks. The arms were unprotected by the armor, and the elf carried a long pole wrapped in a heavy cloth in one hand. A quiver of arrows hung on a belt on the elf’s side and across its back was strapped a two-handed sword.

“That’s correct,” the elf said. “Princess Tewelden and I came across a merchant caravan to the east just over a week ago and they told us that you were traveling across the moors, alone?” There was a tone of suspicion in the elf’s words. “We are traveling to see the Duchess of Ilzonze and came to the village of Dulvor only two days ago. I agreed to let Lydia show us the way to this tower when I heard of the problems they were dealing with. It seemed we had different reasons for going to the Duchess, but each reason carries a great weight.”

“Why would Drasbians want to deal with the Duchess of Ilzonze, and the country of Vologna? We usually keep to ourselves,” Alan said moving to stand between the elf and Lisa.

The elf tensed and the lizard-folk girl moved behind the elf.

Lydia raised her arms and said to Alan, “Fairlyn is Maowar, of the highland elves who are bound to the treaty of ten kingdoms. Princess Tewelden is gymnagaopthian, or you can call her a gymnaga. They’re not to be addressed with vulgar slang. I am a citizen of Vologna and I welcome our friends from the northeast. Your kind may have adopted the name Drasbia for you council of elders and the country our kind took from them, but they were people of Ibalnd before there was a Drasbia, and you can call them the first people, or Ibalnders, but do not call them Drasbians.”

Alan bowed deeply and said, “My apologies.”

The lizard-folk girl slid out from behind the elf. She was a lovely young girl, not unusual for her kind. She had the body, head, arms, and hands of a small human girl, or eshian, but where her hips would begin there was a reptilian body that became a tail. She had straight, fine dark hair, worn long and lose and decorated with glass stones and wooden beads painted in bright colors. Her eyes were blue. She wore a long blue dress that was slit where her lower body began. She stood on her tail and came to about five feet in height. She wore bracelets and jewelry on her wrists, her fingers, ears, and dangling from silver rings on a narrow leather belt around her waist. A bright yellow jewel was fastened into a wrap of silver wires that coiled around her head and rested just above and between her large eyes.

“We accept your apology, sir. You are a north-man, a proper Drasbian, I suppose,” she said. “My name is Shirrellain Tewelden of the house of Lady Shirrellain Amuresse, Queen of the gymnagaopthian kingdom of Sur Wida on the Tides of Evenwater. Can we rest here with you?”

“Yes, yes please, Come in and rest,” Alan said moving back away from the elf and gesturing toward the fireplace. He bent and began picking up the firewood he had dropped.

“I am the Aben Moor sorceress,” Lisa said making a space for the rest of them to come well into the tower and then went to close the door continuing, “and I was traveling alone over a week ago. I met Alan on the road, and we found each other to be good company. He was on his way to Callinwitch and I said I would be returning there soon, but I have a few more villages to visit, Dulvor was next on my list. You are Lydia Commonhearth. The tower has told me you’ve met.”

“Lydia Manakee. I was Lydia Commonhearth but my husband was killed recently and now I go by the name my mother gave me when I was born. This is my daughter,” she pointed at one of the eshians, a frail young halfling woman of about thirty years in age with curly, light-brown hair, “Gwenna Sorran and her husband, my son-in-law, Cooper Sorran.”

The halflings smiled and each raised their left hand with the palm turned toward Lisa and the fingers spread apart. “Hi and hello, traveler,” they said in unison.

“Your daughter and her husband are eshians?” Lisa asked. “I don’t mean to offend you, but I hope you aren’t trying to pass these two off as your children. We have no reason to begin a relationship with misleading information, do we?”

Once again there was tension in the room. Alan had gathered all the firewood he had dropped and moved beside Lisa. The elf and the gymnaga moved in closer to Lydia.

Lydia gathered her children close under her arms and said, “Let me explain. If you are the Aben Moor sorceress, and I’m not sure I want to believe you, either, then you will want to know what we must tell you. There have been dark and evil things growing in the north, beyond the moor, and to the east, in the free lands of Ibalnd, and all of it is beyond simple folk like me. I came here only to get out of the rain. I think now I have no other thing to do but to ask for your help. We need your help.”

End of Chapter 1