[RuneQuest] Brylaneth's Journey Continues: Trouble in the Vale

 

The year that I reached womanhood, many strange things happened. In Stasis week of Fire Season, after the boy Andrinn first disappeared, I woke from sleep in the Red Crow's cave to find him standing on my chest in the form of a shadowcat. I knew the cat was him because the cat's shadow on the cave wall was a red raven.

The Red Crow wanted me to help me with a ritual that he urgently needed to perform. I got out the rattle and drum and began to use them as he'd taught me. He danced a spiral like an air rune in the center of the cave, faster and faster and faster until he was spinning like a child's wooden top. Then a thunderbolt came from the floor to the ceiling with a sound like a tree trunk cracking in the woods. Instead of going away like lightning this bolt became a column of black shadow about the size of a thick spear shaft. 

The Red Crow began to murmur words that I couldn't quite understand but I knew it was a summoning. First a girl whose body I could see through like water came at his call. There was a buzzing in my ears as if I'd been listening to people shouting and singing loudly for a long time. The Red Crow put an offering of herbs at the base of the shadow pole and it disappeared before I could see what kind of herbs. 

Then a second figure arrived, this time a female troll. I remembered how our people had once been friendly with the trolls long ago. The Red Crow gave the troll woman a chicken after he cut off its head and I knew that the chicken was given so the spirit would consume it and not him. The Red Crow seemed agitated. I thought he said a name but I couldn't hear over the buzzing in my ears. Then the Red Crow made a formal farewell to the troll woman spirit and she disappeared. 

He slumped on the floor exhausted and became human again. I slowed the drumbeat gradually to slow his heartbeat. And then I woke up in my family's house in my own bed, not knowing if I still dreamed or if the summoning of the spirits had been just a dream. Perhaps both things were true.

Andrinn wasn't the only child who disappeared that time. Another of the boys that Wurk had been teaching about cattle herding had also gone missing, the boy Keogar son of Tarn. I didn't hear much of this with my duties to the Red Crow, but later I was told that people in the village were starting to blame Wurk because all of the children he'd been with were the ones who disappeared. Then Ashart son of Beroth disappeared too. Beroth didn't hold that against Wurk, he just wanted his son back.

Wurk and Collan and Jaryan had all been searching the area where they'd seen a vision of Andrinn, but they hadn't found anything. Savan the priest and Morganeth both asked the spirits and gods to tell them what happened to the boys, but they didn't learn the same things. Savan said the boys no longer took breath from the King of the Air, and Morganeth said their bones hadn't returned to the earth. Jaryan thought maybe that meant they were in water. 

Wurk was angry when he found out that people were making him scapegoat for the disappearances. Jaryan was angry too. He wanted to fight anyone who looked sidewise at Wurk. 

Jorganeth Bladesong heard what Savan and Morganeth said about the missing boys and believed that they were ghosts. He called his thanes to him to go and fight the ghosts. Morganeth told Wurk and the other young men that they should be sure to let everyone know if they had any more visions of the missing. Gordangar approved that, which helped to cool down some of the anger between Wurk and other people.

On Clayday of that week Wurk and the others decided to go and searched the other side of the valley since they hadn't found anything where they'd been searching. They found some sabercat tracks. That night when the feast of Sartar began they went back and told others about the cats.

At the feast I danced and sang with others. While I was resting between dances, Keogar appeared to me, but it wasn't really Keogar. Black fire burned in his eyes and he looked gaunt and pale. Where he put his hand on my arm it left a bruise in the shape of his hand. He told me to come that night to the place I had last seen Andrinn and to bring no men.

I ran to the Red Crow's cave behind the waterfall to tell him, but his fire was cold and some of his things were gone. I ran back to the feast and found Morganeth to tell her. She healed the bruise on my arm. She could not go because she was blind, but when I told her I didn't know what to do she said she would help find others to go with me, including her daughter Bothildr who had become an initiate of Humakt, Minara the priestess of Chalana Arroy, and Natalina who was an initiate of Ernalda. I still didn't know what to do but at least I wouldn't have to do it alone.

Together the four of us went up a ravine from River Bend. The apparition of Keogar appeared again, then turned into a floating ball of light that led us to a cliff. There was a cave opening in the cliff about three times the height of a man and the ball of light went into it. I used a spell to make a makeshift torch of a dead tree limb. Then I heard noise from the woods and realized it was Wurk. I didn't want them to see us so I climbed up after the will-o-wisp, then I looped a rope over a tree root so the others could climb up after me. Then I entered the cave.

On the left side was a pile of bones with a human skull on top. In the center stood what I first thought was a chaos beast. It looked like a hairless bear, with the skull of a mountain sheep for a head and wings growing out of its shoulderblades. I took out my sling and hurled a stone at it as Natalina came at it with her axe and Minara cast a spell on it. The men came up after us and entered the cave. 

At that point I realized the chaos beast was just some hide and a skull put together to look frightening. I set them on fire with my torch. The pile of bones on the left side rose up and started using another bone as a club, then a second bone pile also rose up from an alcove on the right. I saw a woman crawling on the ceiling of the cave like a spider and she had the face of Drugalla Apple-Cheeks, wife to Borkar the Issaries merchant! The boy Ashart was hanging upside down by his feet from the top of the cave. There was a bowl of blood below him.

Wurk started trying to cut down Ashart while Jaryan went after Drugalla and Collan and Natalina fought with the walking skeletons. When Wurk got Ashart free he used the Stag's Leap to go back to the village. Drugalla moved aside a cover in the floor and dropped into a hole. Jaryan went after her. The skeletons eventually fell down and stopped moving after the others hit them enough. The bones had teeth marks on them. I think Drugalla was drinking the blood of her captives and eating their flesh.

I didn't see Jaryan again until later, when he came back to the feasting with Drugalla's beheaded body in a bag. She had a tunnel to escape. Minara had cast a slow spell on her but she still nearly outran him. He climbed out on another cliffside after her and finally threw her off a ledge. When Wurk first told everone that it was Drugalla who took the missing boys, of course Borkar didn't believe it and was angry. Wurk wanted to learn from the Issaries merchant. I didn't know what would become of that.