A torrential downpour ripped through the trees, tearing leaves and branches down from the high boughs to be whipped about like weapons by the merciless wind. The woman pulled her soaked shawl more tightly over her head and around her shoulder to protect the baby in her arms as she hurried along, but to no avail. He still screamed and cried piteously, his eyes pressed shut against the deluge of water that the woman could not fully block. When she slowed her pace slightly to try to do a better job of protecting the child, the ground shook beneath her feet, renewing the terror in her heart. She took off running again, pressing toward the bridge that the monster behind her could not cross.
The bridge that would bring her and her baby to safety.
Desperation choked up her throat, and weariness pulled at her body. With every footfall, her hair, her clothes, her bundle all seemed heavier- too much to bear. Leaves and branches struck her in the face, scratching and momentarily blinding her with the rainwater they flung into her eyes. Yet the bridge kept its distance from her- its splintering, moss-covered rails and battered boards promising and damning at the same time.
No matter how hard or how fast she ran, it never got any closer- or perhaps it never allowed her to come any closer to it...
Behind her, the monster's footfalls came heavier and heavier; the ground trembled at its weight. The air around the woman grew thicker, hotter, and more rancid by the moment- she gagged and coughed, and the shuddering of her body trying her balance and vision still more.
My baby, she thought desperately, forcing her leaden legs to continue moving forward. I have to-
A sudden, hard swat smacked the woman in the back, sending echoes of pain ringing up and down her spine. She collapsed to her knees on the hard clay, scraping them, then tumbling onto her back. She held her bundle tightly to her as the child within it continued to cry. Immediately, the beast behind her loomed large, roaring its triumph. Lightning zagged across the sky behind it, revealing the shimmering scales, the reptilian eyes, and the rows of sharp, uneven teeth. A long, loose paw, like one that a cat might have, reached forward with claws extended. The beast turned this scaled paw upward, and the space in the center was large enough for the grown woman herself to have nestled down into it. A fine mist arose, both from the heat of the paw as well as the splashing of the rain as the drops struck.
The terrified woman scrambled backward as best she could, slipping in the mud and scratching her one free hand on the half-buried stones. The creature made wondering noises at first, as if it did not understand, but soon began growling its discontent.
No! You can't have him! You can't have-
"My baby!" Hanna cried, sitting up straight in bed. Her body was drenched in sweat, as though she really had run hard through rain. Next to her, however, her husband simply grunted turned over in his sleep, not to be awakened by anything less than a full, blaring call to arms. Tears stung Hanna's already puffy eyes at once.
Again.
She turned sideways, so that her legs hung momentarily over the bed, then braced herself on the headboard to push herself to her feet. The stone floor beneath her, while beautiful, was also cold, and the chill sunk into her bones immediately. She thought of ringing for help, then decided against it. Frustratingly enough, though her feet were cold, her body was still blazing hot, as though she were sitting right next to a roaring furnace. As she shuffled out of the master bedroom and turned down the short hallway toward her drawing room, her thoughts briefly touched on her eldest son. Many had been the times she had passed his master's workshop from a respectable distance, gazing over toward the smoke that plumed from the hard-working forge, and knowing that at the heart of it was her physically dominating, boisterous boy.
The hand-woven throw rugs that covered Hanna's drawing room comforted her feet as soon as they were touched. And of course, to touch them was to think of the hands that made them- none other than those belonging to her dutiful Ielena. So silent and still of spirit that other children used to make fun of her by calling her a golem or a grotesque, Ielena was now a wife and mother herself. Hanna often cherished the imagination that her eldest daughter's boys leaped about and tugged at their mother's skirts, bringing the serious, firm-lipped artisan to do something that she did not often do in her youth- laugh.
Hanna gave a weary chuckle of her own, in spite of her heavy heart, as she passed the various exotic trinkets mounted on her walls. The symbols of Lathander had been from Iona, who had truly gone into ministry, much against his father's wishes. Each culture's adaptation of the god's symbol was just slightly different, and the letters that had come with them had recorded the struggles that had arisen while he attempted to bring the native peoples closer to what was popularly considered true faith. The assortment of weapons, drinkware, and foreign talismans- mostly hung next to the sacred symbols from their various native lands- had been Aaron's doing. Taricia's vicious nagging had been the incitement of every single one, Hanna knew; if it hadn't been for her incessant "reminders," Aaron would have completely forgotten to send any word that his mother could now call his former commander his betrothed.
The jeweler probably has to apply to her for payment installments, she thought wistfully as she passed her hand over a richly carved and decorated Shadovar pact knife. She'd decried the gift as wicked and shameful, and reminded all her neighbors that Clan Raibeart had not a single strain of demonic ancestry in all its hundreds of generations, but then stole it away from her husband's armory to treat it like the treasure that it truly was. She had written directly to Taricia, instructing her to prevent Aaron from sending anything else to his father, without telling her why.
He's very like his father, she thought with a twinge of concern. Too like him. But maybe... maybe she won't... make my... mistakes. Her hand rested on the flat of the knife for a while, as though it would give her the strength to do what she'd come into her drawing room to do. And Adassa gone- completely gone, either to her grave or to some wicked, brutish pagan's slave pen- why have the gods done this to me? Why has Lathander done this to me?
Of course, there would be no answer. There hadn't been one for years. Or at least no answer clearer than that same heart wrenching dream- played over and over, darker and darker, closer and closer to total loss with each time it appeared.
With this bitter determination strengthening her resolve, she made her way toward her desk. The candle there, only a few hours cold, was eager enough to catch the spark of the strange touchstone that Aaron- and by extension, Taricia- had sent home from the Pirate Isles. It always gave Hanna the sensation that she was using some form of simple witchcraft, which pleased her as much as it concerned her. When others were in her drawing room with her, she used the normal sparking stones instead, as any upstanding citizen of Cormyr would do.
In the metal wax catcher beneath her candle, she caught the reflection of her own sneer.
Upstanding citizen of Cormyr, indeed.
She opened the drawer before her and took a fresh sheet of writing paper, then brought the inkwell close to her hand. She allowed a deep, cleansing breath to fill her lungs, then released it, willing her thoughts into organization. How to make sense of what, by its nature, was beyond sensibility? How to explain the danger that rankled ominously just beyond the veil of reality?
Ten days later, Iordyn sat with the letter- which had, by this time, had been unfolded and re-folded so many times that the edges of the folds had begun to pull away from each other due to wear- in his brother's front room. Across from him, on the other side of the fireplace, Valeria napped. Only moments before, Susanna had gotten up to attend to a messenger that had arrived with that day's correspondence, but Salone remained, quietly peeling the leaves from the same ear of corn that had been given her nearly an entire half hour before.
When he'd finished reading it, Iordyn folded the letter back up, leaned on the arm of the chair and rested his chin on the back of his hand. There was an additional crease in the center, where Iordyn had bent it in on itself in order to get it to fit in his light cloak's inner pocket. Salone very meekly looked up from the corn, catching the thoughtful look on her uncle's face.
"Don't go," she said quietly.
The soft, strangely mournful sound of her voice was so surreal that at first, Iordyn wasn't sure that it was truly hers. The other noises of the house seemed to fade just slightly, as though they were coming from farther away than before, and for a moment, the fire flickered, as though a strong breeze had challenged it. After a few moments of silence, two realizations struck Iordyn- first, the fact that Salone had never before spoken to him without being spoken to first, and the fact that she was speaking of a subject that he had not yet shared with anyone in the house.
"Go where?" he finally managed, taking care to make his voice cheerier than he felt. Beneath his cloak and tunic, his heart began to thump a bit faster, as though he were on the cusp of an argument or an attack.
"To Arabel," Salone answered right away, as though she were surprised that Iordyn had to even ask. "Don't. Stay here." As soon as her words hit the air, they seemed to cool and thicken the air around them. The various sounds of the house that intruded upon Iordyn's focus- snatches of Saul and Sylvester's argument, rhythmic metal clangs from Stephen's forge, the thrumming of Sarai's lyre- all died into silence, leaving the room as serene as a temple. Iordyn's eyes stayed upon Salone, stuck fast as surely as if he intended to shortly put an arrow into her.
"Tell me the name of the power on whose behalf you speak," he commanded, the words far heavier than was either intended or even meant. "Please."
"The trees," Salone said crisply, her tone more firm and confident than Iordyn felt he'd ever heard from her. "The elder trees in Arabel don't want you there. They told our tree here- I overheard because they had to repeat themselves. Saplings don't like to listen to anyone, and the one you shot is still angry at you."
Iordyn thought over the teachings of his order for a few moments, trying to determine whether whatever power had overcome his niece were benevolent, or some sort of trickster spirit. "Have the elder trees spoken of Sylvanus or Lathander, or of Meiliki and Chauntea?"
"No," Salone said, shaking her head as she looked back down at the corn. Very slowly, she began pealing the leaves off one by one, as though she didn't want to hurt the vegetable inside the husk. "This was about you. Don't go, no matter what."
"Were the elder trees in Arabel angry with me, too?" Iordyn asked, wanting to get some sort of understanding of the girl's message. In the archway between the front door to the house and the front room, Susanna appeared, but laid her fingers on her lips to indicate that she didn't want to interrupt whatever communication was going on.
"No," came Salone's simple reply.
"Sometimes I shot arrows into them," Iordyn answered thoughtfully. "Not usually on purpose, but I did it, all the same."
Salone stopped peeling and looked up at her uncle again. "Elder trees are different to saplings."
"Eldath?" Iordyn guessed again.
"I'm Salone, Uncle Iordi," the girl replied, looking down to the corn again.
"I meant... of course, Salone," Iordyn relented immediately, getting up. "When you go outside, though... will you take me with you? I'd... like to apologize to that sapling. I didn't realize I hurt it."
Salone nodded without saying anything. Between them, Iordyn suddenly noticed, the fireplace had gone as cold as though it had never been lit that day. Sound began to return to the front room, although apparently, at least Sylvester and Saul had managed to put an end to their argument somehow. Susanna walked all the way into the room and sat down in the chair across from the fireplace, between the still-napping Valeria and her daughter.
"My dove, please take this letter down to your father," she asked, handing the ink-smudged paper over to the girl. Without a word, the child traded the corn for the letter, and moved toward the stairs that would take her down to her father's workshop. Once she was out of earshot, Susanna spoke again. "Iona- or rather, Father Iona the Firehammer- came to port two days ago, and immediately made good on his epithet. I hadn't the heart to take that down to your brother; just holding it made my hands hurt. Like I'd taken hold of a live coal- I'm sure I'll miss the hearth fire shortly, but for now, just sitting in the cool and holding this corn feels good."
"Wow, 'the Firehammer', and taken full rites," Iordyn murmured, putting his own letter back into the pocket of his cloak. "I suppose letter's from him?"
"No, it's from your father, actually," Susanna chuckled, the sound more full of wistfulness than mirth. "According to him, Iona walked into the center of Morningmist Hall, called your mother the grand dame of hypocrisy, and said that her multitude of useless prayers have caused Lathander's ears to bleed. He further said that if she, your father, and all who failed to look upon the truth of their god and his teachings did not repent of their empty, idle, pretentious religiosity at once, that the temple would fall in on itself to wipe out all trace of their abomination. Just about everyone there was brought out for mental sanctity and fortitude testing, because there arose such cries and wails from the place that a few strolling guards thought the congregants were being physically attacked. No one could find Iona to take him, though. Since- despite whatever else your he may think of you- your father knows you to have trained in the name of Lathander, he has warned you to get yourself back up to safety in Arabel, lest Iona find you here and kill you."
"That's... rather extreme," Iordyn frowned. "Did our father have any warning for you?"
"No," Susanna said, shaking her head wearily. "He believes the whole house fully converted to Mother Chauntea, and blames me for it every time he sets quill to parchment. But what bothers me is that Tyr is an ally of Lathander- always has been, in every iteration of both their existences. It makes no sense that Iona should suddenly turn savage against true adherents- did your parents simply not think of that?"
"I wonder what the results of their mental fortitude testing will be," Iordyn mused, nearly to himself.
"And so do I," Susanna sighed, leaning slowly and carefully to one side in order to toss the half-shucked corn into the basket with her own fully shucked ears. "By year's end, they could be calling your brother to go and do something about the Marsember estate- what would I do with two such elders trying to get along with my children? I can hardly imagine the rules Stevie and I would have to invent and enforce for everyone- my head aches just in the consideration of the possibilities."
Iordyn pursed his lips in thought, deciding to save news of Salone's message for a calmer time.
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