Alturiak 4, Cont.
As we approached the man looked at us from out of the shadows, withdrawing the hood of his cloak to reveal a completely hairless head. Even his eyebrows were gone. I began to speak but was cut off as he began chanting a spell! Fin leapt off his horse and tumbled in to the attack. At the same time Toth heard a sound in the woods to our left and charged in to head off our flank.
In the ensuing fight, Fineon displayed his remarkable mastery of the spiked chain. Whenever the man closed, Fin would step back and lash out with his chain, always keeping distance. The hairless man was forced to using up a number of minor spells while constantly falling under the barrage of spells and chain strikes. Soon enough, the man fell, and his dog turned tail and ran. We looked for Toth in the woods, who emerged shortly. “You’ll find a dead dwarfy-thing in there. Weird claws and stiff, poisoned beard. Stinks, too.” Coming from the half-orc, this was some admission.
We searched the bodies for some identifying marks, but found little. Fineon took several minutes in prayer to his god, then stepped up to the corpse. “Step back. I’ll attempt to force his spirit to answer our questions. Any suggestions?”
This was not the first time I had seen Fineon cast clerical magic. His worship of Erevan Ilesere is as deep as mine of Deneir, though less open. Yet I had not known he was capable of such power! To question the spirits themselves! I can only pray to someday be favored so by Deneir.
We discussed briefly, and decided on a few questions. Fineon cast his spell, and the dead man’s mouth slowly began to move, though blood still wheezed through a hole in his chest where Fineon’s chain had broken some ribs. Altogether the sight was rather macabre, as his disjointed jaw struggled to pronounce the questions that Fineon put to him.
“Why did you attack?” Fineon asked.
“Because… you seek… to stop the… the Gul-Drimm from being reborn!” the corpse said, its voice like an echo from a deep well. I started at the words. The Gul-Drimm! So the legends of the ancient anti-heroes are true!
“Who were the horsemen that passed through here immediately before us?”
“I don’t know…” blood bubbled out of its mouth.
Fineon shook his head and turned away. “That’s all I can do.”
We stared around the clearing. The trees’ shadows were growing longer, and despite our general unease, we could not tarry here, hiding under our cloaks and waiting for the bad men to go away. Wearily we got back on the road, poking the horses west.
Soon enough we emerged from the woods, and again the spires of Formyr dominated the horizon. Much closer now, their peaks appeared to spear the setting sun. Not an hour later, we could see the walls of Formyr in the distance, and made out a few other wagons lining up at the gates before they closed at nightfall.
Parallel to the road on our left a long, worked column of stone lay lengthwise on the ground, a good three hundred yards long and perhaps twenty feet tall, leading all the way to the gates. It cast a long shadow in the setting sun, slightly to the south so early in the year. We all gazed at the work as we rode past. What could it be? I glanced back to the gates, and the tall towers of Formyr ahead. Of course! The notion struck me with blinding alacrity -- we were riding along a fallen tower, one much taller than those still standing. What hands could have wrought such a thing? Surely the heroes of old?
I was so distracted with this thought that I hardly noticed as we approached the gates themselves. From far above, a voice called out. “Ho there! State your business in Formyr, or spend the night outside!”
