I find I must break my own rules. I promised to confine myself to my romantic adventures, yet here I must delve into greater detail into the matters surrounding one. The tale of Tarasynora and myself holds too much fascination to omit, and no extant record chronicles the following events accurately. There is that song of course, filled with lies and fancy. Zhahllaia has assured me the damnable bard who wrote it is long in the grave. Perhaps I shall dig up his bones for the pleasure of blasting them into powder.
The stories omit this first section of the tale entirely, calling the cause of my visit a simple errand of love, and the culprit of its eventual turn the serpent called jealousy. While I was drawn back to Iarveiros because of love--foolish, youthful love that blinded me to the obvious--it was not jealousy that turned my hand. My rage, though misguided, was just.
The other version has taken root for that is how we like our history. We prefer the simple explanations, the smooth edges, to pretend that the jumble of events has a clean chain of cause and effect. We want the duel to be the second chapter of a tragic love story, when it is a far darker and more complex tale.
Let this be the true chronicle of what occurred between the Elion Tarasynora of Iarveiros, her husband the elf lord Ellisyr, and one young wizard still finding his place in this world. I pledge that every word in this chronicle is true, and I will omit nothing save that which I did not know at the time. Later revelations would imbue these events, so baffling in the moment, with the most dreadful import.
I will begin just after my departure from Steelhelm. The Mythseekers begged to accompany me, but I did not have the power to transport us all. I would have to travel alone.
Almost alone. I hiked out of Steelhelm along the winding road that took me higher into the mountains, Oddrin following the threads of magic in the air. He would lead me to the nearest standing stones and I could begin my walk through the Hinterlands. The mountain path snaked along the ridge, taking me farther into the frigid peaks. I wasn't certain if I was still in Rhandonia or if I had crossed the border into Svarlskell. I suspect it didn't matter. Borders were for kings and emperors to fret over. Out here, at the edge of the world, such a thing didn't touch the daily struggle for existence.
The flames of Steelhelm's torches sparkled in the distance, growing smaller and colder with every step away. I already missed it, my Mythseekers, Comfort House. I was on a new journey now. The light on the road came from a simple spell, a globe of luminescent cloud collected at the tip of Spire, my ironwood staff. It shed light like a torch, though tinged with the blue-white of the storm.
I set my pack on the dirt road and knelt, rummaging through its contents. I found the lamp at the bottom, wrapped in a robe I never wore anymore. I unwrapped it with care, running my fingers over the tarnished brass surface. I had not touched it in years, not since I started my tenure with the Mythseekers, though I felt its warmth with me always.
"Zhahllaia the Enlightened," I murmured, momentarily worried I'd forgotten how to pronounce her name. My concubine, my friend, my love.
Smoke billowed from the spout, and her silhouette appeared within, as though she was walking up the path to join me. Yet as she appeared, she was not dressed for the cold that had me huddling in my robes. She was nude, as she always was, with only the slim gold chains draped over her lithe form.
I had forgotten how beautiful she was.
At the time, I had thought her no older than me. She had not aged, but now I thought of her as being a bit younger than I. Her hair, a deep brown that was nearly black, fell straight to the small of her delicately-curved back. Her fine, soft features were lit with amusement. Her wide, gold-flecked eyes were fixed on mine, her aristocratic mouth stretched in a smile. Her olive skin with its bronze metallic tint, was burnished in the dim light of my spell. Her figure was soft and slender, her breasts supple, topped with dark, metallic-tinted nipples. Her sex was bare, little more than a modest slit.
She wore bronze bracers on wrists and ankles, elaborately engraved and marked with turquoise adornments. A golden ring encircled her navel, delicate chains of gold radiating from it in a sunburst, wrapping her shoulders and draping over her hips.
"Is that you, Master Wizard?" she asked.
Despite the urgency of my errand, I had to smile. "It is me, my love."
She reached up, her hand bare inches from my face. "You've grown a beard. I like it."
"I am pleased."
She looked about. "Where are we?"
"We should get moving. I'll explain on the way." I told her. We walked into the night, me shivering in my robes, Zhahllaia nude and untroubled by such mundane concerns such as the icy night mountain air. I told her why we were traveling, and while she did not share my concern, she understood the need for haste.
We were deep in the night when we found the standing stones. The henge was tucked away along a hidden path that I never would have found were it not for Oddrin. He fluttered into the break, alighting on the rocks, his glow illuminating the path within. His soft trilling called me through the narrow path. I squeezed between the rocks, finding the henge in a clearing of stone scarcely big enough to house them. I worked my magic, and the world shifted.
Colors appeared in the washed-out palette of night. A scent in the air, of wildflowers in a meadow. Birdsong danced on a sweet wind. The world about me became flat, but that just out of my vision was impossibly intricate, possessing angles and sides beyond the simple dimensions of reality. I was in the Hinterlands, Zhahllaia at my side.
We began to walk, each step carrying us leagues down the mountain. The air was twilight, and the birds flapping overhead looked to be made of folded paper. Yet I had the sense that a creature lurked in the sky, just out of view, and it could see me. The Hinterlands were perfectly safe, as long as one followed the Wizard Roads that had been laid down thousands of years ago. Step off them and become a cautionary tale.
"I am sorry I left you in your lamp for so long," I said.
"It did not feel long, though I can see the differences in you."
"The beard?"
"And in your bearing. I see confidence in the set of your shoulders. I see steel in your eye that was not there before. I am pleased. You are becoming the man I want you to be."
"Worthy of you?"
"Oh no," she teased. "But
more
worthy. Perhaps."
We walked for longer than I would have liked, but I was getting a late start, emerging in another set of standing stones, these at the foot of the mountains I had so recently been traveling through. I unfurled my bedroll.
"I will watch over you," Zhahllaia said, standing on her toes to kiss my cheek. Her touch brought that delightful shiver through my body, like the light draw of a finger over the spine. I had missed it, and her. I settled onto the bedroll and found a few fitful hours of sleep before setting out, eating my meager provisions on the road. I sighed. Not one day ago I had been eating delicacies in a warm tub while a professional woman gently rode me to a lovely end. Now it was cold ground and dry salt bread.
