Chapter 3 – Part 5

Pienna frowned. From what she had observed of the stars before the sun had risen, she figured she was roughly three hundred miles northwest of the town of Cree. It was an exceptionally thick part of a great forest in a land that was almost all thick forest.

She didn’t want to be here, she wanted to be in Cree, readying weather spells against any naval vessels that Aundair was sending out onto Lake Galifar. The Aundairians had not been having much luck in land battles, but they’d successfully landed raiders on several parts of the Lake’s shores.

But she was here, waiting to speak to a druid that she had not seen in eight years about a seal that she had not visited. She was here, supposedly fighting a larger war across dimensions, when her mind was on a battle that legally speaking was not hers.

“It is really only the twenty-second of Aryth?” Brezzy asked, his eyes wide as he stared around. “We came so far so fast?”

“Our trip was instantaneous,” Pienna told the goblin, forcing her impatience down. She found Brezzy too dear to allow herself to be gruff with him. “Many druids do not have the power, but I can transport myself and a few companions any distance on the planet through common vegetation.” She smiled and stroked Missy’s head. The great cat rewarded her with a rumbling purr. “Missy and I have used the spell many times, it is harmless.”

The goblin nodded. A brief time passed as they waited, and finally Bresbin asked “How many times can Pienna use that spell?”

For a moment she thought that question a tad too eager, but then she realized that Brezzy was likely very nervous in this part of the forest, so far from all civilized places. “At most twice a day,” she answered. “I would have to prepare it properly, and choose that power to be channeled rather than others that may be more useful. I only prepared it once this morning, shortly before I used it.”

“Twice?” the goblin asked, astonished.

Pienna smiled. “I have been growing in power rapidly, Brezzy. I have been honing my skills constantly, and as a result that have been getting sharper.”

Brezzy looked away, almost as if he did not want her to see his eyes. Maybe he was afraid of her.

She felt ashamed. Bresbin was looking to the Gatekeeper faith for comfort, and she was coming across as arrogant, maybe even like the monsters of Droaam that he had had to flee as a child. She began to lift her arm, to touch him, comfort him somehow.

“Pienna!” came the call from across the meadow.

“Ama’Shay!” she responded, walking forward to greet the other druid.

Ama’Shay shuffled forward. The druid squinted at the sunlight, trying to stay in the shadows of the trees. He was a full-blooded orc, and like all orcs he found bright light painful. Pienna was shocked to see that his hair had gone full white, and a great deal of it was gone. Only eight years ago he’d had a thick head of gray and white, and a full if hesitant gait. His jutting tusk-like teeth, once powerful, were now withered and yellow.

Pienna knew that time passed quickly for an orc. They had far shorter lifestyles than humans. But still, it saddened her.

She walked forward to meet him in the shade, so as not to force him into the light. Missy trotted at her side, and Brezzy cautiously stayed behind her. She hugged him fiercely as they met, and he hugged her back hard enough to make her take notice. At an age when a human would scarcely be able to force open a stuck cabinet, Ama’Shay could crack a rib if he wasn’t careful.

“Who is this with you?” he asked her. He spoke in the language of druids, having never bothered to learn Common.

“This is Missy,” she said, petting the head of the great cat. “I released Slither from my service about a year after we last met. And this young fellow behind me is Bresbin.” The goblin perked up a bit at the mention of his name, it being the only word that he could recognize.

“This is Filcher,” Ama’Shay said, gesturing as a monkey dropped down from a high limb. The monkey was an orangutan, with long orange hair and deep eyes that expressed sorrow and care for his aging orc master. “Why is the sneak with you?”

Pienna sighed. There were many orcs and goblins that hated one another, but she had hoped Ama’Shay wasn’t one of them. “His family were secret Gatekeepers in Droaam. He knows a little of our faith, and wished to accompany me.”

Ama’Shay scowled. “No one in Droaam is a Gatekeeper except for some orcs in the west, near the Shadow marches. The sneak lies to you.”

“I am good at reading lies,” she told him. “And he had an heirloom, an arrow of slaying aberrations. He shot and killed a carrion crawler of exceptional size that excreted acid. I trust him.”

The orc shrugged. “If you trust him then I am find with him. Come, I need to show you the seal, for I will not be long in this life to guard it. Then I need to show you a nest of dolgrims that are gathering themselves to try and take possession of it.”

“They know where it is?” she asked as he turned back the way he came and she followed.

“Not yet,” he told her. “They are looking in circling patterns. I sense a dolgaunt guides them, and a clever one. We must cleanse them completely, no survivors.”

“Of course,” she said.

“We are too few, we Gatekeepers,” coughed the orc. “Too old and too few to watch all the seals. We must do what we can, stay far from distraction, true to our duty.” He turned to look at her sharply. “And stay out of the wars of the remains of Galifar.”

She almost missed a step. “What do you mean?”

“Merylsward,” he told her. “A brother of ours has been saying that the attack on the town was due to you. That Aundair is hunting for you.”

“Is this brother named Aruunis?” she asked, biting her lip.

“I heard it was an elf that thinks he knows more about being a Gatekeeper than any other,” grinning Ama’Shay. “Like all elves, he knows better than whoever is not an elf.”

Pienna nodded, hoping that Ama’Shay’s bigotry would keep him away from the subject. “Tell me about the seal,” she requested. “It is still a column rooted in the ground?”

“Fifteen feet of it shows above ground, although we have hidden it with growths of moss and nearby trees over the long years. Our histories say that there is another forty feet below ground, and that it forms a great tuning fork stuck in the earth, holding back one of the paths that Xoriat may try to follow…”