From: andrea@cm.deakin.OZ.AU (Andrea Todkill)
Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn
Subject: Kadrys' Tale   (Part 3 of 6)
Message-ID: <3382@sol.deakin.OZ.AU>
Date: 21 Jun 92 00:25:04 GMT

"One evening as I walked towards her temple to meet her for one of our nights
together, I knew something was very wrong. The streets were swarming with
guardsmen. One of them told me that the temple of the Lady had been magically
attacked a short while ago. I slipped my way through the confusion in an agony
of suspense. What if she had been hurt? Killed? Then, she appeared at the
temple gates, distraught but unhurt. She told me that the greatest talisman of
the Lady of Light, the Pearl of the World Soul, had been taken by priests of
the Abyss, commanded by a lich-lord named Xuthl. She explained that the pearl
contained a fragment of all the living souls on earth. It was the mingling of
these soul-fragments that we remember as dreams. If Xuthl could control the
pearl, he would be able to hold the world in spiritual bondage, drive people to
madness and evil through their dreams. She said that the priests had just now
consulted the Lady, and She had spoken through the High Priestess. "What was
taken shall be retaken. Seek among the laity for skilled assistance, and seek
the Pearl in Xuthl's Earthly Abyss." The council chose Imariye' to go, because
they knew that we were in love. They were counting on that to make me choose to
go with her, to keep her safe. They wanted a thief to regain their pearl, so
they told her to go to the Abyss." Kadrys shakes his head. "I never did get on
well with priests. Well, with high priests. I decided to go with her, of
course. There was nothing else I could do. I asked around, and hired three
fighters, N'kuru the swordsman, who by the look of him could have been Maleiu's
brother, Li-chang the archer, as slender and deadly as her longbow, and Brun
the axewielder. South, East and North, so dissimilar yet the veterans of so
many shared campaigns they were as close as triplets. Imariye' in turn inquired
among the priests, and they persuaded Peldarian the mage to accompany us. I 
gave the control of the fencing operation and the jewellers over to Elirivar,
and said farewell to him, the only person besides Imariye' I could call friend.

"So we set out as have so many other companies in so many other tales, to wrest
a pearl beyond price from a labyrinth containing death in a thousand guises.
It was there that the course of my life was wrenched aside for the last time.."