From alt.pub.dragons-inn Wed Dec 22 13:02:38 1993 Path: netcom.com!netcomsv!decwrl!spool.mu.edu!nigel.msen.com!yale.edu!yale!gumby!destroyer!nntp.cs.ubc.ca!cs.ubc.ca!alberta!amisk.cs.ualberta.ca!aaron From: aaron@amisk.cs.ualberta.ca (Aaron V. Humphrey) Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn Subject: [Tolvaj] Zurgen: Questions That Do Not Relate Date: 22 Dec 93 16:38:55 GMT Organization: The Anna Amabiaca Fan Club Lines: 206 Message-ID: Reply-To: aaron@amisk.cs.ualberta.ca NNTP-Posting-Host: gsb010.cs.ualberta.ca Originator: aaron@gsb010.cs.ualberta.ca ADMIN: This post is copyright 1993 by me. The characters of Zurgen and Ugluk are wholly mine; Tolvaj is joint property of myself and David Mar. "Be known as a man that will always be candid On questions that do not relate And the house you live in will never fall down If you pity the stranger who stands at your gate." ---Gordon Lightfoot, "The House You Live In" "Master?" Zurgen surfaced from another fruitless session of trying to commune with his father's Orb. He was almost grateful for the distraction. Every attempt seemed to do nothing more than underscore how far he was from attaining its full power, or even fathoming it. As he returned to awareness, he realized what Ugluk had interrupted him for. "We have a visitor?" he asked. The orc nodded, eyes widening in awe at his master's knowledge. Zurgen had done nothing to earn such awe; Zurgen's ability was mostly the result of precautions his father, Vorkin, had set up before his death, which would have alerted him even before Ugluk if he hadn't withdrawn so far into the Orb. And the only reason Ugluk didn't kill him right away was that the simple charm spell Zurgen had used on him weeks earlier hadn't worn off of Ugluk's even simpler mind. As he stood up and stretched muscles cramped by hours of crouching over the dull grey sphere that had been the source of so much of his father's power, he become aware also of the foul weather outside the tower. His brow furrowed. The tower was far from anything approaching civilization; the tiny village of Gagra was the only thing within miles, and the land was so infertile that farmers had learned not to bother with it. Ugluk's fellows hadn't helped, either. So what was someone doing here in the middle of a storm? "Let him in, Ugluk," Zurgen said, deciding that he could afford a little human decency, even if, as the son of a witch, he had been accorded little enough of that himself. Zurgen almost hoped that, upon being faced with Ugluk, the visitor would run and hide. The fact that he didn't meant he wasn't of the area, or he was desperate. "My master will see you now," Ugluk said as he led the stranger into the parlour. The parlour wasn't in any way ostentatious. It could have been called austere if so much of its austerity wasn't due merely to the absence of furniture in any state of repair. A better word for it was shabby. He would have to refurnish this if he ever became concerned for the opinions of visitors, Zurgen thought. "Please sit down," Zurgen said to the man who stood there, dripping. He was wearing a well-patched cloak, whose hood concealed bright red hair, a hooked nose, and green eyes. "Would you like to hang your cloak before the hearth to dry?" Zurgen said. The visitor's eyes flicked to the hearth, bare and empty even of wood. "Why would it do any better there than elsewhere?" he asked in a lilting voice with the slightest trace of an accent. Zurgen gestured at the hearth and instantly there appeared a blazing fire. That could have been called ostentatious; it was merely another of Vorkin's built-in spells. The red-headed stranger's only reaction was to blink slightly and then smile. "My apologies for doubting you." He threw back his cloak and undid its plain clasp. Underneath, he was dressed in a similarly plain and threadbare style. The one notable exception was the decorated case slung on his back. From its shape, Zurgen would guess that it held a lute. "You are a minstrel?" he asked as the stranger hung up his cloak near the fire. In answer, the stranger threw back his head and laughed. His laughter rang off the stones of the tower, and echoed back in a confusion of unfamiliar noises. It seemed too long since Zurgen had heard laughter like that. Instead of the offense he expected to feel, his own amusement was kindled as well. Smiling, he said, "What do you find so droll?" Wiping tears from his eyes, the stranger said, "Oh, this place is so much different from most places a minstrel stops. Most of them are suspicious of anyone from another place. They ask, 'Where are you from? Where are you bound? What is your name?' Not until I tell them I am a minstrel am I admitted, and even then they are suspicious until I play a song or two to prove myself. You have asked me nothing, and did not even know I was a minstrel when you admitted me. You have not asked my name, or profession, or even offered to care for my horse so that you have a way to control my departure." He laughed again, and this time Zurgen joined him, laughing at himself for feeling so foolish at his delinquency of courtesy due a guest. "So then, to repair my faults: Where are you from? Where are you bound? What is your name? And can we care for your horse, if you have one?" "To answer your questions in the order of their urgency: You are welcome to care for my horse, which I have but tied up outside, hoping it will not spook at a clap of thunder. My name is Tolvaj, though I will often answer to any name bestowed upon me, if it be civil. I am from a barony in the north of the Heath, whose name you have most likely not even heard, and which, for all I know, may exist no more. And I am bound where the wind takes me, though it seems to be taking me south before the onset of winter, a course I am loath to dispute." "Well, our house and stables are poor enough, but we will provide hospitality for you and your horse for the night, and hope that the weather prove more clement on the morrow. Ugluk?" The orc nodded and went outside to tend to the horse. "You seem to show little dismay at my choice of company," Zurgen noted. Tolvaj shrugged. "I have learned to give a chance to any, no matter what I may have suffered from their type in the past. I believe that no being is entirely evil, or entirely good. I did not, for instance, allow myself to be swayed in my course by the opinions the villagers seem to have of you." "My reputation is not entirely unearned," Zurgen said. "They have done little enough for me in their lives, and on occasion I have repaid past actions in kind, or close enough for my satisfaction. And I would also question that there exist no beings of pure moral alignment. As a mage, I know of worlds other than this one--such as the plane, or planes, referred to as 'hell' by most--and I would challenge you to find a denizen of such a place with a speck of good within him." He thought of the one who had taken over his father's tower after his death, and how he had felt no compunctions against destroying it even when it pleaded for mercy beneath his staff. Tolvaj waved this away. "Perhaps this is merely projection, or the license of balladeers, but I have heard more than one tale of such beings--'devil' or 'demon' I have heard them called, and I am ignorant of the term used for them by mages--showing a speck of good, at least, in their souls by the mercy they show their victims at the last moment. Every indication is that the more such beings are exposed to human souls, which, even you must grant, are all capable of both good and evil, the more their own souls become less pure." "An interesting theory," mused Zurgen, who was starting to like Tolvaj more and more. He had never had a discussion of this kind before, except with his father, or rather his spirit--his mother, Rowena, had known a different kind of magic utterly, and neither in the villagers nor in Ugluk had he found anything approaching an intellectual equal. "Perhaps I should hear one or two of these ballads." Tolvaj grinned and opened his lute case. In the hours that followed, Tolvaj played several lengthy ballads, the most telling being "Passion's Mistress", which concerned a demoness named Eskanel who came to revel in her time among humans because she had discovered the bittersweet pain of love. Zurgen was forced to agree that, if the ballad had any accuracy, the ambiguity of human morality was habituating to beings without it. Ugluk served them a late meal from Zurgen's scanty cupboards(which replenished themselves at dawn, another of Vorkin's minor magics; Zurgen had reflected more than once on how much his father's magic had been spent in conveniences), and then Tolvaj played some more, this time melancholy ballads he said were from his homeland. Zurgen started to yawn, finding himself increasingly sleepy, and finally excused himself. "You may sleep down here," he told Tolvaj. "My luxuries are scant, but you can make yourself comfortable enough. Ugluk will tend the fire, and there are many blankets." He was interrupted by a prodigious yawn, and finally managed to get out, "I will see you in the morning if you do not awake with the urge to leave earlier." Upon retiring to his chamber, Zurgen barely got into his bed before he fell asleep, and slept like the dead for hours. When he awoke, it was noon and he had a headache. Tolvaj had been the one drinking wine, not he... Then he realized that it wasn't a natural pain, but was instead similar to the feeling he got when someone was nearing the tower. He got out of bed, reeled dizzily, and then staggered out into the hallway. The pain was sharpest when he faced towards the room that held the Orb. The Orb... The door to that room, like most in the tower, had a lock with no keyhole. Zurgen summoned up the by-now-familiar spell to open the lock, the headache subsiding as he did so. The wooden stand that held the Orb was still in its familiar place. It held a dull grey sphere. But even from here Zurgen could tell that it was not his father's Orb. Tolvaj was gone, all traces of his presence erased. Zurgen had expected no less. It was clear that, whoever he was, he was no mere minstrel. He could open mage-locked doors. He had somehow created a replica of the Orb, although he couldn't have hoped that it would fool Zurgen for long. And he had probably also had something to do with the sleep that had overcome Zurgen and Ugluk the night before--nothing short of magical sleep could have kept him from noticing the Orb's absence for so long. He told Ugluk to ready things for a journey. They had no horses--and even if they had, Tolvaj would no doubt have freed them--but those could be obtained. He could coerce them from the villagers, if nothing else. The only hope he had was that Tolvaj had seemed to underestimate Zurgen's link with the Orb. The fact that he had hoped to deceive him with a replica showed that. And that link, now down to a dull throb in the back of his mind, told him where the minstrel, or whatever he was, had gone. At least one of the things he had said was true. He seemed to be going south. -- --Alfvaen(Editor of Communique) Current Album--Paul Simon:One Trick Pony Current Read--Judy-Lynn del Rey:Stellar #3 The Grave's a quiet place indeed, but hasn't any light to read.