Chapter 23: Chosen, Chapters 23-25: With Eyes Blazing; Wicked Plan; The Warrior (Interludes)

Zurai

Brighid

The Realms

Fifthday, 3rd week of the 7th month, Godless Age 597

Morning

Mistvale Highlands, route from Ceallach Macht to the Starchaser Village

Brighid raced back through the mists as fast as she could push herself. The weight of her armor didn't help, but the centaur racial Trait Longwinded meant that she wasn't going to run out of Stamina any time soon, even at a gallop. She poured all of her energy into running; it would take her the entire day at top speed to return to the village, and she was Aidan's only hope for survival.

Her mind whirled as she ran; she hated herself for abandoning Aidan to die in Ceallach Macht, but he was right, her people did need to be warned, and she was the only one who could do it. She was also confused about what he meant by swearing they would see each other again. Hope fluttered in her heart, but she ruthlessly crushed it. There was no way Aidan could survive the evil she could feel emanating from the lost city, and pretending that his words were anything but a gentle lie to persuade her to do what she knew she needed to do would just cause her more pain and suffering in the end. Even with his last words, she thought, he sacrificed himself for the greater good; oaths are sacred, and there is no way he can keep that one. Maybe he thought his death would absolve him, but Brighid knew all too well that such an unkept oath could bind his spirit to the Realms as a spectral undead. She despaired at the thought and angrily scrubbed away at the tears she could feel staining her cheeks.

On and on she galloped, eating away at the miles between the cursed city and her village. She was soaking in sweat, her armor dug into her painfully, and her breath grew ever shorter, but she refused to waste any of the time Aidan had bought for her and her tribe. Her Stamina was nearly completed depleted, and the sun well past its zenith, when she finally thundered into the village, barely managing to pull herself up short before she ran down one of the guards.

"Mother! Where is my mother? I have to warn her! Where is she?" She gasped at the guards.

They glanced at each other and responded, "Brighid? What is the matter? We can send for her if you would—"

"Brigantia burn you, this is important. Just tell me where she is!"

"Peace, daughter. Dampen the flames of your anger before they burn you." Brighid looked past the guards, and there, of course, maddeningly, was her mother in all her petite serenity.

"How did you know—no, never mind that now. It can wait. There is something I must tell you," Brighid glanced back at the guards, "in private."

Ailis clicked her tongue, but beckoned her daughter to follow her into the nearby guard hut, empty at the moment due to the clear weather. "What is it, Brighid? What has you in such a state? I assume it has to do with that human trespasser and his quest?"

Green flames burned with righteous anger in Brighid's eyes. "Yes, mother, it has to do with Aidan's quest. The wards around Ceallach Macht are failing, or have already failed. Last night, we camped out of view of the city and both of us were tormented by nightmares the entire night through. Then, when we reached the city, the mists around it were swirling around the wards completely regardless of the wind. It was clearly magical, and it extended out for at least a hundred meters from the wards."

She looked into her mother's shocked face and ground out the next words from between clenched teeth, fighting against the tears returning to her eyes. "Aidan refused to let me enter the city with him, Councillor Ailis. He was compelled to enter by your quest on pain of death, but he convinced me to turn back and bring you this warning. He knew he was walking to his own death and still he put the well-being of his executioners above his own. It was not even that he refused an offer of help; I did not even think of leaving him to face that place alone, but he saw clearly where I did not. I say to you now: there can be no clearer proof in my mind than this that Aidan Lostlorn is a friend of the Starchasers. Lift the geas from him, Councillor. Let him leave Ceallach Macht—if it has not killed him already." With the last, the tears finally began to spill down her cheeks.

Ailis closed her eyes and bent her head. After several tense seconds, she said, "It is done, my heart, but he still will not be able to leave." She raised a hand to forestall her daughter's heated response. "I do not know if he yet lives or not, but his talisman was destroyed this morning, shortly after sunrise. He cannot pass back through the wards." Brighid clamped her jaw shut, barely biting back a wail; she was the one who told him not to let the talismans fall into the wrong hands, at any cost. He must have done it immediately after passing the wards, sure that he wasn't going to survive.

"I am sorry, deeply sorry, my little spark. I swear to you that I did not know that things had progressed to such a state. When we first raised the wards, we could feel fierce attacks against them almost nightly. Over time, the attacks diminished, and none of us have felt anything for at least a year. I thought that the evil within had been starving and withering away without contact with the outside world. I truly believed that with you at his side, the human—Aidan—would be able to finish cleansing the city and return it to its slumber." Ailis sighed and brushed a hand across her own cheek. "I was arrogant and wrong, and I am sorry."

"I am not the one you need to apologize to, Councillor. Not for that. I will consider an apology for manipulating me into escorting Aidan instead of just asking, though, were such an apology made to me."

Ailis winced and shook her head ruefully. "That manipulation was not meant for you, my heart, but I am sorry that you were hurt by it regardless. That arrow was aimed at Fionn and Anwn. I will not air dirty Council laundry, but I sent you to fetch Aidan to us because I knew that if you overheard that they wanted to send him off with Steffan you would intervene. I could not ask it of you openly because Fionn and Anwn would have objected, but I trusted you to do the right thing. And my trust has been rewarded, even though your trust in me has not. Be assured, daughter, that you did do the right thing even though I can see how it tears at your heart. I will talk of this more with you later, but now I must speak with the Council. We need to discuss where we will relocate to." Ailis turned to leave, but before she had even taken a step, Brighid's hand was clenched tightly around her upper arm.

"What?! You are just going to abandon Aidan—and even if you do not care about him, abandon our lands, our history—without even considering facing the threat?! No, Councillor. I will not permit it." Brighid raised her voice so that it would carry out to the guards standing at the nearby entrance of the village and spat, "I formally appeal this matter to the judgment of the full Council and demand my right to address that body on the merits of my argument." She lowered her voice to a hiss. "I swear to you now, mother: I am going back to Ceallach Macht. I am going to retrieve Aidan, or, Braihan help me, his body. He has acted in better faith and with far more loyalty than any of us deserve from him, and I will not let the evil of that place claim him. You can either watch me go alone, or help me present my case to the Council on why we should attack the city in force. Your choice. You know where to find me when the Council calls."

Brighid angrily pushed past her mother, ignoring the prompt which appeared in her head. She already knew what it said. She swore an oath, and she intended to keep it.

Ailis

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The Realms

Fifthday, 3rd week of the 7th month, Godless Age 597

Sunset

Starchaser Village, Mistvale Highlands

Ailis watched her daughter storm out of the guard post. Her plans were coming together, but she hated having to deceive good people to get things done, and she loathed having to mislead her daughter. She tried her best to tell at least the literal truth to Brighid, but she knew she had twisted the truth into loops and coils that spelled out something completely different.

Ailis hadn't known the condition of Ceallach Macht, but she'd suspected. Evil could very rarely be beaten by ignoring it, and in a place as steeped in power and mystery as the lost city, there was little doubt in her mind that it had only changed tactics. She was always opposed to letting the city fester and rot, but when the troubles first started, her position on the Council was too new and fragile to force the issue. She had been carefully, slowly maneuvering ever since to guide the Council into re-examining the issue and reversing its previous judgment. It had been her own stories of the ancient wonders of the city to a young Brighid that planted the seed of her daughter's determination to cleanse it, and she had carefully nurtured and pruned the sapling which had grown from the seed over the years.

The other Council members were a hidebound lot, rarely choosing to buck tradition. She was fond enough of it herself, but some of her fellow Councillors tended to forget that tradition was not law and that the distinction was meaningful. She was no longer the junior member of the Council—Anwn had stepped into the role left by old Rhiain's death a few years ago and proven to be a thorn in Ailis's side. The girl was extremely talented in her fields and held the respect, if not the love, of all the tribe's hunters and border patrol guards. Still, she was so uncomfortable dealing with the problems of people that she let the past dictate her every action. Fionn was hardly any better. The old soldier wasn't tied quite as tightly to tradition's apron strings, but he had seen so many friends die in battle that it would take a miracle to convince him that attacking Ceallach Macht was strategically sound. Eilwen, too, was a traditionalist, and she hated anything more violent than a wooden spoon across the back of the hand. Sometimes Ailis was able to play on that to lead the old broodmare into doing the right thing, as she had with Aidan, but just like Fionn, she would never agree to send their people into the lost city on her own. As for Gerwyn, the trader was much less stuck in the past than the other Councillors, but he was still risk-averse. He could be led to water, but she could never make him drink from this particular pool. No, she couldn't approach this problem head-on. She had to manipulate events to start a fire that even Eilwen would have to admit would burn them all to ashes if left to burn on its own.

Ailis knew that manipulating her daughter in the way she had made her a monster of a parent, and it rent her heart asunder. If left unchecked, however, the corruption at the core of Ceallach Macht would eventually escape the wards and emerge much stronger than it had been when it was first contained. She had been grooming her daughter to lead the crusade for a decade now, and the arrival of the poor, lost, innocent human had been precisely the catalyst she'd needed to finally set her plans in motion. She couldn't send her daughter to investigate the city directly; it wouldn't have enough of an impact. The others would only view Brighid as a young firebrand aching for adventure, and even if convinced of the severity of the trouble, would have just voted to relocate their tribe somewhere farther away. Even Brighid herself wouldn't be as fervently against leaving Ceallach Macht to fester without some other factor in play. She needed her daughter to do it for someone else's sake rather than her own.

She also knew that sacrificing Aidan's life for her peoples' welfare made her a monster of a person. She had not expected him to be so noble as to convince Brighid to abandon him for her people, but that result was even better for her plans. Brighid had clearly grown quite friendly with the human over their short time together, which Ailis had counted on. She expected Brighid to accompany him into the city, watch him be gruesomely killed, then escape. She expected Brighid to return, battered and haunted to warn the Council, and gather warriors to her to cleanse Ceallach Macht in the name of her fallen friend. A possible rescue, however, or retrieval of the body of one so unquestionably honorable, would be much more compelling. She grieved for Aidan, but she knew in her heart that she had acted in the best interest of the tribe. She was a Druid, and all Druids knew that sometimes you have to cull one infant from a litter so that the others would live to grow strong. Besides, she recognized a mark of the Divine on the young man. He had been touched by a Power of Benevolence, and there was always a chance that he might just surprise them in the end.

Ailis stepped out of the guard post and walked quickly and with purpose towards the Council Hall. The sacrifices were made; now, it was time to give Brighid the warriors she would need for her crusade.

Fionn

The Realms

Fifthday, 3rd week of the 7th month, Godless Age 597

Night

Starchaser Village, Mistvale Highlands

Fionn observed Ailis carefully, his face an impassive mask. As usual, she was circling her actual objective from a great distance, attacking from an oblique angle. Her body wasn't relaxed enough, and her eyes had gone just a shade too dark, for her current conversation about the village's food situation to be what she really cared about. He nodded along and made the appropriate noises as she built her case for moving the village in the near-term future. It was when she started talking about the warriors and hunters that he began to piece together her real agenda. He looked more closely and saw the signs that she didn't know she gave off. Her tail was twitching in the way she had when she was worried for her daughter; her eyes kept glancing northward without her seeming to realize; she was twisting a ring around her finger like she did when magic was on her mind.

Fionn held up one large, calloused hand, stopping Ailis in mid-sentence. "How bad is it, Ailis?" She blinked at him, confused, and he clarified. "Ceallach Macht. Brighid came back late this afternoon, drenched in sweat and demanding to see you, and she came without the human. Something has happened at Ceallach Macht, and you want me to vote a certain way in the Council. I enjoy playing your games with you, Councillor, but just this once let us talk directly. How bad is it?"

A look of surprise came over the silver-haired woman's face, but only for a moment. "It is bad. The wards are failing, being bypassed. I do not know how long we have before they break completely. Fionn, you have asked me to be direct, so I will. We cannot let this stand any longer. We must cleanse Ceallach Macht before it is too late. Containing the evil has only let it grow stronger in peace, and we cannot travel far enough to be beyond its grasp without completely abandoning our entire territory. We have to—"

Again, Fionn held up a hand to halt Ailis's speech. "Twelve years ago, when the Council voted to seal the City of Dreams, we were still recovering from the fighting with the Miststalker tribe. I know you were not very involved with that, Ailis, but we were close to losing that war. We lost almost an entire generation of warriors. When the monsters began to attack around the lost city, we had only a handful of true veteran fighters left—and three of them died in the expedition into the city. Our ranks were mostly green yearlings and old soldiers like me, past their prime. I voted to contain the threat not so that we could ignore it, but so that we could grow stronger ourselves. I do not know if it was the correct decision even now, but it was made with careful consideration."

Fionn looked Ailis straight in the eyes. "You are smarter than I, and I will even say wiser, Ailis. As I said, I enjoy your games of shadows and hidden messages. But have a care; you are falling into a trap of your own making. You are not the only one who can see the path we tread upon, and you are not the only one who can put what is best for our people above your own cares and worries. Do not allow yourself to think you must always fight alone, or you will find that you will always be alone. Some can walk that path and not be affected, but not you, I do not think.

"As for Ceallach Macht," he continued with a weary sigh, "You are right. It must be purged at last. You will have my vote in the Council, Ailis. I will speak to Anwn if you will speak to Eilwen." He rolled his shoulders and began to head out of the village towards Anwn's home.

Ailis snorted and called after him, "And you accuse me of being devious. You cannot run from her forever! Just give her what she wants, and she will stop ambushing you with cookies and whiskey and waving her tail at you."

Fionn just grumbled and waved the matter away. He couldn't retreat forever, but he might be able to keep out of her clutches until the old nag finally keeled over.

Zurai

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