Odela's Grimoire II
17th of late winter
sennight past in fits as we all healed to lick our wounds and brace for days to come. Anight I have studied secret signs revealed to me, in a library of sleep. I grow close to finding sorcery.
Through translator Mish has told me the name of the oremen we fought is orcneas, ridden dead by demons of poison earth. They burn swiftly in daylight. In ruisman tongue such things are Fomóiri, the immundus.
In hunting by the pictdam with the norseman and a dorbaghman we came across, A gang of bandits moving stolen cart and horses out the woods. We hid against the trees and fled without notice to their murders Though we survive now, hunting reaps less and less.
Lord Donnagh took counsel from ibn Qasim to drag the river of cadavers, and to boil water taken from it. Wise orders both. Aswhile I levied men and horse to prepare going downriver, to pull the sickness from its mouth.
It was later that Qasim brought me aside and said he fears plague of leprosy. One specimen he showed me was pulled from the waters, totally unknown in its type. A stag speared through the mouth, the wound black with oils like wax or peat. It burned a fouler smoke. Lye seemed to loosen it, although much washing would be necessary to clean it away.
Our company wracked by the dorbagh plague, we go afore as four to the nearby Ogannelloe on the goticman's lead. Word reached us that the town so close to dorbagh has some ward to the fomóir. On the road we crossed a herd of game, him striking down one to bring as gift to their named man Ailin.
There we find a town in the long shadow of a ruined fort. None who speak lingua ecclesia, so it is our Brythonman who speaks for us. He has only some farrow between us all, so our speech is troubled. We learn that the man Ailin has vanished the day before last while hunting. Before him, the town's smith. It is his wife Fionola and their daughter who holds the long house now. She says to us that they hold no bane of the orcneas or their like. It is a spirit of the woods that has watched over them since man first settled on the island. They keep its totem as a charm in the village, but raise no shrine and make no offering in its name. I ask about the looming ruins also, and they are ancient and unknown as the spirit.
The goticman vows he shall return to protect them after the quest across the river dorbagh.
Once aft the road, I mustered a carry of men for 120 hacksilver, more spent on lye and oil to burn whatever immundussimus waits. It is a day’s march down river, and we camped by night, as the oremen travel on moonlit roads. By morning we had found the neck of the river begin to thicken, and like a bezoar, it had the dead all around it. Animals hacked apart or drowned or bones such that we could know their source. For a half a mile ad nauseum, the carnage went on, le pestis effleure.
At the nearby point we hung back and sent an advance. The goticman and two spearmen carried forward while we waited. The agony of it, as we wondered if they should come back, or how long to wait, as they were a horse ride’s ahead of us.
The word came back from a lone spearman, senseless. My second was a conlator, and he spoke of the living dead. A profaned spring black with death, bone men sowing the carcasses of animals into its putrid foam. Dark shapes stirring in the water, which our moslem had found was poison even to the touch.
We carry no means against this nigrumancia, and it is foolish to trust the means of metal against it. I commanded that we travel back to dorbagh with this news, and muster to burn the river whole.
It is a bleak march back to the city. We hunted before camping, and slew a fat boar with which to feed my small army. At dorbagh we hailed Lord Donnagh and told of our party, to learn it is a week’s effort to bring oil and men enough to scour the river in flame. The alchemist swears to work surely on a means to lay expurgatatio upon its heart.
…
In my dreams, I come to learn a spell to locate those things which have been lost, for I must know their names. A rattle of a scent hound skull with the skulls of duotres different lesser beasts brings the sound of such things wherever they may be.
I plan to search for the names of spirits, and this spell is of little use to me now.