Odela's Grimoire V
28th of First Spring
A long fortnight spent in Lord Donnagh’s halls, rejoicing at the wake of the Worm King. They burned his body on a pyre out of the city, and the ashes buried under many cadavers of his evil works hauled from the river.
The fête in Blulach is set for a month’s time, so our company set out for Lost Stemullen to learn what might from its ruins. The ride is swift. We arrive at nearly dusk and look over town in the last hours of daylight.
A few buildings stand sad and choked with rain or old fires from the bloody riot. The rest are blackened heaths. Blackened bodies lay withered in the roads, and the sun glints on their metal teeth. Knotted stumps of rabid flesh mark them as fomoir, the oremen we had fought at the river a month over. I call that their heads are cut off, and leave no further business with them. As such, it explains the doom that came to the town.
The town is derelict. A druid-sept stands like the heavy mantlepiece, so inside I found where the man MacUlyn died. Throat slashed by a brother druid or some wild man. Bees make a heavy nest in his ribs. It seemed to keep them in their boxes also, where they were farmed in common.
It seemed a good end for a man such as him. To be some home for natural things, and be no more a man or woman than as like a ram or oak tree. Still, some must answer for his murder. For what could he or his people have done to deserve such wrath? A plague of wolves followed by murder followed by arson followed by…doom.
Our company took some jars from a dead house and tapped the honey. One ruisman said we should draw up an ambush for if the fomoir returned at night. My plan was that we set a fire in the town square and lay in wait, drawing out any watchers in the night. So we set up fire traps for our bowman and stoked a heavy fire, then bed in a shepherd's hut to the southern woods.
We were stirred first by a stampede of wolves in the trees, so went two of our company to find. Then by a band of looters, so went I and the fishmongering ruisman from Dorbagh, waking up the others to tell them where we were going.
We both came up the little square through the shadows, where a man saw and questioned me at sword point. The ruisman translated what little words we could share. The looters were refugees, or bandits. Taking the last of what remained in the houses before going to far places. He told us that the woods were growing thick with a low army of the oremen in the south. A fight in numbers would have us killed.
The looters had all come just before dawn, and the day had broken them up with it. Without the strength to search deeper into the woods, our company made back for Dorbagh with unhappy news. Donnagh was grim. Our options were few. We settled to go for the gathered druids in the east, and went through Ogannelloe.
We hear from Fionola’s daughter some druid-lore, that they gather in the standing stones east only at the full moon. Set for the day of the fête. It seems less wise to quest in the wilderness, than to travel the southern road by the shore.
Before we go out, I take my chance to find the imposui nameless tower there. Inside are only bricks turned the colour of bone by rain and sun, and well polished leg chains glinting on the floor.
This mystery asks questions I cannot answer, and I leave them be.
The road leads us first to the priory of Saint Olham, the only house of god upon this land, and keepers of my good conlatori brother monks. But they are my brothers no more, and I follow no such god as they. I am hungry to learn the holy rites across this land, and we are accepted easily as peregrinatori for mass. We, and not two of us, the ruisyman fishmonger and the brython holding the Worm King’s plageas.
Sermon begins with the long benediction of many saints, but then the abbot comes to throw our company out. I and they all together, because the ruisyman urined on their walls. I laid him out for this and costing us their good wishes.
I should have expected. I have tied myself together with the pagans and the fools. Each day I folles et l’farceur for swordsmen and pagan kings. And to them, I am peregrinator also. At golgotha, I am cast out, and at gehenna, I am cast out also.
I grow sick of our long walk to no place. Yet still we ride down the southern road.
It is dusk as we find a ruined hamlet by the sea. We have come very close to the edge of the isle now, and reached its other side. The town is half sunk down into the earth, filled with only stones, and the stones are filled with sea shells. It is quiet, and night carries the sound of the rolling water.
The fishmonger takes watch, and though does not wake us he speaks of lights in the far sea. Soft green or blue shapes in the gloom and vanishing at dawn.
What mystery is here also? Would I, to know it, be the only one to drag it up from the well of time past?
At all corners of this land, we seem to wade deeper into the oldest forgotten things.
Glinting like coins in the dark.
At dawn we move back to the road and go east, eventually a small town, and a small town of cattle on the hills. I ask to buy one to feed all our company, but the ruisyman is bitter with them for their godkeeping and my good will for the common folk is sharpened now. We leave for their town to trade at a better price. Any cows they give us would be one not taken to Blulach for the fête.
Many in the town named Collecan are conlatori through the church and their monsignor. It is good to be free of speaking through others for now. Many of our company have learned the ruis tongue, but I have not. This may change, if we spend any longer in the north.
A youth beats about the town square, avowing. He says he will become a Stone Man. Magicked things by the river to the north, who do not feel their broken hearts or awful shames. Stone keeps only the dull ache of living.
I have seen monsters before. The end of this path of change. I should not wonder to see it at its beginning. But I do wonder. What is it that changes flesh to stone? To see it would cost the boy, but he is willing to pay that toll. Whatever force is called up, it may lever some small way out the hands of God. A bitter lesson outside the christian house that is built in Collecan.
Damn them all. Just a little.