Sederan Tales

Lenus awoke with a splitting headache and her head on a table. She pulled her head up and looked around. She was in the Unsavory Maiden tavern, and could smell the alcohol on herself. She glanced out the window and winced as her eyes met the early rays of light from the rising sun.

She looked around and groaned. The tavern was deserted except for her. She noisily pushed her chair back and attempted to get up, but then immediately sat back down and groaned again.

The barkeep poked his head in through a door, spotted Lenus awake, then stepped through the door. “You’re awake,” he said.

“At the risk of my dignity,” Lenus said, her voice cracking, “what happened last night?”

“You went through an entire bottle of wine, then started picking fights with the other bar patrons,” the barkeep said. “You claimed to be an emissary of Leorus, and I think you sentenced a man to death for being ‘painfully unintelligent.’ You broke his nose, and yelled, ‘The pundits will come for you with their threshing books,’ as he fled the tavern.”

Lenus sighed and buried her head in her hands.

“And then,” the barkeep said, “I’m not quite sure what happened, but I think you accused a man of being a spy from the ‘little people.’ He ended up fleeing the tavern, too.”

“And then I passed out?” Lenus asked hopefully.

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Lenus paced down the familiar aisles of the open market of Amalia. The open market was where almost all commerce occurred in the small town. Growing up in a tailoring family, the market was the setting of many of her childhood memories—playing in the aisles when work was slow, manning the booth when the work was busy, buying and bartering from the many merchants scattered about, learning simple math and rhetoric in preparation of inheriting the family business.

The market’s aisles were the hub of social interaction in Amalia. Many made visits simply to bump into friends, or perhaps meet new ones. At this moment, the street was fairly busy (by Amalian standards) with most of the merchant and artisan booths open and many people wandering about, chatting, and engaging with the merchants.

The odd mixture of smells, including meat, crops, spices, perfumes, and fresh leather goods, had become very comforting to Lenus. It made her feel at home, no matter what was going on. She and Reese and dubbed it the “market bouquet,” and the term stuck. The last few weeks had been spent on the road, in the tailoring workshop, and in the training grounds. She’d forgotten how much she missed the market bouquet.

Lenus smiled as she walked past the butcher’s shop. On a childhood dare, she had snuck into the shop, stolen a knife, and run up and down the market’s aisles while the butcher chased her. Market patrons shouted, screamed, and scrambled to get out of the way as a plucky, audacious red-headed child ran like mad through the market with a butcher’s knife in her hand, followed by an angry, shouting butcher who was red in the face. After a few laps around the market, she lodged the knife into the door frame of the butcher’s shop, and hid away for the better part of the day. She was caught, of course, and punished, but she didn’t remember the punishment—just the pandemonium. To this day, the door frame still showed the scar of that day, but only if you knew right where to look.

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Niklos explained to Bertram how he had come to join the Sederan resistance and find Caelum. For being such a life-altering event, he used few words to describe it. Bertram still had questions about the resistance and its goals, but he was more curious to see what would become of the two prisoners.

Now, Bertram was sitting on a table, holding a cloth to the wound on his arm. Niklos had gone to join Djinly for the initial questioning of the soldiers, and Lenus had left to go back to the house for something, leaving Bertram and Caelum in awkward silence, as Bertram wanted to avoid another line of questioning like he’d gotten from Lenus earlier.

Bertram heard some muted voices through the wall, occasionally accented with one of the soldiers yelling something. Try as he might, he couldn’t make out the words that were being exchanged.

Lenus walked through the door holding a small leather pouch with a cap over a small opening.

“This is for you,” she said, handing the pouch to Bertram.

“Is this some sort of healing elixir?” he asked.

“Close,” Lenus said. “It’s red wine.”

“That’ll do,” Bertram said, opening and taking a swig of the wine.

Lenus laughed quietly. “It’ll dull the pain,” she said. “It’s the best I could do.”

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Bertram awoke to the sound of knocking on his cabin’s door. He had slept through the sunrise—something he never did. Days of long training followed by late nights of waiting for Djinly had finally taken their toll, however, despite his early night in.

He shuffled to the door, still a bit groggy, and opened it to see Lenus holding a small burlap sack. Her red hair was a bit tousled due to sleep and days on the road, but she had made some effort to tame it into a loose ponytail. She was wearing the same grey tunic she had worn the day before, and Bertram could see the faint outline of light armor underneath it. She also had both of her daggers strapped to her belt. Her appearance was an odd mixture of utility and class, which Bertram admired.

“Good morning,” Bertram said, smiling and leaning against the door frame.

“Djinly got caught up in some documents, but she wanted me to bring you this,” Lenus said, offering the burlap sack to him. “It’s breakfast.”

“Thanks,” Bertram said, taking the sack from her and peering inside. In it were some bread and cheese, and a flask of water.

“Djinly will probably be a little while, but she’ll be down here,” Lenus said, arms folded in front of her.

“Well, will you join me for breakfast?” Bertram asked.

Lenus opened her mouth and looked down at the ground. She took in a breath as if to speak, but didn’t. Bertram’s warm gaze turned to one of concern. Lenus looked back up at him.

“I’m sorry,” Lenus said, “I just…”

“What is it?” Bertram asked.

“Were you one of the ones who attacked Amalia?” Lenus asked.

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The next few days were a jumble of training, questions, and history lessons with varying degrees of tension. Bertram quickly discovered how much pent-up anger Alenard had toward the Ardellian military and worked his best to diffuse it when he could. Granted, most of his anger was well-deserved; but it was not as focused or well-directed as Bertram felt it should have been.

At this moment, Alenard was sitting down at a quiet table in the Prince’s Gamble tavern, having a drink at Bertram’s request. He found that their most civil conversations took place over large tankards of ale. He was also exhausted after a long day of hard training. Though Alenard was nowhere near Bertram’s level of skill, he certainly matched him in endurance.

“So there’s really no defined moral code in Sederan religion?” Bertram asked.

Alenard laughed. “No, that’s not it—there are eight.”

“And you’re just free to choose whichever one you want?”

“Well, that depends on who you ask,” Alenard asking, setting his tankard down on the bar. “The goal is to be a strong soul. Strong souls get reused. Idle souls move onto Hell, a place of nothingness. But some people feel that their god’s ideology is inherently stronger than others. You can guess where that line of thought leads.”

“And you just sit down and talk about this?” Bertram said, taking a long swig of his ale.

Alenard shook his head. “No,” he said. “We fight about it all the time. Sometimes there are schisms, sometimes rebellions. But we always come back to the fact that all eight gods make us stronger as a nation and a culture. Even a Lyrenite has to admit that society is better for its Malechites.”

Bertram shook his head. “That’s far more progressive than I was taught,” he said. “The Ardellian people could all benefit from a few drinks with some Sederans.”

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Djinly sat in a dark corner of the Sly Vagrant tavern, quietly watching the night’s action wind down over her fifth glass of wine. A cloaked figure walked in and she quickly looked up at it. The figure pulled the cloak down to reveal a man’s face, no doubt a traveler out too late and eager to turn in for the night. Djinly averted her eyes to the crackling fireplace which was still going strong.

She began to think she was premature in sending Lenus in for the documents. She thought back to their first encounter in Amalia. Lenus was a scared girl peddling fine clothing to drunkards—a far cry from the fearless woman she needed to be. But still, Lenus had come so far in so few months. The ability to do meant less than the ability to learn quickly, and tenacity certainly counted for something.

Lenus strode in quickly, spotting Djinly before Djinly spotted her. Lenus marched up to her and put her hands down on the table she was sitting at, not bothering to sit down.

“Do you have the documents?” Djinly asked.

“No,” Lenus said, “they were probably burned, since we set the manor on fire, but—”

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Two guards dragged Lenus toward a dungeon cell, one holding each arm. She scowled, but her body remained mostly limp. She had given up on struggling for fear of being struck again. They had stripped her down to her undergarments and she didn’t want to provoke them to go any further.

They stopped at the door to a cell. A guard opened the door with a key and the other threw Lenus down against the cold stone floor. She landed hard with a yelp followed by a pained sigh. She was barely able to catch herself, and unable to prevent some sizable scrapes on her knees.

“We’ll deal with you in the morning,” one of the guards said.

Lenus stood up and violently clutched the cell bars, pressing her face against them. She stood, seething and glaring at the two guards as they disappeared up the stairs. After they had gone, she sat down on the cell floor with her back against the wall and pulled her knees up close to her.

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The sun had set and the moon had risen, but the night was cloudy, giving Lenus patches of darkness in which to act. At the moment, she wasn’t acting—she was merely observing, from the shadowy cover of a nearby patch of trees, remnants of a forest that had been cut back for city growth.

The manor itself was very large—obviously a duke’s manor, not a count’s. It looked more like a small fortress than a large house. The tall walls were made of large grey bricks that looked very sturdy. It was two stories and most likely had a sizable basement as well.

Two guards were posted at the back door to the manor. Both were armored and armed with swords, and neither looked particularly dim-witted, as Lenus was used to dealing with. Additionally, three guards were stationed at the front entrance and a guard with a bow patrolled a balcony which surrounded the entire manor. She had to distract the two guards at the back entrance without drawing any attention from the other guards.

Lenus watched the clouds overhead. They were moving slowly, but predictably. A large cloud was almost in place to block out the moonlight, which would give her the cover she needed. She had a plan and prayed to the gods that it would work.

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“Concentrate,” said Djinly, arms crossed and waiting impatiently.

“I am concentrating!” Lenus asserted.

They were standing in an empty field that had once been used for crops, but had been overgrown with weeds and other plants. The faint smell of wheat and a few fence posts were all that remained of the field’s previous life. Now, it served as a great hiding place, away from the prying eyes of the public, including passing Ardellian military. It also served as a great place to learn to use magic.

“You’re not concentrating if you’re talking,” Djinly scolded.

Lenus gave a soft but clear groan and looked straight ahead again, narrowing her eyes.

“Picture the image in your head,” Djinly instructed, “then focus, focus.”

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Lenus shivered as a cold wind hit the back of her neck. It had taken her a little over two hours to reach the Prince’s Gamble Tavern, and she’d left just as the sun was setting. She’d chosen to wear her charcoal tunic over her new cuirass, along with some dark brown pants and black leather boots. She had pulled her mess of red hair back into a tight ponytail to make sure it wouldn’t bother her, even though she had no idea what she would be doing.

She sighed as she approached the loud, boorish tavern. The light inside was dim, but a cloud moved in overhead, blocking out the full moon that had guided her there and making the firelight inside the brightest thing she could see.

“What are you doing, Len?” she muttered.

She took a deep breath and focused herself, dusted herself off, and then entered the tavern with new resolve.

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