Valenta the Chain Knight, Tiber the Salt Knight and his squire Reme arrived at the Seat of Power on Sceptremas, the high holiday where the vassals of the realm renewed their loyalty oaths to the ruler. The Glass Mountain was a series of triangular spires, clad in white limestone so they shined in the summer sun. The jagged range of wavering peaks swept down to a white walled bailey overlooking a harbor at the end of a vast inlet, stretching south for leagues and widening until it was too far to see across from east to west.
The Knights watched as ships from the Pearl Knight's domed cove tied up at the docks. The largest vessel beached itself on the pebbly beach, where teamsters waited with wooden rollers to haul it out of the water.
The castle was surrounded by a little village, surrounded by farms. The people recognized Valenta, the lost queen of the realm. A crowd formed, following the Knights. Nobody dared speak until someone tossed a flower to the Chain Knight. They were afraid it was a trick. That she'd be taken away from them again. She caught the flower and they cheered. She had returned to them.
Up ahead, the entourages of the realm's leaders waited outside the castle gate. One group wore animal hides and cloth dyed for wilderness camouflage. One wore assorted heavy armor and bristled with weapons, not uniformed but very well equipped. A third group came up behind the Knights. The leather-scaled footmen of the late Pearl Knight, now led by his wife Gurt Glass. She rode up to her mother Valenta, who saw a complex range of emotions pass over her daughter's face. Happiness to see her dead parent. Rage that her husband had died to bring back her mother, and she was going to go through all of this again. They entered the palace together, leaving Gurt's soldiers to gamble with the assembled goons outside.
The great hall of the castle was a vast pyramid shaped chamber, lit by stained glass windows depicting battle scenes.
- The War Knight and the Pearl Knight fighting an enormous toad as its legions surged toward them out of the slime
- The Tankard Knight bashing a bronze warrior over the head with a mug as the metal man lanced him through the heart
- The Chain Knight and the Glass Knight battling the Wyvern
The glass images were missing panes, which had been filled with thin pieces of colored wood. Below, a small group of warriors and their entourage stood before the throne.
- Alexander the War Knight, ruler of Castleview to the east, and his two teenage sons
- Boar the Mercenary, ruler of Bravecrossing to the north, and his wife, maybe ten years younger than him.
- Auckland the Horn Knight, newly arrived in the realm, ready to pledge service to the throne
On one side of the throne, Boar's son Shoat, squire to the ruler. On the other side, a middle aged woman who looked familiar. On the throne, hands clenched around the armrests like he was afraid of falling, looking tired and sick, the Glass Knight. The shape of the chamber made his voice audible all the way in the back as the Salt and Chain Knights entered. They heard him stop in mid sentence as he recognized Valenta.
The Glass Knight stood. His squire Shoat held out his two-pronged fork but the King ignored him. He stumbled forward, reached out for Valenta and fell on his knees. By the time he hit the floor he was babbling. He was sorry. He wouldn't do it again. He wouldn't touch her again. He wouldn't poison his wife and watch her waste away and die because he contaminated her with his rotten body.
The middle aged woman helped the King to his feet. She had spent years handling his "rotten body" and nothing bad had happened to her. But if he didn't want to hug Valenta, she would. This was Ada, Valenta's sister. Not a Knight, not a wife to the Glass Knight, she had hated her sister for both and felt guilty for hating her when she died. Shoat helped the Glass Knight to his feet and he continued babbling, thanking the Salt Knight for rescuing his wife. Any boon he wanted was his, ask but once and the King would obey. His daughter Gurt interrupted to remind him that Valenta had been rescued by the Pearl Knight, who gave his life to free her from the clutches of the underworld.
The reminder that his son in law, formerly his squire, had died sent the Glass Knight back into a depressive spiral. Ada less-than-gently suggested he get on with the Sceptremas ceremony. She had to be firm with him, she explained to her sister, or he'd lay in bed all day, lose his mobility and fall into dementia. Boar helpfully explained the family dynamic to the Horn Knight, who was a newcomer and hadn't met any of these people before. All the Salt Knight wanted as a boon was to serve the ruler and the realm. He realized that the Pearl Knight's death had been the ultimate one-upmanship in their contest.
With loyalty oaths squared away, it was time for the feast of Sceptremas. Normally it would be held in the evening but they held it at noon, to leave time for the procession to the Funeral Plain. The great hall where they renewed their loyalty oaths was normally used for dining, but in the growing season they ate outdoors on the balcony. The spires of the Glass Mountain provided a wonderful view of the surrounding countryside, the sea and the smoke rising to the east.
Roberto Oleotto
A light shone on the far horizon to the south, over the blue curve of the ocean at the very limit of their vision. The King was distracted by it, he didn't notice when Ada poured his wine and he didn't notice when Valenta asked him for permission to go questing with the Knights Errant. Exploring the realm was the only way she could recover her memories. Her husband was heartbroken that she wanted to leave immediately after returning. He didn't want to think about her getting killed or dragged into the underworld. But he had sworn that if she ever came back, he wouldn't infect her with the Wyvern's lingering poison again. He wouldn't chain her by his side. And he understood wanting to leave the castle and go questing. The light on the southern horizon came from a big mountain that stood at the mouth of the bay. Even before the light had shone there he had always wanted to climb to the top, but something had always gotten in the way. There had always been another quest or another crisis or a familial obligation. And the oaths. There were so many he couldn't remember them all.
The Horn Knight talked with fat Alexander. He learned about his fortress to the east, the mountain holding of Castleview. They were both outdoorsmen who took most of what they needed from the land. The mountains were a harsh place but if you knew what you were doing you could find everything you needed. Auckland asked if there was anything to quest for in the mountains and the War Knight sighed. Most of the ruins in the hills surrounding his keep had already been looted.
Tiber and Ream learned a lot through conversation with black armored Boar. Gurt Glass blamed her mother for Lauder the Pearl Knight's death. Everyone there wore his inky black pearls in memoriam, except for Boar (Alexander suspected the mercenary had sold his). They were going to burn the Pearl Knight's ship at the funeral, the one Gurt loved to sail. Lauder was usually busy with his garden, but she would try to remember the days when he came with her.
Ada conspired to her sister while the King was distracted by the strange light, venting about her struggles keeping the middle aged monarch alive. Tiber asked his squire Reme what the deal was, did Ada hate the King? Reme explained that Ada loved the King, which is why she was going through so much trouble to stop him killing himself. If she thought there was any prospect of saving him, such as by taking his poisoned seed, she'd have happily followed Valenta into the grave.
Valenta, Auckland and Tiber left the banquet early to pick up equipment before the funeral. The King ordered the armorer Tahnet to outfit his wife with the best hardware he had available, but he didn't have a coat of plates in her size. She settled for a shield while he took measurements. Tiber and Auckland added helms and gambesons to their panoply. Reme got a buffcoat but Tiber took the shield for himself, intent on absorbing the bulk of the damage while his squire slew foes opportunistically.
The procession set out for the funeral plain. Most of the men at arms got conscripted into pushing the Pearl Knight's ship. The King's companion cavalry accompanied him, clad in painted mail and mounted on destriers. Valenta rode a tired steed that felt familiar, though the beast had no memory of her. Progress was slow with the levy troops moving the rollers and shoving the boat up gentle hills.
The Funeral Plain was an expanse of blue flowers dotted with tombs. Smoke poured out of kilns, reducing the dead to bones for immurement in their houses of stone. Robed figures slowly rose out of the heath and walked, swaying, toward the procession. They took over pushing the boat. The people of the realm fed them and clothed them and gave them gifts and in exchange they did this. They took care of the people after they died. The Horn Knight's rusty steed ate the blue flowers. The robed gravewardens passed oily bundles of blue flowers to the assembled mourners and encouraged them to do the same. The Horn Knight swallowed the bolus and felt calm. He was worried that he had chained himself to a sinking ship, a dying realm with an incapable ruler and his insane family and his treacherous vassals. But he stopped worrying about that. It was the essence of Knighthood, to quest endlessly and to be doomed.
The professional mourners halted the ship by a tomb decorated with Wyvern bones. Ada asked Valenta if she recognized it. She had been there before, though she probably couldn't remember. Valenta didn't go inside. Shoat supported the Glass Knight as he approached the ship. Or rather he held the King back in the guise of supporting him. The ship was to be fired, lacking the body of the man himself, and there was concern that the old King would fling himself into the pyre. The Pearl Knight had been his squire and the Glass Knight was not comfortable still being alive with his successor and son in law dead.
A shout of anguish interrupted the assembled Knights' silent misery. One of the War Knight's men at arms stumbled through the blue heather, tears and snot running down his face. A mourner offered him a bundle of blue flowers and he clouted the gravewarden aside. The party reached for their weapons. Assaulting a holy man on holy ground was a great offense, cause for instant retaliation. Alexander spurred his horse forward, intent on striking the blasphemer down, but was arrested by the sergeant who led his forces. The man would be punished severely, he reassured his lord, but the Knight had to remember that to shed blood on holy ground would be no less offensive.
The Horned Knight listened carefully to the distressed huntsman's cries as the other mountain men led him away. His faithful hound was lost, the hound who had protected him while he was wounded. The dog had saved his life and he couldn't find it, and in a place such as this he could only imagine that his beloved companion was dead. He owed the dog his life and if he had allowed it to wander off and die then his fellows could cut him down and he'd be no worse for it.
Auckland hadn't seen any dogs accompanying the men at arms. Certainly he hadn't seen the man bring it to the burial grounds.
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Barthélemy d'Eyck
The boat burned. After a moment of somber reflection, Alexander asked who would contest him in the funeral games. Burning the boat was a good start but the games would be just what Lauder's shade needed to depart in peace. Boar's young wife whispered something to him and he demured. Funeral games were for Knights, and he was merely a mercenary in charge of a castle. Auckland the Horn Knight agreed to try the War Knight. They'd begin with a shooting contest and proceed from there. They strung their bows, set up targets, fired and both missed. Perhaps the pulse of the dead (which the locals called the blue flowers that grew in the field) affected their vision. The War Knight suggested a joust, to which Auckland agreed. Fat Alexander bade his men at arms give the Horn Knight a shield, which he held in one hand with the antler halberd couched under the opposite arm. Alexander's sons passed him his shield and his pike, which seemed to glow as he lowered the beaked visor of his helm.
The duelists cantered to a goodly distance, faced off and charged down the improvised tiltyard. The Horn Knight struck the War Knight a fine blow, lance glancing off his shield and striking his pauldron. The War Knight struck Auckland square on the shield, unhorsing him with an audible crunch as he hit the ground. The War Knight's sons helped the unseated warrior to his feet and verified that nothing was broken. The portly War Knight congratulated his dismounted opponent for a blow well struck, but unfortunately he was a bit harder to move than he was in his youth.
Rather than travel by night, the funeral procession camped in the field. They shared out food to the gravewardens and, as they had buried a Knight, a fistful of coin alongside the other gifts. The mourners sang songs about the dead man. The Horn Knight spoke the blue-lipped monk Ardbeg, whose prolonged consumption of the flowers made him incomprehensibly wise. He asked about the lost dog, if this was a myth. Ardbeg told him to travel west along the coast. He thanked the holy man and queried Boar and Gurt about what awaited him there. On the western shore of the inlet was a mountain that dropped away to a natural harbor of sea cliffs. Sailors often lost their way and confused it for the harbor at the capitol to the north, wrecking their ships on the submerged rocks. Rumor had it that the inhabitants set false lights and took plunder from the victims. It was a place to be avoided.
George Moreland
Valenta woke the others before sunrise. She didn't want to accompany her family back to the castle. She had permission from her husband to go questing and going back to a giant tomb to be reminded of all the ways she had failed and all the people who resented her for things outside her control was intolerable. The two Knights Errant and the squire Reme agreed to exit the camp with her by stealth, and they were off. West along the shore, spurning the Glass Mountain and the armorer who waited with Valenta's midnight purple brigandine. Along beaches that shone with amber washed up from deposits eroded by time. Valenta picked through the honey colored rocks and pulled out a clear stone with a half-decomposed frog trapped inside. She passed the bauble to Tiber as a token of gratitude. The day passed without omens and the party made camp inland, sheltered by a hollow in the coastal dunes as they transitioned to scrub and grassland.
By night they found themselves in a tower, ringed by hoops of metal that rotated slowly. The shining spires of the Glass Mountain were just barely visible to the north. They recalled they had been here before, but it looked different this time. The clouds and the waves all pointed in the same direction, like a hail of arrows. Hoping for a clue they turned to regard the inside of the sphere. At the center was a heap of cogs and gears, rotating to some unknown purpose. The machine advanced one state with the sound of metal falling on earth. The Knights woke to find Reme had removed the saddlebags from one of the horses to inspect its skin for abrasions.
Daylight found them on the beach at the base of the cliffs. The inlet before them was a vast expanse of hoodoos, rock formations, tide pools and submerged reefs of jagged stone. There was no safe path out into the maelstrom on foot, though many of the stones stcks stuck out above water. Even a mermaid would have struggled to navigate such terrain, the risk less drowning and more being stove against the rock. In the whirling bay were several shipwrecks. The Knights agreed with Gurt's assessment that many sailors had died here, but wondered if rogues really set false lights to lure them in. There was no way to safely reach the wrecked boats, let alone loot them.
With no way to reach the smashed boats, the Company spent the better part of the day working their way around to the landward side, up to the summit. They hoped to get a better view of the surrounding area and figure out where to go next. From the top of the cliffs they spied four figures on the beach below. Three armored knights on horses and a smaller man on a pony.
A ship came into the bay. Not a fishing vessel or merchant ship like the ones used in the realm, but a longship. The kind that could sail up rivers or maraud the high seas, switching freely between sails and oars. On the sail was an image of a toad with a crown. Reme suggested it was the same one as the stained glass from the palace. The ship entered the harbor, thinking it the one to the north where the river allowed travel further inland. They realized their error too late and were sucked by a roaring outflow through a narrow opening in the rock face, smashing the ship and sailors to pieces and disgorging the remains onto the beach at the south end of the bay.
The Knights descended the cliffs to search for survivors and treasure in the wrecked boat. The Horn Knight suggested the big toad on the stained glass and on the sail was someone's insignia, or maybe a metaphor. They attained the beach and stood before the wrecked ship. The cloth was rotted away, the timbers bleached like driftwood and crusted with an age's worth of barnacles.
A child emerged from the hold and stood on the deck. He waved excitedly at the knights and climbed down to greet them. His name was Kemp, he'd been exploring in the woods when a little old man invited him to travel somewhere. The wizened dwarf had given him something, he couldn't remember what. The Knights noticed the kid had a bracelet, a heavily tarnished silver tadpole wrapped hanging loose off his arm. Kemp noted that he had heard animals in the place he had been, whose precise location he could not remember. Cats and dogs and hogs and horses.
Far below, on the beach by the shipwreck, Tiber saw a door open in the sand. A short, stooped figure emerged, looked around and beckoned someone to follow. A child emerged and ran off to play in the wrecked ship. The little man climbed back down into the earth and shut the door behind him.
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