Heartsong: A Dark Fantasy Adventure by Richard Parry

Author:Richard Parry
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Richard Parry

The innkeeper had said there was a mountain within a vale many generations past. ‘Many generations’ was probably a euphemism for, ‘more years than I have fingers to count’, but perhaps Tarragon was being unkind. He’d sent a runner and when the boy returned, he’d carried an old scroll. Unfurled, it was a stained and smudged map of the region.

The man had pointed to a section of the map where a small mountain jutted above a plain. Tarragon could imagine swaying green grass with the Itikari enclave atop. Not much imagination needed; I was born here. Everything was so different now, though. Something had changed this region. Forests grew where roads used to be. The air held a chill that wasn’t present before, and it smelled different. Not clean and dry, but wet and rich. Not rotted or anything, just … not the same.

It’s making me doubt my memories. Can I even open the door to my home? Will the city remember me?

She glanced back at Evanne. The young woman grinned into the spray as their little boat scuffed the water, rust locks damp from rain, spume, or both. She might be a problem. She is a maybe-Vhemin. I can see the heart of her, and know she is good, but the city’s Council might see only the monster, the creature on the surface. Still, they both knew that was a problem they’d need to solve, much like that of getting the Artifices to respond to Evanne’s touch in the plaguelands.

Then, the problem was she wasn’t Vhemin enough. The irised doorway into the machine had been sullen and unresponsive until Evanne lost her temper. Perhaps that was a trait the Artifice recognised, but not for long enough. The machine had glowered to somnolence after a mere hundred klicks.

Still, we survived. It got them off the sands and let them journey through other parts of the Forsaken Lands. Or’sen, Tarragon corrected herself. They don’t think they’re Forsaken anymore.

“Do you think this is far enough?” Evanne stood, balancing in their small skiff. They’d ‘borrowed’ a diving bell and anchor from the township. ‘Diving bell’ was a generous term. This looked like a cauldron with a chunk of glass fitted to the side. A Big could huddle inside, the anchor on the lakebed below, and play a line through a pulley moored to the boat above. This was old, pitted, and to Tarragon’s eye a guaranteed way to get tetanus if you were to scratch yourself on it.

The anchor was a hunk of crude stone. Tarragon thought the pulley was seized when they’d ‘liberated’ it, but it was just a crude friction fit. The idea was to have just enough weight below that the buoyancy of trapped air would keep things more or less equal with the below-average pulley. There wasn’t enough air inside to last more than a span of ten minutes before they’d start flagging, but that was fine. If they couldn’t open the door within ten minutes, they weren’t going to get in at all.

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