Arodus 3, 4719
Breachill
Early Afternoon
I left Iskaryn to her temper tantrum and focused on lunch. I’d been turning events over in my head, trying to make sense of them. I laid out for the others what we knew.
“Voz learns about the Ring at some point in the past—it doesn’t matter when, but it’s before the Cinderclaws arrive—and starts exploring the citadel. She makes a couple of trips over time. She learns about, or already knew about, the tunnel. She pays Roxie off so she can use it without drawing suspicion.
“The Cinderclaws, meantime, arrive roughly a week ago, coming through the Ring itself, and take over the castle. They chase the Bumblebrashers up to the ramparts. The grauladons follow, and the stairs collapse, taking them out along with parts of the walls, leaving the stairwell choked with rubble. The Cinderclaws are now divided, and cut off. One of the two grauladons survives up above, and keeps the Bumblebrashers trapped.
“Sometime before the Call for Heroes, Calmont learns about the Ring, and where it is, from Voz’s notes. He hatches his plan to get the Bumblebrashers to show him.
“A few days before the Call for Heroes, Helba goes to the citadel, sees red smoke, and fears the worst. She starts telling people her concerns, and her plan to bring this up at the Call of Heroes. Word spreads, and Calmont hears about it.
“Calmont doesn’t want investigators, so he hatches this risky and brazen plan to burn down the Town Hall with everyone inside to stop the investigation before it starts. He needs a lot of help, because he’s an idiot, so he steals scrolls of summoning from Voz, and turns the creatures loose on the hall. He doesn’t wait around to see if it’s successful, because he’s an idiot, and then he’s seen running away, too, because he’s an idiot.
“We get tasked with the investigation, and visit Voz that afternoon. She is not an idiot, and deduces that Calmont is racing off to find Alseta’s Ring. She panics because he might actually beat her to it, and because her name was mentioned. That sends her scrambling back to the citadel with a plan of her own: get information from the Hellknights that are buried there. She trips some safeguard, the dead rise up against her, and she retreats in a panic, emerging from the tunnel in a frightened state. Roxie sees her.”
“Voz is desperate now to get to the Ring, and she’s learned of another way in. One that doesn’t involve clearing debris out of the stairwell. She closes up her shop, and takes off for Guardian’s Way.
“We have two actors, now that Calmont is out of the picture, both working independently: Voz and the Cinderclaws. The arrival of the latter started a chain reaction that spooked the former into action.”
While no one disagreed with this version of events, there was not much enthusiasm among the group for what we had learned from Voz. Some of them were concerned that we were becoming distracted by the bookseller’s ancillary role in events, and that the immediate goals were what we had promised to the Bumblebrashers and to the council: give the goblins their home back, and deal with the Cinderclaws.
“Promises were made to help the Bramblebrashers,” Trip said. “There remain skeletons, goblin dogs, and the Cinderclaws beneath the rubble to attend to. A witch does not wish to be an oath breaker when so few grains have passed through the hourglass of her life.”
Tarsius agreed. “A witch makes a good point with the vow to help the Bumblebrashers. While they might live there more safely now, they are not yet safe. I believe a case can be made for chasing Voz, but it still would not release us from our previous promises. I believe a witch is correct that our tasks here are not yet done.”
My argument was that Voz, the Cinderclaws, and Alseta’s Ring were, in fact, all the same problem. We weren’t after Voz so much as we were after what she found. If she did discover a way into Alseta’s Ring that didn’t require digging out two floors of stairwell choked with rubble, then maybe we should consider that.
“A Witch proposes, then, a compromise,” Trip said. “This day is half spent. The remainder could be afforded to securing the first floor, so that the Bramblebrashers can start clearing things. We would spend the night in safety rather than in the unknown wilds, then set out for this Guardian’s Way fresh in the morning. We fulfill our oath and lose little time in pursuit of this new objective.”
I felt like that was as good as I was going to get, so I agreed. And, honestly, Trip is right. I needed answers, yes, but we can’t just drop our agreement to the Bumblebrashers because the timing was inconvenient.
And Iskaryn is already upset with me. She’s not fey, but she’s from a fey forest. Going back on a promise, or even appearing to, would only make things worse.