e camped last night at the caravan. This just seemed like a wise idea given what had happened at the inn. Of course I did not expect this to fool anyone, but the point was not to hide: it was to keep together as a group for our collective safety. Ameiko has, wisely, been sleeping in the covered wagon in order to stay out of sight. While not exactly spacious, there is room in there for as many as three to lie down comfortably so she and I have been sharing the space.<\/span><\/p>\n Given how much closer we\u2019ve grown over the past couple of weeks\u2014it almost feels like it did when we were growing up\u2014you\u2019d think we\u2019d be awake until some ridiculous hour talking, but nothing could be farther from the truth. In all honesty, I am a lousy roommate and have been for some weeks. I am exhausted most evenings, and what time I do have before falling asleep is spent on research, study, or (like last night) copying spells from scrolls. Fortunately, she\u2019s also been buried in books and maps on Tian-Xia and Minkai, and she knows we\u2019re extending ourselves\u2014overextending, really\u2014for her, but it still feels like I am ignoring her.<\/span><\/p>\n In case we needed a reminder of what we have gotten into, one arrived last night around two o\u2019clock in the morning, just as our watch was changing. Both Ameiko and I would have slept through it had Sparna not awoken us. Someone sent an arrow laced with poison into the side of the wagon where we were sleeping. We were lucky that it hit the frame instead of piercing the canvas. Or perhaps they were intending to send a message rather than trying to hit one of us (though that would not make a lot of sense). Whatever the reason, they spent a small fortune on the delivery. Etayne said it was coated with deathblade, a poison which is notorious for both its lethality and its expense. This admonition cost them nearly two thousand gold.<\/span><\/p>\n Admonition? Attached to it was a note, written in Tien.<\/span><\/p>\n It was foolish of you to wake a sleeping dragon. Return what was stolen. Abandon your hopeless quest now or you and your friends will be destroyed.<\/span><\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Ameiko looked lost in thought, staring blankly into the darkness after reading the note for herself. This was her life, her family, and her heritage so it seemed appropriate, if not prudent, to ask her opinion.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t expect this journey to go unopposed. This is\u2026grim, but not unexpected.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n These Frozen Shadows? We have rattled them. Yes, they started big that night at the Skalsbridge, but now they\u2019ve been reduced to paying blind beggars to deliver spooky messages in alleyways, and sending warnings attached to arrows coated with exotic poison, all to convince us how scary and powerful they are. Because we have gotten close to them; hit them somewhere very personal. They are trying to bully us because they don\u2019t know what else to do.<\/span><\/p>\n I dealt with bullies for much of my life, and they are all the same. They talk a lot, they intimidate and posture, they threaten, and occasionally they bloody your nose. But mostly? They posture and threaten. It\u2019s how they make themselves feel better, and how they build their power base, convincing those around them how terrible and frightening they are. But really, they are just insecure and scared.<\/span><\/p>\n The people you <\/span>really<\/span><\/i> have to worry about? They don\u2019t send messages. They don\u2019t warn you in the middle of the night. They don\u2019t play the game of appearances. Like Asvig, they simply <\/span>act<\/span><\/i>. And that\u2019s precisely how we\u2019ll respond.<\/span><\/p>\n I spent some time this morning drafting a short letter to mom and dad. I promised them I would write, and that I would not hide the truth from them when I did. This has been far more difficult than I imagined. Over a decade of experience-turned-instinct screams at me to not say anything about what has happened in the past week, or what we are about to do, because no good ever came of it when I was a child. Things were better when they didn\u2019t know.<\/span><\/p>\n Mom and grandma fought a lot back in those days (dad\u2019s relationship with dadi and dada has never been strained to my knowledge, for whatever that is worth). They\u2019d probably fight even more <\/span>now<\/span><\/i> if they saw each other as often as they did when I was growing up. It was years before I understood what lay underneath those arguments. Grandma does not approve of how mom chose to live her life. She wanted mom to be the scholar, the noble, the aristocrat, the what-have-you in the gilded city of her birth. Mom threw away a life that had been carefully crafted for her along with her savings to, of all things, <\/span>work<\/span><\/i>. And touch the world with her own hands. The horror.<\/span><\/p>\n Maybe part of my fear about sending this letter is that mom (and dad) won\u2019t approve of <\/span>my<\/span><\/i> life. That I, too, am throwing away everything that was carefully laid out for me, only I am upping the ante because what <\/span>I\u2019m <\/span><\/i>doing might actually get me killed. I am worried that I\u2019m destined to quarrel with my mom the way she does with hers. I\u2019ve seen my parents twice since this all began, and the first of those led to an ugly fight over concerns about the exact sort of thing that is happening <\/span>right now<\/span><\/i>. It does not bode well. But I promised I would tell them, and for better or for worse I will see it through.<\/span><\/p>\n T<\/span><\/p>\n he road we are following isn\u2019t so much of a road at this point as it is a lightly-traveled dirt path. Wagon tracks and hoof prints are our guides.<\/span><\/p>\n It was here, about half way to Ravenscraeg where the path ran through a bog, that we apparently missed a turn. As we passed one of the stagnant ponds, a pair of slimy pseudopods shot out at us from the water\u2019s edge and struck at Etayne and Ivan on their horses.<\/span><\/p>\n This skirmish would have been unremarkable except for what we were fighting: giant, amorphous blobs that oozed and flowed as they advanced and burned flesh like acid. Worse, edged weapons merely split them in two, turning one problem into two smaller ones.<\/span><\/p>\n According to Etayne they are called ochre jellies, a name that is as literal and descriptive as it is unoriginal.<\/span><\/p>\n The bog seems an appropriate home for them. Bogs are stagnant wetlands, with pools filled by rainfall over peat-layered soil. Very little grows in them save for trees, moss, and fungus. So basically a swamp without the running water. As opposed to a marsh, which is a swamp with grass instead of trees.<\/span><\/p>\n Bogs, marshes, swamps. Apparently we\u2019ve spent enough time in wetlands that I know the difference between them now.<\/span><\/p>\n We have another five or six hours ahead of us.<\/span><\/p>\n T<\/span><\/p>\n he crags from which Ravenscraeg gets its name are a line of cliffs among the rocky hills that form the border between the southern edge of the Thanelands and the Grungir Forest beyond. The hills, and the sheared northern faces of the crags, rise and fall along their length. We can see the small fortress nestled in a fissure where two neighboring cliffs meet, sitting slightly lower than the surrounding rock but still a good hundred-plus feet straight up. A series of wooden stairs form switchbacks with landings, climbing to meet what we assume is the main entrance.<\/span><\/p>\n We are not going that way because we are not idiots. Half of our cache of scrolls, purchased yesterday evening in Kalsgard, will allow us to literally walk up the vertical rocks as easily as spiders climb walls and walk on ceilings. We\u2019ll have thirty minutes to make the ascent to one of the neighboring cliffs and then drop down into the dell which Nihali tells us lies just behind the structure. This is more than enough time, even with delays. We\u2019ll go after dark, when the quarter moon has disappeared behind the ridge to the southwest, because we also don\u2019t want to be seen. This is where the second half of our cache of scrolls comes into play: the spells on them will allow us to see in the dark.<\/span><\/p>\n(Thanelands, South of Kalsgard, Noon)<\/h3>\n
Arodus 14 (Thanelands, Near the Grungir Forest, Evening)<\/h3>\n
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