Chapter Eighteen #2
They investigated each chamber and storeroom they came across. The torch cast wide shadows behind the broad, heavy columns supporting the foundations of the fortress, and Donan circled them, shoving the darkness aside, leaving no corner unexamined.
“What are you looking for?” Alenia asked.
“Signs. Symbols.”
“Like those?”
She pointed at a section of wall, and upon closer inspection, Donan noticed faint Horadric protection runes scratched into the stone. “Exactly like those,” he said, tracing them with his finger. “Hold this.” He passed Alenia the torch and stood back to take in the inscription.
He lacked the proper guide, but from what he could translate, the runes created a shroud of illusion.
It took him a few tries to speak the proper incantation to dispel the magic, but when he did so, the wall’s appearance shifted.
The stones seemed to melt and slide away, reshaping themselves until they revealed a simple wooden door where plain wall had been.
Alenia stepped back in shock. “Are you a mage?”
“I know a few spells. Come.”
The door was padlocked, but with its magical defenses now down, Donan was able to break the lock using the heel of his staff.
The chamber on the other side of the door had been left clean and orderly compared to the rest of the fortress.
It held bookshelves, which were empty, a few bed frames, a table, and chairs.
Alenia glanced around the room. “There’s nothing here. Why hide this?”
“To leave a message behind,” Donan said, except it did not appear the previous Horadrim had left anything behind.
He strode past the bookshelf, wondering what tomes it might have held.
He crouched down to look under the beds.
He sat at the table, and that was when he noticed more symbols carved into the wood, but unlike the runes of illusion outside the chamber, these had no magic associated with them.
When translated, they simply spelled a name.
“They went to Celestia,” he said.
Alenia strode over to the table and held the torch closer to look at the symbols. “I assume that’s where you’ll be heading next?”
“It is.”
“Then I will go with you.”
Donan looked up at her. “Why would you do that?”
“The Oracle Queen said I would aid you.”
“And you have. You guided me to this place. You came in with me when you didn’t need to. I am very grateful, but you have done enough.”
She held herself with firm resolve, but tears glistened suddenly in the corners of her eyes, catching the torchlight. “I don’t know if I have.”
Donan stood and placed his hand on her shoulder. “Let’s be gone from this wretched place. Then perhaps you can explain what you mean.”
She nodded, and together they returned the way they had come, back through the cellar passages, up the winding stairs, through the hall, and out into the courtyard.
The sultry air outside smelled fresh compared to the subterranean vapors they had been breathing.
Moments later, they left the main gates of the ruin and were back on the road.
They spoke little for the first league or so, and Donan refrained from asking Alenia any questions, instead allowing her the freedom to fill the silence how she chose.
Eventually, she did speak. “We were children when the seers came, but I still remember that day as if it just happened. They said their visions had guided them to our door and that my sister would one day be their queen. My parents were so proud. But I felt abandoned. And angry. I hated the seers for many years.”
“You missed your sister.”
“I did.”
“Did you ever consider joining the seers yourself? To be with her?”
“Perhaps briefly. Never seriously. Even if I had wanted to, I knew one of us had to stay with my parents to help run the inn.”
They walked slowly. Alenia looked down at her feet often, or else up into the trees and the sky, as if struggling with her past.
“My sister came home periodically,” she went on. “That is, while our parents were still alive. After they died, she came less.”
“When was the last time you saw her?” Donan asked.
“It was just before her coronation three years ago. She said after she became queen, it would be difficult for her to visit me again. So that was our goodbye.”
“That must have been difficult.”
“You would think so, but it wasn’t, not really. By then she was almost a stranger to me. She had already aged, and she had cut off parts of herself. I made her remove her veil, and then I wished I hadn’t. I no longer recognized her. But…that wasn’t the worst part.”
Again, Donan waited.
“Before she left, she foresaw a vision of my future. My younger sister laid a terrible fate upon me.”
“Do you mind if I ask what fate she pronounced?”
Alenia inhaled deeply. “She said that one day, I would save all of Skovos.”
For a moment, Donan was too stunned to speak. “That kind of prophecy would be…a very heavy burden.”
Her nod was slow and ponderous. “I was obsessed with it for a long time. Did she mean that I would do something heroic? A middle-aged woman like me? Or did she mean something much simpler and more indirect than that? Maybe I would serve someone in my inn, and because of me that person would save Skovos. I thought about every decision I made, every action—no matter how small—as if it might be the most important thing I would ever do. Then I started to wonder if I had already done it, and Skovos is still here because of something I did without even realizing it.”
“That sounds like a kind of torture.”
“It was enough to drive me mad.”
“And now?”
“I try not to think about it anymore. I live my life according to the virtues as best I can. I leave fate to fate. But if I’m being honest, the only reason I’m here with you is because of that prophecy.
So, I guess I haven’t completely stopped thinking about it.
” She halted in the road and turned to look at him.
“I don’t believe I am done helping you. And this may be how I save Skovos.
” Then she turned away with a shrug and started walking again.
“Or maybe it’s not, and I would be better off returning to my inn.
The point is…I don’t know, and that’s why I am coming with you to Celestia. ”