The Shadow of the Tell

Listen children, for this is an important story. We are the Witches of Sartellia. We alone know the secret histories of the world. We alone know who the Commandant truly is, and if we do not stop him the world is bound to be plunged into darkness. But we are the Witches of Sartellia, children. It has been dark before. And we told each other the stories then, we tell each other the stories now, and should the worst happen, still we will tell each other the stories.

To the west of the plains of Gideon rise the mountains of the Tell. No-one alive today recalls why they are called that, and even though the story I'm about to tell you takes place many, many years ago, still that memory faded from the world long before this story takes place, and a little less long before the story within it.

The mountains are rocky and tall, and riddled with caves and monsters, or at least stories of monsters, which are quite as powerful as the real thing. Now and again in the history of the world, whenever banditry was profitable, bandits would retreat to certain of the best-hidden caves with their absconded loot. Today treasure-hunters often get lost in those dark labyrinths, and are never heard from again. Gobbled up by monsters, say some: Old Jantzy, or Mora. Cursed or too contented by the treasures they find, say others.

Or enchanted by the Witches. For the people in the villages in the shadow of the Tell claim that a community of Witches has lived for many years in that dark and deep.

Now, history tells us that Freyna had two sons, Patros and Sartos, and Shae had none. And that Patros died when he was quite young, and that Sartos had only sons, and so too did his sons, and his sons' sons for six generations. All those sons, except for the warrior Edmund Grondel, were unexceptional in most respects, save for their longevity and virility. And that they told the stories, though they gradually forgot what most of the stories meant.

And all of the Sisters know the story of Amanda, the only daughter of a seventh son of a seventh son, and how she understood the stories better than anyone since Sartos, and how she recognized the sins of the Wizards of the Third Academy, and how she re-established the Sisters, and recruited those not of the Blood. May she bless the Daughters today.

But even she did not know this story, which is kept secret from the Daughters, and is only for Sons among the Blooded of Astor. The story is about her grandfather, a man named Tem who left his family to go a-travelling as callow young men do, and who changed so much he could never come back.

Tem was a poet and a scoundrel and a performer of tricks in a time when that was still forbidden by law in most big cities, back before real magic returned to the world. But the laws were looser in the villages, and he could make a fine living and carouse the prettiest girls as a traveling performer, and so one night he took a tattered volume of Acinius' Confoundamentals and stole away, leaving his wife to care for their seven sons, while Amanda's father was still just an infant.

For all his faults, Tem was undeniably a great listener, and a collector of stories, and he learned many stories that even the Sisters do not know today. It's told that he learned stories from birds and raccoons, and my father said he once spent a week learning some very valuable stories from a particularly talkative tree.

Eventually, he came to the shadow of the Tell, and in the villages there he learned some of the stories about bandits that were current at the time, and of the great lost treasures to be found in the caves. Being the avaricious scoundrel that he was, or possibly feeling sorry about his shabby treatment of his wife and intending to send her a fortune to ease her troubles, he decided he would go and seek the treasure.

The caves were dark, children, and filled with danger. It's told that Tem got lost for weeks, that he lived on mushrooms and giant centipedes. It's told that he got so good at listening to the walls that he stopped using his torches entirely. There are other stories from then, like the story that claims he was pursued by Mora the Fire Demon and ultimately had to lie with her to quench her rage, but my father said that part of the story couldn't be true, because there were no demons walking the world at that time. But who today knows for true?

At any rate, the sure part of the story is that despite hard and long wanderings he found no gold or silver or magical relics. No treasure at all.

No treasure, that is, until he found a huge open chamber where the walls were covered with paintings. The paintings were abstract and strange, but Tem recognized them as resembling the tattoos that the Blooded would copy from generation to generation, even in his day. There was one wall that seemed to match his own father's tattoo, the tattoo he had refused to inscribe on his own body. This room puzzled him deeply and he sat for a long time, contemplating and listening.

He listened for a long time, and it finally was so quiet that he heard the bones singing in a series of hidden chambers. He knew somehow that these bones belonged to his cousins, but he couldn't make out their song, it was so faint. So he moved into the hidden chambers, and he listened even harder.

After a good long while, he could hear the footsteps of people who had left the caves a long time ago, but they were so faint now he couldn't make out where they had gone. And in a very deep and hidden chamber, he heard the strangest thing of all. He heard humming, and the dance of tiny footsteps.

It wasn't a long-ago dance, neither. It was a right-then dance. And as he lit a torch to investigate, he saw before him a sight he was wholly unprepared for. There stood a tiny little old man, no more than six inches high, dancing away in the lonely dark, and humming little songs to himself. Old songs that no-one had heard in hundreds of years, or with words that Tem knew sung to a different tune, or an old tune with strange words.

The man was naked, but he had no genitalia to cover with clothes anyway. His face seemed smushed to one side, and in place of hair he had a coiled string on his head. He was holding a little stick barely longer than himself, which he used as a kind of staff for balance, and to tap out rhythms on the stone floor.

For a long time, Tem just stood and watched. He was fascinated by the songs, and overcome by the weirdness of this little old man. For his part, the little old man seemed content to keep dancing and singing and paying little attention to Tem, except for an irritated glance at the bright torch now and then.

Finally, Tem spoke up. "Old Father-"

"I can't be your father for I never had a son," the strange little man sang, cutting him off. "Once I had brothers, now I'm the only one."

"My apologies," Tem said. The man nodded and continued dancing. After a while, Tem asked. "What happened to your brothers?"

"Most were dumb, made as toys. Some were crushed by impetuous boys."

"And why did you survive?"

"When Patros fled, he couldn't keep much, I was his only possession she had touched. Treasured and cared for, I got old. One gets smart along the road."

Tem recognized the name of his ancestor's brother from his own father's stories, and immediately realized the significance of his discovery. Over the next few weeks, the homunculus told him about his creator Freyna, and how after her death Patros had come here and worked as an Oath Keeper. Yes, children, just like the Oath Keeper of the Sisters today, though the little man claimed that once the Blooded had many Oath Keepers, and only they bore tattoos, which served as a record of the Oaths that bound them. And eventually, in his curious rhyming idiom, he told them about their cousins, the sons of Shae, and about the greatest son of Shae, who, long after Patros had died was brought to this chamber to be buried by his father. And the secret that he revealed was the name of the last son of Shae.

That name was Mott.

And Tem discovered how to open the chambers of the tomb, and he saw the skeleton of Patros, and it was clutching a document, but that document was never shown to any of the Sisters and we do not know what it said. And he saw the body of Mott the Wise and Ugly, which was perfectly preserved despite the long years since his death. And covering his body from his misshapen head down to his clawlike feet were the strange tattoos of the Blooded.

Tem asked what they meant.

"I learned to read at Patros' feet. If you want to learn, then take a seat."

And so Tem entered the tutelage of the strange little man. And he learned many stories that only the sons of the Blooded know today, and he learned a few stories that we don't. But mostly he learned the names of the old Demons and their contracts, which were inscribed on Mott's body in the Old Tongue, which no-one among the Sisters remembers how to read today. And he learned how those contracts might be re-established, and he knew he'd found a greater treasure than any objects he'd imagined.

Today, we don't know why Tem changed his name, or why he never sent for his wife or children. But the Sons know that the sin the Sisters decry is not Muerto's true sin, because he abandoned his wife and family years before he used the contracts to become King.

And we know these things because when Amanda's father was very old, after Muerto had died but before Amanda restored the Sisters, he was visited by the great poet Eburns. Who, as everyone knows, kept a tiny man in his sleeve.