Recalling that Zymaan has the mystical ability to read all written languages, Grim shows Zymaan the sigils along the base of the exterior walls of the keep. They have to open the gates and sneak outside to see them, but the enemy camps are at least one hundred yards away so they take the risk in the darkness of night. Moss has grown in many of the grooves on the stones making them hard to read.
“I can read what I can see,” Zymaan reports. “It’s a story that starts with something about a turtle’s back.” He wipes dirt and moss away to see more. “It looks like a story written all the way around the whole keep. A legend or something. A myth maybe.”
“Apparently Alandra de Winter wrote it twenty-one years ago with her bare finger,” Grim reports, faithfully repeating what Ryparin told him Lady Tidwych said.
“Remarkable woman that one,” Zymaan mumbles, continuing to examine the stone.
“Shall we take the tour? See what it says?” Grim asks.
Zymaan looks out and sees the nearby armies of lizardfolk and other creatures. “Uh, no,” he says.
“Can’t you go invisible or something?” Grim asks. “We can’t leave this undone. Ryparin said this could be some sort of magical shield. We have to explore this.”
Zymaan sighs deeply. “Let’s at least tell someone before we go. We need a contingency plan in case someone sees us and attacks. And maybe we should all go…”
“Sure,” Grim agrees, excited now, certain he is on to something important.
Janaar and Kildrak stand atop the ramparts and survey the enemy camps that surround them. Together they estimate that at least a thousand lizardfolk encircle them. The gates through which the lizardfolk came are no longer open, however, and in fact Janaar and Kildrak think they observed the gates closing unintentionally. As in, the gates appeared to close prematurely, while lizardfolk were still pouring out. And confusion and anger seemed to ripple through the ranks thereafter. Something was amiss.
“What do you think is going on out there?” Janaar eventually asks.
“I’m not sure,” Kildrak responds. “But for now it appears to be to our advantage. Buys us time.”
“Have Valaria and Ash found anything we can use to blow this place up?” Janaar asks.
“Maybe,” Kildrak replies. “They found a twenty gallon barrel of lamp oil, and a five gallon barrel of pitch, and a fifteen gallon barrel of tar. Can you blow up anything with that?”
Janaar shrugs. “I hope so.”
The two men stand quietly a moment.
“And we have a fire-breathing dragon,” Kildrak says in a monotone voice. “Only one though.”
Janaar chuckles. “I don’t even know where to start thinking about that one. How can she be a dragon? Is Alandra de Winter actually a dragon?”
Kildrak shrugs. “Maybe just the father is a dragon.”
Janaar shakes his head. “I can’t decide if her being a dragon is good news or bad.”
As if on cue, both men suddenly observe black hooded figures moving among the lizardfolk ranks. They chant and dump bones from bags they carry. They chant more and the lifeless bones clatter together and take flight as Bone Birds.
Valaria spends time with the troops. Always a quick study, she applies the lessons she learned from Foul Fritoff about taking a ship’s inventory and applies it to the keep. She counts fifty footmen soldiers and twenty bowmen. She counts twenty women and twelve children. She counts everything Kildrak told her to count, and in the process she befriends the people she meets and learns many little secrets.
[Cue cards to Valaria at the beginning of the next session]
Her two manservants, Footman Jones and Sergeant Coulson (recently promoted by Lady Tidwych at Valeria’s behest for valour and prowess demonstrated during combat), follow her everywhere and dote on her every need.
Ryparin and Nyneve get close to Lady Tidwych by working closely with her to tend to the keep’s many needs in light of the lizardfolk armies forming around it. With her husband poisoned in bed and incapacitated, plus with Captain Argon dead, she is overwhelmed with the sudden rush of needs and duties.
She is grateful to Ryparin for the healing prowess he brings to the keep just at the time it suddenly needs it, literally returning from the distant past right at the critical life-saving moment.
It becomes clear in the exchanges between Ryparin and Lady Tidwych that she is very fond of him. Even in all the chaos, or perhaps because of it, she sometimes calls Ryparin handsome, or looks at him overlong. Nyneve figures out long before Ryparin does that when Henry was here twenty-one years ago, he gave Lady Tidwych some affectionate attention.
It is in this warm context that Lady Tidwych opens up about the past when finally taking a moment to relax and recover from her duties organizing the keep’s logistics of bringing supplies to the soldiers on the walls, among other things.
Eventually the conversation turns back to the time twenty-one years ago when Alandra de Winter and her entourage (including Henry Marshall), emerged from the tunnels beneath Bale Keep and rejoined the war then going on across the lands. They stayed at Bale Keep for one month, during which time Alandra taught classes, drew sigils and sent messages far and wide in a plot that eventually culminated in Meat Grinder Rock – the dying place of Alandra’s enemies.
“The dying place for her too though,” Lady Tidwych sniffs, crying at the telling of the tale. “The goings on of Meat Grinder Rock changed her. All that killing, although not done by her… she merely healed and re-healed Morgan over and over again so he could do it… left a stain upon her which doused that indescribable flame inside her which made her so special and precious.”
After many more tears, Lady Tidwych continues.
“So many people around her got hurt and killed. She was the great healer, but so many people around her got hurt in ways that don’t fix easy.”
Another round of tears.
“She always knew what was going to happen next too, before it happened. She knew before you did if you’d changed your mind about something. Of course she knew what Meat Grinder Rock would cost her. How it would change her.”
Lady Tidwych becomes overwhelmed and goes silent a long time.
Nyneve cannot bear to have the story end there so eventually she prods lightly, “Why did Alandra de Winter choose what she did… to lose her powers?”
Lady Tidwych looks at her and then at the man she believes to be Henry Marshall. She once swore never to speak what she knows, but she feels so safe around Henry…
“To protect the baby that was then heavy in her belly,” she whispers.
Nyneve and Ryparin exchange shocked expressions. Nyneve suddenly feels the universe tilting against her.
Ash spends his time mostly with the troops, taking their measure and making honest assessments about the keep’s defensive prospects. With Captain Argon killed in the initial assault, Ash naturally and easily takes charge of the remaining bowmen, just as Janaar asked him to do. He organizes the bowmen into their own group within the larger group and instills his values into them. When he is done, they stand ready to face the dangers before them and to serve the people they are sworn to protect.
In the evening, Ash does a precautionary walk about the keep as he has done every night since the siege started, but this night his supernatural senses draw him along a different path. What he encounters causes him to yell loudly for his companions to join him quickly. That danger has found them again. That something terrible has happened.