Wander West, in Shadow

Traveling with Sooreemah and Reekort, it quickly became apparent why the ogres were so pernicious upon the mountains. For while they might have preferred meat, even if it had to come from one of their own, they would eat anything. Quite literally anything; Reekort, the smaller one, stopped to snap a dead branch off a tree and chew on it thoughtfully, while Sooreemah bent to scoop up a handful of dirt and slowly chew on it, spitting out pebbles like one might spit out seeds. Their wide mouths and large, bulging teeth seemed to have little problem with chewing on even the toughest meals. With such size and strength as the ogres had, combined with the fact that they could seemingly eat nearly anything, Elyse thought, it was good fortune indeed that most of their babes did not survive. Otherwise these creatures might be swarming all over the peaks.

Their path led them a steep, rocky incline, that eventually reached a plateau, thickly wooded with dead, black trees. They were fairly high up, at this point; close to one of the peaks that made up the mountain range, and the htin air made travel more difficult and tiring.

While the woods here were not haunted by spirits, as the Killing Grounds were, they were no less disturbing. For the further they went on, the more the forest floor was littered with bones; animal, hman and ogre alike, victims of the ogre's feasting. Skulls lay tangled in the ol roots of pine trees, brown with rot, froested over in the cold mountain air. Elyse even got a good look at an ogre's skull. She puzzled over this with Martimeos, as they took a break; the strange seam ogres had in their heads was reflected in the bone of their skulls, as welll. It looked almost as if two normal skulls had been fused together, splitting above the forehead. If she could have carried the skull with her, she would have. They were strange creatures, these ogres; and she had no idea what such a split in their skulls might make of their brains. Perhaps, given how slow they were, only one half actually contained any brains at all.

It was not long before the forest began to fill up with a stink; the rank and offensive odor of the ogres, of carrion and rot, grew stronger the closer they came to their home. But before they came to the ogre's place of living, Sooreemah and Reekort showed them all what Martimeos had requested to see: The curious sight of the cave from which the Bogge-King had first emerged.

It was a large cave set into a bleak cliffside - or, more accurately, it had been a large cave; it was blocked up now with boilders and stone piled up before its entrance, many of them larger than even many men working together could possibly hope to move. And on every stone was scribbled, in the ogre's crude art, a depiction of the Bogge-King; or the Mad Father, as they called him. Dozens of towering, clawed black shadows, and the auroch-skull helm smeared into them in chalk, stared out onto the bleak mountainside.

Sooreemah and Reekort themselves refused to approach the cave; they hung back, shaking and trembling, sick with terror to even be this close to it. Mors stayed with them, to watch over them, as the humans went to investigate.

As she approached the cave, Elyse could not help but feel a burning knot of dread within the pit of her stomach. All of those drawings of the Bogge-King seemed to stare at her; crude as they were. A dozen black, empty eye sockets looking upon her with black malice. She glanced towards the others, as they drew near it; Martimeos and Kells merely seemed grim and quiet, but Aela was trembling, and Torc nearly had to be pulled along to the cave, pale and wide-eyed. It made sense, she supposed. This was where it had all begun. The slaughter of their people had started when the Bogge-King first set foot on this very ground.

But despite the dread, it was what it was. Merely a blocked-up cave, and nothing more. Neither she nor Martimeos could sense the Art here; if a clue to what had made Hadley into the Bogge-King could be found here, it must have lain deeper within. She watched as Martimeos ran his hands over the stones, as if searching. The wizard sighed as he came to a crevice, a gap in the rocks that seemed just too small to crawl through. "Curious, don't you think," she said, gesturing towards the cave as the wizard looked back at her. "That the Bogge-King should leave these stones here, that hindered his passage."

"Well," the wizard replied, putting his face to the crevice to see what he might spot inside, and frowning when he found nothing but darkness, "He obviously has another way out, doesn't he? If he is at all like the bogge-men, he can walk through any door he pleases, and into another world. One blocked path hardly matters."

"Th' Land o' Dim," Aela interjected. She stood some distance back, hugging her hides tight to her, as her long red hair flew about madly in the rough winds. She was braver than the ogres, but, it seemed, that bravery would bring her only so close to this place. "Grizel says et's en th' Land o' Dim he dwells." Torc looked back at his sister, and for a moment it seemed as if the Crosscraw man was going to say something. But then, apparently, he thought better of it, glancing at Martimeos, and kept his silence.

"Still," Elyse continued. "Why allow the one to be blocked off, if he had used it? Perhaps he truly is not strong enough to move the stones."

Kells barked a harsh laugh, his gray eyes full of a grim merriment beneath his kettle-helm. "Well, good," the soldier said, mirth ringing in his voice. "At least we can say the Bogge-King does not have the strength of dozens of ogres all at once." At the sight of Elyse's glare, he shrugged. "It's not nothing....sister," he continued, for some reason glancing with hesitation towards Torc. "I suppose it's good to have a guess that there are some things he might not do."

They did not linger long here. With no way to get inside, the cave was little more than a morbid curiousity, for now. It felt good to walk away, and leave those staring, dark drawings of the Bogge-King behind. Though once they had made their way to the ogre's homes, Elyse found herself wishing that they might have stayed by the cave a while longer.

It was in a clearing in the forest, where the trees had been uprooted and torn down, that the ogres made their dwellings. Or, at the very least, some of them did - there could not have been more than a few dozen here; other such places, Sooreemah told them, dotted the forests nearby.

Each ogre family made their homes someplace a little bit different - some had dug great holes in the ground, marked about with branches twisted into a sort of wreath, making their home a sort of burrows. Others dwelt within caves that had been carved into the cliffsides. Still others had even stacked logs, lashing them together with old vines, in some crude imitation of what an actual house might look like.

They raised less of a cry than she had feared, walking into the ogre's homes. The giants seemed to have no real organization amongst themselves; no one to raise a shout of alarm of rally them. Naught but a collection of families, living nearby each other, staring at the strangers as they walked into their woods. She saw some of the ogres point at Mors Rothhach and mutter amongst themselves in fear, which the giant bear seemed to appreciate, holding his head high and snarling at them to further terrorize them.

They might have met a foolhardy, brave ogre along their path, but enough of them feared Mors, or Stonetooth, as they called him, to keep their peace. That did not stop some of the giants from looking at them with a flat, feral hunger, however. Aela and Torc seemed to get some special attention; nasty grins and guffaws of mocking laughter always followed when one of the giants pointed to the two Crosscraw. She shivered to feel their small, expressionless eyes crawling all over her, sizing her up, wondering which bit of her would taste the best, no doubt. Though she was satisfied to see those stares turn to fear as well, once Sooreemah called out to them and told them that she and Martim were practitioners of the Art. It was only right that such foul and base things should fear her. But it was not the ogre's hungry stares that made the place so terrible.

First was the sheer stink of it. The stench of rotting meat, and dung, and a peculiar scent she came to realize was all the ogre's own, like curdled milk, all blended together, enough to make her gag. So thick was the stench that she worried that it would never wash off; that it would settle into her skin and simply become a part of her. She found herself almost immediately wishing for the flower-scented baths of Dun Cairn. She was going to soak in those perfumed waters for a week straight after all this, if she had her way. She could handle a little stink; she had grown up in a swamp after all, but this was truly something foul.

And the second was the casual gore of the place. Roughly in the center of the ogre's homes lay a great firepit, though the flames there danced low over blackened bone and wet wood. It seemed to serve as a sort of gathering place, for all of the ogre families. And it was there that they carved their meat, on great flat rocks soaked and grimy with layer upon layer of old, dried blood.

And the ogres truly did treat each other as nothing but meat. By this firepit, they carved dead ogres like one might have seen a butcher carve a pig in the streets of Twin Lamps. Bloody bones littered the ground. Skinned torsos, for all the world like they were on display for purchase, lay upon the stone tables. Offal lay in great, soggy heaps; as she watched, an ogre waved a pale, severed arm at another. One of the flat carving rocks contained nothing but a few discarded heads in various states of decay. The ogres were not human, but it was too close for comfort. She put a hand to her mouth as her stomach churned, and she felt bile rising at the back of her throat.

But it wasn't that which pushed her over the edge. Not the stench. Not the sight of ogres carving each other, thinking no more of it than a butcher at market. No, what truly pushed her over the edge was how many of the ogres, despite the chill, chose to go around naked. Their pale, grublike skin, bulbous stomachs, and black damnation, all the hair that was not on their bald heads had seemed to decide to grow redoubled in strange places. And the ogre women - every last one of them heavily pregnant -

Elyse could not take it. She staggered away from the group and noisily emptied her stomach onto the forest floor. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, shuddering, to find Martimeos by her side when she rose. At least, she thought, the wizard looked a little sick himself. "'Tis a grim scene, I know," he muttered to her, his normally tanned skin just a touch more pale and gray than it usually was, his green eyes just a bit more wide than normal. He spat in disgust. "Cannibals."

"Could they not at least wear some clothing?" she said quietly, as he took her arm and helped her walk along.

Martimeos glanced at her, unable to stop a small smile from spreading across his face, despite the disgusting scene before them. "You? You say that? I was just thinking to myself how I knew someone else who liked to go about naked when it was not appropriate."

Elyse squeezed the wizard's arm as hard as she could. "Martimeos," she said, her voice icy and dangerous, "Are you comparing me to these ogres? I am nice to look at."

"I suppose the giants must consider themselves nice to look at as well," the wizard replied, either oblivious to her anger or choosing to ignore it. "Or perhaps they do not. I wonder if they know how ugly they are?"

Though it was not all casual cruelty, and ugliness, and brutality in the ogre camp. Despite the presence of Mors, and their fear of a wizard and a witch, a few of the more curious, brave ogres began to approach them. And curiously, the giants adored Flit. The cardinal - or 'little bloodfeather', as they called him - seemed to be highly prized by the ogres. if for no other reason than his feathers were the color of blood. They seemed to consider the bird quite the prize, and were suitably impressed to learn that Martimeos was his master. They cooed in response to his singing; and despite Martim's initial trepidation, the brave little bird even fluttered off to perch upon their outstretched fingers, though Elyse could tell this last made the wizard extremely anxious. She did not blame him; she kept Cecil close by to her side herself, extremely aware of just how easily these giants could crush her poor cat. But to her great surprise, the ogres seemed keenly aware of how delicate Flit was, and shockingly gentle, for such brutish and coarse creatures, when the bird perched on their palms.

Sooreemah and Reekort seemed to have forgotten why they were here; basking, instead, in the curiousity and attention of their fellows. The more of the giants that approached them, the more nervous they all became; it was unsettling to be surrounded by a folk so much larger than yourself. Elyse noted with some satisfaction that Martimeos and Kells seemed particularly perturbed by this. It was a taste for them, she thought, of what she felt all the time; it was not new for her at all to be surrounded by people so much taller than she was.

But it was not long before a great, gurgling harrumph interrupted the babble of the ogres that surrounded them. The giants fell silent, and parted ways, to reveal the sorry sight of one of their elders.

The creature that struggled to walk towards them now resembled the other ogres only superficially. Much of his muscle had seemed to evaporate away, and his skin hung in great, loose flaps of reddened, infected skin. Even his face sagged, seeming almost as if it was attempting to slide off his skull; it only made the unsightly seam in his head more prominent, almost as if the bone was ready to tear through the paper-thin skin. He, at least, wore some clothing; indeed, he seemed nearly weighed down by the heavy furs draped across his crooked back. His teeth bulged forward, long and curling, some of them even jabbing into his lips, as if his mouth could no longer contain them.

"Sooreemah," this giant said as he drew close, struggling to force his words past his gigantic teeth, which barely parted as he spoke. "Reekort." The elder ogre peered at them with small eyes that were nearly entirely covered by the drooping skin of his face. He looked at Mors, and nodded his head. "Stonetooth." He sighed, causing the loose skin of his face to flap ridiculously, and then asked, in a voice that said he already knew the answer, "Where Kortonsoo?"

"He no fear Stonetooth," Sooreemah replied simply. "So now he meat."

The giants reacted to this in a strange way. Some of them muttered to themselves; others looked at Mors and nodded appreciatively. "Urakato. I figure," the older ogre said wearily. "Did you know. You eat his father, Stonetooth. And his father-father. And his mother."

"A FINE FAMILY TRADITION, THEN," Mors answered callously. The gazed around at the giants surrounding them, lips peeled back in a snarl, orange eye glinting in the dying light of day, his half-dead face a mask of feral cruelty. "HE MIGHT HAVE LIVED, HAD HE SHOWN ME THE PROPER FEAR. SOME OF YOU, IT SEEMS, THINK YOUR WRETCHED LITTLE BONE-BROTHERS ARE A MATCH FOR ME. I DO NOT ENJOY EATING YOU, YOU KNOW. I MUCH PREFER CLEANER MEAT, WHEN I CAN GET IT."

"Maybe if you eat one or two, he not care much," the older ogre muttered in reply to this. He pointed towards Mors' stomach. "Oh well. He with them now." He shuffled his feet, and then turned his gruesome face towards the humans. "Who you bring among us, Stonetooth? Foxhairs. Wizard. Witch. Why?"

Martim stepped forward to give the answer himself, making sure to prominently display Flit, who sat perched once more on his shoulder. "I am Martimeos, your wizard," he answered, "And the witch is Elyse. We have traveled to these lands with our companions to learn about the bogge-men; your bone-brothers, as you call them. Sooreemah and Reekort here have told us of your Stone-Mother, and the Mad Father, and we wish to learn more. I was told an elder might tell me more of these things."

The elder ogrew was quiet for a long moment, as if all those words at once was a bit too much for him to absorb. "I am Jabhok Lotsoo," he answered finally; he seemed to be mimicking Martim's tone of speech, though whether it was out of mockery or simple-minded imitation, Elyse could not tell. She thought these things might be a bit too stupid for mockery. "And I have twenty winters." The elder ogre paused, as if this was a shocking revelation that they all needed a moment to process. When he received no impressed exclamation, his flesh drooped in a way that Elyse supposed might be called a frown. "Few make it past ten," he muttered. "I old already when Mad Father first walk land. Old, before bone-brothers ever kill first Foxhair. I old, when Mad Father first return us to stone. I-"

"What do you mean by that?" Martimeos asked, interrupting the ogre. "Return you to stone. Do you mean he killed you, or do you mean something else?"

All the ogres that surrounded them fell silent, now, looking nervously amongst themselves. Their small eyes were expressionless as ever, but their wide mouths contorted in strange, toothy frowns. This was clearly something that they did not like talking about. "If I mean kill, I say kill," Jabhok said, turning to face Martim; his entire face was so loose and drooping that it seemed as if it might slough off as he did so. "And he did kill many, before we block his path. But come. I show."

Jabhok, shuffling and slow, led them - thankfully, away from the gore at the center of the ogre's burrows. A few of the younger giants trailed behind them, still curious, but reluctant, as if dreading where their elder was leading these strangers.

It was to what looked to be an old, abandoned ogre-hole, dug into the ground, that Jabhok led them. The entrance was large, but looked partially collapsed, as if it had not been used in some time. Layers of black, rotten leaves, slick with ice, lined the path down, which disappeared quickly into the darkness of the earth. "In there," the old ogre told them. "You see."

Mors regarded this hole in the earth dubiously. "I HAVE SWORN THESE MANLINGS TO MY PROTECTION," he rumbled, turning to the ogres that followed him. "IF THIS IS A FORM OF TRAP - IF ANY OF THEM COME TO HARM - I WILL LINGER HERE, AND HUNT EVERY LAST ONE OF YOU FOR SPORT. NEVER WILL THESE WOODS BE SAFE FOR YOU AGAIN."

"No trap!' Jabhok replied in an agonized yell, as the ogres about them whooped nervously among themselves at the bear's threat. "Go down. You see."

Elyse glanced at Martimeos. The wizard gave her a puzzled look, and then shrugged. "Nothing for it," he replied.

With a murmur, she glamoured up a ball of pale flame to float above her hand, to light their way inside the darkened burrows, nodding appreciateively as the ogres exclaimed at this. She and Martimeos went down first, ducking their heads against the twisted roots that wound their way around the entrance, careful not to slip on the icy leaves that lined their path.

They did not need to go far. The burrow was not large. An ogre's home, it seemed, was little more than a pit in which they slept. But there were no ogres here; or at least, not any longer. Only what had once been ogres.

For against the bare, earthen walls of the burrow, tucked far into the corners of the room, were two large, strange formations of crystals. Black and clustered, their points looked dangerously sharp, glinting in the light of the glamour-flame Elyse had summoned. She did not realize what they were, at first. It was not until she drew closer to them, dangerously close, that she could see the shape that lay beneath. That of two ogres, each curled into a ball, as if in great agony; the crystals looked as if they had grown over - or through - the creatures while they had lain here.

"So they are stone, then," Kells said, when he had descended into the burrow, along with Aela and Torc. The soldier shook his head, giving Elyse a sober look when he caught her eye. "So he is not as strong as a dozen ogres. But he can doom us with a scratch."

"Ah dinnae understand," Torc muttered in the darkness. "What does et mean?"

"It seems," Martimeos said quietly, ignoring that Torc had dared to speak in his presence, "That Grizel was right. It is a blade of Dolmec iron that the Bogge-King wields." He eyed the walls of the burrow. Spreading out from the ogre's bodies, in an ever-spreading pattern, the black crystals grew along the earth. "Let us not linger here. I wonder if it would be deadly for us to receive a scratch from these crystals, as well."

Jabhok and Mors were still waiting for them, as they clambered up out of the earth. It seemed the other ogres, though, had lost interest. Elyse could see them stomping through the trees, pale and stooped forms in the dim light of dusk. For some reason, as she looked after them, she felt a strange sense of pity. Perhaps it was the way they walked, or their stunted speech, but she realized that Aela was right about them. An ogre was a broken thing.

"You see," Jabhok asked them, as they returned to him. "Return to stone. But stone wrong, though. Not good stone. I speak to it. It not..." The old ogre sputtered for a moment, as if his mind strained to form the right words. "Mad Father, husband of Stone-Mother. We honor him. But...something not right. You see. Stone sick. Too much death." Jabhok swung his loose, drooping face towards Aela and Torc. The expression he made was far too warped by his drooping flesh to read. "Even for Foxhairs. Too much death."

Aela gave a low, dusky laugh of weary astonishment. "Ah never thought Ah'd see th' day," she said, her voice hoarse, "That an ogre pitied us."

Jabhok wrinkled his face at her so much that his eyes and mouth nearly disappeared into the folds of loose skin. "Should have kill some of you. So you not so strong. Enough so we can hunt you again. But he kill so many, and bone-brothers not let us take meat. Kill us, if we try. Nail us to trees. Take our heads. Make land strange. Full of spirits. Young ones, they not know. Old Jabhok knows."

This was interesting. Elyse would have thought that these simple-minded giants might have worshipped the Bogge-King as a god. But she supposed it made sense for some of them to have reservations, if the bogge-men were vicious enough to kill them as well. "Is this not the will of your Stone-Mother?"

Jabhok made a strange sound, half sigh, half exasperated growl, his long jowls and the loose waddles of skin on his neck wobbling. "Stone-Mother breed with many. Love Stone-Mother." He reached up and tapped the seam of his skull with one withered hamd, in an odd gesture. "But live long. You know. Mothers not always right."

"I suppose," Elyse said softly, "That's exactly so."

Martimeos was quiet for a while after this. The wizard, Elyse guessed, was probably considering whether or not to tell Jabhok of their actual mission. In the end, though, it seemed he opted for caution. "I had heard the elders among you could talk to this Stone-Mother," he said finally. "Might we see this? Is she here?"

"She everywhere." Jabhok raised his head to peer thoughtfully at the sky. Dusk had settled in, the sun disappearing behind the peaks of the mountain, the last rays of its feeble winter light fading from the sky. "Tomorrow," the ogre said. "Tomorrow, I show you."

Martim looked as if he wanted to press the issue. But in the end, he nodded, running a gloved hand through his long hair. "Very well. Tomorow. I...thank you. You have been very helpful. More so than I expected."

Jabhok snorted, towering over them, even hunched as he was. "No choice. Anger wizards, bad." He extended a long arm, skin hanging from it like a sleeve, to point at Mors, the gigantic bear's half-dead face a quiet nightmare in the dim light. "Anger Stonetooth, bad. I give you what you want. Then you go. Urakato."

And with that, the old ogre doddered off, through the dead and broken trees, to join his companions.

They made their camp far from the gruesome scene of the ogre's homes that night, though unfortunately, not far enough away that the stink was gone. It had become more tolerable, as they had gotten used to it, but that just made Elyse worry even further that it was somehow staining her. "Cecil, when this is all over," she said quietly to her familiar, "You must tell me if you can still smell these ogres on me."

No sooner than they had lit their fire, though, and gathered round it for their meal, than Kells shouted in alarm. By the edge of the flickering campfire's light, they could see, among the dead trees that surrounded them: the pale, broken figures of ogres, watching them.

Mors raised his snout in a threatening growl, hefting his bulk to his feet from where he lay; but it seemed these ogres were here out of curiousity's sake, not in ambush or violence. Younger ones, or at least they were not so withered as Jabhok had been. They wanted to know about the wizard and the witch who had come among them; and many of them actually seemed curious about the Crosscraw, as well. Aela went wide-eyed as the giants crowded around her, panicking and dashing to hide in the shadow of Mors as the ogres plied her with questions.

How many Foxhairs were left, they wanted to know; were they all gone yet? Were they really as delicious as the elders said they were? They did not seem to understand when Aela snapped at them and told them the Crosscraw were not cannibals. They pointed to Torc - had they not carved him up for meat and eaten his arm? Many of the ogres seemed to have a strange sadness for the Crosscraw; they missed them, in an odd way, if only because they thought the 'Foxhairs' made a good meal. The bogge-men, it seemed, were considered by them to be regrettable, but necessary.

They were impressed when Elyse made the shadows dance; they grinned their odd, bulging grins when Martimeos made the campfire leap and roar. They continued with their tricks of the Art; as long as they were here, they might as well be on the ogre's good side. And there was something about the ogre's simple delight that was disarming; it was almost enough to make Elyse forget that she was performing for a pack of giant cannibals, half of which were naked. Almost, that was, until one of the ogres wandered off, and returned to them with an offering of their 'meat': Severed fingers and tongues, held out in the giant's eager hands, as he grinned at them obliviously. He seemed confused and a little hurt when they refused.

But eventually the pale light of the moon rose to kiss the snowy, dead forest; and Mors drove the ogres off, snarling at them that they were disturbing his slumber. They were finally left alone, around their campfire, though they could still hear, in the distance, the sounds of ogres banging on their drums. Mors grumbled about this as he settled down to sleep, a large, dark shadow at the edge of their campfire.

"Et seems strange, does et nae?" Aela said quietly, breaking the silence that had begun to stretch among them. The Crosscraw woman sat on an old gnarled stump by the campfire, her face hidden in the darkness of her wolfs-head cloak as she stared into the fire.

Kells, his dagger glinting in the firelight as he idly whittled on a piece of wood, gave a small chuckle. "What does?" he asked. "The naked giants? The ones turned to stone?"

"Nae," Aela answered. "Ah mean....here is where et all began. Where th' Bogge-King first set foot on th' land. Et seems strange tae find ogres here, livin' on. Et almost seems...peaceful. Ef ye dinnae count their butchery o' themselves." She sighed, and poked at the fire with a stick, sending a flurry of sparks dancing into the night. "Nae army o' bogge-men. Nae fort tae siege. Nothin' but life, goin' on witout us."

There was silence for a moment. And then Torc, still bound, shifted, and glanced towards his sister. "Et were always so, fightin' the bogge-men," he said. He glanced towards Martimeos cautiously, but the wizard remained puffing on his pipe, staring into the flames, ignoring him for now. "Tae wage war against 'em was like fightin' a shadow. They'd strike an' then retreat tae th' caves. An' no matter how we scoured 'em, never would we find 'em."

Aela stared at her brother, and then turned away, not answering him.

Martimeos spoke, though, surprisingly. The wizard seemed consumed deep in thought; perhaps he had not even realized it was Torc that had spoken. "I suppose," he said, "That is what it is like to fight a foe that can walk between worlds, when you yourself cannot. Even if they did not have their strength, and their power, the bogge-men would be terrible to face for that alone. An army that can retreat to where you cannot touch them, whenever they please. Who can walk through any door they wish, to enter into our world once more." The wizard blew out a plume of blue smoke, and grimaced. "Even if they were normal men. Who could win against that?"

The shadows flickered and shifted, playing across their faces, as they considered this in silence.

"So, wizard," Kells said after a while. "Do you think we will learn anything from this Stone-Mother the ogres speak of?"

"I am skeptical," Martimeos replied, shooting a wry grin at Kells. "Whatever this Stone-Mother is, it sounds like some ogre goddess. They clearly do not know much about the Bogge-King themselves. Perhaps it is all just stories they tell themselves. But we will see." His gaze returned to the fire, and his grin slowly faded into a frown. "Even if we do learn something," he said, "We must then make our way to the Bogge-King."

"Perhaps we should take up that one bogge-man on his offer, when we are ready," Kells suggested. "The one who told us he'd bring us to his 'First'. If we can find him again. What is wrong?"

For at the mention of that particular bogge-man, Martim's face had fallen. The wizard puffed fiercely on his pipe, anxiously, as he ran his free hand through his hair, as if he did not wish to speak. "'Tis just....that bogge-man. Peculiar, he was. He gave me an unsettling thought. What if what we do is not enough?"

There was a moment's silence. "What do you mean?" Elyse asked. But she thought she knew what Martim was going to say. It was a thought she had had herself.

"'Tis just...." Martimeos paused to tap out the bowl of his pipe, struggling to find the right words. "I had thought that...if the Bogge-King were destroyed, the bogge-men...they might be freed. They are, after all, Crosscraw beneath it all. That if we lifted the desire for revenge that....that Hadley has, from them, that they might stop their killing. But that one seemed so free-willed. Even to the point that it seemed willing to disobey the Bogge-King's orders. Killing one of its own kin. What if ending the Bogge-King...simply doesn't stop them? What if they just continue on, as they are?"

"Nae!" Aela cried. They all turned to face her. The Crosscraw woman had leapt from her seat, and was standing by the fire, staring intently at Martimeos, her bright green eyes wide and wild, red hair floating on the heat. "Nae. Et cannae be so. Ah am tae...tae risk mah life, fer nothin' tae change? Th' Ancestors wouldnae be so cruel."

Martimeos seemed surprised by the severity of her reaction. "I simply wish to be honest with you about the possibility," he murmured. "I am a wizard, but I know so little about these bogge-men. I cannot say how they might react to the death of the Bogge-King." He paused, regarding her quietly for a moment. "I do not mean to give up. But you do not have to come further, if you do not wish it."

Aela was taken aback by this; she stepped back from the fire, glancing towards her brother. She seemed to steel herself before speaking again. "Nae," she said, clenching her jaw. "Ah hae come this far. Ah willnae abandon ye. But...Ah...Ah will hear nae more o' this. Ef we do kill th' Bogge-King, et - et will change things. Et must. Et must."

"Of course," Martim said softly. "Of course. Let us not consider it again."

They were quiet, after this. Aela seemed badly shaken. She shivered, no matter how close she sat by the fire. And that night, Torc watched after his sister, never taking his eyes off her, for a very, very long time.

~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~

Jabhok came to get them before they had woken, the next morning. Ogres, it seemed, kept early hours. Elyse nearly screamed when she awoke, groggily shaking the sleep from her eyes as she crawled out from her pile of hides and furs, only to find the old ogre sitting by the smouldering remains of their campfire, talking with Mors. The creature was, if anything, even more hideous in the clear morning light. It only became ever more clear that there was a deep infection taking hold in the flaps between his loose, hanging skin; his face seemed like a dead mask about to slide off his skull. She gagged to see the ogre chewing idly on...well, best not to think where the meat had come from, his overgrown teeth coated with a thick red slime. She was disgusted, and horrified, to find that whatever Jabhok was eating, he had been slipping some of it to Cecil, her familiar purring contentedly as he gnawed on a blessedly unidentifiable hunk of red meat. None of them had the stomach for a breakfast, that morning.

She gave no small thanks to Fortune as the ogre led them away; wherever they were going, it was once more nowhere near the gruesome butchery of the ogre's homes. The giant led them down a well-trod path, underbrush and root crushed beneath many years of marching feet, winding lazily through the black forest. Skulls and bones lay tangled among the dead trees they walked through, half-buried in the snow; such a grim road seemed a little strange to walk down on such a bright day.

It began slowly, at first. A small tickling, in the back of her mind. A tingling in her scalp. She even removed her hat and scratched at her hair, mistaking the feeling for an itch.

But as they walked along, Jabhok leading them, with Mors by his side, and Kells passing the time in idle conversation with Aela as he dragged Torc along, the feeling became undeniable. Like a hum inside her mind, a great bright torrent that filled her with life, bringing a blush to her cheeks and making her feel giddy. There was Art here. Not among these stones themselves - as strong as the feeling was, it still felt muffled, as if it came from a great distance. But somewhere - somewhere close - there was something to do with the Art. And not just that - there was more of the Art here than she had ever sensed in her life. Nothing had ever come close.

She looked to Martimeos. The wizard must have felt it too; a rosy blush stained his cheeks as well, and his dark green eyes seemed full of more joy than she could remember seeing since they had come to these mountains. The Art lit a fire in their minds, filling them with a thousand questions; her thoughts seemed to spark and fly and burn with such brilliant intensity that it almost made her dizzy. "Oh, it's wonderful," she said, only just barely managing to keep her voice from becoming a loud cry. "Martim, what is this...?"

"I have no idea," the wizard laughed in response, causing the others to look back at the both of them strangely. "To think, that something like this might have hidden here - I must know what it is."

The feeling was so joyous that it was almost a disappointment when they adjusted to it. It did not fade; if anything it kept slowly growing stronger. But the exhiliration and thrill of it did slowly die down to something more tolerable; something that did not make Elyse feel unsteady on her feet. But it still left them with a burning curiousity. Was this the Stone-Mother that they felt? The pace at which they walked seemed agonizingly slow; Martimeos almost seemed ready to push Jabhok down the mountain if he did not bring them to their destination quickly enough.

Though the old ogre walked slowly, they, fortunately, did not have very far to go. And mercifully, their path led them mostly downwards, to a small valley of sorts between the peaks, where frozen waterfalls streaked the gray cliffs with white. Cliffs, Elyse realized, that were far too regular to be natural; too flat and smooth despite the water that ran down their face. It was breathtaking; though small compared to the mountains themselves, this valley almost seemed as if it were a bowl carved into the stone of the mountain itself.

She was not the only one to notice this, either. Kells gave an appreciative whistle, the soldier's eyes widening as his gray eyes took in the horizon of smooth stone. "It seems almost like a quarry," he said, his voice hushed, "But no quarry I've ever seen was this large."

And that was not the only thing strange about this land. The rocks that jutted up from the ground here, as well, though covered in coarse lichen, were smoother than they ought to be as well. And it was not difficult to guess why. As they walked on, in some places, the stone formed crumbled square formations, or circles large enough to stand in. "WHERE THERE ARE STRAIGHT LINES AND CIRCLES, THERE IS MAN," Mors rumbled, swinging his snout back and forth to take everything in. "I HAVE COME ACROSS OTHER PLACES LIKE THIS, AMONG THE PEAKS. BUT NEVER THIS LARGE. PERHAPS I SHOULD HAVE DONE MORE THAN MERELY HUNT OGRES, WHEN I LOWERED MYSELF TO COME TO YOUR LANDS. GRIZEL, I THINK, WOULD LIKE TO KNOW OF THIS PLACE."

Jabhok grunted at that. "We no be happy if Foxhair witch come here," the ogre mumbled, looking at Mors, clearly displeased. "This just visit. You leave after. No come back."

"MY WITCH CAN GO WHEREVER I GO," Mors replied with a snarl. "AND IF YOU THINK YOU CAN STOP ME FROM WALKING YOUR LANDS, YOU ARE WELCOME TO TRY." Jabhok merely muttered uncomfortably in response to this; the giant declined to argue the point further.

Whatever it was, it was clear that at one point, some large structure had stood here, its ruins worn down by time. A structure that seemed to have grown straight out of the stone of the mountain itself. And beneath the joyous hum of the Art that Elyse could still sense throbbing from somewhere beneath all this, she could sense the faint whisper of the Art lingering in the stone, as well. It reminded her of the halls of Dun Cairn. But where the great halls of the Crosscraw had been shaped into the mountains themselves, almost hidden, this - this was much more a complete reshaping of the land. Now reclaimed by stream and forest, true, but..."Do you think it was the Crosscraw who made this place...?" she asked Aela.

"Ef et were," Aela responded quietly, "Ah havenae ever heard of it." The Crosscraw woman looked at the stones surrounding them and shivered. "Ah dinnae ken. Et gives me th' chills, truth be told." Elyse nearly boggled at her - how could this place make her ill at ease, it all felt magnificent - until she remembered the woman could not feel the tune of the Art as she did.

Martimeos listened intently to the Crosscraw woman's answer, and made a small disgruntled noise when he found it unsatisfactory. "What about you, Jabhok?" he called out to the giant who led them. "Do you ogres know who made this place?"

"Stone-Mother. Who else?" Was all the ogre replied.

Finally, though, they reached their destination. In the very center of a ring of old, worn down stone, overgrown by trees, there stood a particularly large chunk of stone wall that had survived whatever had happened to this place; taller than most buildings Elyse had ever seen, except for the very largest in Twin Lamps, and very nearly wide across as a house, as well. Scrawled upon the flat surface, in the ogre's crude drawings, gigantically large, was a strange image: That of a woman, nude and curvaceous, her skin white chalk, her hair longer than she was tall, and a mess of some vibrant green dye, with splotches of color that Elyse supposed were meant to be flowers in her hair. She sat cross-legged, and curiously, surrounded by a bright blue square that contained her entirely.

And, next to this monument, a set of wide stone stairs, leading down into the darkness of the earth.

"Here she is," Jahbok said, as they approached the clearing. The old ogre walked up to the large stone facade, and patted it fondly, looking up at the woman with the closest an ogre's face could get to expressing fondness. "Stone-Mother."

There was silence, for a moment. Martimeos, Elyse could tell, was bursting with a thousand questions. The wizard's eyes darted from the stone shrine, to the stairs in the earth; he kept opening and closing his mouth and licking his lips, as if he could not decide what to ask first. She would have thought it funny how the wizard could not seem to speak, except that her mind raced with a thousand questions as well, all seeming to try to claw their way out of her mouth at once.

Unfortunately, Martimeos beat her to it. "I notice," the wizard said, "Your Stone-Mother, ah, she looks different than I was expecting. I thought she would be an ogre herself."

"She birth ogres," Jahbok replied, as if it were obvious, "She not ogre."

"So, I mean..." Elyse interjected, before she knew exactly what she was going to say, if only to prevent Martimeos from being the one to ask the next question. "Is...is this actually her? Is this her, here? Or is it just a drawing of her?"

"It her. It not her. She here. Everywhere." Jabhok sounded exasperated, now, as if the humans were being deliberately stupid. "Everywhere there hole in earth, she there. She speak through stone." The ogre lay his head alongside the smooth rock, making a strange hum for a few moments. He then drew back, nodding sagely, and turned to them. "Stone-Mother say, she not like you here. She say leave, go away, leave ogres alone. She love Mad Father too much to tell secrets. Oh well. Should go now. Not come back."

"What's that blue square around her?" Martim asked, ignoring the ogre's insistence.

The old ogre made a small, frustrated noise, his face drooping even further, if that were possible. It was clear that something he had thought a clever plan was not going as well as he had hoped. "Stone-Mother," he replied, picking something awful from his bulging teeth and flicking it away, "Everywhere, but live in prison, deep in earth. Square is prison."

"Who made the prison?"

"No one know! Why it matter? She in prison!" Jabhok may have been old, but he was still a giant; it might have been a bit terrifying to see him become so agitated if it wasn't so funny. "Should go now-"

"So is she here?" Elyse asked, pointing to the steps that led down into the earth. "If we go down there, will we find her prison?"

"You go anywhere deep in earth," Jabhok replied, his patience clearly strained, "You find her prison. Walk for five winters away from here. Go in earth. Deep in earth. Her prison there. But some places, must go very deep. And Stone-Mother's lands dangerous."

"Can we talk to her," Elyse emphasized, pointing again, "By going down those stairs?"

Jabhok shuffled on his feet, making small, strained grunting noises. "No one know," he said. "Too dangerous. Ogres that go too deep there no return."

"Why?" This was Kells, now, joining in on the questioning. The soldier peered into the darkness, and then turned back to the giant. "Is it the bogge-men? The, ah, bone-brothers? Are they down there? Do they come up from there?"

Jabhok had gone beyond frustration, at this point, and was beginning to look a bit upset. It was clear that the giant found this many questions overwhelming. Mors was grinning, clearly finding this amusing, the bear scratching one paw along the ground, bidding the ogre to answer. Elyse almost felt sorry for the giant. "Not bone-brothers," he huffed, tugging at the loose skin of his neck anxiously. "They no ever come from there. We block if they do. Even before bone-brothers come, it dangerous."

That was not going to be satisfactory, Elyse knew. Not with the Art she could feel singing from somewhere deep within the earth. Truth be told, it was strong enough that even the Bogge-King had been pushed to the back of her mind, right now. She simply had to know what it was that lay down there. Some part of her knew that there was something about the Art here that was burning her caution to cinders; but she just didn't care. "Dangerous for ogres, perhaps," she said, "But for a witch and a wizard? I think not."

She was aware of how strange this sounded. Kells and the two Crosscraw gave her an odd look, and Mors sniffed in her direction. "LITTLE WITCHLING," the bear growled, "THAT HOLE IS TOO SMALL FOR ME. YOU WILL NOT HAVE MY PROTECTION, SHOULD YOU CHOOSE TO GO THERE." But Martimeos was nodding eagerly in agreement with her.

"I warn you," Jabhok said, wringing his hands, and perhaps not realizing that if they disappeared down the hole he'd get what he wanted anyway. "Other wizard go down there, and not return either."

There was a small moment of silence.

"What other wizard?" Martimeos asked slowly. "Was it the one that made the shadows come alive and attack you?"

Jabhok shook his head, picking anxiously at the seam that ran across his skull. "No. Not show that one this place. This very long ago. Before that one. Before bone-brothers and Mad Father come to land."

Martimeos was tense; it seemed almost as if any moment the wizard might jump forth like a spring. "Why don't you tell me what he looked like," he asked, his voice strained.

"Little ones all look same to me. Not a Foxhair. Dark hair. Like you. Or him." The ogre pointed towards Kells. "He come to our lands. We not fight him. He carry a...a bear's head." Jabhok looked at Mors with trepidation, as if expecting a burst of outrage from the gigantic black bear. Mors, however, did not seem to care in the slightest.

"A what?" Martimeos asked, clearly confused. He tugged at his red scarf, frowning, as he peered at the giant. "Did you say a bear's head? He was carrying it around?"

Jabhok was clearly uncomfortable, talking about this. Frustration and confusion had drained out of the ogre, replaced by fear. "It talk," the giant muttered quietly, looking down at the ground, his loose lips drooping over his bulging teeth. "It...say things. Make us go mad, when hear it. We do as it say. It tell us bring him here." The ogre pointed down at the stairs descending into the earth, the loose skin of his arm flapping in the breeze. "Then he go down. Not come back up."

Martim became very quiet, and very still. He stared intently at the giant, his dark green eyes wide, intense. "Was there," he said softly, "Anyone else with him?"

"Yes," the giant answered. "He have friend. Man with gold hair."

The wind gently whispered through the trees, as Martimeos turned away from the ogre. The wizard looked down the stone steps into the earth, grimy with age and slick with ice. "Hadley," he said quietly to himself, though Elyse heard him. "Here you were."

The wizard's expression was unreadable, as he looked into the yawning dark. There must have been a dozen questions dancing in his mind, Elyse knew. Fortune knew there were dozens dancing in hers, as well. But there was one that swam to the front of her mind, above all others. Was Martim's brother dead, somewhere in the dark, killed long ago?

And if he wasn't, what in the world was he doing down there?