Belleton, Epilogue
#16 of Belleton
EPILOGUE
Belleton's small tavern was bursting at the seams with soldiers.
Standing in the doorway, Solierre looked around himself, dumbfounded and overwhelmed, and he would have stayed just like that if not for the door swinging shut behind him and nudging him into the crowded room.
It was the biggest building in the whole village, the gathering place for nearly every annual celebration and social event, with a yard around it large enough to host archery contests and other games, and the tavern itself had never been filled to capacity until now. The tiger-striped rabbit searched through the crowd for any familiar face, and when he caught a glimpse of shining white through the bustling walls of chain mail and leather, he weaved his way toward the other side of the tavern as best he could.
Marcel was sitting at a long table with Colem beside him, two noble looking strangers sitting across from them, and they all regarded Solierre as the rabbit arrived.
"Ah. This is the last of the survivors, then?" a big, stern looking moose asked. He was wearing the same chain mail as the rest of the soldiers, but his was polished to a bright sheen, and the tabard he wore over his chain coat was decorated with a wide, red and gold sigil of office. Lieutenant Drolder of His Magesty's Infantry, he was the commander of the regiment currently occupying Belleton.
Colem nodded to the moose. "The last of us three who had direct contact with the curse, yes."
The other stranger was a tall, female heron whose long neck rose from a spectacular gold and crimson robe, and she, at least, Solierre was able to recognize from her famous description: Verollin Balvune, head Keeper of His Majesty's Royal Libraries, and the most famous mage in, so far as Solierre knew, the entire world. "Then let us be on with it. You three have questions, I understand, but we must all of us be ready to depart before dawn. We have a long road ahead of us."
The trade masters of Belleton had returned to the village a day late, finding their apprentices all in shock and mourning. The army had arrived five days later, following the wake of a line of tragedies through the kingdom back to its source. Now they were here, and on Verollin's authority, they demanded that Colem, Marcel and Solierre all return to the capital along with them.
It was Colem who replied, "I should think our first question would be obvious. Why do you need us?" The golden retriever spoke with none of the deference a Lieutenant and elder mage were due, but then, Marcel seemed reluctant to voice his own questions, and Solierre was outright unable to; the rabbit still hadn't found his voice after his traumatic treatment by Turick. He didn't think he ever would. So for now, Colem acted as their spokesman.
"You have had firsthand experience with the magic used to transform your friend, with the curse that has killed so many," Verollin told them. "Each of you has breathed in the curse's residual energy, and it has left you altered. We have reason to believe you will have built up a tolerance to the dark magic that was used. You will be resistant, perhaps even immune, to the individual responsible when we confront him."
"The person responsible?" Colem echoed.
Beside him, Marcel shook his head, staring at his pale, scaleless hands on the tabletop. "You mean someone did that to Turick on purpose?"
There were a few seconds of relative quiet around them, aside from the constant bustle and conversation of the soldiers with their tankards filling the tavern. Then the heron asked them, "Have any of you heard of the mage Temolis Val before?"
The three of them all started shaking their heads, but Lieutenant Drolder looked at the heron beside him sharply. "There will be no keeping it from the world now, Drolder," she told the moose with a shrug.
"That's the mage that cursed Turick, then?" Colem asked, his eyes narrowed. Verollin gave him a graceful nod of her head. Just about every movement she made was graceful, Solierre thought. "Who is he?" Colem went on. "Where did he study? I haven't heard of the kind of transformative magic he used since before the ages of legend."
The heron lifted a feathered eyebrow. "You answered your own question, journeyman. Temolis Val studied in the time before the ages of legend." Another quiet settled over them as she paused to let that sink in, but she began explaining before the others could think of anything else to ask. "Temolis Val was a rabbit mage of ancient times, possibly the greatest mage the world has ever known. He would be an infamous legend himself, if all mention of his name hadn't been abolished after he was...subdued. Many of his accomplishments themselves are well known. The construction of the Tower of Abaleth, for example, or the slaying of the great dark fey naga, Meldruthra. Several paintings in my very own library were likely created by Temolis Val, and there is an old document from the secluded shelves that accredits him with the founding of an entire school of dark magic that evolved to alterancy as it is practiced today."
"But Abaleth and Meldruthra...those are both different legends, with different heroes at the heart of the stories," Colem argued, frowning, "and neither of them had anything to do with alterancy."
"Not as the legends are told today, no." The heron held up her hands, the feathers in her wings shuffling against each other.
Marcel was still studying his own smooth hands. "So this ancient mage was an architect and an artist, as well?"
Verollin nodded. "He was a prodigy in all things, according to our records. At the start of his career, there was not a task that he could not excel at. Unfortunately, he was unable to recognize his own brilliance unless comparing it to someone else's accomplishments, and by all accounts, Temolis Val would remain unsatisfied until his own works outshined those of every competitor."
"That sounds like wisdom to me," Colem said. "One should always find new motivations to improve one's work, whether you're an artist or a merchant or nobility. Competition's one of the best driving factors in any market."
The heron lifted that eyebrow again. "Ah, but Temolis Val was never content. Any time he attained his greatest ideal of perfection in any chosen trade, he was unsatisfied with the gap between his masterpiece and those that had come before, and since he could not improve his own work any further, the only way to broaden that gap was to demolish anything that came close to comparing. There is a reason the Tower of Abaleth is the only structure of its scale to survive from that era. And when Temolis Val entered into the schools of magic, his obsession with superiority only grew worse.
"Magic, you see, was the one area in which he struggled. Sorcery comes naturally to very few..." She spared a significant glance toward Marcel. "...And for a rabbit who was a prodigy in all else, it presented a challenge unlike any other. So he obsessed, he became a fanatic, and he grew to resent magic and everything about it for consistently resisting his efforts. Over time, however, due to that very obsession and remarkable self-discipline, he gradually excelled in the magical arts, as he did in all others. And just as before, he was not content so long as other mages existed who could compare to his brilliance."
Colem was smirking. "So what did he do? Magic isn't a building that you can tear down brick by brick, or a painting that you can deface."
Verollin didn't look remotely amused. "He targeted the mages themselves, using the one form of magic he had mastered above all others: compulsion."
That wiped the smirk from the canine's face. "But compulsion is forbidden," he said lamely, "even for the highest orders of mages. Even for you."
"And why do you think that is?" The heron locked eyes with Colem for a moment, then shook her head. "Temolis Val had discovered a way to combine compulsion with the school of alterancy he had founded, his curses able to change his victims mind and body. At first, he didn't appear to be doing anything malicious, simply giving people what appeared to be magical blessings, increasing their drive and ambition so that they were able to obtain goals they had thought out of their reach. Those blessings were obsessions all their own that he spread to the populace around him in exchange for coin, and he grew more prosperous from casting the spells on the willing wealthy than he had from all his previous, non-magical endeavors. As far as they knew, he was gifting them with the ability to realize their wildest dreams. He had become a veritable wish-granting genie."
"But he wasn't content to merely grant people's wishes?" Marcel murmured.
"Indeed. The obsessions he sold grew more powerful as he perfected his craft, oftentimes becoming a need that could never be placated, a hunger that could never be satisfied. He grew so proficient, not only in alterancy and coercion but in the other schools of magic, as well, he was able to read the desires of those around him, and he began targeting those desires specifically in his fellow mages, and the obsessions he created in his rivals were eventually so powerful, they began to alter their physical forms as well as their minds.
"It was a terrible, dark form of magic, and there came a point when the true nature of the curses was clear to all, mage and non-mage alike. Those still unaffected decided that something must be done, but it was nearly too late. Temolis Val had mastered his craft and eliminated any mage who might have been able to contend with him."
"So what did they do?" Colem asked. The sandy-furred dog seemed fully invested in the story now.
"They trapped him," was the heron's blunt answer. "How they managed it was never written down, not in any of the ancient texts in all of the King's libraries, and that in itself speaks volumes about the methods they used."
"Something more forbidden than what Temolis Val himself was doing?" Colem's eyebrows lifted at that, and Verollin nodded.
"However they contained him, they struck his name from all public records and did everything they could to make certain the world forgot about him, both as an appropriate punishment for such an ambitious and notorious mage, and as security against anyone one day seeking a way to release him."
Marcel finally looked up to look back and forth between the moose and heron across from him. "But now he's broken free? How?"
It was Lieutenant Drolder who answered. "Last winter was an unseasonably warm one, was it not?" The three apprentices all nodded. "The melting snows caused an avalanche in the mountains some leagues from your village here. After tracing the recent plague of curses back to Belleton, we believe that whatever was being used to contain this ancient mage, it was buried in those same mountains."
Marcel was frowning down at his hands again already, wrinkles visible in his smooth, furrowed brow. He didn't say anything, though, and neither did Colem. Solierre could only shift uncomfortably on his seat, trying to wrap his head around what he and his friends had gotten themselves caught up in.
"Well then," Verollin said abruptly, pushing her chair back and getting gracefully to her feet. "Unless you have any further questions...?"
As it happened, Marcel did. "I still don't understand exactly what you want us for."
"Yes you do," the heron told him, but when he just looked up at her with a hint of pleading in his eyes, she sighed and went on. "You three have had significant exposure to Temolis Val's sorcery," she reminded them again. "You may be more resistant to his influence than anyone else in the entire army."
She fixed each of them with a level stare, then said, quite simply, "So you are the ones who are going to kill him."