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STST

She lay sleeping, her dreams dark and foreboding, when suddenly the clouds and lightning cleared away from her head, replaced by a woman. An elf, she was radiantly beautiful. She bore a mirror, which she held up to Aladris’ face.

"Your secret is known," said the beautiful woman, and Aladris saw her brother’s face overlay her own. "Your enemies come to you. Arise!"

Aladris felt herself floating further and further from the woman. She struggled to stay close. "What of my brother?" she cried.

"He is fled. Arise, my child, lest you be slain!"

The dream ended, and Aladris woke, finding herself already out of bed and dressed. Her enchanted weapons were in her hand. Mere moments later, the door burst open, and a band of assassins, the Knife in the lead, broke through the bolted door.

Alone, she was a match for any of them, swifter and stronger. And even against those she fought, she felt she might have, in the end, prevailed.

Then, of a sudden, from the four walls a brilliant life enveloped her, both blinding and binding her so that she could not move.

Trapped! No! I must break free! I must —

The Knife, whom she could not see but only feel, methodically stripped her of her weapons.

No! Do not take them! Please! Without them, I —

"No," came a quiet, cultured voice. "Do not kill her."

No! Not again! Robbed of sight, her blurred memories of the raiders swam before her mind’s eye.

"Why not?" retorted the Knife. She could imagine him, his blade raised for the deathblow. Or would it be so quick?

"I have a much more — intriguing idea." Aladris’ blood ran cold. She recognized the voice now. Draem Cloudmaster, the most powerful mage in Midpoint. The most powerful mage anywhere, some said. He, too, sat on the Council, though he rarely attended any meetings. Like most of his brethren, his worship of power left him far less compassionate than most. She could only shudder at his "intriguing idea."

"It will be much more interesting, you know," Draem continued behind the white haze that bound her fast. "And it will let me know if the artifact works as advertised. It’s so inconvenient to lug the bedamned thing around, yet it’s far too useful to sit on some dusty shelf. Since it will take three years to recharge, I get the best of both worlds."

"As you will, if she will not longer be around to bother us."

Draem’s dry chuckle filled her ears. "No. Not around here, anyway." She heard him fumbling with something metal. The white began to fade into a spinning grey vortex, and she felt herself dragged up and into —

So she began her exile in Limbo, for that is what she called the place and none argued it.

A strange realm was Limbo. she never had found out what it was for, how people came to be there. For some, there were spells, curses, magic gone awry. For others, there were strange stories, machines and arcane devices that performed incomprehensible tasks, and that inadvertently sent their creators there. And for still others, there was no explanation — just their presence there, in that No-place.

In form, Limbo was largely a featureless plain, the ground gravely and lifeless. there was no sky, and usually a thick fog, muffling, disorienting, surrounded her, cutting vision to a few dozen yards.

In this featurelessness, any interruption would be strange, yet those people, places and phenomena that did populate Limbo would have been strange even in the light of the sun of Arodnel.

Sometimes there were just sounds — screams, howlings, conversations, battles, whispers and roars — with no noisemaker to be found. Sometimes there would be visions — cities, people, all of them fog to the touch, seemingly unaware of their viewers.

There were roads. Some were of strange material. Some traveled in circles. some abruptly began or ended, with nothing further to be seen. Again, along some could be heard the clattering of wagons, the roar of monsters, the wind of some great object’s passing, all without anything there.

Scattered about the wilderness could be found signposts, some so ancient and worn to be unreadable, some graven in unknown languages. Aladris had her letters, after a fashion, but even the shapes of some of the writing there seemed strange, alien. Some of the signs led to findable locations, others not.

Other bizarre places she visited in her long wandering, each more strange and repugnant than the last. Once she found an inn populated solely by the creatures of dirt and darkness in her homeland — goblins, orcs and the like. She left there quickly. Once she found a pool of mud, surrounded by "worshippers" who prayed for the courage to take "the way out."

Perhaps the worst was an inn called "The Scarlet God." Inside was a non-stop orgy by a group of people, of various races, who claimed that this was Heaven, an elysial Afterlife, and that they were being justly rewarded in pleasures of the flesh for their virtue in the lives they’d left behind.

Closer examination, though, showed that some of the revelers in the tangled , sweaty weavings of flesh did not seem to be having all that good of a time, while for others, the festivities seemed to be spiced up by such tantalizing aids as a knife slipped between the ribs at the moment of climax.

She fled, sickened. Never had she known love in the sense that bards talked of, nor known a man in such a way. But she knew, even in her numbness, that what she was seeing was wrong.

Eventually, in her seemingly endless wandering, she found a safer haven, another inn by a roadway, named "The Rusty Spike." It was run by a taciturn man named Metsys. room and board was free, but there was a constant turnover of clientele. People came and went, most never to be seen again.

She stayed there after she found it. It was an anchor, a place where, if she was not happy, she was not threatened.

Aye, and you are the stronger of us two. The anchor without which we would founder.

There was a semblance of normalcy at the inn. She had found a simple sword and dagger, imbedded in a stone, shortly after her arrival, and felt much better once she had them. They were not so fine as her personalized weaponry, but they would do. Still, when she pulled them out to sharpen them or oil the blades, she realized that not even her weapons had availed her against the combined forces of that night.

How long she remained — she did not know. She would learn later that she was in Limbo for three years, as time was counted in Arodnel. But she had no idea whether that was the span of time she had spent there.

The inn was populated by a few dozen individuals at any given time. Some were of races she had never seen before. Some had been there for some times, speaking of lost cities, unaware of historical events such as the Cataclysm.

Every person there had their own opinion of where they were. Some saw plots, schemes of mad wizards or cabals of dark priesthoods. Some spoke of "nexii" and "parallel worlds."

Some advocated despair, resignation. Some wanted to fight back against whomever had done this. Aladris saw no profit in either course — there was nothing visible to strike against, but she was willing to wait, as patient as was within her power, for some sign of the purpose, the reason they were there.

Of rumored ways out there were thousands. Arcane sites, pillars, temples, caves, doorways in the air, strange statues to sacrifice to, cliffs to leap from — all were spoken of.

There was one constant. Once every two weeks, the provisioning wagon would come by, driven by a man named Jarek. She once went riding on his cart, to see where he went to pick up supplies. After two weeks of visiting other inns and taverns and other domiciles, she found herself back at the Rusty Spike. Somehow the provisions were replenished. She tried pressuring Jarek, only to find that any pain she inflicted on him was returned to her. And, he told her, to kill him would sentence the killer to replace him, until she or he was killed as well. She recoiled at the prospect, and returned to her new "home."

So her stay at the Rusty Spike continued. She had weapons, and all of her skills. But even though her freedom of movement was unimpaired, she was still imprisoned there. And that weight heavily on her mind, such that, when she considered it for too long, it drove her into a frenzy.

As did one other thing. She wondered about the dream that had awakened her. Who had that figure been. She didn’t know, but it frightened her. Asking men and women of learning as they passed through the inn, she began to be convinced that it was a goddess of some sort, possibly the Goddess of Love, Aredre.

A cold terror had gripped her. Why had the goddess warned her? Aladris was not an active worshipper of Eretun, no matter the efforts of her teacher, but surely his taint had rubbed off on her. Why would such an antipodal goddess warn her of the attack?

It seemed too great an omen. She did not know if she could ever be faithful to the goddess’ teachings, but she could abandon her old profession. That was no great task, for there was no one to kill here, and no desire in her heart to try. But perhaps she could find out how to worship Aredre, though she knew not how. Perhaps the goddess would free her from that realm.

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Copyright © 2001 by Dave Hill

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