12/08/04
                       THE COMING OF THE ZIOTH
                           TURN SIXTY-THREE


   "Move to the sides," Kreemon whispered. "Keep going forward." He
stopped briefly to check the water level before following his own
advice. The water was getting deeper. In the center, it now reached up
to the base of Kreemon's middle finger, when before it was only two
knuckles deep. Either the water was rising, or the passage was sloping
downward. Another minute of running and the water was ankle-deep, even
on the edges, and at least a food deep in the middle.
   With the distance gained between them and the guards, Kreemon
decided more caution was now possible. He tapped the others on their
backs and whispered, "Slow down, less noise. They won't be able to find
us if we don't give ourselves away." He continued down the passageway,
sticking to the sides, straining his eyes to look for light.
   Another minute, and it no longer mattered where in the tunnel they
stood. The passage made a sharp downward turn, and Ardith and Kreemon
both slipped and were totally immersed for a second. When they
recovered, they were waist deep in the water. Kay, in the rear, managed
to keep her balance and slid more gracefully down the slope. The
greater amount of water diluted the filth somewhat, so the smell wasn't
as bad as they expected. Either that, or they'd gotten used to it.
   It was several seconds before Kreemon realized that, while he was
under, he had seen the faintest glimmer of light in the distance. It
could have just been his imagination, but then again, it could have
been a way out.
   Kreemon sheathed his weapons and belongings and made sure they were
secure. He then whispered to the other two, "I think I saw a glimmer of
light. Let's continue forward, carefully." Slowly, taking their time
and testing each step in front of them for any sudden drops, the three
headed in the direction of the light. The floor dropped steadily, and
soon they were chest deep, then shoulder deep, then neck deep. When the
water reached their necks, they felt a slight tug pulling them forward
-- a current. They also noticed another change; the passage was getting
narrower. But the light was unmistakable now. If they opened their eyes
under the water, they saw a tiny circle of dim light, below and well
beyond their current position.
   Another speck of light appeared on the surface of the water, at the
tip of a wave -- a reflection. Their pursuers were getting closer.
   Kreemon walked towards the light, using his arms to propel him
forward. When the water was about to reach above his nose, he took a
few deep breaths and dove down. The tunnel continued to narrow, and the
circle of dim light continued to widen, and the current became
continually stronger. When Kreemon was halfway there, the tunnel made
another sudden drop and then rose slightly before continuing downward.
By this point, there was only about two and a half feet in which to
maneuver, so Kreemon's hands were on the floor. He felt all manner of
small objects caught in the dip. It felt like a lot of little bits of
metal or stone, immersed in a thick slime.
   While he was down, Ardith and Kay heard the guards approaching. "You
keep going if you want to; we're turning back. There's no way they came
this way. We took a wrong turn somewhere."
   The current was getting strong, and Kreemon was running out of
air, so he got a good look at what was ahead and turned around,
fighting the current the whole way. When he got back, he told Ardith
and Kay what he'd seen. The light looked natural -- possibly moonlight,
but the circle was narrow. It was hard to tell for sure, observing it
with only its own light, but it looked like it was one and a half or
two feet wide at most, perhaps just wide enough to squeeze through with
the help of the current. The time for decision was at hand. The guards'
light was getting close, and it would be only moments before they were
seen.
   Kreemon dropped the guard's sword, and unstrung his bow and strapped
it to his back. "I will go first. Give me a little bit before the next,
so we don't run into each other down there." He took several deep
breaths and filled his lungs with air, and then dove down. As he swam
with the current, he ran his hands along the floor of the tunnel and
stuffed whatever he grabbed into his pockets.
   Once he got to the hole, he twisted his shoulders to the left and
right to get his upper body through, and then shoved off the edges with
his hands. Once on the other side, he kicked off the wall to give
himself a boost towards the surface.
   Kay unstrung her bow and put the string in her pouch. "If I have to,
I'll push it through in front of me," she told Ardith. "This is too
good a bow to lose. You go next."
   "I can do without this staff," Ardith said. "The other is better
anyway." Holding her crossbow in front of her, she took deep breaths
until she almost felt dizzy, then plunged after Kreemon. With her
narrower build, she was able to squeeze through more easily than
Kreemon by pulling her shoulders in. Kay, much more skilled at swimming
than either of the other two, shot through soon afterward with
everything but her spear.
   They were in a lake, probably Andan Huerten, and there was moonlight
above. Shimmering shapes of four moons could be seen -- Tirop was too
dim to make out through the water. A hundred feet away and twenty or so
up, shimmering black rectangles -- probably docks -- jutted out over
the water. The tunnel emerged just a few feet above the lake floor,
where it would be invisible from the surface.
   The current continued to pull, trying to keep them down and bring
them further from the shore. With a few good kicks, Kay managed to get
some momentum and move upward, but below her, Ardith and Kreemon were
struggling to stay in one place. With only one of her arms free, Ardith
could do little more than rotate slowly, and Kreemon seemed weighted
down, probably by the iron-studded leather he wore under his shirt.
   Kay swam back down to Ardith and took her crossbow, allowing Ardith
to kick and paddle. Kreemon kicked his feet as hard as his could while
he pulled his shirt up over his head. Holding the shirt, he drew a
dagger and cut the bindings on his armor. Seeing this, Kay decided
Kreemon didn't need her help, and pushed as quickly as she could
towards the distant surface with Ardith. She couldn't paddle
effectively with a crossbow in one hand and her bow in the other, but
she did the best she could with her feet, and the wood gave her a
little buoyancy.
   Letting his armor fall free, Kreemon sheathed the dagger, stuffed
his shirt partially into his pants and swam with all his strength.
   It was a long way to swim after traversing the tunnel. Kay reached
the top gasping for air, and then she realized the other two had fallen
behind. Leaving the weapons to float, she dove back in. Ardith had
taken in water not ten feet from the surface, and was slowly sinking
until Kay grabbed her around her chest and pulled her back up. Kreemon
was still swimming, though he had a ways to go and not much air to take
him there. Unable to carry two at once, Kay pulled the bows behind her
and swam Ardith to the docks.
   "Ho! What do we have here!"
   "You should know better than to swim in Horn's End at night!"
   "Surprised the current didn't get them."
   "And look, swimming in their clothes, and with weapons!"
   A man with arms as thick as his legs pulled the girls up and lay
them on the docks. It was only then, when she was free of the Baron's
soldiers and she and Ardith were safely out of the water, that Kay
realized how cold she was. The night air felt like it was going to
crystallize her soaked clothes, and trap her in a shell of ice. Next to
her, the strong-armed man turned Ardith over and pushed hard on her
back over and over until the water came rushing out of her mouth, and
she could breathe again.
   "Well you two must have an interesting story," said his neighbor.
   Kay, with teeth chattering, managed to stammer out an answer. "Our
b-b-b-boat s-s-sank. We're f-f-f-freezing."
   A large net was lying nearby, tied up and full of fish. Behind it, a
crowd was accumulating on the docks. "Why don't you take off those wet
clothes?" someone called from the crowd. The fishermen laughed.
   Ardith choked, sputtered and coughed the remaining water out of her
lungs, then sat up wheezing. "Can we build a fire anywhere? Don't want
to <cough> burn down the dock." Turning to Kay, "Where's Kreemon?"
   "I don't know," Kay answered, "but he made it to the surface OK."
   "Three of you, armed, on a boat at night?" said the man with the
heavy limbs. "Not very smart. What are you running from?" It was
difficult to tell whether his question was in jest.
   "Here," said the second fisherman, and hung his own coat around
Ardith's soaked one. "And here," he said while running out to the
crowd. He took the coat of the man who had jeered at Kay, and brought
it back for her. "We have to drag in this catch before we can go
anywhere, but we'll end up someplace warm. With a fire."
   "It <cough> can't be soon enough for me," Ardith responded. "We
aren't from this city. It seemed like a nice thing, to <cough> take a
boat ride on this beautiful lake in the light of the moons. We had no
idea about the currents. By way of thanks, can we help bring in the
catch? We aren't as strong as you seem to be, but we can help." This
question brought peals of laughter from some of the fishermen, the
closest of whom got an off-hand slap to the shoulder by the heavy-armed
man. He squinted at Ardith and called out, "All right. Let's get these
girls someplace warm."
   Despite the energy of the fishermen, it took twenty minutes to heave
the nets full of fish from ships and docks onto the nearby carts,
and get moving. The girls weren't allowed to help at all, but they
watched, and learned a few things about fish-handling that they hadn't
known before. They also heard a few of the fishermen's names. The
man with the heavy arms was Brunner.
   While the men were busy, Ardith took a moment to cast a spell. For
a second, she thought one of them had noticed her, but he just smiled
and got back to work. She focused the spell on Brunner, and soon could
be certain that she had little to fear from him. He was a good man with
good intentions, law-abiding and in control of himself. Of course no
one was perfect -- this spell never, to Ardith's knowledge, painted a
flawless picture, but it also was not powerful enough to give away
specific details -- only vague notions of good and bad.
   Fewer men were required to handle the carts than to load them, so
Brunner was able to break off and take Ardith and Kay to "Sir F's," a
nearby tavern where most of the fishermen gathered nightly to wind
down.
   Right now, there was no one in the large common room of the tavern.
Even the bartender wasn't around. After a couple seconds, he poked his
head out of the kitchen door, saw that it was just Brunner, and went
back into the kitchen. Once the door was closed, Brunner took them to
a corner table but didn't sit down. He spoke quietly to Ardith and Kay.
"Maybe some of my friends can't tell a haddock from a horseshoe, but I
know a sword wound when I see one. What have you two gotten yourselves
involved in?"
   "Oh, it's so good to be in a warm place. My teeth were chattering,
Brunner. By the way, have we introduced ourselves? My name is Ardith,
and this beauty is my friend, Kay. We are new to your city, you know,
and only came here yesterday.  
   "This is the largest city we have visited in a long time. And, your
lake is so beautiful; we could not resist taking a boat ride on what
seemed the calm waters in the light of the moons.
   Ardith chattered away, and signed to Kay to pick up if she ran out
of steam. In the meantime she tried to discern more about Brunner's
personality, and the reason of his interest in them.  
   He _seemed_ a fatherly type, his curiosity aroused by their somewhat
mysterious appearance in the lake water, and the obvious scars of
combat they both wore. 'No simple fisherman, he,' the priestess
thought. 'Perhaps he had been a guard himself, so it would not do to
tell him we had an altercation with the guards; or perhaps he had been
a soldier when younger, in which case I still cannot know how much
to say. At least, he is kind, and seems to care about Kay and me. It
would be a lot simpler to just leave, but that would be both rude and
suspicious. Better to make up a tale, close to the truth, perhaps buy
him a mug of ale or two by way of thanks, then go... Gee, I wonder
where that idiot Kreemon has gone off to. Though I hope he's all right,
frankly I'd love to choke him for what he did in the keep. And his poor
dog - where could he be?'
   Kay picked up the chatter while Ardith mused to herself. "Brunner, I
didn't know how you hauled the nets from the boats to the dock so as
not to bruise the fish. That was really clever. And that you had ice.
Where did you get the ice? In my hometown we had fishermen also, but
they had no ice and had to get their catch to market quickly. With ice,
you could wait a day or two, couldn't you?"
   "A good deal more than a day or two, with enough ice. That and salt
will keep them through the winter. But I'm getting the feeling that
you're avoiding my question. Pretty soon the others will be in here,
and if you're already being evasive with me, I doubt you'll want to
discuss this in public. What really happened out on the lake tonight?"
   "All right, Brunner," Ardith sighed, signaling the innkeeper for a
round of ale when he poked his head out of the kitchen again. "We told
you an untruth on the dock, in order not to create a problem with
bystanders or other of your fishermen."
   Brunner smiled and leaned against the wall. "I thought not," he
said. 
   "We had no boat."
   "I never believed that either."
   "We swam out of a drain in the Baron's cellars." Brunner stood
straight. At this point, she produced her Holy Symbol of Andritha from
under her coat. "This is mine. It is not stolen. It would not tolerate
being taken, do you know that? So you may believe what I tell you.
   "We came on a mission to bring a message to the Baron, but were
betrayed; in what way I do not know. In the end, we were pursued by the
guards and only escaped by swimming out of a drain. Then the current
took us and only by the strength of my companion and friend, Kay, were
we able to make it to the dock.
   "Again, our mission was merely to bring a message to the Baron, not
to do any harm or to alter anything in Huerton. Merely to bring a
message. Yet, we were pursued by guards due to... things beyond our
control."
   Ardith fell silent, watching Brunner's reactions, to see if he
seemed to be offended by the idea of their running from (or maybe
fighting with) the guards, or perhaps sided with anyone siding against
either the Baron or the guards.
   Kay chimed in. "It was horrible, Brunner. We were pursued through
tunnel after tunnel, then finally had to swim out of a drain into the
river. Then there was the strong current. I thought I would lose my
friend and my..." she whispered, "my priestess. I came from a far part
of Rang, never thought much of Andritha. I am now a worshiper of the
goddess. Ardith has shown me the way."
   Brunner hardly seemed to be listening to Kay, but it took the
duration of her speech to get his wits about him. He managed a weak
smile, and sat down heavily, making the chair creak. "I think I like
your other story better. Two strangers, on a small boat, at night, on a
lake as big as Horn's End, who fell into the water and were cut up by
man-eating fish before swimming to shore. Not so far-fetched..."
Brunner fell silent when the bartender came out of the kitchen holding
three mugs, one in each hand and a third locked between them, and set
them down on the table.
   "Let's wait till the place fills up 'fore we order a second round,
will we?" The bartender squinted at the gash on Ardith's arm, then
shrugged and went back to the kitchen.
   "_Three_ strangers on a small boat, not two. You named a third at
the docks -- Ramone or something, was it? What part does he play in
this, and why wasn't he with you?"
   "Brunner," Ardith began, "The story you told is the best to tell
your fishermen friends when and if they come here. Our real story is
just too strange, and would arouse suspicions. "
   Kay added, "And maybe bring more guards to try to capture us."
   "But what about this third person?"
   "Kreemon," Ardith said, nodding her head. "He was the one who was
supposed to give the message to the Baron. Something went wrong. Also,
he had a dog with him, named Bork. Don't know what happened to the
pooch. He left long before we went down the drain."
   "Kreemon made it to the surface of the lake," Kay added, "and swam
toward the shore, not the docks. I lost sight of him when you helped us
up. I hope to see him soon -- I have a lot of questions to ask him!"
   "I don't know what to believe," Brunner said. "This is too much." At
that moment, the door burst open and a tall, full-bearded man hopped
in, still reeking of fish. "Brunner! Getting a head start, are you?" he
said, looking at Kay but still talking to Brunner. "Leave some for the
rest of us!" He laughed and sat down at the table, and took a sip of
Brunner's untouched drink. "Not bad. Still tastes like piss, but they
stirred in some ale this time, just to be nice." Another two fishermen
walked in the door, and continued whatever conversation they were
having at a table on the other side of the room. "When's Rilla and
Drilla coming out? I'm dying of thirst, and whatever that is smells
almost edible. So where've you been all my life?" he asked Kay.
   "He's married," Brunner said absently. "Three years, six months."
   "Aw, come on. That never stopped me before." He laughed again.
   "We'll talk later," Brunner told Ardith.
   "I bet you will. Two at once? Isn't that a bit exciting for a
widower like you?" He laughed.
   Ardith and Kay grinned at the banter between the fishermen. Ardith
covered her laughter and took a swig of the ale.
   Sir F's became more and more crowded as the night wore on. When the
room was about half full, the bartender and barmaids appeared, evoking
cheers all around. Among the seven or so barmaids, Rilla and Drilla,
two busty girls in their late teens with heavily freckled skin, were
the universal favorites. Within an hour, there was hardly room to move.
Every chair, table, window sill and corner was taken, along with the
bar and the edges of a small stage where three mediocre musicians
played some of the most popular songs. For a bunch who had been working
since before dawn and had just come in from the lake, these people had
a lot of energy.
   Eventually, the crowd started to thin. Children sent out by their
mothers came in to fetch their fathers, drunk men were dragged home by
friends and some just said goodbye and left. Although he was pretty
popular among the people here, Brunner didn't wait to be the last to
leave. Well before the place cleared out, he signaled to Ardith and Kay
and brought them outside, followed by loud jeers about his luck with
women, or about these two being too much for him (more than one had
commented on the dry blood on Ardith and Kay's clothing).
   "Alright," Brunner said when they were well away from the bar. "I
won't say I believe you, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt for
now. If you got in a ruff with the castle guards, news will get out by
tomorrow morning and you'll be wanted women -- your friend Kreemon too.
I don't know anything about this message of yours, but if you were in
the castle, you had to get there somehow, and you're too well-armed and
well-dressed to be escaped prisoners." He turned a corner, and made
sure Ardith and Kay were following. "I'll help you if I can. Maybe
Andritha will overlook some of the other things I've done if I help a
priestess."


***********************************************************************

It is night on this eighteenth day of Farinon, ninth moon of Halkak,
two hundred and forty-second day of the one thousand first year of the
Zioth, in the City of Huerten, in the Barony of Huerten, the Kingdom of
Rang.

/--Next New/Full Moons--\      Upcoming Events
|            New   Full |  -----------------------
| Halkak:    10/1 10/14 |  10/16 First day of winter
| Tirop:     9/20  9/28 |
| Ot:        9/28 10/17 |  Market days occur on every 2nd and 6th day
| Ilsapeich: 10/8  11/6 |  of the week. The next one is on the 20th.
| Zabrigar:  12/8  10/4 |
\-----------------------/


Notes
-----
   Ardith is down a staff, Kay's down a spear, and Kreemon's down a
suit of armor.
   I'll try to send out the beginning of turn 59 soon, but I'll be
really busy for the next couple weeks.


Hit Points
----------
Kay:      9/16
Ardith:   16/20, -8 subdual    (subdual heals overnight, along with
Kreemon:  10/16, -4 subdual     your level worth of normal damage)


Levels and Experience Totals
----------------------------
Ardith:   4 8650/10000
Kay:      3 5500/6500
Kreemon:  2 5575/4500  (Most experience will come from private turns)


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* Game Name    Real Name           | Game Name    Real Name           *
***********************************************************************
* DM           Eli Fenton          | Kreemon      Chris Dunn          *
* Ardith       Karl Schinke        | Sahlman      Mohammed Qureshi    *
* Johannes     Nathan Weismuller   | Ziedon       Alex Corbin         *
* Kay          Karl Schinke        |                                  *
***********************************************************************
*     Email addresses are character_name (lowercase) at zioth.com     *
*             Zioth web page: http://www.zioth.com/zioth              *
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