Makei's End

D. J. McNulty

Winter 2003

Makei reined his horse in at the door to a small tavern in the central province. With a few hours ride remaining before he reached Everstand, he was sorely in need of refreshment. Sliding from the saddle onto somewhat numb legs, he shouldered the leather courier’s bag that he’d borrowed from the real Shorehaven Courier and strode into the tavern. Recognizing the Court’s sea foam and blue colors on the tabard, the barkeep ushered Makei straight to the “best” table in the place – “best” being the small, beaten and scarred barrel closest to the fire.

Makei dropped the bag on top of the barrel and plopped onto a second barrel with a thin cushion that identified it as a “chair.” As he waited for the serving wench to stop flirting with a guardsman at the plank they called the bar, he ran his finger along the design carved into the leather of the bag. Peering closer, he realized that the carving was a stylized sea bird of some kind. Absently he wondered who had taken the time to embellish the bag with the design. The courier he’d met briefly, after arranging his cover story and disguise with the Queen, had not seemed to be an artistic type. His clothes were standard court issue, dark pants, dark boots, dark shirt, with the only spot of brightness being the court colors. He hadn’t seemed the sort to engage in whimsical leather craft.

The Mage’s musings were interrupted by the bar wench, who sashayed over to him and gave him a smoldering look that told him she would deliver more than a drink or a meal, if the price was right.

“Mead. Bring the bottle,” he said, carefully avoiding her eyes. He looked everywhere else as she shrugged and departed. There were about a dozen people in the single room, a large crowd for a wayside inn of this size. The reason soon became apparent, as a graceful young man stepped over to a clear spot before the fireplace, a few feet from Makei.

He cleared his throat, and the room gradually fell to silence. “Tonight, perhaps I shall tell of things that may come to be. Things told to me by a gypsy seer I had the good fortune to pass a few evenings by the fire with. But first, some song, and then some tales, and perhaps some verse.”

Makei sat back and sipped his mead. The evening wouldn’t be a total waste, for the lad had a lilting voice and a pleasing countenance. As the traveling bard slipped into his song, Makei, like the rest of those in the room, was enraptured by his voice.

Hours later, the bard was persuaded by his appreciative audience to reveal the prophecies of the gypsy.

Most were typically cryptic, as prophecies tend to be, and didn’t rhyme, which explained why the bard hadn’t set them to music. Makei snickered to himself as he finished a second bottle of mead. Gypsies were always good for entertainment, at least.

“Last for tonight,” the bard said, “for my voice grows weary, a vision of the Sister Realms the gypsy saw.”

That made Makei sit up in his chair and take notice, for the bard now spoke of his home, ShoreHold, sister realm to Shorehaven.

An elfin bard, with hair pale as snow and a heart light with laughter, armed with magic in the music.  

A rogue seer, as dark in countenance and temper as he to the light. She of magic born and magic bred.

Shorehold’s music mage, Shorehaven’s seer witch, love bonded, love bound, forever as one.   For family’s sake, for love of clan, against the Dark Souled One they will stand.

The bard laughed as the serving wench teased that he’d made that one up about himself. He fingered his own dark hair as he stood and packed away his instruments. “Not as pale as snow, my dear. Besides, a seer witch wouldn’t be my type.” That said, he glanced over at Makei, who’d been watching him all evening.

The serving wench tossed her head, shrugged her shoulders and cuddled up to the guardsman, who at least appreciated her charms.

Just when the bard would have introduced himself to the man in Shorehaven’s colors, a dark-robed figure stepped between them. The bard shrugged and went to the bar instead to collect his pay and have a drink. Makei, irritated at the interruption, looked up into the hooded face, and gasped. There was no face, only a pair of glowing eyes within the darkness of the hood.

His will was no longer his own, Makei stood, collected his things and followed the robed figure across the tavern and out the door. He was not allowed to mount his horse; instead he walked on his own two feet towards his doom.

Tell me again.”  Hal'lee circled the room, chewing her lip, toying with a blonde curl.  To anyone who didn't know the beautiful elf woman, the effect would have been best classified as a ‘pout’.  But this was no pout.  This was a dangerous rage.  “Tell me again who will be to blame.”

“A bard, and a rogue seer…”  He chanted the prophecy by rout now, she’d made him recite it dozens of times since she’d captured him.  “…against the Dark Souled One they will stand.”

She snorted in derision; she knew she was the Dark Souled One of whom the prophecies spoke, as there had been other visions, other cryptic sooths, foretelling of her rise and of her power.  The prophecies that concerned her most were the ones that spoke of her fall.   Prophecies could be wrong, and if interpreted correctly, the paths could be changed, and the future happenings averted.  She’d twisted fate before, it was what had brought her to this point.  

Hal’lee looked at the ruined husk of Mage chained before her.   His wrists and ankles were burned raw by the iron laced metal cuffs that held them, enough cold metal to discomfort, intensely, but not to kill.  She sighed.  He’d served his purpose; it was time to finish with him.

Makei knew Hal’lee’s mood for what it was.  He tensed in anticipation of the pain he knew would be coming, clenched his hands into fists within the metal rings which held him suspended above the floor.  Hal'lee spun on her heel, held out one slim hand and hurled a bolt of energy across the room, slamming the Mage with physical and mental energy that made him spasm and jerk and let out a withering scream.

They had been at this “questioning” for days, and Makei was nearly ready to take his last breath.  He'd told her everything he knew, for his will had been broken early, and he’d answered her questions under extreme duress.  He knew that the Dark One was torturing him, not for more information, but for the sheer fun of it.  She was enjoying his pain.

Hal'lee truly did thrive on the suffering of others, as the Mage's Guild had long suspected, but never able to prove. Unfortunately, Makei wouldn't live to carry the tale back to his brother and sister mages, to confirm their theories.  He was going to die, here, in Hal'lee's hidden torture chamber, with his final mission unfinished.  

The scroll that had been entrusted to his hands, to his supposed protection, would go undelivered.  He, a High Mage of the Guild, had failed in that simple courier's task. No matter that his strength lay in the healing arts, he’d accepted the duty, as it was too important to be handled by any outside the guild. Because of his failure, a war would come, innocent people would die, and a kingdom would fall.  His weak foresight gift, in this case a curse, allowed him to glimpse the consequences of his own failure.   Tears slid down his face, knowing of the deaths that would be on his head, all because he had tarried too long at a tavern, stayed too long to hear a bard’s recital, been enamored of a pretty face.  Now all those deaths… the kingdoms would go to war, never knowing the cause of their strife was nothing but an error, a clerical error.   He sobbed once, before raising his head to look woefully at his captor.

He'd made a mistake, he realized in that instant.  Makei had been thinking on his mission, dwelling on his failure, wallowing in his own misery.  He’d given her a weapon, and she knew it, and now knew that he knew it.  This had been what she’d been waiting for, for him to sink into the depths of his own self-pity.   Hal’lee had the key now, the key to lock him into a new prison.  Makei recoiled in horror as he saw Hal’lee begin a weaving, the energies swirling first around her, then around his broken and battered body.

“No!”  He shouted hoarsely, above the rising roar of a dark Mage wind.   There were worse fates than being physically bound and beaten.  He was now facing such a fate.

Hal’lee’s lips moved as she chanted an incantation, strengthening the casting.   He felt the dark energies pierce his body, work their way through him, sapping at what little remained of his strength.  Makei screamed as he felt his soul, his mind, everything that made him the person he was, separate from the mortal shell that had carried it for his entire life.

Hal’lee gave a wicked smile as she gestured with a graceful hand, drawing his essence towards her.  The being that was Makei feigned submission, allowing her to think she had him.  At the very last moment, before she could absorb him into her own evil being, Makei called up the tiny bit of magic that he had deep within himself.  He was, after all, a High Mage. Not a very adept seer; he hadn’t foreseen his capture, or torture, but he’d known he needed this last little bit of magic, and so had held it in reserve.

As his consciousness started to fade, as he started to lose cohesion, he cast one last little spell of his own.  He bound himself to the mortal world, cheating Hal’lee of the prize of a Mage’s essence.  The last sound Makei “heard” was Hal’lee’s shriek of dismay as her own spell went askew and she was robbed of her anticipated power surge.

Unfortunately, there were few objects in the room that weren’t laced with iron, imbued with evil, or likely to be eaten or burned as objects of their nature would be. When he’d been dragged into the dungeon-like cave, Makei’s possessions had been heaved against the far wall of the cavern chamber.  His weapons had of course been taken away.  The scrolls bearing the Mage Guild’s seal had been burned after Hal’lee read their contents.  Some gleeful servants, who had fought over his robes and cloak, had stolen his clothing.  In fact all that remained of the original pile were his saddle and saddlebags, useless without the horse her minions had eaten on the way back here, and a leather courier’s bag.   The satchel bore a ridiculous carving of a sea-bird and had been part of Makei’s “disguise.” He had thought as the courier of the neutral shore realm he would not be accosted on the road.  He’d been wrong. Clothing couldn’t disguise his Mage’s power from one as powerful as Hal’lee. This whole mission had been doomed to failure from the start.

Makei had chosen the satchel as his focus, when he had realized the time was at hand for drastic action, just before Hal’lee had started her incantation.  He had mumbled his own spell under his breath, repeating it until the very moment Hal’lee had separated him from his body, “Returned to the Court of Shorehaven, returned to the Woods Last standing, bound to the bearer of the words.”  

Once he’d poured out his last burst of magic, he’d been bonded forever to the Court at Shorehaven, more precisely, to whoever the court courier of Shorehaven should be. The secondary return spell to Last Wood Holding was an afterthought on Makei’s part. The leather bag, now enchanted, disappeared as Hal’lee stormed around her workroom, not that she noticed the absence of such a mundane item.

It took several days, in fact, for the real court courier of Shorehaven to notice the satchel.  It wasn’t until weeks later that the unfortunate fellow discovered that he’d been cursed with an entity tied, not to the leather bag, as he surmised, but to his post as Court Courier to the realm of Shorehaven. That wrong assumption would be passed down, along with the bag, to each succeeding courier of the court.

Makei’s spirit did not rest easily within his self-imposed prison. As time wore on, the Mage’s spirit became a bit restless; one might go so far as to say… peculiar. Each successive courier interacted with the spirit in a different way, and with varying degrees of success.

But those courier’s tales are tales for another day.

~ * ~

“Makei’s End” is a segment of a longer story from Shorehaven’s past, titled “What Might Have Been.” The realms of Shorehaven, ShoreHold and Everstand have become unreachable since the cataclysm, as the gates no longer function to and from E’atara, though that does not dissuade me from hoping to find a way, someday, back to my home, family and Queen.

~Rinka Tur

1. ~300 BDS Approximately 300 years Before the Destruction of ShoreHold

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