The Gryphonpike Chronicles Complete Series

The Gryphonpike Chronicles

The Complete Series

by Annie Bellet

Copyright 2017, Annie Bellet and AnneMarie Buhl

All rights reserved. Published by Doomed Muse Press.

These stories are a work of fiction. All characters, places, and incidents described in this publication are used fictitiously, or are entirely fictional.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, except by an authorized retailer, or with written permission of the publisher. Inquiries may be addressed via email to doomedmuse.press@gmail.com.

Cover designed by Greg Jensen with art by Kerem Beyit.

Formatting by Polgarus Studio.

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Dedicated to Greg, Tom, and Eric.

Table of Contents

Witch Hunt

Twice Drowned Dragon

A Stone’s Throw

Dead of Knight

Brood Mother

Into The North

Also by Annie Bellet

About the Author

We all know this tale. There once was a beautiful elven princess who lived in a crystal forest in a hidden kingdom far beyond the common worlds. Her voice was unparalleled among the World-singers and her power brought her all she desired.

Until Wrath and Pride wound their way around her heart, turning songs of beauty and creation into songs of death and violence. For her crimes, she was cast out and cursed to live among the lesser creatures, among the elves and men who had forgotten those who sang into existence the earth they squabbled over. Her voice was stolen; her words taken like ember-waves melt footprints from the glowing sands.

Her banishment and silence will end when she has purged her crime by doing one thousand good deeds. So she joined with a rag-tag band of adventurers who call themselves the Gryphonpike Companions.

I am that foolish Singer. These are the chronicles of my path home.

Witch Hunt

By the time we’d climbed up the Ragged Hills and come through the pass, the five of us had short tempers, worse body odor, and only three days until our Adventuring Guild charter expired and the fines would start piling up. The High Road is a remarkable feat of engineering and while my companions stopped to argue about our course, I wandered a short distance away to admire the clean stone-paved path twisting away into the misty hills beyond. The road, which started at the base of the mountain pass we had just come through and snaked a hundred leagues to the Verdant Coast and the city of Ramsport, was wide enough for two wagons to go side by side, built slightly elevated from the surrounding ground with culverts to let rainwater drain away. It was almost as functional as something my people would have sung into being. Almost.

I am not the one who got tangled up with a Baron’s daughter, forcing us to flee from the only city with a Guild chapter between Salvat and Ramsport, said Rahiel. The pixie-goblin shook her wand in Drake’s face, then flapped her butterfly-like wings furiously, blowing more of Drake’s human sweat stink in my direction.

Drake smoothed his black curls with an exaggerated hand motion and blinked the dust out of his eyes before replying. Oi. And I’m not the one who detoured us for a fortnight to find a pearl in a bleeding lake.

The lake wasn’t bleeding, Rahiel said. And it is a very beautiful pearl with qualities your feeble man-mind cannot grasp. She stroked the black pearl in question where it hung suspended in silver wire around her scrawny green neck.

It’s an expression, oh, curse you. Drake raised his hands in throttling motion.

Azyrin, our half-orc shaman, intervened before Rahiel’s familiar, the mini-unicorn Bill, could stick his diminutive but sharp horn into Drake’s thigh.

Enough. Makha and I consulted maps, we have solution. He folded his blue-skinned arms, managing to look calm and reasonable despite the summer heat, the angry glares directed at him, and the sweat-stains darkening the edges of his thick leather jerkin.

Splinters! I want to examine that road.

I took one last look over my shoulder at the open road in the distance, then repressed a sigh and shifted my full attention to the conversation. Makha, Azyrin’s wife and our heavy hitter was crouched next to her pack, finishing the elaborate process of buckling on her armor. She finished messing with her knee-buckles and leaned her chin on her shield before returning my look with a small shrug of her mountain-like shoulders. Of course, even a small motion is impressive when the shrugger wears plate armor.

Azyrin waited for the clinking of his wife’s armor to die down and then pointed off toward the north. Strongwater Barrow has chapterhouse. The Barrows are little out of our way, but if we push pace, we can reach the town in three days, pay our fee, and take road through the lowlands until we find High Road again. Minor detour.

I snorted at that, which started a headache as the curse clamped on. Apparently snorting counts as communication. Fortunately smiling, eyebrow wiggling, and very casual shrugs don’t seem to trigger the same nausea and headaches that gestures like nodding or shaking my head will.

What now, elf? Makha glared at me. I considered myself special in that she had no pejorative or plain baffling nickname for me.

Our silent friend seems skeptical and bloody rightly, Drake said. He tugged at the neck of his shirt, loosening the laces as a hint of welcome breeze wandered over us. Forgetting something, are we? The Barrows. Infamous for being full of undead and other nasties?

I wanted to shake my head, but the creeping headache was bad enough to stop me. It was already looking to be a hot, tiring day. Drake was wrong, however. I wasn’t skeptical about the idea of going into the Barrows and paying our dues. That was a sound plan that would avoid fines. I was skeptical that we would only suffer a short detour. One of the reasons I put up with my companions was their charming quirk of getting into trouble. All it took was someone offering coin or a sad story, preferably both, and they would go haring off to right a wrong or slay a dragon or what have you. A boggy land full of undead sounded exactly like the place for us to get into trouble.

I rubbed my thumb along the smooth wood of my bow, Thorn. Undead sounded good to me. Put enough arrows into a critter, even the undead turn back into just dead.

I have to agree with the annoying human, Rahiel said. The Barrows sound not very nice at all.

Fines sound not nice at all. Companion funds are running low. We have barely enough on us to cover charter fee. Many fines make longer winter, Azyrin said.

And we can get the Guild news; find out if those meatknuckles have any jobs posted. Makha hefted her shield and stepped up to Azyrin’s shoulder.

Undead jobs, Drake muttered.

So, we vote? Azyrin ignored him.

I will follow you. Avoiding fines does make the most sense. Rahiel folded her arms into the sleeves of her dress, which today was a frothy pink gown embroidered with pale blue birds. Hers were the only clothes that seemed to stay clean on the road. Magic use has its perks. Bill whinnied his agreement.

Drake?

All right. Long as this town has a decent tavern and a hot bath, I’ll survive. Drake picked up his pack and pulled the straps tight. I was glad he agreed he needed that bath. His smell was definitely rank enough to offend even an insensitive human nose.

Killer? Azyrin turned to me.

I raised my bow in a casual motion toward the north as my answer. The headache didn’t worsen. Good. I scanned the hills. Fade, my mist-lynx companion, had left us sometime around dawn to hunt, but I knew he would catch up.

Lead on then, lover, Makha said as she re-slung her shield with another ear-pinching screech of metal on metal.

We picked up our gear and turned to the north, heading down from the hill where we had camped and toward the shadows of the bog lands.

Oi, Rahiel. How come you always call me ‘the human’? Makha’s human, too, Drake said.

Ah, yes, but Makha carries a bigger sword. Rahiel jumped onto Bill’s back and settled her skirts. The pixie-goblin might be no higher than my arm is long, but she didn’t lack for verbal courage, baiting Drake this early into the start of a long, hot walk.

I moved too far ahead to hear the rogue’s response but I smiled at the sound of hooves beating a retreat. I hoped that somewhere ahead would be a sob story and a pile of coin. I could explore the High Road and its elegant simplicity another time. Tiny red-throated larks started singing and the breeze picked up, bringing with it the scent of fresh water, ripe summer grasses, and the promise of a beautiful day.

By the morning of the third day, we had found the muddy track that was generously referred to on Azyrin’s maps as the Barrowroad. The hills gave way to marshland teeming with tasty redfish and stinging clouds of midges. The shaman had an unguent that helped keep the tiny bugs off our skin that smelled of bear musk and pine sap. A slight improvement over the stench of human sweat, I suppose.

We passed the first signs of human habitation just after dawn, when the summer moon still hugged the horizon like a plum resting at the edge of a giant basket. The main staple of this land was rice, a peculiar purple variety that grew well in the boggy lowlands. Fields of the grey-purple plants spread out around us, the horizon broken by clusters of bog cypress and man-made earthen field-boundaries. We saw no one working and the lean-to shelters we passed were empty of gossiping farmers, lunch pails, or any other sign that these lands were worked and claimed.

The sense of foreboding grew as we neared our destination and the cypress groves became more numerous, turning to light woodland. Ranging ahead, I smelled the town, wood smoke and human waste carrying on the faint summer breeze, the stink intensified by the wavering heat. Fade padded up beside me, his black-tipped ears twitching. When the mist-lynx started to growl, I stopped in my tracks.

The leaves on the trees ahead of us were withered and falling, the road and the area around it covered in desiccated corpses of birds and hundreds of insects as though a line had been drawn between life and death and everything on the wrong side had perished. Not even the normal buzzing of the marshland was still here, only the breeze rattling the dead leaves disturbing the creeping silence.

Killer, what is, oh. . . Makha clanked up behind me and took in the strange scape ahead. Azy, love?

Azyrin and the others caught up to us. He bent and dug up a handful of the gritty mud from the dead side of the road, murmuring words too low even for my keen hearing to make out as his other hand gripped his amulet. After a long moment where his ice-blue eyes seemed to stare off into nothingness, he shuddered and refocused on us.

Curse magic. Dark ritual of some kind. He wiped his muddy hands on a patch of reeds growing along the healthy side of the path.

When we show up in town and everyone is dead, that would count as extenuating circumstances for the Guild, yes? Drake had pulled a square of embroidered cloth from one of his many belt pouches and held it daintily over his face.

Town? Ashes, no. Bill and I are not going a single step further. My kind are too prone to illness to risk it, Rahiel said with a look of horror on her delicate green face. Bill supported her statement by pawing at the mud with one gold hoof.

What’cha talking about, dipwing? Makha used her favorite nickname for the pixie-goblin but her tone was strained.

If you all would cease staring at the ground for a moment? Rahiel pointed with her wand to something waving from the nearest stand of dying trees.

Crude banners were tied into the branches, yellow and indigo. We all knew what that meant. Yellow for plague. Indigo for mourning. Ahead of us, people were sick and whatever the illness, it was deadly. I didn’t even have to turn my head and look at Azyrin to know that despite what Rahiel had stated, we were going ahead.

Well, I did hope for a sob story. A town full of curse victims will do.

It took a good candlemark of argument, but Azyrin was adamant and what the shaman wanted, his wife would agree to and what Makha wanted, we all did. I had encountered giants less stubborn than our champion.

Even if I wanted I couldn’t voice an opinion, so while they argued I ventured down the path. Fade had already stepped onto the cursed ground, still growling low in his throat. Not much disturbed the pony-sized mist-lynx and his few vocalizations usually meant he wanted to draw my attention to something, so I followed him. I hesitated right at the line of death and shivered as I set my foot down, then felt stupid when nothing happened.

Fade stopped at the bloated corpse of a plate-billed heron and pawed at it, looking back at me. I shook off the uneasy feeling, unslung Thorn, and put my free hand over my nose as I caught up to the cat. The bug-repelling salve smeared on my skin almost hid the stench of decay. The bird had been dead only a few days, though since all the insect life around here also seemed to have succumbed to the curse, it was harder to say. I moved further down the path, looking for more bodies.

I found a whole family group of clay-rats, their corpses clustered together as though whatever had killed them had caught them fleeing in a pack. These creatures were nocturnal and should have been deep in the wet mud for the day. There were no wounds on their dark brown bodies and I judged they had been dead perhaps a day or two longer than the heron. So the death line had advanced and killed anything in its path.

Sending a worried look at Fade, I turned to make my way back to the group, wishing I could tell them what I was thinking. It was a dim hope to think they would notice such things for themselves.

We go to town, eat this, Azyrin told me when I rejoined them. He held out a dried five-petal flower. Cirrica, a rare flower that could stave off most illness for a small period of time.

I took it with a small shrug and chewed the bitter blossom quickly, washing it down with a sip of tepid water from my waterskin. Fade appeared beside me and opened his formidable mouth, his rough black tongue lolling out. Azyrin took the hint and handed me a second flower. The mist-lynx curled his upper lip after I set it on his tongue, but he swallowed. His kind was aloof and mysterious, populating the ice marshes of the northern wastes, but I had come to respect his uncanny intelligence if not his whiskers in my face when he wanted attention.

We made cautious progress to the town, passing the first mud and daub houses that lurked like burial mounds beneath the dying cypress branches. Fade left my side, disappearing into the marsh. I wished I could follow him, not being keen on towns myself.

Occasional patches of insect noise that came and when with a maddening lack of pattern and the sound of a human voice calling out further down the path bolstered my heart somewhat. Not everything was dead. I kept a firm grip on my bow and adjusted the quiver over my shoulder for drawing quickly.

Though I heard voices and saw movement as someone ducked back behind a grimy curtain as we passed, no one came out to greet or challenge us. Thick, oily smoke hung like a shroud over the town and low bonfires burned in make-shift stone fire-pits, the wood guttering in the damp marsh air. The heat from them turned the already sticky summer day into sweltering boil, coating my skin like a paste and making even the shallowest breath taste of ash. How like humans to turn to fire for comfort. Burn enough trees and perhaps the darkness will recede.

The central square, if the only paved area in Strongwater Barrow could be called a central square, had actual stone buildings. On the far edge of the paved area stood a beautifully carved marble unicorn, a shrine to the goddess Thunla. Beneath the statue was a brick well. More noise drifted out of a building I assumed from the crude sign painted with a large goblet was an inn. Drake veered toward it, but Makha’s large gauntleted fist hauled him back.

Guild first, plague whores later. She chuckled at her own pun.

We trudged toward the long, two storey stone building that had the crossed swords and dragon banners of the creatively named Adventuring Guild. Maybe the name sounded better in the original Samsiri, the tongue of the rocky isles where the Guild had started. Farishna Qvet. No. Not much of an improvement.

No one challenged us at the door and so Makha pushed it open and we filed into the dim room beyond. Two men sat at a scarred old table bisecting the long room. Candles in various stages of melt burned in sconces and helmets in a wide range of styles hung from hooks on the walls. I imagine they were meant to look decorative and impressive, to evoke thoughts of far-away places and exotic cultures, but with the curtains drawn tight and the guttering candlelight, the effect was sinister and macab.

Oh thank all the good gods, the older of the two humans exclaimed. They got our message in Brighthollow? He was a scrawny man in his fifth or sixth decade with a thin moustache and a cumbersome wooden brace bound to his left leg. He wore a dagger in his belt and had a series of old scars over one cheek. When he turned his head, I saw his ear was half-gone.

We got no message, nor’ve we been by Brighthollow. We came from the southeast, through the pass. Makha unslung her pack and shield.

We are Gryphonpike Companions, here to pay our dues, if you have scrying mirror and official ledger, Azyrin added, peering around skeptically.

Scry mirror broke. Was one of the things we sent Othe and Wilt for. Damn. The old man ran a hand through his thinning hair. Where are my manners? I’m sorry. I’m Hewgrim and this is Deohan. You’ve come at a poor time.

The other man stood up. I couldn’t make out his features much beyond that he was human since he had a roughspun cap pulled down around his ears and a thick black beard covered the rest. He was nearly as tall as I, which meant he stood still a head and some shorter than Azyrin and would have looked Makha in the chin if his eyes hadn’t been locked on the floor.

Azyrin Stormbane, Azyrin said, extending his hand to clasp Hewgrim’s arm. My companions. Makha Stormbane, Drake Bannor, Rahiel Glowbix, and Killer. He gestured at each of us in turn.

Rahiel curtseyed and Bill mimicked her gesture, tapping his horn on the rough wooden floor. I followed Drake and Makha’s lead and shrugged out of my pack.

The Stormbanes? Of course. I should have guessed. Not as though there are many Winter-orcs registered with the Guild, eh? Eheh. Hewgrim tried on a smile and motioned toward the empty benches. You need to pay your Guild dues? Well, the ledger is here and up to date from a fortnight ago.

I stayed standing with my pack leaning at my side, the arrows within easy reach. Deohan avoided our gazes and was bundled up in a long-sleeved tunic with a high collar and a cap more suited for cold evenings than hot summer afternoons. Somewhat was wrong here.

Well, well then. Yes. Hewgrim settled himself back in his chair at one end of the table with a grimace of pain.

It’s witches, Deohan said. His voice was higher, breathier, than I would have expected from a large human male, as though something were pinching his throat. What? he added at Hewgrim’s glare. They need t’know.

Witch, witches? Plural? Azyrin asked.

The name witch gets bandied about and has come to refer to multiple things. Don’t like the pretty girl courting your son? She’s a witch. Old woman who makes love philters and herbal salves with a level of magic a step above charlatan and about a bell-tower’s worth of steps below a true mage like Rahiel? They call those witches, too.

Then there are the true witches. Not taught, but born. Always female, very powerful, often but not always nasty to folk who disturb them.

Real witches, three of them, Hewgrim said. He dropped his gaze to his hands as he folded them on the table. They moved into the swamps to the northeast last year. Weren’t a problem until one took a fancy to our blacksmith. Fellow already had a wife. Whole family ended up bloated and black, found ‘em myself that way, dead in their beds. Group of us went out with our priest of Thunla and caught one. Gave her a trial and all, but the other two showed up. We killed one, but lost Amos, our priest. That’s when my leg was crushed. He balled his hands into fists and ground his knuckles into the table. Night after that, that’s when the curse hit. Half the town sick and dying. All the animals dead. Horses, chickens, water bison, even our cats. Those that didn’t get sick fled. Just a few of us left now.

I bit my lip and took a deep breath. The pain in Hewgrim’s thin face hit me like a punch. He had the wan, hollow look of man filled with despair. I knew the dark secret of his thoughts. Why them? Why not me? How am I to go on? Though my hands twitched with the desire to step forward and offer comfort, I dug my fingernails into my palms and shoved away the tide of my memories.

Besides, the one and only time I had tried to offer comfort to another my curse had knocked me unconscious. Comfort-offering counted as communication, apparently.

What is this plague? Azyrin asked gently, covering the old man’s hands with his large blue ones.

Hewgrim nodded to Deohan. The younger man nodded slowly and then reached up and dragged his cap off.

Makha cursed, Drake and Rahiel leaned away and even I