P.J. McDermott - The Scarf

PROSPERINE

Temloki

T emlokis leathery wings rippled in the blustery breeze, rousing him momentarily from his slumber. The journey from Avanaux had been long and arduous, and the sword grew more burdensome with each passing hour. His strength would not last forever, he knew, but it would suffice until he reached his destination. The Scarf. He quivered with excitement in his half-sleep. At last, he would be with his kinfolk.

Hed nested alone these past three hundred years, ever since the day Ka-Varla had failed to return from the hunt. Hed woken with her screams echoing through his dreams and immediately left the lair to search for his mate. Temloki tracked her to the marshlands outside the city of Crodal.

There, among the white waterlilies, he discovered Ka-Varla near death. She lay on her side, pierced by a score of arrows, thick black blood oozing from her belly, swollen with the nymphlet shed carried these last eighteen months. His mate lifted her head and keened as he approached. Temloki dripped water into her mouth and brought her fresh meat until she could no longer swallow. Her breathing became weaker and more labored, and finally, with a long sigh, she was still.

Temloki grieved many months for the loss of his mate. Shed been with him near a century, the mother of four nymphlets, all of them dead at the hands of the wingless ones. Each night before they slept, they would relive the joy of the chase and the kill, and share their bewilderment over the endless wars between the six kingdoms of Erlach.

Ka-Varla and Temloki. They were the last of their kind on the northern continent, and after his mates passing, Temloki lived in solitude, emerging from his cave only to hunt, his sorrow, and hurt souring to anger and hate. The rage festered inside him day by day until all thoughts but those of revenge had fled his mind.

He brought terror to the wingless ones, the Erlachi, demanding they give him their children, their mates, as they had taken his. His revenge knew no limit. Many of his victims he swallowed whole to satisfy his hunger, but others he tore apart slowly for the pleasure of watching them die. His appearance at the gates of a city created hysteria among the population and earned him his epithet, Riv-Amok, bringer of death.

And in two hundred years, he had never heard another voice until the warrior from the stars whispered in his mind. At first, hed thought he was dreaming again of Ka-Varla, then with mounting excitement, hed hoped the whisperer might perhaps be one of his own, miraculously come from afar to seek him out. Hope turned to bitterness when he realized the stranger was but a wingless warrior. He sought her out, but her will was strong, and she evaded him. In the end, he devoured two of her companions before the White One commanded him to leave and take the sword to the Scarf.

In the first days of his journey, he fancied hed heard the weapon murmur to him, urging him forward with promises of great treasures, but he had laughed at it. Nothing created by the hand of a wingless one could hold sway over him.

Temloki grasped the sword more firmly in his talons and coasted lower. This was a hot and steamy place with salt-encrusted white rock cracked and broken into a million pieces by rivulets of seawater, and seemingly devoid of life. There was nothing for him here. He groaned, beat his massive wings, and flew on.

The sun sank slowly beneath the sea, and Prosperines two orange-dusted moons rose high. The aurora unfolded like a curtain, and the sky was blanketed with pulsating sheets of emerald, ruby, and turquoise. A thin ribbon of gold rippled slowly across the heavens and sank beneath the horizon. Temloki cared naught for this natural beauty and fastened his eyes on the land below.

Gradually the terrain changed. Occasional patches of lichen and algae joined together, and the salted crust gave way to rushes and ferns and then to swamps infested with biting insects and creeping plants. Bushes and scrubby trees emerged, growing taller by consuming their own branches, leaf litter, and the occasional animal carcass. The land pushed up in places, forming hillocks and ridges in the otherwise flat vastness.

A flicker of light caught his eye, and Temloki turned towards it, his heart suddenly aflame.

Trouble in the Scarf

G eorge Lace, Admiral in the Intragalactic Agency, and responsible for the security of the Alliance, contemplated his adopted daughter. His fingers tapped the table between them. Youre telling me this sword has some sort of magical power that enhances the strength of the person using it? One eyebrow rose.

Hickory squirmed in her seat. She was aboard the admirals flagship, the Jabberwocky , being debriefed on her recent assignment to Erlach. She found it hard to accept this man as her father, preferring to think of him as the Admiral, with a capital A. He was a stranger, an enigma to her. When her mother died giving birth to Hickorys younger brother, Michael, hed offloaded both siblings to his sister so he could pursue his career. For ten years, the only communication Hickory received had been an occasional birthday card with his name printed on it. In the last five years, thered been nothing. Then, out of the blue, shed been transferred from the Alien Corps to work with him on the Prosperine mission.

Not for any filial reason, Hickory knew. The admiral had requisitioned her because of her experience working with unusual alien species, and because she was a neoteric. Hickorys heightened empathic senses meant she could tell when someone lied or distorted the truth by merely reaching out to them with her mind.

The admirals scorn for anything hinting of the paranormal was well known. She spread her hands wide. I dont say magic , sir, but Sequanas mind was definitely strangely affected by the Sword of Connat-sra-Haagar. Before he acquired it, he was a charismatic leader of the rebellion and a brilliant thinker much loved by his followers, even following his defeat at the walls of Ezekan.

Then, a few months later, he became paranoid and suspicious of everyone around him. Those who knew him say his whole personality changed after he stole the sword from the temple. I believe that sword helped Sequana to become powerful, but in the end, it also made him vulnerable. The legends of the Avanauri say the Sword of Connat-sra-Haagar magnifies weaknesses as well as strengths.

The admiral snorted, then changed tack. And you lost this weapon? You had it in your hand, yet you lost it?

Hickory nodded carefully. She didnt want to lie to the admiral. Still, she didnt want him to know the truththat Gareth, her sidekick, had given the Sword of Connat-sra-Haagar to the Avanauri mystic called the Teacher, who in turn had placed it in the keeping of the ferocious telepathic creature, the Riv-Amok. I have an idea where it might be, though. I heard someone say it was taken to the Scarf for safekeeping.