Of Crows and Jackdaws

Part 4 - A Meeting of Knights

After Elias had eaten more than his fair share of stewed cress and chard, makerouns, meat pie, pickled beef, elderflower cheesecake, and almond milk fruit pie, they were on their way to the monthly gathering of the Order of the Crow. The wizards, diviners, and alchemists of the Circle, afraid as they were of being pursued by witch hunters, had taken to meeting after dusk in the ruins of an ancient Sassarite basilica. At some point, the old road that led to the meeting place turned into a trail through the Norbrook Woodlands.

Barcias did not like these woods.

It was an old forest in which a woodsman had not set foot for many generations, and it felt as if it liked it that way. The air was heavy. The trees were covered with moss and the ponds of stale rainwater with dead leaves. No birds chirped or chipped or trilled or lilted or tweeted. No wolf was on the prowl, no lion lurked in the underbrush, no deer roamed about. The faint silvery light emanating from the small jewel on Elias' staff gave the forest an eerie and ghostly appearance. The stones, shrubs, and saplings seemed to shudder in the cold wind. On this cloudy moonless night, one could have sworn that the shadows were oozing from every pore of the land. The leaves in the trees were a giant web and voices and sounds as many flies stuck and hanging in the branchlets.

In the forests of the North, he had run into sentinels of the wildlands, rangers who protected small villages from afar and kept the forests as safe as they could. No rangers guarded the woods of Norbrook.

They were walking along the old trail, a few hundred steps from the basilica, when a slight noise was heard: a tiny whisper that rose and fell in a breath.

A flash: Barcias' blade was out of its sheath.

A whispered cry: the young woman stood up from her hiding spot.

"Master Elias, there you are."

"Callirohé? What are you doing in the bushes?"

"Not so loud," she said as she approached. "You're late, Master."

"Yes. Well, we had troll trouble."

Barcias coughed.

"...and the innkeeper was quite slow to serve us."

The young woman was shaken, nervous, and afraid. She was a more than capable diviner who was well versed in aeromancy, but she was not a combatant.

"Thank God you weren't at the reunion. I think about half of us got away, but I didn't have time to do a head count."

Elias' eyes widened. "What? Slow down. What happened?"

Callirohé took a deep breath. "There's no time," she said, exasperated. "We have to run."

She took the Archmage's hand and started walking away from the ruins with great strides, dragging him behind her.

"Wait! Explain yourself!"

"Shhh! Quiet!" she said with a finger on her lips.

Elias stiffened, frowned and glared at her: he was getting tense.

"The Circle was attacked, Elias. The black knight was looking for you, but he massacred everyone he could get his hands on."

"A black knight?" Barcias could not see the wizard in the dark, but he knew that he was making a face.

"A dire thing in black armor."

"And it was looking for me?"

"Yes. It asked if you were present and when we inquired as to why it wanted to see you, it said it would bring your head to its master."