What Happened Last Session
Slush
The flail came down, and then everything else did. Wrundl took the first round and looked at Arthur with something like heartbreak. “Arthur, my love, what are you doing? I thought you wanted the coin. It was almost done. I just had located it.” The second round killed her.
The pond went with her. Every drowned thing that had risen screaming out of the water lost its shape and ran into the snow, and the company stood in a field of slush in a silence three days old. There was nothing to loot and no coin; whatever she had found died with her, and nobody asked. The Realm counted it a Myth laid to rest and gave each knight a Glory. Four of them can rule a Holding now.
Rhino Dogs
From the hill at 1006 the south opened up: cliffs, a waterfall into 0907, Arthur’s dam turning at 1007, flocks like white dots on 1107. Two horned wolves came out of the trees’ shadow straight at Ro’an, drawn to the stick that dogs love. His Deny rolled a twenty; Robin’s rolled a twenty; the teeth closed on his legs and did not quite get through. Ro’an threw the stick to Arthur, Arthur drew the Circle and caught it, and the wolves chased the stick into the line. One took thirteen and limped off. The other broke its teeth on nothing. Both are still out there.
Five Seers, Five Answers
Dowell was wrong before the gate: withered fields, and bodies against the wall, families who starved waiting to sell crops that never grew. The company split up to find their own Seers and learned that every one of them lives in the city. Ro’an’s is an infant in a crib: “I don’t like it. Can you get rid of it? It’s over there!” Bray’s is a burning man on a post who spoke inside his skull: “Trust no one.” Robin closed her eyes and walked until she opened them in a toy shop lined with felt dolls, where a shifting-faced shopkeeper said most futures end in war, but not all. Seeli’s was passed out on a pub table. Arthur met his for the first time, a shadow digging a grave in daylight: “All it takes is the death of one. One that should not be buried here. Find the one that’s not from this realm, Arthur. Give your ring. The one you trust.”
Outside the pub Abran told Seeli that Dowell was hunting whoever brought the snow, and that his own Seer had sent him after a tree with a face, a fleshy door in a trunk, somewhere in the Grey Lakes. “I think it might be the solution to this cold. Bring me along with you. I think I might be able to find the entrance.” She said she would. In the square, the Carved Seer was asked whether the rot was someone new here, and said yes.
Drink Until He Remembers
By afternoon Seeli’s Seer was good company and had an idea: “Ask Ro’an, he saw it. Drink until he remembers.” So knight drank against knight until both hit the table at once, and the memory came as a dream. A night in the Grey Lakes, alone fetching firewood, a fleshy door in a tree that snapped shut the moment it was seen. And just before it, on the road, Kelwun the Iron Knight.
Arthur did not drink. He woke to whispering through the ring on Ro’an’s unconscious hand, then wheels, and ran down the only wagon moving in Dowell: two unarmed commoners and his friend under the canvas. “They have our families. It’s a figure. He gives us food.” Robin arrived with the flail out. They let the wagon roll on so they could follow it, and Arthur slid the ring off Ro’an’s finger and put his own on Robin.
Show Me Your Hand
At the castle gate the kidnappers raised a hand, and a brand on the left palm raised the gate. Arthur walked into the dungeon on his own name, choked out a jailer who had wanted to see his hand, and found the same mark on the jailer’s palm. The company slept in the cells next to Ro’an’s.
Morning brought a relief jailer who ran the moment Arthur asked when the prisoners would be collected. Ro’an put a stick in his face and got a name, the Order of Change, and one fact: he had been told to report when Ro’an, specifically, arrived. A guard outside bolted into the courtyard, where Bray, sent by his Seer to find them in the castle, bit him to sleep in what looked to everyone else like a kiss.
Then the round table. Arthur asked for hands. Kelwun, now on the council, offered hers for the price of a dinner; Abran took her glove off himself, and there was the brand. “I’ve never seen this before,” she said. Behind Ro’an, Isaac hissed. Arthur arrested her by the Steward’s decree and had every palm bared: the Marshal’s marked, the Sheriff’s, the Envoy’s and Abran’s clean. “Do you trust me now, Ro’an?” The order to stand down went out, and half the guards drew their swords instead.
Looking Ahead
Steel is out in the Seat of Power, over an Iron Knight who says she never saw the mark on her own hand, a Marshal who carries it, and a Steward who gave the order and is not sure he should have. Dowell is starving, its families are hostages, its merchants have been sent away to look for something, and Abran wants to be taken to a door in a tree. The Seers gave a piece each: the death of one, trust no one, don’t fight the chance, leave it alone and it will sort itself out. Sam says next session is most likely the last.
A clean hand proves only that nobody has written on it yet.