The Tiers of the Shiverfang

[Diadems of Promethion]

“Now now, gentlemen, you don’t mean to say,” the dwarf did declare, perching his considerable bulk on the counter-top so that he sat at a height with his audience. “None among you have heard of the Tiered Mountain?”

Oak boards groaned beneath his weight, seasoned and stained with centuries of spilled drink. Having already imbibed an impressive amount of the indeterminate swill these humans called ale, he belched to show his appreciation. The nearby hearth glowed across the burnished sea of red-gold filigree upon his bared chest. His cheeks, like pitted coal, smouldered beneath its warm caress. Swirling smoke from an unseen pipe curled across his features: the broken nose, the gregarious gap-toothed grin, the bristling stubble on his lantern jaw.

He heaved air into the powerful bellows of his lungs, savouring the acrid taste of dried summergrass like a connoisseur of fine spirits. Such distinctive scents tended to make him nostalgic for the silent weight of his ancient underground homeland, now lost to the chaos that consumed the far south. Funnelling the raw emotion into his voice as a spider might weave threads, he slipped into the assembled ears and arrested their attention.

“That will not do! Allow me to wet my throat with your finest ale... aye, thank you, that will suffice my dear... and elaborate on my quest.”

Already he had entertained the common room with three stories today. The best so far, a bawdy tale of a Cathayan prince and his pet dragon, had turned the tavern wench’s ears the same shade of scarlet as the Coronian wine she served. His latest pronouncement only further fanned their anticipation. Grime-streaked farmers leant close to better hear his words. Rush-strewn benches creaked as they fought for space with burly woodsmen and their equally burly wives. A handful of lone adventurers pretended not to listen from over their pewter tankards. From the shadows of the trestles in the far corner, a pair of tempered amethyst irises watched and studied.

“Somewhere in the mists between Knife’s Edge and Archen, far from the well-worn tread of the Wolf’s Trail, there stands a mountain held by the most fanatical followers of the Ethereal Sway. Nobody knows how to find it, and nobody knows how to get there. Ten of the King’s best huntsmen once tried, at the height of your civil war. Only one ever returned, raving like a madman that there was nothing there to find. The king chopped off his head, not long before his crown came tumbling off to join it.”

A satisfied hiss echoed through the flickering tendrils of darkness. The dwarf reminded himself that many of those present had likely fought for Church against King and noble, not so long ago. He would be wise to choose his words, so that his head didn’t end up separated from shoulders as well.

“Legend speaks that the Sway themselves led the Saint there during her frantic flight from her tyrannical All-Father. The heat of her silken skin melted the heart of even this most bitter of lonely mountains. Her presence carved a hollow soul from the cold rock, and instilled it with her divine grace. Her tears pooled in its darkest depths, where even now they glimmer in silvery sorrow. The sweat of her sculpted teats...”

The tavern wench shot him a dark look from behind the counter. The dwarf raised his hands in good-natured defensiveness.

“... very well, I leave to your imagination the beads of sweat that spilled from her soft, supple, sculpted teats.”

She upended half a tankard of stale bitter over his head. Leering snickers from his audience accompanied his exaggerated spluttering. The dwarf made a show of rubbing his cropped scalp and licking at the sticky rivulets that poured down his jaw. An appreciative sound rumbled from the depths of his muscled throat, as he too joined in the laughter.

“But we return to my quest! Long after the Saint departed the Tiered Mountain, rested and healed, the Church reclaimed it for their own purposes. And unlike the Aeromancer’s Tower or the Grand Cathedral in Knife’s Edge, they don’t want anybody snooping around there. The Tiered Mountain serves two purposes for them. It’s a monastery where they can train their most infamous of inquisitors and witch hunters. And it’s a reliquary where they can store their most powerful, most mysterious of artefacts. The Grand Cathedral is the light they want people to see, all glamour and relics and pompous circumstance. The Tiered Mountain is the darkness, in which they hid their deepest and darkest secrets.”

“Blasphemy!” a young voice called from the back of the audience, only recently broken into manhood. A couple of drinkers closer to the counter, more cynical and world-weary than the besotten boy, snorted with care into their mugs. All had heard at their mothers’ breasts the tales of shadowy figures burning innocents at the stake. But only some had experienced them first-hand.

“Aye, blaspheme I do!” The dwarf laughed again to wash away the shiver of fear that settled in the room, though he made sure to pin the speaker beneath a glare of flinted jade. He’d rather not that any mind-washed fanatics stole into his room at night, sharpened knives in their hands and blind devotion on their lips. “For I am a harmless drunken dwarf from Alerar, a humble spinner of words and purveyor of magnificent merchandise. I seek out secrets and I quest for truths, for I know no better!”

He punctuated his point with an emphatic gulp of his ale. Half the tavern followed suit, and all was well in their worlds once more. Now if only those cold amethyst irises would look elsewhere...

Throld Sartet’s voice rose again, continuing to spawn half-truths and fancies from his fertile imagination. With any luck, he would not pay for another drink tonight.