Chapter 1 - Carabas and the City of Mists
We’d been together for some time – long enough to begin to fully grasp the horror of the Overlord’s wicked schemes, plots that placed the world, including the Shire, in tremendous danger, all while cloaked as a figure of myth and nightmarish legend. Her actions in bringing down the Sky Island of Vree, though not then known widely as her work, made our quest of even greater urgency.
We descended by the mist barges (these traveling downwards to the Lowlands, rather than the more common routes to sky islands) to the city of Redvalley (or “Rauörfold” as Wynn insisted on calling it). Once it was part of the Ohir’s empire. When we were there, it was surrounded by the mists of the Lowlands, tremendous animals and spirits occasionally wandering by in the ruddy woods.
But the Mist never entered into the city, not before then. Great statues of the Ohir Protectors, one at each cardinal point, rose into the air, mighty and menacing, and bespelled to keep the Mist from the city. Rowan had brought us here, the horoscope he cast …
… oh, right. Yes, whatever, much spooky magic, portents, grave warnings, mystical intuitions, meow, meow, meow.
Let me tell you about mystical intuitions, my kitlings, for when the Overlord struck, I knew it! I felt the fur rise all over my body. Yes, I appeared larger and more mighty than ever, which one might expect to daunt any would-be attackers.
The others of the fellowship were relieved by this, and chuckled with nerves. But not for long, as the great enchanted statues began to crumble, stones the size of horses plummeting to the pavement below, their enchantments shattered by the Overlord’s cruel sorceries.
The population screamed, and ran back in forth in a way that some would find amusing, but was a sign of their fear and uncertainty. And understandable it was, for their entire city was threatened, if not by falling masonry than by the entry of the Mist and the fell spirits that lived within it!
The inn where we were staying, owned by a human couple named Bernard and Jane – Do not laugh! Yes, that was her name, and yes, I know what it means in the slang that your parents would not be happy you know, I had exercised iron control in not chuckling, and certainly would not have dreamt of telling her, for I fear she had very little sense of humor.
At any rate, realizing the people of that town were doomed, we could not simply flee. Those around us – in the inn, even in the neighborhood – we had come to know in the week we’d been there, and we felt it our obligation to consider how to get them to safety.
The mist barges were out as an escape – not only were the crowds of panicky humans already swamping them, but if magic and the ley lines were themselves under attack, that exit seemed an even greater danger.
Ann, used to wrangling humans, did her best to try to gather up folk together to evacuate, but Bernard and … his wife, refused to go until their son and his wife could be found.
Which, certes, was a noble sentiment on their part, but one likely to get everyone killed. I knew I would have to do something drastic to save them!