such as they are.' The dwarf nodded toward a great wooden chest chained to a granite slab. Raidon guessed the wide slit in the top served as a coin slot.
Raidon walked through the gates, dropped a coin in the opening, and continued into the city.
The dwarf wished him a good day, but Raidon didn't waste more breath on the fellow. He was already past, his eyes crawling over the landscape of half-collapsed and abandoned buildings. Then he smelled charred meat on the wind. He stopped moving. His mouth watered.
The odor was ambrosial. His empty stomach commandeered his feet and turned him toward a rambling edifice just inside the gate. Like the other surviving structures he'd glimpsed, this building was cracked and worse for wear, having seen little if any upkeep. However, light, voices, and the smell of cooking food issued from it. No sign or exterior glyph indicated the name or nature of the place.
Raidon pushed through the open door into a wide, low chamber. It resembled the common rooms of travelers' inns he'd seen all across Faerыn, complete with some four-footed beast sizzling on a spit in the fireplace. Raidon took a deep breath, savoring the odor.
About a dozen people were present, gathered into three distinct groups, save for a lone grandfather near the door snoring into a spilled tankard of ale, a woman in a barkeep's apron bustling around the chamber, and a boy manning the spit.
A man muttered from his drink, 'Look 'ee, a half-elf.' All eyes swiveled to regard Raidon.
The monk raised a hand, said, 'Greetings. I seek a meal, and information.'
The barkeep yelled, 'Grab a table, traveler, and I'll bring you ale and stew. The boar'll be done enough to cut up later, if you're having any?'
'I am,' affirmed Raidon. He walked forward, past the inquisitive locals, and sat himself down at the bar. He could feel the weight of curious eyes on his back, and hear the beginning buzz of speculation.
The barkeep pulled his drink and set it before him in a wooden tankard. Raidon eyed the frothy liquid but decided against asking for tea. He doubted the establishment carried such niceties of civilization.
The woman yelled, 'Merl, stop idling over there, and get this fellow a bowl of stew!' The boy at the spit started from his daydream daze and darted into a back room.
'My thanks,' Raidon told the barkeep.
She nodded without a hint of cordiality. She said, 'If you're here to join these fools on their 'Scar Pilgrimage,' then I doubt I'll ever see you again. Might as well spend your gold now, because once you're dead, it'll do you no good.'
Uncertain of her meaning and as yet unwilling to reveal his ignorance, Raidon merely returned her look without reply.
The boy reappeared from the back room with a fired clay bowl filled with cold stew. The boy set it before the monk, then returned to his position by the fire to give the spit another turn.
Raidon fell to. He couldn't later recall the flavors, he consumed the dish so quickly.
The barkeep cocked her head, asked, 'Nothing to say? Hungry enough, though. I can see by your clothing you're no brigand come to spend ill-gotten loot. You'd be dressed more elaborately and would have ordered hard spirits. What kind of scar do you think you'll find in the Plague-wrought Land?'
'I do not seek more scars,' Raidon said, wiping his mouth on a piece of linen.
The barkeep laughed, shaking her head.
'You ain't here for a pilgrimage?' came a voice behind Raidon.
The grandfather was awake. His brown eyes twinkled, and laugh lines crinkled around them. His beard was streaked white and black, and so was his long hair tied back in a single braid. His clothing was damp from the spilled ale he'd been dozing in.
'I am not seeking a scar in the Plague-wrought Land. Why would I?'
'People don't come here for any old blemish,' said the old man. 'They come to be scarred by the Plague- wrought Land.'
'To be scarred by…' Raidon trailed off, recalling what one of the ghouls outside Starmantle had said, before it tried to eat him. It babbled something about spellscars. About how spellplague didn't killed everyone it touched, but changed some instead. Sometimes monstrously.
Raidon inquired, 'Are there those insane enough to subject themselves to active spellplague?'
A few of the people gathered in the bar shifted to expressions of self-conscious doubt or embarrassment; other faces hardened into looks of defiance. Raidon realized he'd erred.
'My apologies,' he said. 'I did not mean to offend. Pardon me for my ignorance of your ways. Suffice it to say, I am not here to undertake a scar pilgrimage, nor do I possess sufficient experience to comment on what you seek.'
The eyes of the tavern's occupants remained on him. A few seemed mollified, though not all. Regardless, he might have no better chance to ask his questions.
He continued, 'No, I am here for another reason. I am looking for an old friend who came here a few years after the Spellplague. A woman, a… a star elf actually, attired as a warrior. She was named Kiril Duskmourn, and she bore a sword called Angul. Were any of you here then? Did any of you see Kiril?'
The barkeep shook her head. 'A lot of people come through here, and most never return once they leave. Those who go on the scar pilgrimage usually stay a few tendays or months building up their nerve, and then I never see them again. A few do come back, ecstatic or horrified, depending. Anyway, I don't remember this woman.'
'I remember her,' declared the old man.
Raidon swiveled back, his pulse responding but his face betraying no hint of his eagerness to know. 'What do you remember?'
The grandfather put a finger to his lips, shook his head. 'It weren't too long after the Spellplague picked up Ormpetarr and tossed it down again, like a child throwing a tantrum. Ormpetarr was reduced to its present sad state in moments. Many were killed. I remember the screams and cries of the survivors, I do.'
The grandfather took a pull on his tankard. The barkeep must have refilled it during the old man's doze.
'But some of us survived. And a few of us stayed. That's right, I stayed!' The man's tone verged on belligerence. 'Where else could we go? Plus, we had our own special souvenir of the Spellplague: a pocket that didn't fade away like most of the rest in Faerыn. It lingered, just beyond the city. Onnpetarr's claim to fame in the wider world, eh? These ruins aren't home merely to crazies, ne'er-do-wells, and criminals. No. Well, we got them, but we also got pilgrims.'
Another sip, then he continued, 'People began to trickle in, just one or two every month. The swordswoman you're describing was one. She wanted to enter the Plague-wrought Land.'
'Why?' demanded Raidon.
'Probably heard the story of Madruen Morganoug and wanted to try for herself, same as the rest of the pilgrims that came later.'
That name drew smiles and nods of happy assent from many others present.
Raidon cocked his head to signal his unfamiliarity with the name.
'You don't know much, do you?'
A thread of heat urged Raidon to grasp the man's head and bang it hard against the table. Slightly shocked to even entertain such a thought, the monk outwardly revealed his discomposure by narrowing his lips. He requested, 'Explain.'
The grandfather laughed. 'Well, Madruen entered the Plague-wrought Land, and unlike everyone before him, Madruen returned. Of course, it was an accident he'd fallen in at all, and the rest of us figured he was dead. A day later he walked back into town, his skin aglow with blue fire and a smile plastered across his face. He was touched by the spellplague. He was the first spellscarred anyone ever heard about.'
More nods from the clientele and even a couple of cheers. Raidon said, 'Why did Madruen smile? Why did his skin glow?'
'He smiled because he wasn't dead. His skin glowed because he soaked up the wild magic of the Plague- wrought Land, and it remade him. His skin was like iron-almost impossible to cut through. He could withstand daggers, swords, even ballista! Madruen was a walking palisade!'
Raidon took a deep breath and found his focus again. The image of the Cerulean Sign tattooed on his chest flashed before him, and he supposed, indeed, he was spellscarred like Madruen, but with a different outcome.
