Kirby Crow - Scarlet & The White Wolf 3 - The Land Of Night(1), New folder 1
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The Land of Night
by Kirby Crow
Torquere Press
Copyright ©2006 by Kirby Crow
First published in www.torquerepress.com, 2007
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The Land of Night
by Kirby Crow
PREFACE
This is the conclusion of SCARLET AND THE WHITE WOLF.
Book One,
The Pedlar and the Bandit King
, told the story
of Scarlet of Lysia, a young and honorable Hilurin pedlar, who
by chance met a Kasiri bandit on a toll road through the
mountains. The Kasiri was Liall the Wolf, a feared and famous
giant of a man from the far northern lands of Rshan na Ostre,
and a famous atya, or chieftain, among the tribal Kasiri kraits.
Their first meeting was less than polite. Liall demanded a
kiss in toll for Scarlet's crossing of the bandit road. Scarlet
angrily refused and insulted the atya, and Liall sent Scarlet
packing back to his village.
In Lysia, a stranger named Cadan—an Aralyrin soldier in
the Flower Prince's Army—began asking questions about the
Kasiri blocking the mountain road. Cadan seemed to focus
much of his attention on Scarlet, and questioned the young
man repeatedly about Liall. The Aralyrin and Hilurin peoples,
though sharing a common ancestry, had been waging a
sporadic, unofficial war against each other for years, and did
not trust each other. The Hilurin have long guarded the secret
of The Gift: an ancestral Hilurin ability to use magic, and to
suddenly have an Aralyrin taking up residence in a Hilurin
village, watching the doings of bandits, roused Scarlet's
suspicions. Scarlet refused to speak to Cadan any further, and
angrily ordered the soldier to leave him alone.
For the next several days, as Cadan watched closely, an
inventive battle of wills ensued between Scarlet and Liall.
Scarlet tried to sneak by the road in the dead of night, then
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The Land of Night
by Kirby Crow
hid inside a cart of crockery, and finally dressed in his
mother's clothing with his black hair powdered to crone-gray.
Liall was fooled by none of it, but highly amused, until Scarlet
took the game further and accused Liall of being a brigand
and probable murderer.
Enraged, Liall cut the dress from Scarlet and humiliated
him in front of the Kasiri. Peysho—Liall's Morturii enforcer—
put a stop to it before it went too far, but the damage was
done. Scarlet fled down the mountain road, and a regretful
Liall followed him.
While escaping the Kasiri camp, Scarlet ran straight into
Cadan, who was lying in wait for the pedlar. Cadan attacked
Scarlet, meaning to leave his dead body for the village to find
and lay the blame on the bandits, but Liall arrived in time to
save Scarlet, wounding Cadan and driving him off.
Liall returned Scarlet to his people to recover, and
explained to Scarlet that Cadan was a former Kasiri in Liall's
krait. Cadan had proved to be more of a brutal outlaw than a
Kasiri, and Liall had marked and banished Cadan from his
krait three years earlier. Cadan's attack on Scarlet was
motivated purely by revenge against Liall.
Deeply ashamed of his actions that put Scarlet in such
danger, Liall refused to see Scarlet when he recovered his
health and chanced up the mountain road, but granted the
traveling pedlar full and free passage through any road that
the Longspur krait controlled, forever.
Two months passed. A messenger arrived for Liall from his
northern homeland of Rshan na Ostre, summoning the
northman on a mysterious quest to return to his family.
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The Land of Night
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Scarlet traveled to Ankar, a Morturii city, to work in the souk.
There, he made plans to move away from Lysia and join a
trade in Ankar, but decided to make one more trip to his
village to see his parents and inform them of his decision.
Approaching Lysia, Scarlet could see tall columns of smoke
on the horizon. He raced into the village, only to find
everyone dead, the homes burning, and the village full of
Kasiri. Scarlet assumed that the Kasiri had attacked the
village, and drew a knife to attack Liall. Liall protested that
that the attack was an Aralyrin raid, bent on murdering the
Hilurin, and refused to fight Scarlet. Liall's men disarmed the
grieving pedlar, and Liall gently informed Scarlet that his
sister, Annaya, survived the raid. She was safe in the Kasiri
camp.
Two days passed while Annaya recovered in the krait,
tended by her brother, until another survivor straggled into
camp: Shansi, the blacksmith's apprentice and Annaya's
betrothed. Shansi confirmed that it was the Aralyrin who
destroyed Lysia. Liall has his men sifted the ashes of Scarlet's
home to find the bones of Scarlet's parents, and Liall helped
Scarlet bury them in a peaceful field.
With the seasons turning and Lysia destroyed, the krait
prepared to break camp and move back to their base in Chrj.
Liall tried to find a way to be alone with Scarlet so that he
could investigate Scarlet's willingness to stay with the krait,
but Scarlet resisted all of Liall's invitations and the offer was
never made. Liall prepared to return to Rshan alone, turning
over the leadership of the krait to Peysho, and said goodbye
to Scarlet on the mountain road where they first met. Scarlet
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