Lost Trails: The Harrowdale Horror: Part 7
Posted: Tue Apr 30, 2019 12:05 am
HALVAN'S KEEP
As the party moves up-slope through the autumn woods, the hikers catch multiple glimpses of the Keep through the screen of blackberry bushes and red-leafed trees: crumbled parapets, the sweep of a mostly-intact section of curtain wall, a heap of broken stones the height of a mature oak.
Soon, trees thin out, the bushes grow even thicker and thornier.
Perielle pauses to pick and eat a handful of berries.
Then the acolyte points out a fallen building stone the size of a man, half hidden in the briers and high weeds.
''There's a path over there, I think. The workmen used..."
She rubs her noses and eyes with her left hand, and then munches more berries.
A brief investigation proves Perielle correct.
A cart-rutted, hoof-marked path runs from some point downhill, deep in the lower woods, up the hill to a clearing before a high-arched gateway.
The heavy wooden doors of the gate hang ajar.
Solid stonework, showing off-colored blocks and fresh-looking mortar suggestive of recent repairs, runs left and right from the open doors, vanishing in thick thorn-bushes.
Scouting the site before entering, the party finds shallow tracks in the dirt, some that might have been made by plant men as well as boot-prints of human size.
But even though reconnaissance found no enemies in sight, no one passing through the entrance can shake the feeling of being watched.
A jumble of small, tumbledown buildings, thickly clad in brown and yellow-green vines, fills the space to the front and right. It looks less like a castle inside the walls than like a village of stone houses and shops, burned and ruined and now overgrown with creeping plants and weeds.
But off to the left, near the curtain wall, a cleared, weeded, and leveled area spreads about ten feet on a side, stacked with cut logs, pieces of building stones, barrels, crates and sacks. The bushes behind the clear zone rustle, and presently a boy of maybe twelve emerges, dressed in drab brown clothes and carrying a basket.
The kid makes a beeline for the party front-rankers, then stops just out of reach.
He stares at the adventurers.
The lad opens his mouth, revealing teeth black with decay.
His voice comes as a surprise, hollow and hoarse.
"My mistress wants to know why you have been attacking her minions. What does it profit you? And what purpose would your deaths serve here, now, except to feed the god. Is that your true wish?"
As he speaks, something wriggles in his long, dusty hair on the left side of his head, like a garden snake writhing in dead grass.
As the party moves up-slope through the autumn woods, the hikers catch multiple glimpses of the Keep through the screen of blackberry bushes and red-leafed trees: crumbled parapets, the sweep of a mostly-intact section of curtain wall, a heap of broken stones the height of a mature oak.
Soon, trees thin out, the bushes grow even thicker and thornier.
Perielle pauses to pick and eat a handful of berries.
Then the acolyte points out a fallen building stone the size of a man, half hidden in the briers and high weeds.
''There's a path over there, I think. The workmen used..."
She rubs her noses and eyes with her left hand, and then munches more berries.
A brief investigation proves Perielle correct.
A cart-rutted, hoof-marked path runs from some point downhill, deep in the lower woods, up the hill to a clearing before a high-arched gateway.
The heavy wooden doors of the gate hang ajar.
Solid stonework, showing off-colored blocks and fresh-looking mortar suggestive of recent repairs, runs left and right from the open doors, vanishing in thick thorn-bushes.
Scouting the site before entering, the party finds shallow tracks in the dirt, some that might have been made by plant men as well as boot-prints of human size.
But even though reconnaissance found no enemies in sight, no one passing through the entrance can shake the feeling of being watched.
A jumble of small, tumbledown buildings, thickly clad in brown and yellow-green vines, fills the space to the front and right. It looks less like a castle inside the walls than like a village of stone houses and shops, burned and ruined and now overgrown with creeping plants and weeds.
But off to the left, near the curtain wall, a cleared, weeded, and leveled area spreads about ten feet on a side, stacked with cut logs, pieces of building stones, barrels, crates and sacks. The bushes behind the clear zone rustle, and presently a boy of maybe twelve emerges, dressed in drab brown clothes and carrying a basket.
The kid makes a beeline for the party front-rankers, then stops just out of reach.
He stares at the adventurers.
The lad opens his mouth, revealing teeth black with decay.
His voice comes as a surprise, hollow and hoarse.
"My mistress wants to know why you have been attacking her minions. What does it profit you? And what purpose would your deaths serve here, now, except to feed the god. Is that your true wish?"
As he speaks, something wriggles in his long, dusty hair on the left side of his head, like a garden snake writhing in dead grass.
