The Two That Came To Ilarnek

Chapter 2

A lone figure on a black mare moved through the dawn mist. Katemperos-Tsa wrapped his dark cloak tighter about his gaunt frame, to guard against the chill of morning. The sky was bleak over the plains of Mnar as he approached the long ruined city of Ib, what little remained of its huge megaliths now seemed a skeletal hand clawing its way up from an ancient tomb.
    The remnants of Ib stood upon the shores of Lake Thune, a city abandoned, and left to fester alone and unmolested by mankind for centuries, a city said to lay under a terrible curse. Long ages ago Ib had been home to a race of strange amphibious beings that performed ghastly rites to propitiate Bokrug the Water-Lizard, one of the Old Ones that had come to Earth from the black gulfs between the stars ere the first human walked Earth's green fields.
    When men first came to the land of Mnar, and erected the nearby city of Sarnath, the amphibians still dwelt in Ib. Men were suspicious of the inhabitants of Ib, repulsed by their batrachian features, their bloody rites, and by their monstrous deity Bokrug. When many of the young children of Sarnath began to disappear, especially when the times sacred to Bokrug approached, enmity grew, then enmity became hostility, and in time the men of Sarnath fell upon the amphibians and in red slaughter slew them all. They stole the hideous green stone idol of Bokrug from his temple and brought it to Sarnath. The high-priest of Sarnath warned them that a curse would fall upon them for their insult against the god, but his pleas fell upon deaf ears.
    Many years passed and Sarnath grew to become a splendorous city. Little did the men of Sarnath remember the ugly creatures of ruined Ib or the curse of their god. But at length, when the stars came right, Bokrug awoke from his long slumber and laid waste to the city of Sarnath, avenging his frog-like followers. The men of Sarnath were utterly exterminated from the earth in the course of a single night, by a force unknown to living men. It was the ruins of Sarnath that the two barbarians had passed through, before Abrim's guard waylaid them.
    But it was not to Sarnath that Katemepros-Tsa rode. The mage rode to the place where Ib one stood, and as he drew ever nearer his horse grew nervous and eventually became recalcitrant.
    "Easy girl, we'll find a place to let you graze in peace and I'll walk the rest of the way.", the mage spoke in surprisingly tender tones, his long fingered hand gently patting the mare's sleek black neck. Katemperos-Tsa saw just the place and reined his horse toward a patch of wood to the southeast. It did not surprise him that the horse would shy away from the remnants of Ib, and what dwelt in the languid green waters beside the sparse ruins. Even the ravens gave it a wide berth.       
    He could see a brownish-grey smudge undulating upon the distant hills and knew it to be a herd of grazing aurochs, but nothing stirred closer at hand as he approached the silent wood and tied his horse to a frail cedar tree. He gave her an apple for her troubles, grabbed his staff and satchel, and was on his way.
    As Katemperos-Tsa reached the ruins he scanned the area to make sure he was alone. He doubted anyone, besides himself, would venture here, except perhaps the black sorcerer Xaltos, whom Abrim's spies had informed him was now dwelling in nearby Ilarnek. He knew the Acolytes of Bokrug could not approach this place due to the presence of a Star Stone. Satisfied that he was alone he strode through the crumbling grey edifices and tumbled walls until he found what he sought.
    It rose up before him, right at the water's edge, the Akurion of Bokrug- the sacred stone pillar central to the ghastly rites of Ib in ages long past. The Akurion was polished black obsidian, untouched by the aeons, shaped like a massive trapezoid and perfectly smooth except upon the side furthest from the lake, into which were hewn steps never meant for human feet.
    Katemperos-Tsa mounted the stairs and climbed to the top twenty feet above. As he reached the surface of the great monument his eyes surveyed the glyphs inlaid there in gold, signs carved in the pre-human language of Aklo, now known only to scholars of the diabolical arts. In the exact center of the Akurion was a double cube of stone, one atop the other, carved of deep green bloodstone, and veined with crimson red.
    "I see I made it here before that blackhearted bastard Xaltos. Too busy politicking in Ilarnek I suppose.", the mage said aloud. "All the better". He looked down at the top of the bloodstone cube. The Star Stone was perfectly fitted into a depression in the cube's surface.
    "I never thought I'd be deactivating a Star Stone," he spoke in a slightly amused tone, as he brushed its pale green surface, examining it. The ovoid stone had a single glyph resembling a tree with five branches: the Elder Sign. It was a Lesser Star Stone, a ward meant to keep one on the Lesser Old Ones locked in an ages long torpor.
    Katemperos-Tsa's right hand clutched at the crystalline amulet around his neck as he began to make the necessary incantations, the amulet started to glow with a dim inner fire as did its sister stone which adorned a bracelet upon his right wrist. His left hand hovered over the Star Stone. Suddenly his right hand extended forward, his palm toward the water, his voice growing toward a crescendo as he intoned the eldritch mantra in the ancient Aklo tongue. An aurora of greenish haze formed above the waters, which started to boil, viridescent lights played frantically deep below its angry surface. A wave of fear, of utter horror, seemed to break over Katemperos-Tsa like an onrushing tsunami, but his will focused to a sharp point, like a spear, and broke through. He felt a malevolent mind coming to wakefulness somewhere in the murky depths. The Star Stone levitated from its niche in the bloodstone cube, and his fingers grasped it firmly.
     "It is done," the mage whispered harshly to himself. The hand holding the Star Stone shot quickly, with its prize, into the mage's satchel. With that, Katemperos-Tsa abruptly rushed from the Akurion, his robe whipping about his tall lean frame, moving like a shadow blown upon the wind. He quit the ruins, and sought his horse, that he might begin his journey to Ilarnek.