Praising with Faint Damns...

Um...hi.

2011-04-27T00:53:37Z

Anyone still out there? I'm alive. :0)

jayjaybear @ 2009-12-02T21:46:00

2009-12-03T02:46:31Z

I grew up on soap operas: The Young & The Restless, The Bold & The Beautiful, As The World Turns...I know actors and actresses that almost nobody in the real world has ever heard of. So when I saw Rod Stewart singing on some "Christmas at Rockefeller Center" thing on TV, it hit me...

Has anyone ever seen Rod Stewart and Jeanne Cooper in the same room together?

That was kind of cool...

2009-10-05T21:41:09Z

We were just outside with Daisy, and we noticed she was investigating...something. Since it was at the other end of the yard, we couldn't tell what it was, only that she was in her "hesitant sniffing" mode...sniff, back up, go forward, sniff, back up, etc.

So we go out to her and see that it's an apparently dead baby opossum. Wasn't moving at all. supervenusfreak and I shoo Daisy into the house, grab the shovel and prepare to dig a hole to bury it. As we're doing this, I notice that the opossum is starting to twitch its ears, so I move over closer. And see its eyes are now open, and its tail is starting to move. It was playing possum! I've never actually seen one do that! SO COOL!

There is nothing truer than this.

2009-09-14T22:39:16Z

see more Funny Graphs

Robert Novak has died.

2009-08-18T16:50:44Z

Robert Novak (aka Novakula, aka The Prince of Darkness) succumbed to cancer less than an hour ago.

I disagreed with almost everything he believed, but I've been raised to not speak ill of the recently dead.

Therefore I'll only mention the possibly apocryphal response by Bette Davis on being asked her feelings about the death of Joan Crawford on a talk show (possibly Carson):

"I was raised to believe that one should speak only good of the dead. Joan Crawford is dead.

Good!"

jayjaybear @ 2009-08-10T09:23:00

2009-08-10T13:24:28Z

It's the strangest thing. I looked at my bank account online this morning...and there was MONEY in there! I think this is called a paycheck. It's just that it's been so long since I've actually gotten one that I've forgotten a lot about them.

I can spend this, right?

jayjaybear @ 2009-07-13T12:29:00

2009-07-13T16:37:19Z

Interesting weekend. We went up to Altoona to go to my mom's church festival (I went mostly to have pasta e fagiole, an annual tradition). Nice festival, good food (most of which I had to avoid), seeing family. Oh, yeah, seeing family was the dark side, too...my mother's family is Catholic, mostly, with at least one born-again bible church nondenominational rightwinger (that's not to say there aren't any Catholic rightwingers...my one aunt is one of those). Anyway, there was Obama conversation between the born-again and the aunt...my tongue was bleeding (figuratively) from biting it so much. There was no way I could answer those kind of conversations without drawing figurative blood, and that's something you try not to do with family, especially when supervenusfreak and I could just go home to Lancaster on Sunday but my mother had to live with these folks (who were her relatives (and mine)).

Afterward, we went to the Escapade to see a relative (my Aunt Rosanne's step-grandson) perform at a benefit drag show. He looked good...he's definitely got the look and the attitude down. He has a predilection to using remixes for his numbers, which I have an aesthetic disagreement with. Remixes are too long, and they have way too much extraneous crap in them to lipsynch to. But then, I'm old-school. Kids these days...

All-in-all, good weekend. I kind of regret not getting into it with my Obama-hating relatives, but it was probably for the best. I did get a lot of eyerolls in when the born-again said something about "this country doesn't need to be spitting in God's eye", though. Hard to spit in something that doesn't exist...

Words!

2009-07-11T02:46:42Z

Words provided by baeritone:

Arthur - Arthur Knight Hammer...he's hard to put into words. I owe a lot to the self-styled King of the Bears, including pretty much the whole life I have now. If it weren't for Arthur and Bearidise, I'd probably still be living in my mother's house, completely alone and emotionally walled off from everyone. Arthur and Bearidise mean a LOT to me, even if I'm somewhat avoiding the man and the place at this point in time. It's unfortunate and it hurts a little, but the cliff has been jumped, and I'm the one who's still standing up top.

Eighties - Big hair! Members Only jackets! Leg warmers! Michael Jackson! Cyndi Lauper! Pegged jeans! Reeboks! The second half of my childhood/adolescence...the 80s is my nostalgia center. It's the decade I go back to when I want some comfort music. I was born in 1971, graduated high school in 1989, so the 80s were definitely the bulk of my conscious memories prior to adulthood. Flashback Eighties Weekends on the local radio station are a minor thrill for me.

Gaming - I am geekazoid, hear me roar. Okay, hear me clicking the keyboard, then. I'm a bit of a gaming geek, but not necessarily with the kind of games that hardcore gaming geeks actually respect. I'm a casual but frequent WoW player (and have been for over 3 years now). I'm also a pretty dedicated player of "casual games"...my bailiwick is Hidden Object games. Sometimes Match 3. I'm a member of Big Fish Game Club. I will usually download and try out every Hidden Object and Match 3 game they come out with. It's the one thing that keeps the WoW in check. :0)

Pennsyltucky - There's a saying that Pennsylvania is Pittsburgh and Philadelphia with Alabama in between. Not TOTALLY true, but it definitely resembles that more than it doesn't. I've lived here (in between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia) most of my life. I'm used to it...that doesn't necessarily mean that it's the most possible pleasing situation, but it does mean that the pros outweigh the cons, to at least a small degree. Pros: My family lives here...not HERE, in this city, but here, in central PA. My job is here, and it's a good one (when we're getting paid). My love is here. My friends (a large number of them, anyway) are here. Even living here in Lancaster, I sometimes miss the mountains around Altoona/Johnstown. There are good things and bad things, and the bad things don't have to shove the good things into the background.

Fury - I can have a temper. I try very hard not to let it go, but it exists. If the offense is bad enough, it can be pretty white-hot. I had a few very bad days on temper control Nov 5 of last year over Prop H8 in California, mitigated only by Obama's victory. I'm pretty sure I posted some things at various online forums that day that I would regret if I could actually remember them. At the same time, what seems like fury to me inside here often isn't even visible externally. I FEEL like there's fire jetting from my eyes but it's not something that's breaking the surface. That's one of my flaws, I think...I don't really show emotion unless you actually know me very well. It's all part of my walls, you see.

Feeling naked at work...

2009-07-07T02:06:02Z

My computer at work wonked out today. It got stuck on the start-up screen and wouldn't go any further. So...I spent the day out in the cubicle farm taking calls. IN THE CUBICLE FARM!!! I felt so naked...I've been working every day, all day, in the phone room, by myself, door closed, moderate privacy guaranteed for over two years. The day has STRESSED. ME. OUT. And I have no idea just when tomorrow morning the tech is supposed to come to fix it. So I may spend another half-day, at least, out in the open. Occupational agoraphobia? :0)

In health news, I am officially an insulin-using diabetic. Had my doctor's appointment tonight. My A1c that I took last weekend was 10.7. So we're going insulin. Twenty units, long-acting so I only have to inject once a day. At the end of a week of use (which will be next Tuesday), if I don't have a fasting glucose of 115 or lower, I'm to increase the dosage by 5 units. And so on, weekly, until I get a fasting glucose between 75 and 115. I'm authorized to go up to a max of 50 units per day. If I don't get a suitable fasting glucose by that point, I need to see the doc again to figure out what to do.

We're using Lantus Solostar pens since I have pen injection experience from when I was using Byetta a couple of years ago. I still have a box full of BD Ultra-fine needles, which are compatible with the Solostar, so I'm fine for those for a while. I got a sample pen from the doctor and a prescription for more pens and needles. I'm set.

The good news? The doctor thinks my diabetes is curable. All I have to do is lose about 250 pounds.

jayjaybear @ 2009-06-30T20:46:00

2009-07-01T00:54:59Z

I just got a call from my aunt this evening. My mother is in the hospital in preparation for the insertion of a pacemaker tomorrow.

Yeah, I had no idea.

It's interesting...when I was first away from home, back in the early 90s, I lied to my mother until my lips bled. "I'm fine. Everything's fine. I'm okay." I was actually behind on rent, blowing my pay on frozen cordon bleu, cigarettes and Doritos, and horribly lonely.

Now, she lies to me. Constantly. "I'm fine. Everything's okay. I'm okay." She doesn't tell me about any new health problems unless I'm right on the verge of a visit, because she knows she can't hide it in person. I didn't know she was having trouble breathing. I didn't know she was so sick at one point that she couldn't even clean the house. I didn't know that her diet consisted of junk food and yogurt because she didn't feel like cooking. And she lies to my brother, as well.

The only way we know she's sick 90% of the time is if her younger sister, my aunt Rosanne, call us to tell us. And half the time my mother threatens to stop telling her about her health problems if she calls us.

So, apparently, my mother had a heart monitor all weekend, which she didn't see fit to tell me about even thought I talked to her on Sunday. She took it back in to the doctor today. An hour later, she gets a call at home: "The doctor would like you to go to the hospital." My mother asked my aunt to drive her (they told her to have someone else drive her over), and then my aunt promptly called me and my brother to let us know.

As soon as I hung up with Rosanne, I called my mother's hospital room and we...had a little talk. We had been planning to go up to visit the weekend after the Fourth, because my mother's church's festival was that weekend. I told her we were coming up THIS weekend and probably NEXT weekend, too, to make sure she was okay. She tried to put us off repeatedly. I told her in no uncertain terms that we WERE coming up.

At that point, I let her go so my brother could call and bawl her out. Then I took supervenusfreak and his brother to the ballgame and came back home. My brother had called. I called him back and we worked out that he and his older son would go up this weekend, so we can go back to our original plan (with extra mother scrutiny!).

It's strange...I didn't have to have my own kids for my mother to get her revenge for my childhood...

jayjaybear @ 2009-06-29T10:07:00

2009-06-29T14:08:21Z

Dear Client,

I refuse to believe that you just TOOK A CELLPHONE CALL while I was waiting for you to find a pen to write down your worker's number.

Do they just not teach people etiquette anymore?

jayjaybear @ 2009-06-27T17:29:00

2009-06-27T21:30:05Z

Haley Joel Osment looks like someone photoshopped a 12-year-old's face on a 20-year-old's body. Poor kid's going to get carded until he's 60.

jayjaybear @ 2009-06-26T07:55:00

2009-06-26T11:55:27Z

This is going to make Anna Nicole Smith look like a Jane Doe potter's field burial.

Like an ass, falsely...

2009-06-25T16:55:50Z

I hate anticipating "Thank you!" It happens regularly, since my job consists in large part of someone requesting information about their case and me looking up that information, whether the information is who their caseworker is or when their case was closed or exactly what benefits they have active.

And the natural (and, even in these decadent days, common) wind-down of the conversation is for the client to tell me "Thank you for your help!" or "Gracias!" and for me to say "You're welcome!" or "No problem!" or "De nada!"

Unfortunately, that predictability leads to me looking like an ass when I anticipate the thanks. If I say "You're welcome!" before they say "Thank you!", it looks like I was expecting them to forget to thank me and that I was prompting them, passive-agressively, to thank me. Which I wasn't. I fully expect people to say thank you because probably 95% of them DO.

Then again, it's probably like most of my supposedly horrible character flaws, something that only I agree is one.

jayjaybear @ 2009-06-05T21:24:00

2009-06-06T01:26:45Z

Bloodstone Pt. 2

The massive chamber echoed with the sounds of a great crowd as the
Hierocracy dispersed, their business concluded for the day. This was
the time when the complex but delicate web of agreements and
arrangements were rearranged, as this patriarch gently nudged another
into offering support for his own agenda, and that undersecretary
carried the invitation for a meeting between his master and another.
Dolmant, Archprelate of Holy Mother Church, held himself away from the
mind-numbing welter of deal and counter-deal that the lesser but still
bright lights of the clergy seemed to indulge themselves in endlessly.
His neutrality was too important to get involved in the power games.
Dolmant was the single voice which spoke unreservedly for the Church as
a whole, rather than for any particular Patriarchy or Primacy. While he
could and would deal with those who came to him with real problems and
emergencies, the petty market of favors and vote-gathering was a
dangerous distraction to his ability to concentrate his vision in the
proper directions.

As always, Sarathi, as the Archprelate had always been called as an
honored term of affection, exited the chamber as soon as he closed the
session. He was immediately surrounded by a detachment of the
Archprelate's Guards as he started for his office to continue the mounds
of paperwork in which he'd only managed to make a symbolic dent during
the dinner break earlier in the day. Sometimes Dolmant wished, in the
most secret parts of his mind, that he could magic away the things that
seemed to eat away at what little time he seemed to have. But he'd left
the Pandion order for a more spiritual path before he'd begun any real
training in the mysteries. Not that it would have been quite proper for
the Archprelate to be praying to Aphrael in any case.

Dolmant sighed softly. It was too bad that God did not respond to
prayer in the ways that the Styric gods did. Well, except for that one
exception.

Which brought his attention back to the report he'd received during that
very dinner hour and had only been able to skim through before the
session began again. The Secret Order. He hadn't been completely
comfortable with Preceptor Galeryn's plans to disperse cells of the
Order throughout the Elene kingdoms, to better perform their primary
duty. The prime directive of the Secret Order was to be just
that...secret. The problem with spreading a secret society far and wide
was the danger of it not being secret for very long. And this secret
was one that nobody involved wished to have exposed.

Dolmant sighed again, as he entered his office and seated himself behind
the solid and parchment-covered desk. His life had been so much simpler
when he was just the Patriarch of Demos. Sometimes he'd truly wished
that Emban had left the blonde queen of Elenia home in Cimmura that day
16 years ago.

======================================================

Their ship made landfall in Jiroch in the twilight. Desert sunsets were
beautiful, Sparhawk decided as he scanned the western sky, but he
wouldn't travel to Rendor just to see them.

"Where do we stay tonight, Lord?" Khalad asked him.

"There's an inn three streets inland," the rugged knight answered. "The
Golden Sands. The Order has more or less standing arrangements there."

Khalad nodded and set to the task of stewarding the party off the ship
in some semblance of order. Sephrenia took the lead on Chi'el, with
Aphrael riding nestled in front. Vanion followed on his old black
warhorse. Talen was next, followed by Kalten and finally, Sparhawk and
Khalad. They'd decided that seven people was more than enough for a
quick investigation. Rendor was mostly pacified and the few remaining
Eshandists were gathered in the far dunes a hundred leagues to the
south. There shouldn't be any great danger.

The party hesitated when a hooded individual emerged from the shadows
off the docks and approached. Sparhawk nudged Faran forward. Faran was
venerable for a horse, but still had more fight in him than any two
colts. Sparhawk had often wondered whether Bhelliom had given both of
them a bit of the same gift it had given to Sephrenia and Vanion. God
knew he didn't feel as old as he should.

"Anything we can help you with, neighbor?" the big Pandion asked the
shadowy figure standing in the street.

The voice that answered sounded normal enough, if a bit rough. "A
message for the lady, from a friend."

"Hand it to me. I'll make sure she gets it."

Sephrenia just rolled her eyes at this, as did Aphrael. "Never mind,
Sparhawk. He's one of the licensed couriers...he's not the least bit
dangerous."

Chi'el walked over to the messenger and Sephrenia leaned down to take
the sealed message from him. "Sparhawk, give him something."

The knight reached into the pouch inside his surcoat, extracted three
coppers, and tossed them to the courier, who scooped them out of the
air, bowed, and walked away.

"What does it say, little mother?" Kalten asked.

"I don't know yet, dear one, and I'm not going to stand here in the
street and read it. Let's go."

Talen looked back at Kalten and shrugged, as the group moved on.

==================================================

The physic was troubled. Another case of the strange wasting disease
had been reported in the village of Jarid, a half-day's ride to the east
of Dabour. He'd also heard rumors of similar cases springing up in
towns and villages throughout Rendor, seven cases besides the one in
Jiroch. Neither he nor his colleagues had considered the case in Jiroch
to be communicable. Could they have been wrong? Another letter was
written, this time including the more recent cases, to be sent by
courier to his agent in Jiroch. He needed advice, and he knew he could
ask for no better advisor than the Styric priestess.

He bent his head over the writing desk, intent on his task, and so
missed seeing the wiry, dirty man passing in the street outside. As
he'd passed through seven other communities in the last ten days.

===================================================

The seven of them had been given a suite of three rooms, opening onto a
private sitting room. The inn was, like its counterpart in Cimmura,
more than it seemed. The shabby exterior and most of the first two
floors were in stylistic agreement, seeming to be no more than a
slightly run-down waystation with a small taproom. The third floor,
however, was more upscale, consisting of two such suites, furnished well
and mortared tight against the cold winds of the desert night. That
floor was informally reserved for the Militant Orders, and the long
years of the Eshandist uprisings had given it plenty of use. With the
suppression of the Eshandists, however, it had been little-used, and the
hostler had driven his servants into a frenzy of cleaning when Khalad
had given the signs that indicated a need for that floor.

They'd finally gotten settled into the rooms, and Sparhawk was standing
at the window as he usually did when returning to Jiroch, thinking about
his decade of exile. The bells for Vespers were ringing from the tower
of a monastery, maybe the one he'd managed to drag himself to that night
he'd been ambushed in the street. He couldn't be sure; there were
several in Jiroch. Finally making peace with his own mind, as he always
did when he came to Rendor, he turned away from the window and walked to
the straw-stuffed couch that occupied the space before the fireplace.

Sephrenia was sitting there, frowning as she read the letter the courier
had delivered. Aphrael was sitting beside her, frowning also. Vanion
paced the far corner of the room slowly, glancing occasionally at his
wife. Kalten was oiling and sharpening his blade, as Khalad was doing
for Sparhawk's. Talen had disappeared soon after they'd arrived. At
least they'd be able to get some idea of any rumors surrounding that
fireball when he got back.

The small Styric woman made a sound that seemed a cross between a sigh
and a worried hum. Both Vanion and Sparhawk looked at her.

"What's wrong, little mother?" Sparhawk asked her.

Sephrenia finished reading the letter and spoke. "An acquaintance of
mine from Dabour wrote me with the description of a strange disease that
was apparently the talk of the medical community here in Jiroch a few
weeks ago."

Vanion spoke then. "Do you think it may be something relevant to what
we're doing?"

"Possibly," she replied, "But it could be just that...a new disease.
The symptoms bother me, though, and I can't say why. It's very
frustrating."

The door slipped open with only the faint hiss of wood on carpet as
Talen entered the sitting room.

"Well?" Sparhawk asked.

"Rumors fly, Lord Prince Consort Preceptor Sir," Talen answered with his
usual impudent grin. Maturity had filled him out, but it hadn't changed
his basic irreverent nature. "The fireball incinerated the entire town.
The fireball was just an illusion. The fireball carried strange
creatures from another world who proceeded to incinerate the entire
town. The fireball was made of solid gold and the shepherd who found it
bought all of southern Rendor...shall I go on?"

Sparhawk looked sour, then replied, "No...don't bother. It's just the
usual gossip. Although I can't say that the one about creatures from
another world makes me feel any better. What if it's a repeat of
Klael's army? That could start a war that goes on forever."

"It's just rumors. The thing probably set fire to a few shepherds' tents
and as good as disappeared," Kalten offered.

Sephrenia looked thoughtful. "Still, we have to investigate. The
prophecy doesn't offer much in the way of detail, but it does mention
the fireball, and that's our only lead."

Sparhawk almost grinned at the small woman's casual use of logic.
Apparently she had been changed by Vanion as much as she had changed
him.

"In the morning, then, we'll go to Khorentz," he said. The group
dispersed to get some sleep before the journey.

===============================================

Most Holy Sarathi,

May this missive find you in good health. I have recently received a
report from my vice-preceptor at the monastery in Rendor. I'm afraid
you won't like what he has to say. I am including his report, coded as
this letter is. I await your thoughts on this matter, my friend.

Your servant,
Galeryn
Preceptor

--

Dolmant was reluctant to open the report. It wasn't as if he'd been
begging for a crisis that would increase his backlog even further. And
a crisis it almost certainly was; Galeryn was a master of
understatement, and if he said Dolmant wouldn't like what the report
said, then Dolmant was almost certainly going to feel worse about it
than that. He turned to the slim stack of pages that had been inserted
into the courier bag with the letter, and began to read.

/Concerning the Recent Fireball Over Southern Rendor/. Lovely, thought
the Archprelate, not only is it bad news, it's dusty prose, too.

/After careful investigation by two of our best knights, it has been
determined that.../

Yes, yes...Dolmant skimmed over another four paragraphs. The Secret
Order always seemed to bury their conclusions in pages of what seemed to
him to be irrelevancies. He understood why they detailed everything,
but he wished that Galeryn would take the time to snip out the details
he knew were irrelevant to the Archprelate.

/...conclusion.../ Ah, here it was. /...is that the fireball itself is
now completely harmless, but the stone which was carried on the
meteorite is of a different and more dangerous nature. Having only a
trace to work with has unfortunately made our findings most tentative,
but considering the strength of evil in that trace it would be better to
act on the assumption that the stone should be a major object of
interest to both the Order and the Church itself./

Galeryn was right. Sarathi didn't like it one bit.

=============================

The corpse, such as it was, was discovered by Ussif when he entered the
baker's shop to beg for a bit of bread for his widowed mother. Hassan
the baker was assumed to be visiting his sister and her husband, as he
did occasionally, since he hadn't been seen for several days. Ussif
determined to try the door, to see if he was home but not baking for
some reason. If he was away, and the door could be opened, Ussif would
have stolen a few old loaves. Better to sin and be forgiven by the
priest than to starve to death. But the bread was forgotten when Ussif
saw what was behind the counter.

Twelve days dead, the local healer had said. Some sort of wasting
disease. There was barely enough of the baker left to put in a box and
bury.

Within a day, the gossip had begun. On the surface, everyone praised
Hassan to Heaven itself. In whispers, however, they recounted every
scandal and public spectacle the baker had ever been involved in.
Several remembered when he had been discovered with the Desert Warden's
daughter, "teaching her how to bake." It may have been true...she
undisputedly had a bun in the oven six months later. Others remembered
the more recent spectacle of Hassan berating a beggar outside his shop.
The man had been scrawny and filthy, but had demanded charity as if he
were the Beggar King in the Winter Play. Hassan had tossed him out of
the shop. It was the last time anyone had seen the baker alive.

=========================================================

They set out in the early morning, shortly before dawn. Sparhawk had
merely smiled at the usual morning complaints and groans coming from
Kalten and Talen. He hadn't realized just how much he'd missed this
sort of thing in the last decade or so. Statecraft was intriguing in
its own right, but this was what he'd been bred to do, through
generations. It was actually somewhat surprising how little hands-on
work a Preceptor of one of the Militant Orders had the opportunity to
do. Sparhawk sometimes felt that he was picketed to his desk with
chains made of paper. This, he thought as he looked over the group
riding through the city gates, was what being a Pandion was really
about.

Aphrael rode with Sephrenia, as usual. The child-goddess had a slightly
confused look on her face, as if she were trying to work through a
problem.

"What's wrong with Aphrael, little mother?" Sparhawk asked the
white-clad priestess. "She looks as if she swallowed a lemon and a
green apple, and can't decide which one's more sour."

Sephrenia looked down at her patroness, frowning. Aphrael made a brief
gesture and returned to her concentration.

"She's sensing two different trails. One recent one coming in from the
south and another one that's older and more general, as if the being
that made it were a regular visitor to Jiroch."

Sparhawk appraised Aphrael, who was studiously examining the horizon as
if the answers lay beyond.

"Could they be the same thing? Maybe the being that made them lived in
Jiroch years ago, and recently returned from the south?"

Aphrael gave a small sigh and looked up at him.

"Since I'm not going to get the quiet I need to concentrate," she said
with a sharp look at Sparhawk, "I might as well answer your questions
myself.

"No, they're not the same being. One is unimaginably older than the
other, but all I get is relative ages, nothing absolute. They're both
undeniably supernatural. Whether divine or of the dark I can't tell.
All I can feel is the trace of the presence, not the personality."

Talen looked thoughtful. "Priests?"

Sparhawk looked at him in disgust. "I was hoping that leaving Ulath in
Cimmura would keep the cryptic comments to a minimum, Talen."

"What I mean," Talen explained, laughing, "is could a devoted worshipper
of a god carry around little bits of that god without realizing it? For
instance, could one of the Thousand be able to detect your presence when
Sephrenia's around, even if you're not?"

"Not under normal circumstances. Of course, if she had been doing magic
it would," the goddess answered, then lapsed into sudden
thoughtfulness. "It's possible. This doesn't feel like any of my
cousins, though. I think we should keep on to Khorentz. I'll want to
investigate this fireball in any case, and I'm not going to lose either
trail any time soon."

The party of companions fell quiet except for the clop of hooves on the
road before them.

=================================================

"When did they leave, good innkeeper?" the courier asked at the desk of
the waystation.

"About two hours ago," the old hostler replied. "Heading south to
Khorentz."

"Thank you, good sir," the courier answered as he walked out the door.

Damn! he thought. He didn't want to kill a horse catching up with them
now. And he didn't want to be stranded in the desert when the horse
gave out on him.

They'll come back through, the courier thought to himself. Their ship
has a regular dock schedule in Jiroch. They'll be back for it.

Plenty of time later to give the woman the letter he carried.

He headed for his home office, to get indoors before the full heat of
the day fell on the city.

=================================================

Brother Caretaker hummed a tune as he pulled the canvas tight over the
smooth-melted rock in the storage shed. An interesting addition to the
research stock indeed. You didn't often get such a large and perfect
microlite in one piece. The brothers in the laboratory would go crazy
over it.

He tied the last corner off and locked the door to the shed behind him.
He was curious about what the original investigators had found at the
site. He could imagine the damage the thing had caused. Of course, the
only things out that direction were a few sheep folds. Crispy mutton
for everyone, he was sure.

Brother Caretaker hummed all the way back to the dormitory, preparing to
tackle the repair of the water system. He hated plumbing. With a
passion.

A shadow detached itself from the darkness in the corner of the compound
and moved silently for the storage shed. The lock was picked and the
door slipped open enough for something short and lean to enter the
structure.

The figure looked at the small mound under the canvas, then reached its
hand out to untie one of the ropes that surrounded the shape.

A flash of light blinded him, as hot air assaulted his face and body.

"Usif!" a voice boomed. The boy trembled and flung himself out flat in
front the rock. He lay there whimpering with fear and repressed sobs.

"Usif," Brother Jothran, the abbot, repeated. "Why are you here in the
shed?"

Usif looked up, his face dark with shame but lit with relief at the same
time.

"I'm here to see the stone that killed my father," he replied, trying
unsuccessfully to keep his voice steady.

Jothran strode over to the stone, not very large for the damage it had
caused. He uncovered it for the boy.

"There it is, Usif. It's just a stone that fell from the sky. There's
nothing particularly dangerous or evil about it now."

"It's not hot...how did it burn him?"

"It's not hot _now_. Have you seen how the Church Knights joust when
they visit during the holy days?" the abbot asked. Usif nodded.

"So you know that when they're moving very fast, they hit each other
harder and do more damavge because they have more energy built up. It's
the same way with this stone. It fell very, very quickly from a very
high place. Every piece of dust or speck of feather or anything it hits
in the air heats it up a little, because the energy has to go someplace,
and the easiest place for it to go is into the rock. By the time the
thing has gotten to where it could be seen easily, it was already
dangerous. Your father was just in the wrong place. Do you understand
now?"

"I think so, my lord."

"Good, run home now. I'm sure your mother needs you for something now
that you're the man of the house."

"Goodbye, my lord!" the boy smiled as he waved.

The abbot waved back, then stood in the doorway in thought.

"Not entirely accurate, you know," came a voice from the side. Brother
Archivist walked over to the shed to stand with the abbot.

"I know, Rolyn. But if I'd started talking about air pressure and
potential and kinetic energy, the boy would have understood none of it.
You know as well as I that _when_ we teach, we're to do it in such a way
as it can be understood. That's the Third Rule, and it's at least as
ancient as the first two."

"True, my lord," the aged brother agreed. "I hold the Way of Discovery
as highly as you. I just wanted to be sure that _you_ knew the theory
accurately."

"Still testing, Rolyn. Just as you were when I was a novice." Jothran
sighed wearily. "Was it truly so long ago, my friend?"

"Thirty years, my lord."

"Where does the time go?" the vice-preceptor asked softly.

The pair stood and silently watched the sun rise over the tops of the
white monastery walls.

==================================================

Zanjel wandered the streets of the sleeping village, his mind on other
things than his surroundings. He found that he didn't need to sleep
anymore. Every time he felt his alertness starting to flag, or his
stomach begin to growl, he felt a great surge of energy. He knew the
stone was doing this. It told him so. Sangulyth, it called itself, and
promised him great treasures and a life unlike anything he'd ever
experienced if he did what it said. And if he didn't, it gave him a
taste of what it could do to him.

It didn't appear to be able to hear his thoughts if he didn't want it
to. He was quite capable of thinking rebellion against the soulless
domination of the stone, and often found himself wishing he'd never even
seen that depression in the sand. The problem came in doing anything
about it. He'd tried to leave the blood-red rock behind on the sand
once, just off the trade road. His hand wouldn't unfold from around
it. It simply wouldn't let him get rid of it.

Zanjel was not used to that sort of thing. He'd spent a fair amount of
his life not obeying the words of kings and priests. But that was
mostly passive. Not obeying and refusing to obey were two very
different things. One was passive, realized mostly in inaction:
skipping out on taxes, smuggling to avoid import duties, shying away
from his religious obligations. The latter was active, requiring some
effort: struggling against compulsion, fighting pain when the stone
decided to punish him...unclenching his hand against the will of
Sangulyth. He found it much easier to merely do what the stone told him
to. And in return, he got the benefits of renewed vigor and unflagging
energy.

Both of which were fading now. It had been three days this time, over
unbroken desert, moving to a point which only the stone knew. His
thinking was slowing down and his feet burned like he had stepped into
the middle of a bonfire. He found himself wishing for the flow of
energy that burned the clouds from his brain and eased his aching
muscles.

*Now* the voice of the stone spoke in his mind. He felt the stream
begin, his mind clearing as he began to walk a bit straighter, the pain
he felt in his legs and feet fading as if they were being washed away by
a cool river. Zanjel sighed in pleasure, and continued toward the
unknown destination.

In the village behind him, a woman moaned in her sleep as her face began
to age. Her strong goodwife's hands began to curl into the mottled
claws of the very old. She began to shrink in height, as her spine
collapsed forward on itself. And then her moans stopped, and would
never begin again.

================================================

"Not very impressive, is it?" Talen noted as they climbed the last hill
before the town of Khorentz. The place looked like a thousand other
towns and villages out here in the semi-desert before the true sands
began. White stucco and red tile dominated the scene, with an
occasional black outcropping where some fanciful architect had imported
basalt from the north. The scents were the usual Rendorish mix of sheep
and chickens, with a large population of goats doing their part, and the
spices the Rendors used in almost every meal. The pungent bite of
garlic and the face-smacking sting of the tiny hot peppers called
_jiele_ were prominent.

"No more impressive than Demos is from a distance, Talen," Sephrenia
admonished the young man. "I'm sure that a native of Jiroch would find
Cimmura to be just as strange and even more unimpressive. At least
here, the weather isn't a perpetual shade of wet."

Talen looked back at her. "I suppose that's true. But after all, little
mother, I _am_ a thief. Thieves like poor weather. It keeps our
victims' minds on other things than their purses."

Khalad gave him a look that said volumes all by itself. While none of
Talen's brothers particularly approved of his 'profession', they knew
that argument would get them nowhere and even took a peculiar kind of
pride in the fact that the "baby of the family" was the heir apparent of
Platime's underground empire.

Sparhawk watched the town below for a few minutes, then turned to the
others. "There's a monastery on the far side of town, if I remember the
paperwork that came across my desk a few years ago. One of the
scholarly orders."

"Why did you get the paperwork for the establishment of a scholar's
monastery?" Kalten asked.

"All of the preceptors get courtesy copies of monastery and chapterhouse
establishment orders," Sparhawk explained. "The official reason is that
all of the patriarchs receive that sort of thing. The real reason is
what happened to me 26 years ago in Jiroch. A refuge is no use if you
don't know it's there."

"So why don't I know about this place, if the knights are supposed to
know these things?"

"Kalten, you _do_ read the annual report that gets circulated at all the
chapterhouses, don't you?" the Pandion preceptor asked, knowing the
answer already.

"There's an annual report?" Kalten replied, blinking.

Sparhawk shook his head and motioned them to follow as he rode down to
the gates.

=========================================

"My lord!" a voice called out. Jothran, finishing a regular report for
the Preceptor, recognized the voice as the brother who'd been on
surreptitious guard duty outside the monastery walls.

A knock sounded at his door and Jothran called, "Come in, brother!" A
man who was just slightly too well-muscled to be spending his days in
contemplation entered and came to a stop beside the desk.

"Yes, Carmer?"

"A party of northerners are approaching, my lord. Two definite
Pandions, another possible Knight, a Styric woman and child, and two
civilian Elenes. They seem to be moving in our direction."

Jothran sat back and thought for a few seconds.

"Greet them as any traveler, Carmer. Masquerade is active as always.
We're just a scholarly group of monks, bringing God's peace and teaching
to the frontier."

Carmer smiled momentarily at that, then brought his face back under
control. "Yes, my lord."

The monk shut the door softly behind him, and Vice-Preceptor Jothran
brought his hand to his chin.

"What could you possibly want, Sir Knights? I'm willing to bet a year's
supply of incense that the meteor in the shed is involved. This could
become an interesting little dance. Very interesting."

Jothran returned to his report, making a mental note to keep an eye on
this group in the immediate future.

The Secret Order hadn't stayed secret for thousands of years by
accident, after all.

jayjaybear @ 2009-06-05T21:20:00

2009-06-06T01:24:37Z

Again, posting another David Eddings fanfic I wrote almost a decade ago, for purposes of linking to it for a friend.

Bloodstone

Bloodstone

The crown princess of Elenia was peeved.

Things simply weren't going quite the way she had envisioned them. Her
plans were in a shambles thanks to what she would _swear_ was deliberate
stupidity on the part of the people around her. Why couldn't they _see_
that she knew best?

"Your Highness, may I suggest..." the aged Earl of Lenda began. Danae
shot him a glare of such concentrated danger that he immediately lapsed
into silence.

"Gentlemen," the dark-haired young woman spoke sharply, "if you're done
tossing all of my carefully-planned ideas out of the topmost windows of
the palace, may _I_ suggest that we adjourn for the morning? I'm really
very cross at you all and I'd like a bit of privacy while I break
things."

"Danae..." the rugged Pandion knight at her right hand spoke. "They
really were all very good ideas, but they were unworkable. The treasury
just wouldn't stand that sort of thing for very long without raising
taxes...and since one of your other ideas was to freeze tax rates, you'd
be at a stalemate in two years."

"Father, why don't we discuss this in private?" she asked, punctuating
the request with a significant glance.

"Good idea," Sparkhawk agreed. "Gentlemen, I motion that this training
session be adjourned."

"Seconded!" a slim man spoke from the far end of the table. "I was about
ready to plead an urgent matter myself just to get out of here."

"Talen, you'll eventually be sitting in on far longer meetings than this
one, you know."

"Yes, Sparhawk, but by then I may have the luxury of the kind of
posterior padding that Platime enjoys and I won't mind so much."

Danae gave them all a hopeless look, and motioned her father to the door
of the chamber. "Come along, Father. We need to talk."

"Pray for me, my friends," the big Pandion said in mock despair.

The raven-haired girl looked back at him, an amused expression on her
face.

"Somehow I doubt it would help, Father."

The mock Royal Council chuckled at this as they filed out the door.
Sparkhawk strode into the adjoining chamber and sat at his daughter's
writing desk.

"What did you want to discuss, Danae?"

"You _know_ I can make it work, Sparhawk. Why do you insist on doing
things the hard way?"

"Aphrael, you can't run an Elene kingdom with divine magic. The people
won't stand for it. Eventually, someone will notice that you're running
your kingdom on nothing, because you can't keep the entire population of
this world under your spells. Besides, if you start doing everything
for everybody, when the time comes that they have to do something
themselves, they won't know how."

The Child-Goddess-cum-Princess wore an expression of regret. "But I love
them, Father! I love them all! I've never had Elenes before, and, may
my family forgive me, I love them as much as I love my Styric children!"

"But they're _not_ Styrics, Aphrael," Sparhawk explained. "They won't
just sit back and accept that suddenly there's enough in the treasury to
pay for every improvement but their taxes have dropped. They'll try to
figure out how it happened, how you're working it. What's worse, the
other Elene kings as well as other rulers in the world will notice. And
that's a secret they'd kill to possess. Do you really want your love
and generosity to lead the kingdom to war?"

"Of course not!" Aphrael looked shocked, as if she hadn't thought about
that possibility. "How can I show them how much I love them, then? How
can I use my advantages to help them?"

"Maybe the best way to show that you love them is to leave them alone,"
Sparhawk replied. "Only use your powers to help them in subtle ways.
When a drought threatens the kingdom's crops, make it rain, but just
enough to keep the crops alive. When floods threaten, cause them to
avoid populated areas, but only by a narrow margin. Don't wave your
hand and wipe out all poverty and natural disaster. Turning Elenia into
a paradise will only make it a brighter target to other powers.

"And _don't_ try to push any schemes based on your 'advantages' through
the mock Council. None of the members of that body are stupid. Lenda,
may he last long enough to offer his counsel to your reign, is sharp.
Talen is almost preternaturally shrewd. Melidere is nearly impossible
to fool. You're not dealing with rustic Styric mystics here.

"Which brings up a question I've been meaning to ask but keep finding
myself forgetting, for some strange reason," Sparhawk continued,
glancing sharply at his daughter. "What do you intend to do about
Talen?"

"What do you mean?"

"He's definitely on your menu, Aphrael. You've made no secret of that
in the last dozen years or so. Do you intend to tell him who you really
are?"

"I suppose we'll have to swim that river when we come to it," she
answered, an artfully innocent expression on her face.

Sparhawk shook his head in disgust and walked out of the room, a curious
giggling following him down the tower stairs.

==========================================

Atana Miran, warrior-priestess in Her Majesty's service, slept in the
half-awake state of all of her race. A warrior-bred did not give any
creature a chance to take advantage of any vulnerabilities, including
sleep. She did, however, dream. And that dream profoundly disturbed
her.

Miran awoke quickly, reached for the writing tools and parchment on the
desk beside her bed, and began to write.

After an hour of this, the Atana replaced the tools on her desk and
placed the parchment carefully in a drawer. Returning to bed, she
dropped quickly back into her alert relaxation. She would deliver the
fruits of her effort to the Styric advisor to the queen tomorrow. Solan
would know what it meant.

Miran drifted back into her half-sleep, confidence in the Styric's
knowledge of esoteric matters calming the ripples of disquiet the dream
had caused her. A whippoorwill sang his melancholy chorus as the moon
drifted across the sky.

==========================================

Some weeks later, the sky above southern Rendor was inky black, a
darkness broken only by the brilliance of the stars above. A herd of
sheep, penned into the fold for the night and mostly asleep, looked
skyward almost as one, the sleepers wakening in an instant. A few muted
bleats escaped the upraised woolly muzzles, bleats which brought the
shepherd out of his sleep on an instant. Lions had been seen in the
region the last few nights, and the shepherd's sleep was light. Sheep
weren't very pretty, or intelligent, or even interesting, but they were
his livelihood. He stepped out of his tent, his hunting bow and staff
at the ready, but saw nothing. Except for the fact that his flock
seemed to be intent on some unseen object in the sky.

The shepherd looked up, as a high-pitched whine began to intrude on his
senses. He strained his eyes to see what it was that the sheep were so
interested in, and noticed a white flare high up. A shooting star, like
the hundreds the shepherd saw out here in the desert every year. With a
sigh of disgust, he started back to his tent.

He never made it.

A blast of flame and heat obliterated the tent, the fold, and the
shepherd as the meteor flashed only a few hundred yards overhead. Had
he survived, he would have seen the object come to ground with a
blinding explosion, but the shock waves from that explosion would have
sealed his fate as surely as the fires of its passage did. If he had
survived the explosion, he would, perhaps, have crept his way carefully
to the edge of the ragged hole that the landing had made, and he would
have seen the meteor itself, a hunk of blackish-blue rock five feet in
diameter, as it cooled from its passage through the atmosphere. And he
may also have seen the single jewel which protruded from that rock, a
ruby the size of a man's fist. A ruby which held a deep red glow,
throbbing to some unknown pulse.

And he may have heard a low, throaty chuckle, a sound as chilling for
the coldness of its tone as for the fact that it seemed to come from
that glowing jewel.

=============================================================================

The monastery bustled with the normal morning activity of a thriving
religious community. Monks walked quickly from the dormitories to the
chapel, and teamsters, struggling not to make a great deal of noise out
of respect for the religious nature of the place, filled the outer
courtyards with their delivery wagons and waited their turn to unload
with uncharacteristic patience. The air was already uncomfortably warm,
and the humidity that the night had brought was quickly evaporated by
the morning sun.

"Lovely, lovely Rendor...hot as hell and twice as uncomfortable," one of
a pair of monks crossing the courtyard muttered under his breath.

"Shhh! Not in front of the teamsters," his companion warned him. "Monks
don't swear, remember?"

"Blast the teamsters!" the first spoke, but in a whisper. "It's been
three years since we were sent down here. What's Galeryn's point with
this little masquerade? Why Rendor? The Eshandists haven't been a real
threat since the Battle of Chyrellos. Once Sarathi replaced the men who
were revenge-minded with those who would actually work for
reconciliation, that particular heresy withered away. So why are we
here?"

"I don't know, Rosler. We'll find out when we find out, won't we?"

His companion began to reply, but bit back his words as they entered the
chapel. Built of the same white stucco that most Rendorish structures
were made of, the chapel was decorated to resemble northern churches as
closely as possible. A low altar resided in the apse to the east, and a
flat ceiling replaced the vaults and pillars in necessary genuflection
to the local architecture. Rather than carvings, the Rendorish practice
of painted stucco, called _fresco_, picked out the saints and angels of
the Elene church. There were patriarchs with their curved croziers of
office, knights with their great swords, kings with their scepters of
state, shepherds with their hooked staves. The great and the small, the
rich and the poor. All equally holy in the eyes of the Holy Mother
Church. And each pair of half-windows matched, knight to patriarch,
king to shepherd, crozier crossing sword and scepter crossing staff.

The monastic pair joined a group of their fellows in the pews near the
front of the nave. Morningsong had begun, the voices of the monks
rising in praise of the Elene god as monkish voices had since the dawn
of the Church.

When the morning service was over, the monks filed out of the chapel and
dispersed to their tasks. A monastery is not, contrary to popular
belief, a particularly restful place. There is sufficient time for
contemplation, of course, but it usually occurs that this time for
mental activity is allotted concurrently with some necessary physical
activity. It isn't necessary, for instance, to be particularly alert
when hoeing a field. Nor does one need to concentrate on the harvesting
of grapes. There were, however, other physical activities in this
monastery that required quite a bit of mental acuity and concentration,
activities that the general population of Khorentz weren't aware of.

Rosler and Korran stepped across the courtyard, aiming for the hidden
practice field deep in the heart of the monastery grounds.

"Lord Abbot! Lord Abbot!" came the cry from the main gates as a boy ran
frantically into the courtyard, spooking horses and scattering chickens
as he ran. "Lord Abbot!"

Rosler grabbed the boy, stopping him and trying to calm him to the point
of coherence. Korran gasped as he recognized the child.

"Rosler, that's Shalan's son!"

Rosler looked at the boy critically, then recognized the distinctive
features that he'd inherited from his father.

"Usif, calm down. My Lord Abbot will be here in a second, but you must
stop screaming. This is a place of worship and reflection. We cannot
have this sort of disturbance."

Usif looked at him as if seeing him for the first time. His eyes were
filled with a horror that neither Rosler nor Korran had seen in many,
many years. And it filled them with dread.

Korran felt a hand on his shoulder, and looked over his shoulder to find
Brother Lothran, the abbot. A sigh of relief escaped his lips as
Lothran took the child's hand and led him toward the inner buildings and
his office.

"Lord Abbot...my father... he's..."

"Hush, child. You can tell me the whole story in my office."

Both Rosler and Korran watched the pair enter the inner gate, then
looked at each other with worried faces. Shalan was the local outside
contact for the monastery, a shepherd who spent several months of the
year in the semi-desert areas to the south but remained in the city the
rest of the time. If he were in trouble...

The question remained unspoken, the possibilities too horrible to
consider. Shalan was the only outsider in town who knew what the
monastery really was. As callous as it seemed, both Rosler and Korran
hoped fervently that whatever had happened had happened quickly. Both
for his sake and for theirs.

The pair walked off to their original destination with a subdued step.
And the sun drifted westward like a flaming galleon, bombarding the land
below with its heat.

=================================================

"We're about to have guests, Sparhawk," Danae whispered to her father.
"And I'm afraid it's not a social call."

Sparhawk looked quizzically at his daughter, but she only pointed out
the window with a grim look on her face. Leaving Elahna to deal with
the Tamul ambassador alone, Sparhawk sidestepped toward the opening and
looked out on the city of Cimmura.

A small group had just passed through the palace gates, two men, two
women, and a little girl. Sparhawk heard the faint notes of pipes drift
upward and he shot Danae an exasperated look. She merely raised an
eyebrow.

_Wait and see, Sparhawk. I know it annoys you when I bilocate, but it
was necessary._

The big Pandion turned from her and gazed at the group coming into the
courtyard. The delicate white horse one of the ladies rode looked
familiar, as did the black charger behind.

"Sephrenia?! And Vanion? What are they doing here?" he hissed at his
daughter.

_Like I said, father, you'll see. It's not quite my story to tell.
There are other reasons too, but I'm sure you'll pick those up soon
enough._ Her mental voice was quietly disgusted, but Sparhawk couldn't
tell what the object of that disgust was.

The group was approaching the main doors now, and Sparhawk moved to
excuse himself officially.

"We have special guests, my Queen. I'll see to their welcome."

"Why, thank you, Sparhawk. Entagne and I are just finishing up,
though. Who is it?"

"I'll bring them up to the conference room once everyone's pulled
themselves together from the journey. I'd hate to spoil the surprise,"
the Queen's Champion spoke with a forced smile. He was always happy to
see Vanion and Sephrenia, but the circumstances held the fairly strong
scent of trouble, and that was a situation he could live without.

"Of course, dear. I'll be presentable in half an hour."

Sparhawk bowed to his wife and took the back stairs to the east
corridor. He entered the Travellers' Porch just as the small party
started up the steps.

"Sparhawk!" Vanion came forward and clapped him on the shoulder. His
renewed youth hadn't faded very much in the 10 years since their last
crisis together in Daresia. If anything, married life was keeping him
young.

"Lord Vanion, it's very good to see you again. Elahna will be thrilled.
Little Mother," he said, turning to Sephrenia, who'd come up behind the
red-haired former Pandion preceptor. "Would you bless me?"

"Of course, dear one," the raven-haired Styric priestess spoke with a
rich voice and asked the blessings of the Younger Gods on the knight.

"Who are your companions?" Sparhawk asked, then realized that the
cloaked one could only be an Atan. No other human being was that big.

"I don't want to explain things more than once," Sephrenia told him, "so
that can wait until Elahna and the others get here."

"Others?"

"You'll see," Sephrenia said with a nearly-hidden smile.

"Have you been talking to Aphrael?" Sparhawk asked suspiciously. He was
beginning to get very tired of that phrase.

"Of course, dear one. I always talk to Aphrael."

The small Styric girl danced forward then, playing her pipes. Sparhawk
laughed and picked her up, hugging her tight. He loved Aphrael's Danae
incarnation more than the world, but Flute was special.

"Come in, everyone. I'll have rooms prepared, and you can get settled."

"The others should be here within the next two days," Sephrenia told
him. "Aphrael's been playing messenger since we entered Eosia."

Sparhawk showed them to their chambers, then went to find Danae. He was
planning on having a long talk with his daughter.

The almost laughing sound of shepherd's pipes that followed him up the
stairs did not ease his mood in the least.

=============================================================================

The scrawny man was filthy. Living by one's wits on the edges of the
Great Rendorish Desert wasn't the cleanest occupation humankind had ever
discovered. He was also hungry, and the rumors of a great curse
couldn't compete with his stomach's complaints as he neared what he knew
had once been a shepherd's camp near a burned-out sheepfold. The tent,
of course, was gone, destroyed by whatever evil magic had burned both
the shepherd and his sheep to blackened husks. He knew these desert
shepherds, however. There was bound to be a buried cache of food and
water nearby.

It would be difficult to find, of course. The sandstorm that had blown
through the area soon after the fireball had passed over last night
would see to that. But it couldn't be very far from the fold. No one
hid anything too far away in the desert. One could need things very
quickly out here and one rarely had time to search square leagues of
identical, sandy terrain for a necessity.

He found the cache as predicted, a few hundred feet to the east of the
fold. Two waterskins, a carefully wrapped haunch of mutton, and a sack
of pomegranates were hidden in the sand. The water was warm, of course,
but it was water and that was all that mattered.

The scavenger tucked the food and water into his pack, and began to the
west, toward Khorentz. He passed a slight depression in the sand, off
of his path by a few hundred yards. Another cache? he wondered.
Khorentz could wait.

He veered off to the north, toward the hollow in the sand. Shrugging
his pack from his shoulders, he bent down and began to dig into the sand
with his fingers, using his hands like spades to push the sand away.
After a few minutes, a slow, pulsing beat began to sound in his ears,
and doubt began to plague him. The scavenger started to get to his
feet, intending to take his pack and resume his journey. Whatever was
buried here could stay buried!

But his legs would not carry him, nor would his hands stop digging. He
was tired, he was soaked with sweat, and he was afraid. Very afraid.
His hands dug, though he screamed in frustration for them to stop. His
legs remained under him, though every nerve in his body felt the need to
run. And the beat grew louder, like a vast heart, shuddering through
his brain with every throb.

His screams of helpless anguish rang through the desert air. But there
was no one to hear them, and he dug on.

============================================

They arrived the next day, friends from years ago. Stragen, of course,
was a resident of Cimmura thanks to Melidere, but was returning from his
meetings in Emsat with his successor as leader of that city's underworld
kingdom. Tynian and Ulath arrived together, having met up in the Holy
City while each was on an individual errand for their respective
orders. Bevier came up from the south, overland from Arcium. Berit and
Kalten came directly from the Motherhouse in Demos. Alean accompanied
Kalten, of course. She had rarely let him out of her sight in the eight
years they'd been married. Kalten's reputation had preceded him into
wedlock.

The last to arrive were Mirtai and Kring. Elahna almost broke down into
tears at the sight of the proud Atana riding beside the short, scarred,
bald man on the second horse.

"Not in public, Elahna," Mirtai spoke firmly but gently as they
embraced. "We'll both end up crying ourselves dry before it's over, but
in private."

"Of course, Mirtai," the queen said as she regained some control over
her emotions. "Promise me we'll have time for a long, leisurely
conversation."

"I can't promise that, but I promise that I'll try, my mother," Mirtai
replied, invoking the deeper relationship that Elahna had adopted at
Mirtai's succession to adulthood. Some in their party may have
dismissed the queen's declaration of motherhood to the tall Atana as
simple oratory extravagance, but both of the principals knew that Mirtai
was the true spiritual daughter of the beautiful Queen of Elenia, a
position she'd assumed upon learning of Mirtai's childhood and the
deaths of her parents at the hands of slavers.

"Kring," Sparhawk went to welcome the Peloi domi, almost forgotten in
the emotional reunion of the two women. "It's good to see you."

"And you, Sir Knight," the scarred chieftain replied. He threw a glance
at his wife and the queen. "How long do you think they'll be taking?"

Sparhawk laughed. "Another quarter hour, at least. More, if we didn't
have other guests."

"I should get the horses settled and our things in the palace, then.
That little girl promised some fairly dire consequences if everyone
weren't present and available by this evening. She's a bossy little
goddess, isn't she?"

Sparhawk chuckled. "Only out of love, Kring. Only out of love."

======================================

Brother Rosler fumbled his way out of his pallet, moving quietly in the
dark as he pulled on his sandals. Korran was already awake and waiting
for him at the side of the bed, a burglar's lantern in his hand with the
shutters closed.

"Hurry up, brother," Korran whispered. "The Lord Abbot is waiting."

"I _am_ hurrying, brother, so don't shove," Rosler answered, irritated.
He knew this was the sort of thing he'd signed on for, but having Korran
and his 'quickly, quickly' attitude to deal with at the 3rd hour wasn't
what he'd expected.

The two monks walked briskly to the Lord Abbot's quarters, sandals
scuffing as they stepped on grit and sand that the desert made an
inevitable part of the decor of any town built near it.

"Good morning, my sons," the Brother Jothran greeted them.

"Very early morning, my lord," Rosler muttered darkly.

"Don't worry, Rosler," the abbot began. "You'll see more of them before
your next assignment is done."

Both of the monks looked at their abbot quickly, their eyes questioning.

"This room's secure, so we can talk openly," the older man started. "Sir
Rosler, you and Sir Korran are to ride to the sheepfold of Shalan the
shepherd. Do it quietly, and do it quickly. I want you to find
anything unusual in the area and report back to me."

"My Lord...may we ask what happened to Shalan. I mean...we've heard
rumors. That he'd been torn apart by lions, that he'd been slain by one
of the wild nomad tribes, that his sheep had taken a liking to meat and
eaten him. What really happened?"

The "abbot" looked at them, gauging whether they were ready to learn the
truth. "Shalan is dead. He's been burned to a husk, along with his
sheep, his tent, and the fold. We don't know what did this. That's why
I'm sending you out."

Brother Jothran turned to the table at the back of the room and picked
up a piece of parchment, which he carried to his desk.

"There are numerous reports of a fireball in the sky over that area the
same night. From our investigations, as you know, we've found that
'falling stars' and fireballs are merely stones falling from the air,
most likely pieces of the moon shaken loose by the pull of our world.
The timing and placement of this one, however, are suspicious. It may
yet turn out to have been merely a rock from the sky, heated
tremendously by it's speed through the air and igniting Shalan's camp in
passing. Then again, there may be more to it."

Korran looked at the report, then passed it to Rosler.

"What's our methodology, my lord?"

Vice-Preceptor Jothran looked at him with an amused quirk to his mouth.

"That's what _you_ get paid for, Sir Knight. I merely push the
parchment and issue the orders. Now go to the stables and outfit your
horses for a ride out to the camp. You'll want to investigate the area
thoroughly, try to come up with explanations, and file a report on the
whole operation when you return. You know the details."

Rosler looked up from his contemplation of the report and spoke, "On our
way, my lord!"

Both "monks" snapped their heels and saluted, then slipped out the door.

"Galeryn, I hope you know what you're doing," the tall vice-preceptor
spoke softly to the air. "I smell trouble at every turn down here. And
if the Secret Order becomes known in Rendor, we'll all wish we'd been
crisped by that fireball."

Jothran brought his hand to his throat, where a small silver medallion
rested, and brought it up to his eyes. Following the mazelike pathways
on the surface of the disc, he initiated several deliberate breathing
routines and quickly relaxed into a meditative state. He had a good
three hours until Morningsong, and he felt a great need to clear his
mind of the worries that came with not only running, but hiding, an
entire chapterhouse of Church Knights from Elene and Rendor alike.

The spring-wound mantel clock in the office, quite possibly the only one
of its kind on this world, gently ticked its way through the minutes as
its silver pendulum swung beneath.

=============================================================================

They gathered in the Council Chamber that afternoon, all except Danae,
who told Ehlana that she wasn't feeling well at all, and to convey her
apologies to the rest, especially Aphrael. Sparhawk caught her in the
corridors before the gathering began.

"Are you sure you wouldn't like to see the court physician? If you're
really ill..."

Danae sighed and raised her eyes skyward. "Of _course_ I'm not really
ill, Father. I'm going to need my full concentration in there," she
said as she gestured toward the Council Chamber, "and I can't do that if
I have to divide my awareness. Now just let me go and lie down like a
good little sick child while you pay attention to what we're going to be
discussing. It's very important."

Sparhawk looked at her as if searching for something. "All right. But
you and I are going to have a long talk after this meeting."

"If it makes you feel better, of course," she replied lightly, and
walked up the stairs quickly.

The whole company was gathered when Sparhawk entered the chamber. A
long table stood in the center of the room, with carved wooden chairs
set around it. All were filled except for the one beside Ehlana.
Mirtai stood behind Ehlana's chair, taking her customary place as
bodyguard as much out of old habit as duty. Kring was seated in a
window embrasure, talking in low tones with Stragen. Flute was sitting
on Sephrenia's lap, the expression on her face grave.

Sparhawk took his seat beside the queen, and Flute stood. Stragen and
Kring both fell silent as the tiny goddess lifted her face to speak.

"Something very unusual has happened in the world, my friends, and I'm
not certain how to react to it. I'm sure you've all heard that Styrics
don't take surprises well. Unfortunately, that is a trait they
inherited from their gods. I've been surprised in the last two weeks.
Badly surprised, and I'm afraid I don't know how to deal with those
surprises."

The Child-Goddess's voice cracked, and her anxiety was evident. The
faces of those gathered were caught between sympathy for the child-like
deity and fear of whatever was ominous enough to put her at such a loss.

Sephrenia rose from her seat, and took Aphrael into her arms.

"The heart of the matter is this," the priestess began, reaching into
her robes to remove a parchment, written in Tamul characters. "Two weeks
ago, the Priestess-Warrior attached to the Royal House of Atan had a
dream. It was a prophecy, sent directly to her by the Atan god. Most
of the gods don't deal with prophecies, preferring to have closer
relationships with their people than the distant words of prophecy
allow, but the god of the Atans has always been just a bit strange."

Ehlana was the first to speak, directing her remarks to the Atana that
had accompanied Sephrenia and Vanion to Cimmura.

"Atana Miran, were you the dreamer of this prophecy?"

"I was, Ehlana-Queen," the olive-skinned Atana replied gravely. "The
dream came to me as I slept, and I wrote it down immediately after. I
brought it to Betuana-Queen's advisor, Solan," she added, indicating the
elderly Styric man beside her. "And he knew to bring it to
Sephrenia-Priestess, who commanded me to accompany her here to the
West."

"Thank you, Atana."

Stragen spoke now, his interest in the esoteric showing in his face.
"What does the prophecy say, Little Mother?"

Sephrenia opened the parchment and read:

"Behold, in the day when fire rains in the desert shall the
Child-Goddess begin her quest for the Hidden One, and in the ending of
that quest remove a great evil from the world. Let her go forth and
vanquish the Spirit which has lain so long out of the grasp of gods and
men."

"The Hidden One?" Sparhawk asked.

Aphrael sighed, and motioned to Sephrenia to go on.

"When the Younger Gods were binding the Elder Gods, one was missed.
He'd left the company of his brethren eons before and very few
remembered his existence, let alone where he'd gone. He is the Hidden
One. He had another name, ages and ages ago, but it's been erased in
the minds of men and gods...probably at his own initiative. The Hidden
One is the only Elder God of Styricum left unvanquished, and this
prophecy indicates that it's Aphrael's task to finish the job."

Talen looked at her wide-eyed. "I can see why you're frightened. If all
of the Elder Gods were like Azash, you have your work cut out for you."

"Why is the god of the Atans issuing a Younger God of Styricum marching
orders? No offense intended, Atanas," he said quickly.

Aphrael sighed again and began to speak. "Do you remember when I told
you that we can't really see the future, just the occasional dim image?"

Sparhawk nodded.

"Well, that's not entirely true. Sometimes one of us has a very clear
vision. The Atan god tends to have these most often. Except for your
Elene god, who's reputed to know the future with some clarity. The
Elder Gods as well, although they didn't see clearly enough to avoid
being bound."

"Azash didn't seem like such a powerful seer when we met him in Zemoch,"
Talen noted.

Aphrael gave him a look that said volumes about her opinion of his
insight. "Azash was bound, Talen. He was limited by the idol."

"Oh," the young man answered, looking slightly disappointed.

"But this isn't giving me what I need...advice! I need a plan, my
friends, and I need it soon. A fireball was sighted over Rendor two
nights ago. That means I'm already past due to begin the search!"

"Perhaps the fireball and the prophecy are related in more than timing,"
the Baroness Melidere offered. "Perhaps there was something about that
fireball that will tell us where you need to start."

"I like it," Stragen spoke.

"You have to," Talen told him, ducking away from Melidere's exquisitely
manicured hand as he spoke.

Vanion, however, looked thoughtfully at Melidere. "She may have
something there. Call it a hunch, call it years of living with a mystic
people, but that idea just feels right to me."

Aphrael's eyes lit up with hope for the first time since they'd begun
this meeting. "It does to me too, Vanion."

"Where in Rendor was this fireball sighted?" Stragen asked.

Sephrenia stood up to point to a spot on the world map on the wall.
"Here...near a town called Khorentz."

===============================

They found the charcoaled remains of the sheepfold half-buried in sand,
but that was expected. Nothing stays uncovered in the desert. Some
searching revealed the canvas floor of the tent, protected from the
flames by a layer of sand the night the fireball appeared.

Rosler and Korran searched in a widening circle from the tent floor,
finding nothing but sand. At a few hundred yards, Rosler stopped and a
small groan came from his lips.

"Are you all right?" Sir Korran asked, shouting from his position to the
south.

"Come here! Quickly!" Rosler yelled back. Korran ran to his position.

"What's wrong?"

"Don't you feel that?!" the older knight asked him, an expression of
slight pain on his face.

"Feel what, Rosler?"

"Damnit! Open yourself. This isn't a picnic. We're supposed to be
investigating this, and that includes the Disciplines."

Korran apologized, shame-faced. "I forgot to ground and open. Hold on."

Stepping aside for the minor ritual that would open his mind to the
impression of magic, Korran began to scan the area. There! To the
northwest about twenty yards. A feeling of discomfort, like a sharp
headache, began to beat at his brain.

"Do you have the location?" Rosler asked him.

"Yes. About twenty yards that way. There's a depression in the sand
over there."

"Close up and follow me. We'll need to get closer and we'll never be
able to stand the pain if we go over there like this."

Both of the Church Knights went through the procedure of closing down
their higher awareness and went back to their horses to get the spades
they'd brought.

Working in shifts, they uncovered the meteor within an hour.

"This must be the fireball," Korran said.

"Let's get it hitched up to the horses and pull it out of this hole. We
need to examine it more closely."

The horses pulled the blue-black rock out of the sand, and Rosler
studied it closely. The heat of its passage through the air had melted
the outer layer smooth, except for a fist-sized depression, the edges of
which were sharp and clear, as if something had been attached to the
stone until after it had cooled.

Sir Rosler wasn't fond of pain, but he could face it if duty demanded.
He knew he had to open himself again, to find the exact source of the
evil they'd sensed before. Perhaps a bit of reconstruction, too, to
identify what had been attached to the stone.

He prepared himself again, and opened his mind to impressions while Sir
Korran watched warily. Rosler noted that the intensity had faded, as if
the source of the pain had been removed and only residual impressions
remained. That lent strength to his theory.

Rosler then began a reconstruction of the stone as it had been
immediately after its fall. Piece by piece, he saw the
stone-as-it-had-been come into being in his mind...steam rose from it,
and the smell of ash and heat. And, sitting in the depression as if it
were born there, a ruby, glowing a bloody red. And emanating an evil
more horrible than anything Rosler had ever experienced.

====================================================================================

"Why didn't you tell me about this when you first found out?" Sparhawk
questioned his daughter in her study after the gathering below had
dispersed to make their preparations for the journey to Rendor.

"Sparhawk, I'm more than a bit upset with myself for missing the clues
and rumors as it is," Danae replied. "Please don't make it any worse by
telling me what I should have done."

"Clues and rumors?"

"There have been stories floating around my family for centuries that
the Hidden One was still active on this world. But they were only
stories, tales we told to frighten ourselves. We're not unlike mortals
in that respect.

"But in the last five or six summers, those stories have been coming
from other directions than the Younger Gods. The Troll Gods actually
came to my cousin Setras and told him that they were concerned about
certain...I guess you could call them sounds, though that's not exactly
accurate...coming from the sky. And the Tamul gods all but went into
hiding two moons ago. No one has been able to coax them out of their
private domains to find out what frightened them. My own family had
realized that something different was happening. Except for me."

Danae's usually radiant face was downcast and shadowed. Sparhawk gazed
at her in concern.

"Why did you miss these clues?"

Danae laughed sardonically. "Because of _this_," she said, gesturing at
herself. "This 'adolescence' that you mortals go through is distracting
me tremendously! The hormone imbalances alone are taking about half of
my concentration, and the physical changes are uncomfortable. I don't
dare do more than try to keep things on an even keel because I don't
know for sure what a major change at the wrong time will do in the end,
and it's driving me crazy! I'm beginning to wonder what I could
possibly have been thinking when I decided to 'go mortal' in a situation
where I _had_ to let things happen naturally."

The Pandion looked confused. "You don't know how to grow up?"

"I've never _had_ to before, Father. I usually take steps to prevent
growth after my sixth birthday. This is the first time I've let nature
take its course. And you see where it's led us."

"I wouldn't worry, Danae. I doubt that you could have done anything in
any case until that prophecy was given. Do you think any of your family
would have believed you if you had somehow put all the clues together?"

The dark-haired princess looked thoughtfully out the window. "Probably
not. My family loves me dearly, but they don't really take me very
seriously. Sephrenia wasn't made the Overpriestess because of any
affirmation of my leadership abilities. She was given the honor because
the rest of my family wanted to bribe me into leaving their pet projects
alone. You might say I annoyed it out of them rather than led them to
the decision."

"And even if they had listened to you, do you think you could have done
anything to prevent the Hidden One from becoming active again? We still
don't even know where it is or what it's doing. We're just pinning hopes
on that fireball. It looks pretty, sitting there with all of those
hopes dangling from it, but it's not going anywhere very fast just yet."

Danae smiled at that, and it was like the sun emerging from
thunderclouds.

"Oh, I love you, Father!" she laughed as she ran to him.

Sparhawk embraced her with all the love a father could feel for his
daughter, and an extra measure for the part of her that was Flute.

And, for that moment, all was right with the world.

=====================================

Vice-Preceptor Jothran was worried. The report that the two knights had
brought back from the desert was disturbing in the extreme. A stone of
great evil, come from the sky, was loose in the world. They didn't even
know what it was, let alone what it could do. Or how it had escaped the
rock which had carried it to this world.

A report was required, but Jothran was reluctant to make it. Galeryn,
having led the Secret Order for 40 years, was frail. Sarathi had, after
his succession and the customary revelation of the existence of the
Secret Order, offered to allow the elderly preceptor a generous
retirement, but Galeryn had declined. He wanted to die in the habit of
the Order, on active duty, not in some dusty, forgotten hostel where his
name would be forgotten before his body was even cold. Still, Galeryn
was frail. And reports of a great new evil in the world could very well
finish him.

Jothran considered sending the report directly to the Archprelate
instead, then decided against it. Galeryn would be mortally offended if
he ever found out that his vice-preceptor had gone over his head.
Jothran couldn't do that to a beloved friend.

The thin, almost rangy, man behind the desk sighed wearily and removed a
quill and parchment from the drawers before him. Duty was a
constantly-moving wind filling the sails of the ship that was the
Church, and a wish for the comfort of friends was a wisp of fog before
it. Jothran began his report as the sun began to sink behind the hills
to the west.

=====================================

The man is filthy, the innkeeper at Jiroch thought to himself. I'll have
to pay my other patrons to stay if I let him in.

"Go away, desert scum," he spoke to the man looking for rooms in the
haughty tone of townsfolk the world over when speaking to rustics. "When
you know how to look more like a human being and less like a jackal,
come back and I'll consider letting you clean the stables."

The thin man had the look of a dervish, that fanatical gleam in the eyes
that spoke of madness as much as faith. The innkeeper had never had
occasion to confront that particular characteristic before, but several
patrons in the common room had recognized both the look in the peasant's
eyes and the tone in the innkeeper's voice, and were searching for
unobtrusive exits as the dirty little man stared the innkeeper down.
Finally, the man spoke. His voice was strange, almost as if more than
one person were speaking.

"You should learn manners, friend innkeep. You live today. You may
regret that."

The man turned and walked out of the door of the small white inn,
disappearing down the crowded avenue in search of other lodgings. The
innkeeper merely smirked his opinion of 'desert superstition' and
continued in his duties.

Three days later, he was dead, his body ravaged by a wasting disease
that had never been examined by the physicians of any city on the coast
of the Inner Sea. Since it didn't appear to be contagious, the gathered
worthies merely shrugged and returned to their respective towns and
cities, noting the anomalous appearance of a non-virulent consumptive
disease in Jiroch and worrying themselves about it no more.

Except for one physic from Dabour, who was more conversant with
controversial therapeutic techniques than his conservative colleagues.
A letter was written and sent to a woman of his acquaintance, via a
contact in Jiroch. The contact would get the letter to the woman, even
if she were traveling. His talents were unusual, and the physic had no
wish to know more than he had to about the methods used, considering the
prevailing mood in Rendor. Eshand's heresies may have been stamped out,
but the general attitudes toward witchcraft survived.

After sending the information he'd gathered, the physic returned to his
shop in Dabour, and promptly forgot about what he'd seen, heard, and
written, a talent of his own that had proven most useful over the years.

jayjaybear @ 2009-06-05T20:43:00

2009-06-06T00:44:04Z

For general purposes of making certain things available to some people, I'm republishing a piece of fanfic that I wrote about 10 years ago. It's David Eddings fanfic, and his recent death made me remember the stuff I wrote in his universe.

Beloved Disciple

The rat-faced little man stood silently in the shadows, his face set in
a slightly worried expression. Things had gone smoothly tonight...much
too smoothly. Perfect capers set his teeth on edge. There was always
_something_ that was missed on a normal expedition like this, and
everything tonight had been too convenient. He hadn't even had to
persuade any strays that leaving the diplomatic function taking place
below wasn't the wisest course of action. And there were _always_
strays wandering about at Tolnedran affairs...if only to sniff out the
coffers of their host. He hadn't seen a soul since he'd left the
ballroom.

He became a shadow, distinguishable from the natural shadows of the room
only because of his mobility, and edged toward the ornate door that
closed off the upper end of the landing. He lightly pulled on the
handle, found it was locked, and extracted a small set of thin tools
from inside his doublet. Quickly choosing one, he picked the lock and
slipped into the dark chamber beyond.

Keeping to the wall, he silently moved toward the far end of the room, a
nagging feeling of...wrongness...echoing in his mind. And then the
lamps were lit.

"Can I help you find something, your Highness?" a deliberately too-sweet
voice asked from the center of the room. Kheldar turned.

"Vekra," he spoke with the bravado of a thief caught in the act. "Lovely
house you've got here."

"You aren't here to examine the architecture, Silk," the tall,
sable-haired woman replied, arching one eyebrow. "What are you after?"

Kheldar searched her violet eyes, trying to determine just where on her
hit list he stood. He sighed resignedly.

"I suppose it's best to be honest in this situation, Vekra. It goes
against just about every principle Drasnians hold dear, but I have a
feeling that I have a better chance of getting what I want by asking
you."

"Then why did you decide to burglarize my...never mind. I know
you...you did it to keep in practice. Ask me what, Kheldar?" the Nadrak
woman asked guardedly. She knew better than to take anything the little
Drasnian said at face value.

"Kheva needs to see a certain document..."

"You mean Porenn wants to see a certain document, don't you?"

"Kheva no longer has a regent, Vekra. He's quite capable of running his
kingdom himself."

"Don't play coy, Silk," Vekra said irritably. "I'm well aware of who's
really running the Intelligence Service since the dismantling of the
Regency. Khendon's almost in hysterics most days from trying to figure
out which of his agents is really his and which are working for the
queen bee at the same time."

"Very impressive. I won't ask who you're paying."

"Thank you for the courtesy," Vekra answered. "But I'm not. I do have
other methods, you know."

Kheldar blinked. "Yes, I'd almost forgotten about that." His face took
on a sly expression. "How loyal are you to Drosta? I'm sure that either
Porenn or Khendon would pay very well for someone with your talents."

She only sighed and shook her head. "Kheldar, you know better. I was
_assigned_ to Drosta. And you know who assigned me. Do _you_ want to
go tell him you're planning on hiring me away?"

Silk privately thought he'd have a fairly good chance, but decided to
drop the matter. "Forget it. Now about that document..."

Silk was mildly irritated when she began to laugh and spoke to the
ceiling. "Drasnians! All right, Kheldar, follow me. I probably owe
Porenn more information at this point than she owes me anyway. Although
I expect you to remind her that this cancels _all_ of my debts to date."

"Of course, Vekra dear," Silk assured her smoothly, moving to help her
through the doorway.

She glanced back at him, then at his hands. "I'd suggest behaving
yourself, Kheldar. I _am_ a Nadrak, and I haven't given up my
daggers...they're just hidden rather better than the average Nadrak
woman hides them. Besides, I believe your lovely dimpled wife would be
rather displeased. Think about it, won't you?"

Silk nonchalantly clasped his hands behind his back as they approached
the doorway. The woman's daggers he could dodge, but he had to live
with Liselle, and he couldn't stay awake forever.

The tall Angarak woman led Silk up a series of stairs, into a winding
corridor that seemed to follow the outside contour of the large house.
Shadows dominated this place, and as the corridor began to lead into the
interior of the dwelling and the windows which ushered the light of the
full moon inside dwindled behind them, the darkness became complete.

The Drasnian heard a slight sound ahead of him as a faint glow erupted,
seeming to float at the height of a tall man's head.

"Kheldar, put this on," Vekra said as she handed him a long piece of
dyed linen. "I think I'd feel more secure if you didn't know exactly
where I keep my more sensitive information."

"I'm hurt, my lady!" Silk replied in an aggrieved tone as insincere as a
Nyissan's promise. "The very thought that I would be so churlish as
to..."

"Did anyone ever tell you that you have a tendency to overact, Kheldar?"

Silk flashed her a wide grin and, borrowing a page from Beldin's book,
said, "Ah, me darlin', I do b'lieve that nasty rumor's been bandied
aboot oncet 'r twice!"

Vekra spoke as she shook her head slowly, "Sometimes I think the only
thing about my master that I'll never understand is the affection he
feels for _you_, Kheldar."

"The product of a long and fruitful accquaintance, my dear. You may
have noticed just a _bit_ of my influence in him."

"It's the despair of the established priesthood," she replied. "The old
guard Grolims are used to cold, humorless Torak, or paranoid,
monomaniacal Urvon. They can't quite get used to him occasionally
bantering with them as if they were lifelong travelling companions."

Once she was certain of the fastness of the blindfold, Vekra led Silk
through another maze of rooms and corridors, stopping once to spring a
hidden catch which caused a section of wall to slide back.

"Hidden doors, Vekra? Incredibly amateurish."

"I didn't design the house, Kheldar, so don't grouse at me. It's
typical for Tolnedran construction. Wouldn't want all that gold just
lying where anyone can find it, you know."

"Still...I'd think with your advantages you could find other ways to
keep things hidden," Silk said with just the slightest tone of
curiousity.

"Didn't you learn anything from Belgarath in the forty-odd years you've
known him?" she asked, tired of this particular fishing expedition.
Kheldar had been trying to pin down the limits of her abilities almost
since they'd met. "It takes as much effort to do it that way as it does
the normal way. There's really no need to use that method unless you
must."

Silk sighed theatrically. "How prosaic. I'm really very disappointed in
you, Vekra."

"You'll survive. Come on," she said, leading him through the secret
opening and up another flight of steps.

They stopped in a circular room, obviously inside one of the towers
which made up the corners of the house. Vekra removed the blindfold
from the wiry spy and moved to a locked armoire at the far end of the
room.

"Here," she said, handing Silk the document in question. "I assume
that's the one Porenn wants. I imagine that the trade agreements
Drosta's made with Zakath are rather vital to the Drasnian economy."

"On the nose, my dear, on the nose," Silk murmured as he skimmed the
pages. "If you can let me have this for an hour..."

Vekra arched an eyebrow and answered, "Not a chance, your highness.
That document doesn't leave this room and I'm not leaving you here
alone."

"But I need the information..."

She reached out for the pages. "Give me those. I'll take care of it."

Vekra spread the pages out on the desk to the right of the door, then
placed a sheaf of blank pages beside them. She began to skim the
originals line by line, humming as she did. Marks appeared on the blank
pages, in a pattern identical to those in the original agreements.
After finishing the last page, she handed both original and copy to
Silk.

"Check them. We want to make sure Porenn gets an accurate copy."

Silk quickly read the two together for accuracy, nodded, and pocketed
the copy.

"Thank you, Vekra," he said, handing her the original. "Porenn will
appreciate this."

"Just remember to remind her that our accounts are settled now. We're
even and any further information from either one will put the other in
debt again."

"I will. Shouldn't you get back to your party now? Tolnedrans are so
sensitive to snubs."

"Blindfold on, Kheldar," she said, her voice brooking no opposition.
"You're coming down with me. I'm not stupid enough to leave you in my
'treasure-house' without supervision. As a matter of fact, I think I'll
see you to the door. I wouldn't want you to come down with an
unexplained attack of absentmindedness and get lost in the corridors."

Silk sighed and tied the blindfold behind his head once again.

---------

After escorting Silk to the street then erecting a barrier specific to
uninvited guests, Vekra returned to her ball, alternately flattering and
flirting with the cream of Tol Honeth society. As with all Tolnedran
social affairs, the festivities lasted into the early morning, and the
last guest left just before sunrise.

After ushering the stragglers through the door, Vekra ascended to the
same room that she'd led Silk to the night before. Cleverly designed to
convince someone not familiar with the plans that it was situated in one
of the towers, it was actually in the very center of the house, on the
second floor. Almost the entire second story was taken up by a maze of
corridors and stairs. A staircase would go up, seemingly to the next
floor, but the corridor beyond sloped almost imperceptibly downward
until it was on the general level of the second floor once again and
looped back to that same set of stairs. The illusion of as many stories
as desired could be created merely by taking your blindfolded guest
through this loop any number of times. The "tower room" was near the
bottom of the trick steps. A set of _real_ steps to the real third
floor was concealed beyond another hidden door set beside the one into
the false "tower". It was truly ingenious for Tolnedran construction.
She was fairly certain a Nyissan architect had taken a hand in it.

She entered the illusion room and moved to the armoire, opening the
doors. She moved to the back of the heavy wardrobe and opened another
hidden door, which led into a set of stairs going upward.

At the head of the stairs, the woman known as Vekra entered a small,
quiet room, furnished simply, and sat at the window, facing east, her
head tilted upward.

*Master* she thought.

A strong, clear voice made itself heard in her mind. *Polarenn.*

*I gave Drosta's trade agreement to the little thief, as you
instructed. Is there anything specific you want me to watch for in Tol
Honeth?*

*No, Polarenn. I sense that you want to return to Gar Og Nadrak. You
may leave Tol Honeth whenever you want.*

*Thank you, Master* she thought, then after a slight hesitation,
continued. *Master, how loyal am I supposed to be to Drosta?*

*As if you were actually working for him. Why?*

*Then why am I betraying him to Porenn?*

*Because _I_ have loyalties to Porenn and Kheva that supersede yours to
Drosta. Kheva is probably the only person in the world who can claim to
have slid down the bannisters with a future god.* She could feel the
smile on his face. *Remember, Polarenn, that your duties to Drosta are
temporary. Once the wheel of time turns far enough, there will be a
king of the Nadraks that I can trust on the throne and your duty to
Drosta will be done.*

*I understand, Master.*

*And Polarenn...*

*Yes, Master?*

*Please drop that title. I'm Eriond. I always have been and always
will be. I'm sure you can remember who you work for without having to
remind yourself every time you address me.* Now she was sure he was
smiling as he spoke to her.

*Yes, Ma...Eriond.*

*That's better. Now get some sleep. You've had a long night and you're
leaving for Yar Nadrak tomorrow.*

*Thank you, Eriond. I will.* She smiled herself as she broke contact
and proceeded to do as instructed. She knew he was right. It was a
long way to Yar Nadrak, even with her "advantages."

jayjaybear @ 2009-06-04T14:13:00

2009-06-04T18:20:09Z

I haven't forgotten to test or forgotten to post it. I've been thinking about how I've been doing this after someone sent me a PM after my last glucose posting. And I realized he's right.

I've been looking at the situation entirely the wrong way, really. I've been seeing this as "My blood has too much sugar in it. If I watch what I'm doing and take my meds, it should go down, like a bank account that's in active use. $100 - $80 - $65 - $40..." And that's not how it works. I have been concentrating far too hard on the idea that my sugar is lower today than it was yesterday. Yes, it is, but not for the reasons or under the rationale I was thinking it was. It's not a matter of time...even watching everything I was supposed to watch and doing everything I was supposed to do, my daily fasting glucose was huge, by any reasonable standard. Which means that my body isn't going to work with me the way it's supposed to.

I mean, I knew that wasn't the way it worked, intellectually, but I wasn't thinking straight about it. At this point, I can safely say that my A1c is going to be higher than desired...I've been over 100 units more than I should be for 3/4 of the time I've got until I get the blood draw done. There's no way, with less than 3 weeks left, that the numbers are going to be good.

This doesn't mean "give up", though. It just means "mentally adjust to the fact that I'm probably going on insulin". I can recognize denial now. :0) I'm going to try to avoid it.

jayjaybear @ 2009-06-03T11:14:00

2009-06-03T15:16:05Z

Home from work today...let's just say I don't want to get too far from a bathroom.

Anyway, I'm listening to the Price is Right in the next room and Johnny (or whoever the hell the announcer is now) is describing a showcase, and says, "This pair of corn-holders..."

That is NOT what I actually heard, though...

jayjaybear @ 2009-05-30T19:42:00

2009-05-30T23:48:47Z

I've been having somewhat gloomy thoughts this afternoon, accompanying some gloomy googling of diabetic insulin delivery options: i.e., pens, pricks and pumps. Judging by the fact that my downward trend for blood glucose, while still downward, seems to be plateauing at around 250, I can pretty much predict that my A1c in a couple of weeks is going to be well above 7. Which means I'm probably going to be put on insulin.

The thought doesn't so much terrify me as annoy me. I'm going to be saddled with a life-saving but perpetually annoying regimen of injection, to be added to my current regimen of simple bloodletting, and probably multiplied by an approximate daily factor of 3 or 4.

I KNOW that if it's necessary, it's necessary. I know I'm not the first or only person on the face of the earth that has had or continues to have to do this. I know I'm whining.

Some people want to trade in their current spouse/partner for a newer or prettier model. I just want to trade in my current body for one that runs without so much maintenance.

jayjaybear @ 2009-05-30T12:07:00

2009-05-30T16:08:25Z

You all know that I rarely embed YouTube videos, but this was posted by niebuck and I DIED watching it.

jayjaybear @ 2009-05-29T11:17:00

2009-05-29T15:30:38Z

Blood glucose: 254

Yesterday was fun. No, let me rephrase. Yesterday was...busy.

First of all, supervenusfreak has been sleeping VERY poorly lately, mostly because the window air conditioner in our bedroom is old and rattley and he cannot stand it. It IS very loud, and sometimes (though much more rarely than for Dwight) it even wakes me up in the middle of the night. The problem being that we NEED that air conditioner to be running or we both don't sleep anyway because we're soaking the sheets and pillows with sweat. (We're the people who have our bedroom window open ALL WINTER because otherwise we'll drown in our own perspiration, remember)

So he called off yesterday because he'd gotten about three hours of sleep the night before. When I got home from work yesterday, I had dinner and right after, Dwight comes down the steps from where he's been trying to nap all day and tells me we NEED to switch out the air conditioner upstairs with one of the ones downstairs. So we switch it out with the new one we bought the other week. Which involves the confinement of our escape artist cat (because open windows with no screens in are not a good thing to have her around), the banishment of the dog to the backyard, and a lot of lugging heavy machinery up and down a narrow and steep staircase. Oh, and some good old-fashioned short-tempered sniping on both of our parts as we get in each other's way, trip over each other's feet and generally make each other crazy working together in small spaces.

SO...after we get everything switched out (and the new air conditioner is PERFECT...not mousey quiet, but definitely worlds better than the old one), it turns out we need to go to the supermarket to get some things that we're going to need before the big grocery trip tonight (paper towels, mostly...we have a puppy...)

We went and did that, giving up my nice parking spot, and come back to another okay parking spot. (I have a hangup about parking in our neighborhood...I grew up in a slightly more suburban neighborhood than this one, where everyone had room to park their car(s) in front of their house and parking in your neighbor's spot was considered bad manners...HA!)

Finally home to stay, I take my iPod up to the newly quiet bedroom to elevate my feet for an hour or so, when I hear Dwight's sister in the bathroom next door... "Dwight? Can you come up here a second?"

The bar that lifts the ball in the toilet had lifted its last...it finally broke. So, we have to go to Lowe's to get a replacement. Another trip out. I'm the kind of person who loves to come home after work and STAY THERE! Anyway, we go to Lowe's and come back to find that other okay parking spot taken. *sigh*

And I finally got to stay home.

jayjaybear @ 2009-05-28T11:33:00

2009-05-28T15:50:06Z

Blood glucose: 260

Same yesterday.

The Jeopardy audition yesterday was fun. The drive to and from was not. The Baltimore and Capital Beltways are not fun during rush hour, and I got a double dose. I left the house about 7ish, hit the traffic on 695, then 95. Got to the Greenbelt metro station about 10ish. Drove around looking for a parking space in the Park & Ride for about 15 minutes, then found one all the way at the far end of the lot. I walked to the station, by which time it was around 10:30.

I had seen the sign that you couldn't pay cash for parking coming in, and thought that meant you had to use your farecard, so I put about $20 on it, to make sure I had enough at the end of the day to get out of the parking lot (more on that later). Transferred to Red Line at Fort Totten, got off at Farragut North, walked the block to the hotel (the St. Regis...god is that hotel beautiful!). Got there with 15 minutes to spare.

When I arrived they were still doing the earlier group, so my group waited in the hallway and filled out our application-information sheets. When the early group was done, they called us in and we were seated at tables, two or three to a table. They explained how things would go, how casting was done for the show, how the clues were written, then did a few clues to test our timing (you can't answer until the clue is fully read...she wouldn't pick people whose hands were raised before she was done reading). After that, we did another 50-question written test (no form of a question required!), which I think I did pretty well on...there were only about five questions that I had to leave blank because I had NO IDEA what the answer was. They then gave us a short break while they "graded" the tests and (I assume) discussed us.

After the break they started calling people up in groups of three to play a mock show, with the actual signalling devices! Each group did about ten questions, then each contestant had a mock interview, like on the show.

I had the worst time remembering to answer in the form of a question! And I was really the only one who was that bad in the whole group. When you're actually playing the game, against other actual people, with the board in front of you and the signalling device in your hand, it's TOTALLY different than just shouting out answers from your couch at home. It's hard to coordinate all of that and still remember how to phrase your answer.

I got some laughs, too...one of my "interesting facts" was that I live in a tiny rowhouse containing four people, three cats, a dog, and a rabbit. Maggie (the contestant coordinator who was playing "Alex") asked me which I liked better, the people or the animals? I responded, "It depends on the day." Also, one of my interesting facts was that I am addicted to Klondike Solitaire on my iPod, which Maggie mentioned. I reached into my pocket and took out...my iPod. Proof!

Oh, the parking thing...well, after I got back to Greenbelt and slogged my way to my car in the 90% humidity, I found out when I got to the gate that it was NOT the farecard you use, but what's called a SmarTrip card, which costs $10 ($5 for the card, $5 on it). So I spent $30 yesterday to take what amounted to a $6 metro ride, since they don't offer refunds on farecards. I can put it on my next Jeopardy audition "interesting fact" sheet as "I was held hostage in a metro parking lot by a little old Hispanic lady (the booth person at the gate)". Looks like I need to go back to DC sometime soon to use up the rest of my metro fare...

jayjaybear @ 2009-05-24T17:06:00

2009-05-24T21:07:23Z

Blood glucose this morning: 279. It's hovering around there right now...not sure why.

*sigh*

jayjaybear @ 2009-05-21T14:44:00

2009-05-21T18:48:47Z

Gaaaah! I have a toothache and I'm miserable. At least, I think it's a toothache. Right above my upper right incisor I'm feeling pain and swelling right behind my nostril. Hurts worse when I smile or blow/wipe my nose (and of course I have a sniffle today).

*sigh*

Either it'll go away over the weekend or I'll have to schedule a dentist appointment Tuesday. I'll probably end up going to my Jeopardy audition on Wednesday with a baseball-size lump on the front of my face...