My travels towards the east continued next morning, the Margravine’s challenge weighting down on me, I thought of the bitter and lonely noblewoman who would be, perhaps, the last Lady of a dying land, now deprived of her husband and most other support she was accustomed to. And I wondered at the fates that helped guide me to a place where I would be called upon to answer a debt nearly fifty years in age.

I had to chuckle as I shivered in the cold wind. Drake would certainly not approve. Perhaps that alone would be good reason to take on an unsanctioned mission.

“I am granting you this excursion, only because fellow Trona has been called this cycle to stand for Council by the Vaer Emperor at Ethcille.” High Councilor Averius Drake had offered me disdainfully. The man with the face of a youth was an enchanter a good score years younger than myself, and thought his position made him my better, at least according to Council. “And, despite that incident at Atham, it has been decided the gathering of chronicles cannot be delayed any further. It has been agreed, you are the most acquainted with the task available.”

Eleven years, and I was still tarnished by my actions in that insignificant series of border skirmishes between the Kingdoms Elke and Borea tor Spass. Even if I had been an instigator, which I was assuredly was not, the punishment couldn’t have been more humiliating. Council’s new generation did not appreciate its wizards getting themselves involved in what they deemed ‘conflicts aristocratic’. I could not to this day reveal the truth about why I allowed the King of Elke to be killed, not without potentially causing further war, not only between kingdoms of the Thirteen, but also with the vast Empire of the South.

My silence was what had ultimately convinced Council to end my twenty three year service at the task I had now taken up one last time. Yes, a pair of Vaer sorcerers and their ambitious princeling had been working from the shadows, but in the end I had been persuaded it would be best if I shouldered the blame, in the service of diplomacy. I’ll admit the whole affair made me feel my age. So, I had accepted my retirement with what grace I could.

It had been subtly complicated, but not impossible, to alter very, very, slightly the tone of several missives between Council and the Vaeranshi Consulate. I had not let those years in archiving go without educating myself on the subtle art of surreptitious diplomacy for no cause. It was the only way now to gain allowance from such fellows as Drake. And I thought it offered some pleasing irony to see him again, predictably, act with excessive haste where it came to the Vaer.

“I still know well many of the towers and their fellows who Council positioned in them,” I reminded him. “Several of which were once my own apprentices. Who else, then, would be the best to take the esteemed Trona’s place, for this one gathering? Just this once?”

“Don’t remind me again of your brood,” he’d replied flatly “Your past apprentices remain among the most obstinate and aggravatingly independent of the entire collegiate.”

“And yet they are some of the most respected and in demand by their supplicants,” I added, ignoring the insult. The short and wiry sorcerer from the shores of the Ocean of Dawn made one of his huffing noises he relied on to demonstrate his lack of appreciation of the fact.

“Don’t make me regret my decision, venerable one,” Drake had warned testily. “And please remember, you are only charged with this singular mission. Please do not trouble yourself, again, with side excursions, or allow yourself to be obliged in any local affairs, or linger excessively without sanction. Are we clear, venerable one?”

He acted as though he knew the man I am, was. His tone was intended to remind me time had turned; I was no longer to be indulged. Drake had been rather a resentful apprentice for the brief time he was fostered to me. He still remembered how I differed from his other masters, and not in any way he appreciated. He had never enjoyed his assumptions being challenged. He seemed to believe he was obligated to be as reluctant to accede to my requests when he could find no good reason not to.

Council was now full of men like him. Tenet guided collegiates, who believed they had invented the rules I had helped instill.

I pulled back on the reins, and turned my steed to glance back at the lone tall tower of the keep, its single bright banner cutting through the gloomy clouds which seemed to have followed me across the wasteland, hiding suns both warm and chill. It would be a lie to say I wouldn’t be happy to put many leagues between me and this now forbidding land. But, even if there was nothing I could do to restore the land’s stones, I could at least catch up with the Margrave and restore him to his wife. What more could Drake do to punish me, for such a small diversion, after all? And who better than the Margrave would have knowledge that might prove my suspicions correct?

Delaying for a few moments, I cast a minor remedy which would make the journey easier, at least from the aches I would be provided by my chaotic mount. Numbed back to comfort by the spell, I then turned my steed back to the east, and did not spare another glance past my shoulder.