Traitorous Blood

[Biske]

No one knew much about Wilhelm Scott. He was just one of the newest line of paper-pushers, men barely out of boyhood with aspirations of public service, pressed in their duties by the recent chaos. In fact, he wouldn't even have been -missed- - he still lived with his family, and they had merely assumed he had spent another long night out.

They had been proved wrong.

There is the head of young Wilhelm; his eyes have-closed, his mouth held half-open by the stake that held him upright. Just below him, nailed into the blood-soaked wood, was one of Helstone's missives; and below that, a message. Sloppily scrawled, it proved to be from the pen of Wilhelm himself.

Helstone Is A Traitor.
He Is Working With The Drow.
He Works With The Drow And They Feed Him Lies To Tell You All
The Council Knows And Does Nothing!
TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR

The last line is filled with ink-splots, shaky in absolute terror. And though it is in Wilhelm's writing, it is signed by another name:

- the Beast

[Biske]

Why should there be a respite? Why should the night hide only one killing, when another would only strengthen the point? A poor woman, this time - Mariville Hester, one of the tough young mercenaries, hired on to patrol the Meeting House at night. She had been relieved; her door had remained locked, though the shadowed interior was bathed in blood. Her corpse was tied spreadeagled across the Blacksmith's wooden post fence; again, one of Helstone's missives jammed into her mouth, another nailed to the wooden boards - again, the woman's own handwriting painting a fear-filled picture.


Helstone Is A Liar And A Traitor
He Works With Audmathus
He Works For The Drow!
The Council Will Die
They Are Not Innocents
I Am Justified!
DEATH TO THE TRAITOR COUNCIL
GISCARD HELSTONE ROSCHEN KERRAK GISCARD HELSTONE ROSCHEN KERRAK GISCARD HELSTONE ROSCHEN KERRAK

I AM COMING.

What was this signature? It was impossible. It was written in Hester's own handwriting, but it was different from her terrified script - it was small, and so neatly penned, as if she were writing to a lover:

- Quincy Randall

[Biske]

This one had been harder to take, it seemed - as if the mysterious killer had suffered some injury. For certainly no one would expect Jerald Duthane to put up much of a fight; a mousy clerk, one that had been busily making copies of Suede's missive. His unfinished copy was clutched in a bloodied hand, ending in a severed stump - the only thing left of his body, the arm itself nailed to Myrken's Town Center board. His own terrified hand had written the words upon the parchment, nailed next to his severed stump.

The Councellors Are Frauds!
They Have Fooled You
They Have Fooled All Of Us
They Are Not Our Councilmen But DROW In Disguise
Helstone Kerrak Giscard Roschen
They Will Be Destroyed

AUDMATHUS
AUDMATHUS
DO YOU HEAR ME?
I AM COMING FOR YOU.
THE BEAST IS COMING FOR YOU.


- Quincy Randall

[Carnath-Emory]

By dawn the next day, Quincy Randall's name has been obliterated from these gruesome incoherencies. The rest, of course, is permitted to remain as written.

[C-t-F]

And in the tiniest, bottom, almost unseen corner of these scrawled posters, another message. The language was exotic, copied, imperfect. The writer left no signature.

J'aime les sashes rouges!

J'aime les sashes bleus!
De bons noms ne méritent pas d'être défilés.

[Biske]

There had been moment's respite; a few days of silence, to allow events to continue. Quincy's name had been allowed to be stricken; the papers, no doubt, having been taken down anyway - along with the corpses. But as the day dawned a new sight would greet the people of Myrken, a grotesque sign; young Ellis, one of the Council Runners. Or parts of him, would be more accurate. He was strung and nailed up, complex pattern that allowed both hands to point downwards - to the ground. Nailed onto his dangling tongue were more words - written in his own uncertain hand, for he had not been the best at his studies.


forr liltl counclors went, fer tee and bred
forr litl drow caym bak In-stead

yoo ar mine AUDMATHUS

- the Beest

[Biske]

RISE
RISE AGAINST YOUR FALSE COUNCELLORS
RISE AGAINST THE DROW

- Quincy Randall

Where was the body? The handwritting was shaken, as if it's writer was held in mortal fear; but that mystery was soon enough solved. Jernal Tuppins was not one to be easily intimidated, a Blacksmith's son - he wasn't one you'd think would work as a scribe for the Council, either. Yet there his massive body was, stuffed into a hole that had been dug.

Dug by his own hands. For dirt caked under his cracked and once-bleeding nails, his fingers worn to grotesque claws, his eyes wide in terror. A stake pinned another note to his back - the stake that had taken his life.

WHY DO YOU RUN FROM ME????

[Biske]

Another death; so different from the others, for no note was borne from it, no message on display; simply the charred body of local playwrite and Council file-keeper, Lane Grant, resting in the street; shards of slagged glass about him. His skin had blackened and peeled back, his fat solid- though it *had* been liquid, for tiny bubbles formed, and it looked as if it had been oozing out of the man's body. Limbs and face were contorted in impossible positions of sheer agony. The smell, the sight... horrifying.

His screams of pain *should* have been heard. The flames *should* have been seen. This, maybe, would frighten the populace more than the others; for what could do this to a man in the middle of *town*, with not even the Militia the wiser?

[Biske]

I AM WEAK.

A message, carved in flesh and blood; the likes of which have not been seen for a month. Even as the Militia cut down the corpse that had been bound to one of the high streetlamps; in Baker's Row, facing the ruinous building that once housed one Coriolanus Helstone.

To the gathered crowd's eyes, in fact, it seemed that *this* man was Helstone; but on second glace, past the carefully-trimmed hair - the nose was far too long, the jaw far too square; the face old, to Helstone's relative youth. The barrister's name was carved into this unknown man's forehead; across the ruin of a stomach were those words; as if a hot iron had been drawn across a still-living, *jerking* body.

I AM WEAK. I BETRAY YOU ALL.

Only this time, there was no signature.

[channe]

The uproar outside the barrister's new building -- ten houses down, just by the corner -- causes him to shrug on a coat and emerge onto the street, flanked by Rosamaria Rameriz in crimson and black. He is close enough to view the hanging man while the Militia do their unclean work; and the gathered crowd is stunned enough to allow him to pass.

Utter silence reigns. In the torchlight, Coriolanus Helstone looks down at the murdered man; his eyes are terrible, suffused with a thousand secrets. He kneels, then -- kneels, on both knees in the middle of the dirty, scum-stained road, removes a glove, and traces the One God's sigil on the murdered man's forehead, over the blood, over the letters carved into his skull.

And then he rises.

There are quite a few people, now, all whispering, all willing cogs in the rumor mill --

"I have seen the halls of the Underdark," he says, his voice choked with -- with something; a man does not show his emotion, does he? "After kidnapping me and my guard, the drow Audmathus asked me to write the letter naming those people as traitors; he asked me, you see, to sign the words naming your brothers and sisters, your defenders and friends, as enemies of Myrken Wood, else see my guard, Rosamaria, executed -- one inch at a time. I --" he pauses, obviously overwrought -- "could not do that. The murderer of this man says I was weak; well. I was weak. I could not see her innocent blood sacrificed on the altar of such defilement, so I signed the words written by Audmathus. Could you have done any different, with such open hearts as yours? I am sorry for causing so much pain with my signature -- it is something I have said innumerable times before -- but I am not sorry for -- for feeling how I do about Myrken Wood, for if any of you were in Rosamaria's place I would have done the same. If that is weakness, well, then, let me be so."

He straightens, then, and starts to look around -- perhaps a few of them will whisper later -- he looked straight at me, I saw him looking straight at me --

"I came to Myrken Wood to make some money. I stay because --" he chuckles, coldly, terribly -- "you have made me love this place. It is personal. Rosa has plunged a sword into the drow king's stomach; I have seen his guts on the floor. I will hunt down the murderer of this man; and we will hunt down Audmathus and his bitch and we shall show them just how strong we are."

----

He whispers orders to Rosamaria on the quick walk home -- no, they are stalking those paces, their footsteps vengeance-starved.

Find Elil. She killed him before. She can do it again. I want to know how.
I want the madman who tried to kill me before found and brought to me. Use the Brotherhood if you need to.
We will need a lure.

I do not intend for you and I to die here.

[Biske]

A witness. A woman who saw the hanging of this newest body, this *newest* message that was wrought in blood - wrought in the flesh of this unkown man, who was dressed in Janeiro's colors, his hair trimmed to appear as if it belonged to Captain Kerrak. The face, however, was rendered unrecognizeable; as if a hot brand had been drawn across those features, melting and obscuring them forever.

DROWFRIEND.


It was a man, this witness would state; she was a young scullery maid, her face paper-white as she stuttered out testimony. A shadow of a man, tall and broad in the shoulder; his hair was wild, and his eyes?

Only one, says she; only one, and it blazed crimson.