The Council Is Adjourned

The Council Is Adjourned

In Sylvan Watch, Unon opened the packet beneath a lamp that helped him read in the waning light of the day.

The attendant was standing with a basin with its base only barely covered with water for his hands. “Why is there no water? Are the pumps still not powered? I had heard that the Primary Crystal had arrived and was replaced this morning.”

“It arrived with less than a full charge and it seems they are rationing power. The pumps are just one side effect,” she explained.

“How long was it at Heartwell?”

“Longer than usual, Senator.”

The dimming evening light only just contrasted the message wrapped in cloth on a white tray next to Rahkhan’s service token.

Unon unfolded the cloth to retrieve a report.

Across the table, one of Drue’s trusted carriers waited with wet boots planted beneath his chair. He had brought copies of records from Kefar, folded small enough to hide inside a saddle lining.

Unon read Rahkhan’s account without interrupting.

When he finished, he went back to the paragraph describing the bound Guardians.

“Who else has this?”

“Each Dark Rider in the network would have made a copy until it made its way here. It is what we do to ensure a message gets through. So many now have the report. The riders will make sure those we trust also see the information.”

“The same names?”

“The same deaths. The tower location. The warning about Kaelen, all of it Senator.”

Unon placed the service token beside the now twice read message. “My man in Alfadin asked that the Dark Riders protect a witness.”

“The first carrier at the inn knows how to reach him, he is still in the mountains at the monastery last we heard.”

“Then we arrange his extraction before anyone announces his name.”

An official beside Unon shifted a stack of ledgers closer to the lamp.

“Though the charging of the primary crystals at the Heartwell affects us all this seems like an internal Mosaic Isles issue. Perhaps we should not be getting involved.”

“A Sylvan ambassador appointed by this senate seems to have usurped power in Kefar and is endangering Sylvana and energy consignments from the Mosaics to the entirety of Aethoria. What part of that sounds like a domestic issue?” Unon grabbed the other packet which contained orders for reserve distribution and preparations for gateway deployment. Unon read the headings, then looked towards the official. “This is a moment of great crisis and if we act then it must be for all of Aethoria and for the promise of a Sylvan part in its future less we become the reason for its downfall and a pariah for centuries to come.” He walked away from the rider and the senator to turn and look into the dark shadows in the encroaching jungle around his villa. “Preserve the originals, we will start gathering all the evidence we need to prove this was a rogue act.”

“The Riders only have access to the messages that we are given to deliver. What you need is someone with access to Delrona’s villa.”

“We have guardians with her that are loyal to Sylvan Watch. We will plan for getting access to them there. For now her correspondence that has gone through your hands and Drell’s command records are to be retained and brought here in Sylvan Watch where we will build our case against Delrona.”

The Rider leaned forward.

“If word reaches Kefar first, they may burn their records.”

“Then our requests leave tonight along with copies of everything we have on the murder of a Sylvan monk and 30 other innocents in Alfadin. Send it all by blackbird and by Rider. And with the trading parties already travelling. No single route to make sure everyone knows of the massacre.”

The other senator hesitated. “The rest of Aethoria will know that the Senate approved and empowered her appointment as Ambassador, they may see it as a plot backed by Sylvan Watch.”

Unon folded Rahkhan’s report along its existing creases.

“We appointed an ambassador not the new de facto ruler of Kefar. If we want Aethoria to believe us, we must act before she destroys the evidence”

He touched the service token. “I still have a man on the inside that will be crucial in helping us do just that.”

The next morning at an emergency gathering of the Senate in Amazania almost all senators were gathered in the main audience chamber. Some were travelling but quorum was reached and the meeting began amid a swirl of speculation. “This is a public hearing and members of the citizenry and the Intelligentsia are here as witnesses to today’s proceedings. We begin with an accusation that the Sylvan Watch had authorised Delrona to command Guardians in Kefar and empowered her actions in that great city. Who will speak to these charges?”

Unon rose.

“We, senators, empowered her and authorised her to represent us in negotiations concerning the crystal shortage and to serve as our voice in Kefar.”

“Did any of us authorise the seizure of Alfadin?” asked Senator Pluo who was eager to be heard in opposition to what was about to be discussed.

“No.”

“No”

“Never”

Calls from all every faction were heard.

“The removal of its custodians?” Pluo continued.

“No!” Came a unanimous voice. Then murmur spread through the chamber.

Unon waited until it subsided. “Senators! I have in my hand a report that must be answered to. The accounts before us describe eleven monks and twenty Guardians killed during the expedition’s takeover of the holy site in Alfadin. Their deaths require an investigation by the authorities they served, one of them Sylvan which is why we are here in emergency session. Their names must be established and their families informed and this criminal act answered for.”

Senator Avara near the front stood. “Has Delrona ordered these deaths?”

“We have evidence connecting her office to the operation. We have a witness account that she was told of the bodies and continued the work. We do not yet have a witnessed order from her directing the killings.”

“Then should we not wait?”

“For what Avara? More deaths. News that Sylvan Watch is responsible for the deposition of the High Council of Kefar, War?”

“For her explanation, it seems you are basing urgent action on one report from an underling that I hear is directly aligned with you.”

“I can understand your scepticism Avara, you have benefited greatly from recent crystal prices and your investments in Verdant mines and I recall rousing support for Delrona’s ascension from your faction.” Avara sat down and rolled his eyes at the senators he sat with. “Senators, I propose that Delrona be recalled at once and asked for an explanation so that these questions may be answered, which is why we are all here today.”

Avara lifted his hand as he saw his opening. “Seconded. An investigation is crucial but senators,” he stood and took the floor, “meanwhile, power is being rationed, charging of replacement primary crystals is taking longer, and my sources tell me preparations are being made for an force of inter-crestrealm guardians is being trained in Kefar that includes Sylvan’s. Investigations will not solve these issues or protect us from the gathering storm. Waiting does not suspend hostile actions. I propose we prepare our guardians and our mages and we send them in advance to retrieve Delrona who will answer for these accusations. ”

Pluo looked towards Unon confused by the sudden show of support from Avara. Unon set the papers down satisfied that regardless of motivation this would convince Aethoria of Sylvan innocence and secure energy supply.

The senate chair rose. “Senators I call to vote the motion as Delrona’s mandate has been exceeded and the Sylvan senate never authorised those actions that she be recalled and as the Sylvan Watch repudiates them we call for the installations to be secured, the records preserved and the witnesses protected and a Sylvan force will leave to ensure such actions are undertaken. All those in favour rise.”

The clerks began making copies before the hearing ended and the senators took their seats.

Outside, the first rider was already saddled.

* * *

By the time Varda’s patrol found Kaelen in the Sentinels, he had stopped trying to walk.

He remembered boots on the stones beside his face. Someone knelt and asked his name. He tried to answer, but his tongue felt too large for his mouth.

“Kaelen?”

He knew that voice.

Varda turned him carefully onto his back. He recognised the scars before he could bring her face into focus. In Karvok, he had listened to her describe the northern patrols and the people who returned from them. He had seen what the Dereliction left on those who survived: damaged skin, missing fingers, limbs that could not be saved.

Now she was looking at his feet.

“Where is Blena?”

He tried to lift a hand.

“Gone.”

Varda leaned closer.

“Gone where?”

“Ring.”

She waited, but that was all he could give her.

“Get the litter,” she said.

When another Guardian brought a flask, Kaelen turned his head away so sharply that Varda caught his shoulder.

“It’s clean,” she told him. “We brought it from Karvok and you are well outside the dereliction boundary.”

He stared at her.

“Small mouthfuls.”

She held the flask while he drank. The first swallow hurt.

After that, he remembered little of the journey.

* * *

He woke to green light beneath a pale ceiling with a narrow crack running towards the window covered with leaves around the outer edges.

For several moments he watched it, trying to decide whether it was another broken tower.

Then he heard bowls being stacked.

A curtain moved beside his bed. Beyond it, somebody coughed. The room smelled of boiled cloth, herbs and warm grain and over it all he could smell Ironroot tea.

“You’re in the Ironroot Healing Center.”

An old man sat beside him, sleeves folded above thin forearms. A healer’s crystal rested in a shallow dish on the table.

“Karvok?” Kaelen whispered.

“Yes.”

“Varda?”

“Brought you here. She has been back twice.”

Kaelen tried to sit up. The healer put a hand against his shoulder.

“Slowly. You’ve spent several days making us do all the work.”

He helped him drink, then settled him against a folded blanket.

“Your name?”

“Kaelen.”

“And do you know how you came to be out there alone?”

Kaelen looked towards the leaves on the window.

He remembered Blena falling backwards into the light. His hand reaching too late. The ring’s light collapsing before he could make it answer again.

“I couldn’t stay,” he said.

The old healer waited.

“I tried to make it work. Then I had to leave.”

He had taken the route they had followed north, or what he hoped was the route. Familiar stones became unfamiliar from the other direction. He lost a day circling a ridge before finding their old camp.

At first, he had measured Mereth’s protective goo carefully. Then he had scraped the inside of its container with a twig. On the last morning there had been only a smear beneath the rim.

He swallowed that too.

Afterwards, every ache seemed to connect to his back, sides and legs in one excruciating electric movement flashing though every part of him inside.

He had water left in his flask, but less with each day. Beyond their camps, he passed pools with dark growth clinging to their edges. Once he knelt beside a stream and watched it run over clean-looking stones.

He had almost drunk from it.

Instead, he put the stopper back into his empty flask and walked on.

“What happened to your boots?” the healer asked.

Kaelen looked down at the blanket.

“One split. I tied it.”

“With the cord we cut away?”

He nodded.

“You kept walking on swollen feet.”

“I needed to get out.”

“Yes,” the old man said. “You did.”

He folded back the blanket.

Kaelen’s feet lay on a padded support. They had been washed, and loose strips of cloth protected the damaged skin. Several toes were dark. The smallest looked almost black.

He stared.

“Is that going to come off?”

“The dressing?”

“My toes.”

The healer looked at him, then returned his attention to the foot.

“I cannot tell you that yet.”

Kaelen remembered Varda’s scars. The people she had spoken of who had returned from patrol and still lost parts of themselves afterwards.

“Have you treated this before?”

“For years.”

“Did they recover?”

“Some did.”

Kaelen looked up.

“And some?”

The healer’s hands rested beside his ankle.

“Some died. Others survived with injuries we could not repair.”

He gave Kaelen time to hear it.

“But you are drinking now. You are keeping food down, and the fever has eased. I think you will recover.”

Kaelen looked back at his toes.

“All of me?”

“That is what we are working towards.”

* * *

The blackbird reached Ironroot a week after Varda’s patrol had found him.

Kaelen slept through its arrival. The message was placed beside his bed, beneath a small wooden weight, and remained there while the healer coaxed broth into him and checked his feet morning and evening.

Three days later, Kaelen insisted on standing.

The old healer inspected the darkened toes before allowing it. He touched each one gently and watched Kaelen’s face.

“Anything?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Pain? Pressure?”

“Maybe pressure.”

The healer drew the blanket back over his legs.

“Today you may stand beside the bed. That is enough.”

Kaelen gripped the bedframe. His arms shook before his feet reached the floor.

With the healer supporting one side and an attendant the other, he stood.

The room tilted.

He shut his eyes until it settled.

“There,” the healer said. “Now sit.”

“I could walk to the door.”

“You could fall on the way but if you are willing to try you should.”

Kaelen looked at the doorway. It seemed absurdly far away.

They let him try later, with an attendant’s arm beneath his own. At the threshold, his bare foot swung too close to the frame. One blackened toe scraped the wood.

Pain shot through it.

He stopped with a sharp breath.

“What happened?”

“My toe.”

The attendant helped him back to the bed. Kaelen leaned forward, frightened that he had torn it open.

The healer examined it.

“No broken skin.”

“It hurt.”

“Yes?”

“I felt it.”

The old man glanced up at him.

“That is useful to know.”

Kaelen looked at the ugly little toe again. It still frightened him. But he had felt the scrape all the way through it.

For the first time, he could imagine it healing.

That afternoon, a Rider arrived.

Kaelen was sitting against his pillows when the carrier placed a packet in his hands. He read the first line twice.

Blena is alive.

He pressed the paper flat against the blanket.

The Rider said something. Kaelen did not hear him.

For a little while, the rest of the message blurred beneath those three words.

Then he made himself continue.

Mechanum Ascendancy. Anderix. Tajan.

Alfadin. The Water Mage. The diversion of Heartwell power.

He reached for the earlier message beneath its wooden weight. It was a shorter account of the same news.

“Chief Parnaf,” he said. “Can someone tell him?”

“What shall I tell him?”

“Blena is alive.”

He looked down again, making certain the words had not changed.

“She’s in The Mechanum Ascendancy.”

* * *

Over the following days, Kaelen began walking the length of the healing room. His feet remained wrapped, and the old healer made him rest whenever the pain increased.

Kaelen asked about travelling every morning.

Every morning, the healer looked at his feet before answering.

Another carrier arrived while Kaelen was at the table beside the window, writing replies.

“Do you know Rahkhan?”

“No.”

“He sent this before the latest disturbance.”

Kaelen read the account of the monastery dead.

Eleven monks. Twenty Guardians.

He lowered the page.

“This Rahkhan was still there?”

“When the report left.”

A later warning from Mechanum lay beside it.

The Guardian Rahkhan entered the ring carrying recovered papers. His destination is unknown.

Kaelen read that sentence several times.

“Have a drink,” he told the carrier. “But don’t drink the tea. Trust me.”

The man chose water. He found a few dried wheat crackers in his bag and softened them in the cup while Kaelen arranged the reports.

“He knew what was happening,” Kaelen said.

“Who? The Sylvan Guardian?”

“Yes.”

“All us Riders know is that he wanted his account of the events to reach you.”

Kaelen drew a clean sheet towards him.

“Then it has.”

He began a summons, naming the places where each message should be forwarded. Delrona had taken control of Kefar and was now at Alfadin. Heartwell’s charging was slowing. Blena, Anderix and Tajan were travelling to the Mosaic Isles.

They needed to reunite. He wondered where Alster and Drue were and he asked the Rider.

“What’s become of Drue? Do you know his whereabouts?”

“He was heading for the Library of the Astryx Arcanum and that’s just between you and me with a healer from Veirilian Bloomlands.”

“Alster, yes I know him. Can you get word to Drue?”

“It won’t be fast but it we know what we are doing.”

Beneath the table, his feet began to throb. He shifted them onto the padded stool the healer had provided.

He could not yet reach the corridor without help. He had no idea how he would reach Alfadin.

But the messages could leave today.

At the bottom of the summons, he asked that any news of Rahkhan be carried with the same urgency.

When the packets were ready, the carrier gathered them.

“How many routes?”

Kaelen looked at the separate accounts Rahkhan had trusted to strangers.

“As many as we can trust.”

As long as it takes a blackbird to fly across the southern ocean and all of the Emberwild Dominion is how long it took for the Sylvan decision to get to Kefar. Delrona received Unon’s declaration at Alfadin a further 2 days after that beneath a sky streaked with fresh dust from the mountain that had been shaking on and off for weeks as adjustments were made without results.

Fateese read the first page aloud. While they were sitting at a table on the famous balcony of the monastery, once the site of prayer, now an exclusive breakfast table for two.

She stopped him halfway through.

“Who has copies?”

“The Crestrealm representatives. The Council. Several receiving authorities.”

“Several?”

“The accompanying note says the account has been sent through independent routes.”

Delrona held out her hand.

Fateese gave her the declaration.

She read the signatures.

Then she turned it face down on the table.

“Secure the paths. All installation correspondence is to be examined before departure. The reserve stores remain under my authority.”

“The Council may withdraw that authority.”

“The Council has not restored the crystal supply.”

Fateese looked at the guarded door.

“Neither have we.”

Delrona’s eyes lifted to his.

He waited.

Outside, a Guardian called for the next watch.

“Send the orders,” she said.

In Kefar, Menard read the Sylvan Watch Senate’s declaration to the High Council with his hands resting on either side of the paper.

The chamber windows stood open to the ocean square. Voices rose from below, carrying fragments of the Sylvan Declaration that troops would be arriving to arrest and return Delrona to Sylvan Watch, from one group to another.

Fateese’s place was empty.

Drell’s officer stood beside the doors.

“The Council withdraws the emergency governing authority granted to Ambassador Delrona,” Menard read. “Her office is directed to surrender control of the reserve stores, release the installation records and submit its actions to inquiry.”

A councillor near the window looked towards the officer.

He did not move.

Menard continued.

“The authority of the resident custodians at Alfadin is recognised, and the deaths reported there....”

“The resident custodians are dead,” another councillor said.

Menard lowered his eyes.

“That is just rumour,” interrupted the Guardian officer Drell had left with command of High Council security.

The silence lasted until a cry from the square reached the chamber.

One councillor gathered her papers.

“Then we should find out if the rumour is true. The Sylvan Watch senate certainly believes it. Troops are on their way.”

The officer walked into the middle of the chamber and signaled to his Guardians to close the window. “There is no need for that.” The window closed and ten Guardians in Drell’s mix of Sylvan and Astryx garb marched in slamming the door to the chamber open when they entered. They drew swords and their blue crystal shields crackled to life. “I am going to ask you all to come with me. The council is adjourned”

Thy Quest: Authority and Accountability

Compare the Sylvan Senate’s response to Rahkhan’s report with the Guardians’ response to the High Council’s declaration. Use one specific detail from each scene. Explain what these responses reveal about who can question authority and how evidence can be protected.