Season 2

TL;DR

They rode west under contract, to open a Mól ruin in the mountains for a scholar who meant to publish it. The escort came apart inside a week; the valley’s famous curse turned out to be a gnoll tribe eating whoever came through; and behind the last door in the keep a bound Peren spirit named the real one: a single working laid on all of Idir and all Peren, held in seven keeps, with these three chosen to break it by the woman who pulled the Mól Empire down. Nobody paid them for any of it. They came home to a burning Loshev, a bank that had kept their money, and a city where the man who bankrolled the slavers now commands the guard.

First seen

• The Elder: the Peren spirit bound in the keep, waiting for whoever was prophesied
• Vëné: named and never met; who pulled the Mól Empire down
• Al-Sāmiyah: the exalted matriarch, nesting above the keep
• Rakhzan: hobgoblin patrol leader out of Draazstone; a guide first and a partner after
• Telvanius: the enslaved historian whose ciphered volumes armed the revolt

What changed

• The curse has a shape, and the company’s name on it. One working on all Idir and all Peren, bound in seven keeps (six located, the seventh lost, none broken), and Vëné’s three named to end it.
• The Mól Encyclopædia is a cipher: a binding’s filigree color indexes the subject hidden under the plain one, and the alchemy volume is legible.
• They own property and hold no money. An estate in Loshev, land in Westwood, and a bank that declared their accounts defunct and kept the gold.
• Beltran Grayeras commands Haudh-Gwenn’s guard: force purged, docks taxed, a private army raised over the winter and marched east at the thaw.
• Part of Loshev has burned, and whatever burned it lights buildings by hand.

Left open

• Where the seventh keep stands, and which three can fall in the same hour.
• Where an army marches in early spring, and what it means to take.
• Who lights fires by hand: Orsugo, gnolls he has armed, or somebody wearing his legend.
• What is consuming Gwenivere Velmont, and whether anything undoes it.
• Why Koa can see a spirit only Peren should be able to perceive.

Synopsis

The escort came apart before the mountains did

Loshev settled its debt in property rather than coin: the dead Alex Westwood’s emptied house, land in Westwood, a year of Forven’s tax, and a writ for rooms nobody could reach in time. Then west, under contract. Elliot had hired the Valiant Few to open a Mól ruin in the western mountains for the knowledge in it.

The company he assembled did not last the week. Elliot could not ride and was sent home; Jaden went south alone after the soldiers lost in the mountains; Harveen deserted. At the ground where the Amultans were taken stood a cairn with a monogram cut into its face (RC), and under it Raerin Corvain, on nobody’s word but Harveen’s. What the three had in place of an escort was a hobgoblin patrol out of Draazstone under Rakhzan, which turned out of its own road to walk them to the goat pass for nothing.

The curse of the valley had teeth

Travelers are found torn apart in the Valley of Doom, or not found, and no story about it names a beast. What answered Koa’s roar one morning was an animal cackle: hyenas up the trail, gnolls behind them, and a dropped sack of chewed leather and travelers’ scraps. The curse eats whoever comes through, and seen later from the air it is not a band but a tribe, in the hundreds.

Everything else there had a mechanism too. The red door at the cliff’s foot gave to acid, lye and a tarnished ring worn as a conductor, because Mól metal carries a current, which is also what runs through Loshev’s ancient bridge, and what nobody in that town could ever explain. Behind it lay three hundred feet of trapped stair.

Seven keeps, and a spirit that could not recall its own name

Past a twelve-symbol dial that had to be read before it would turn lay a stone table carved with the map of Idir as it stood seven hundred years ago. There Koa saw a flickering figure Aldo could not see, and Mikhail heard a voice neither of the others heard.

The Elder is Peren, and old, and bound there to wait for whoever was prophesied. There is one curse, he said, on all of Idir and all Peren alike; in Idir it is the Shattered Throne, so that any true ruler goes mad and his realm crumbles under him, which is why the country has never held a government worth the name. The Mól made the Peren by alchemy; the Peren pulled the empire down under Vëné, who chose these three. Seven keeps bind the working; break three in the same hour, or all seven inside a moon, and it ends.

The great eagle nesting above the keep carried Aldo off over a dead mate and a cracked egg; the party read it as a message, tracked the poachers to Rakhzan’s own crew and bought the eggs back, and Al-Sāmiyah has carried riders since. And the book Mikhail picked off a floor proved to be the Mól Encyclopædia: thirty volumes by Telvanius, a Peren slave raised to imperial historian, who hid the empire’s weaknesses in code beneath entries on flora and trade.

They had ridden west for a paid dig, and came away with an errand nobody was paying for.

Home, and paid nothing for it

They buried Orsk under a cairn coming down the Goat Trail, and Loshev sang songs at them. Then Elliot admitted for the first time that he had only ever agreed to fund the expedition, never to pay a fee for it; Koa followed him into the cold and talked him into wintering at the estate anyway.

Hinta of Draazstone, paid in the party’s spear, named what a Mól blade actually is: electrum run through the steel as a conduit. Then Aldo wore a dismissed cook’s face to rob the auction of the party’s own confiscated furniture, and an innocent man was jailed for it. Koa would not have it (we can’t become the corruption we fight) and stood the night watch himself so the books could be slipped back and found. That same night something tall and fur-covered with a long dog’s face walked through Loshev lighting buildings with a gesture. People died, part of the town burned, and Yara came out of it with nothing but her axe.

A winter in somebody else’s city

They went downriver. Forven had lost its captain: Cazzik trapped his own house, killed the men sent to arrest him and ran east. Haudh-Gwenn was worse: a wall of new uniforms in the market that the locals stepped around without looking at, and over them Beltran Grayeras, who paid for the slaver ring the company broke and whom they had chosen not to name before a council. He purged the force, taxed the docks and set a hundred men training under mercenaries. The bank declared the company’s accounts defunct and kept the gold.

So the winter went into groundwork. Edrick pointed them at Johanka Materai’s cellar and its Mól-stone door onto a passage of the ruins’ own make. Gwenivere Velmont was told all of it, and is more tired every month. The Slumbering Queen took Mikhail on, trading him what the Arcane Congress would never sanction for what he knows of it. Then the roads dried, Beltran marched a hundred and twenty men east to a place nobody would name, and left a skeleton watch and a door the company already had the key to.