[b]Monavdu, Aylsfyn[/b]

“I want to hear the one about Refir the Red!” the young boy shouted out. His hands balled into fists, and raised excited into the air. His stout legs sunken deep into the pillows and cushions he had thrown into a pile to sit on.

He looked to be no older than seven. His face pale and portly. Nose small, sapphire blue eyes wide. His silver-golden hair lay hap-hazardly down his back in tender pig-tails. The young prince was as well adorned in fine robes, far different than the modest – if still former – attire of the bard trying to amuse him.

“Excuse me my lord?” he asked with a small humored smile. He was an older man, passed the better half of his life with six children of his own. Violent arthritis had claimed his hands and stolen his ability to hold a hammer. Bags of time weighed on his dark-brown eyes. The light of the warm fires in the room's meany hearths illuminated his sage-like appearance, and he was as much kissed by the sun as the hermits who traveled the kingdom and the Sephali mainlands.

“I want you to play it!” the young prince Bern scoffed, “I am old enough!”

The bard laughed, hoisting the lyre up higher on his lap. He may not be able to close his hands, but he at the least taught himself to keep playing the lyre still. It was enough to put him in the king's court and earn him extra coin. “I dare not say you are still.” he said softly, “It's a song of great violence, and other things young children shouldn't know about.”

“And I am older!” the boy stubbornly insisted, throwing his hands down into the pillows and throwing himself down into thick, “I asked last month and I am not a month older!”

The bard couldn't help but laugh. He knew full well that it could have gotten him in trouble with his liege, especially in the wrong circumstances. But all it could do was make the young prince's face grow redder. “I've heard it at court!” he shouted. “In the late hours, in the weeks past! I am old enough!”

The confession only made the old man's face grow number as he laughed. “And what were you doing up so late?” he crooned, “What would your mother – the queen – think?”

“She doesn't think,” Bern admitted, “she's too stupid, like you.”

“Now boy, that far to sour a thing to say.” the Bard said. A sour note hung on his tongue, “Even a highborn as of yourself shouldn't mistreat your elders so.”

“I don't care.” Bern growled in a low tone, “I am a prince! I can get any of your head chopped off. And I will demand my father let me watch just to prove I'm old enough!”

“How do you know your father's opinion will differ?” the bard asked.

“Because he's the Inquisitor, he gets people inquisited and then they die.”

“Oh really?” the Bard toyed.

“Yes, he says so and they die...”
“But do you know why?” the bard replied.

Bern drew him a sharp biting stare. His lips curled down in an impatient frown. The way he furrowed made the bard laugh softly to himself. “What are you laughing at?” the prince asked.

“You remind me of my sons when they were your age...” he said in a soft wistful sigh.

“Did my dad kill them?” Bern remarked, hoping for an insult. But the bard merely traded him a happy distant stare.

“No.” he said, “They are far away... I have not seen them in a good ten winters.”

“I hope they died.” Bern mumbled grumpily. Crossing his arms as he lay back on his mountain.

“Do you even know what you're saying?”

“I do. I want you to die. You won't sing me my song! You took an oath to do so!”

“An oath is a fantastic over-exageration!” laughed the Bard, “Do you really understand what you're demanding?” he added, in a harder tone. Leaning over on his knee towards the pouting prince.

Bern was silent for a long moment, before finally admitting, “No.” At heart it wasn't something he made to relieve himself of his happiness. But to end the stupid. “But I'm sure when Theodocis teaches me, I will know! And you'll still die!”

“Well, maybe when you understand I will sing you the song and I can live.” the Bard smiled, “Until then, how about Vesha the Mongoose. Or Mepa the Wolf?”

“Those are baby songs.” Bern grumbled, “I don't want baby songs anymore.”

“Baby?” the Bard laughed, “I've heard them sung in many a wine-house across the city. You would not call the men there babies would you?”

“Yes!” Bern grumbled, “I'd call them all baby men.”

The bard smiled and nodded. His gaze drew itself along the walls to the windows. Outside the sky had darkened, and was taking on a faint maroon glow. “I say it's almost time for dinner.” he said softly with a old man's smile, “Let us go down to eat.”

[b]Aylsfyne, Kirshna Forest[/b]

(Took over a bit for Theodocis, Googer. But you'd know that.)

The horses of Skullding and Theodocis clodded along the jungle road. They moved slow, avoiding the roots and low branches that loomed in the underbrush that had grown over the stone and dirt tracks left behind my generations of travelers past. It was by no means the most traveled road. But it was the most direct route to Makan, the homestead of the Bjorni clan.

Ancient flagstones and cobble peered out from under the thick bladed grass and creeping green vines, hinting at the story of the old road. The worn and rutted stones suggesting a time of greater travel. But now the highway was so lightly taken it had been choked by the trees. Blooming upward they covered the sky, raining in a soft shade that cooled the forest and protected it from the harsh sun that loomed over them day and night.

In either direction alongside them the trees and brush marched in an impenetrable mass. Thick with twisted brambles and trunks greater than five fat, well-fed oxen. All around them birds called and jeered. A chaotic symphony of squawks, chirps, and cawing. Occasionally, the song-like calls of rarer birds, or the whopping of peacocks punctuated the noise of the forest.

Skullding looked out in the woods. He didn't fear bandits, his kind had built a reputation on rumors for turning men into a pillar of fire on the spot. No lay high-way men would charge a man in robes thinking it was a good idea. Nor the heavily equipped rider behind him.

Skullding turned comfortably in his saddle, looking back at Theodocis behind him. The young man looked pained and uncomfortable. He had heard the stories of his people, that they had not thought to ride a horse. They ate them. It was a strange thought, more-so on the rarity of the consumption of horse on the island of Monavdu, though then again much of the dark-skinned Sephali preferred to consume plants or fish than animals that walked.

“When we arrive I will be sure to lend appropriate time to recover.” Skullding promised as he turned back to the road, “I can promise my investigations will be of some time, and you will find yourself with the time to feel your balls once again.”

The wizard could feel the uncomfortable glowering of his companion on his back as he road. “Thank you for the comfort.” the prince grumbled coldly.

The two continued to ride on through the afternoon. Slowing the horses to a light walk to give them rest as they continued to trot on through the thick forest. Delving deeper, hills rose and fell, giving brief glimpses at rolling empty groves. Even more distant, stone towers rose from the hills. Vacant and emptied, even from a mile away the thick vines crawling up their stone faces could be seen. Black clouds flew in and out as birds went between their nests and the fruit-rich jungles around them.

The jungles had many lost treasures and structures such as that. Ancient tombs and castles. Many the road cut through or by. Many of these used informally as road stops, as Skullding knew from his inquistory journeys. The ancient remains of an ancient culture. One the Sephali knew well as the Bambezi.

The rich trove of forsaken monuments made no strangers to the travelers as they wound through the hills. As the interior became more erratic and the day darker statues of massive great apes stood out in the natural granite and limestone of the hills. Holding out lost insignias and draped in thick robes of green as the jungle sprouted forth from their armor and hide.

Eventually, the day darkened to a point they had to retire their journey. Leaving the road they made through a narrow brush-choked path up a hill. Reaching a clearing where stood a modest keep, or watch tower. But built no different from the far-off structures that rose from the jungle's interior.

Skullding lead Theodocis into the courtyard of the empty keep. A thick creeping banyan tree. Its root and trunk reaching out over the walls, like the remains of some ancient siege tower that took the fort in older times. Even going so far as to clutch stones in its grip, or to pierce the windows of the stepped bastion that stood at the far end of the courtyard. The ancient weathered faces of apes centuries dead, or a millennia, looked down at them unapprovingly as Skullding set about starting a fire, and as Theodocis messaged the inside of his thigh.

“If you persevere one more day then maybe we can be in Bjorni's by dinner,” Skullding said, his tone soft with a polite counseling tone. A flint and tinder held gently in his wrinkled hands as he went to work lighting a pile of tinders, “And you begin to forget the pain with the lord's mead. I will see he his obliged to serve you plenty.” the old wizard looked up as sparks cracked in his fire-to-be and the sticks and leaves smoked and popped, whining softly as the fire grew into a clear, infantile state.

Theodocis returned the promise with a pleading stare, hovering over the fire.

“Will you sit?” Skullding invited, reaching into his pack for some firewood he carried.

“I think I'll stretch my legs.” Theodocis said smartly.

“It would be wise.” the wizard laughed.

As the small logs the wizard carried were placed on the fire and its light grew as the sky darkened Theodocis finally came to sit down. His gaze plied up the busts on along the watch-tower's face. “What do you know of the ape men of Monavdu?” the wizard asked.

“I'm afraid I don't know anything...” the prince said, “This land makes me curious every day I'm here.”

“It rightly should.” Skullding smiled, “It has many curiosities.”

“What do you know of these 'ape men'?” Theodocis asked

Skullding looked up at him, then the ancient, weathered busts. “They are the Bambezi.” Skullding chimed, “What we know of them comes from the folk songs. What more I know of them, I try to gleam from the ruins when I visit them.

“As the stories say, their empire once spanned the southern coast. They held ultimate power where it was warm. From Monavdu they ruled.

“They looked much like a man, but had tails like lions. Their skin black as night, and bodies coated in fur like a wolf. Their civilization was grand: ancient. From the days when humanity was young they presided over Monavdu and beyond as their kingdom. Building structures even greater than this.”

Theodocis gave the wizard a curious expression. Skullding caught his bewilderment, “Somewhere deep in the jungles, or lost to the sea, but no one knows, is their citadel of Numba.”

“How do you know it existed?” Theodocis asked.

“The songs say its name. There is a Sephali fable of the lizard-king Jicarta who sought to capture the monkey king of Numba, but was instead fettered off into the wilderness when he was outsmarted with the monkey king's allies: the hawks. But it doesn't say where it was.

“I imagine these fables were learned by man early when the Bambezi still walked alongside them, watching the ancient kingdoms of man rise and fall.”

“If they were so great, where'd they go?” the northern prince asked.

Skullding shrugged, “I don't know.” he said, “None of my colleagues from anywhere else in the holds seem to know either. It's a matter of discussion. Some would say though, their era ended and their time passed. Death swept them away to their next paradise for achieving so much.”

The wizard went silent as he dug in his travel bags, digging out a simple loaf of bread, “Shall we dine?” he offered