Chapter 1

The town was a quaint fishing village of a couple thousand. This road was the only land route by which visitors came, although visitors by boat were slightly more common. It had been many years since he had been here.

Back then he had been on a ship that had stopped briefly for supplies. It had been a quiet overnight stop. It had struck him as such a peaceful and relaxing place. He knew that this time, unfortunately, would not be the same. He adjusted a strap on the heavy pack he carried, and continued down the road.

He had to admit, despite the pebbles accumulating in his boots, and the overall ache in his feet from walking for so long, that he still preferred to travel by land. The sea, he had found, upset his stomach with all the swaying to and fro that boats tended to do in the waves. He had never liked that feeling that the floor beneath him wasn't quiet stable. He'd also found that most boat crews were superstitious. It was apparently almost as bad to be carrying a wizard as it was to have a woman aboard most ships, and almost every boat he'd traveled on had seemed anxious to be rid of him. The only one where they didn't seem to mind, had had a crew of mostly women. That trip had certainly been easy on his eyes, despite his stomach's complaints.

The village itself was nestled into the steep slope that led down towards the shoreline. The open sea beyond it seemed to sparkle in the afternoon sun, as ships and small boats both bobbed up and down in its waters. Most of the small boats, he knew, would belong to the fishermen coming back with the day's catch, and he wondered idly if the fishing was good this time of year.

To the north and south of the village were trees, and he thought that perhaps the village had grown some, pushing the trees back as it expanded. Smoke drifted from chimneys, and there were more warehouses past the distinctive rooflines of the fishmarkets at the south end of town.

About half the population were fishers, with most of the rest farmers, lumberers, and the like. If they had the financial support to build more extensive boat repair facilities, they would grow quickly into a city. At least he could see that he was not yet too late.

As he drew nearer, he could see that they'd built a low fence around the bulk of the central town, although it was more designed to keep animals from running off than to keep intruders away. No one manned the "gate", which was little more than a break in the fence, allowing the road to pass through it. He wondered what state, if any, the town guard was in, having the feeling that they'd never stand a chance if something ordinary were to happen. And what was coming would seem far from ordinary to their lives.

A few people glanced up at him and smiled politely as he passed down the main street, looking for the inns. He knew the town had held two inns at his last visit, but his memory on where to find them was muddled by the layouts of all the towns he'd been to between then and now. He headed down towards the docks, figuring he could get the information from someone there, who'd be accustomed to giving directions to strangers. He was in no mood to try and decipher local directions, which could often involve such advice as "turn at Bob's house". He just wanted a hot meal and a good night's sleep before he tried to find whomever was in charge of this town. He ought to warn them of what was coming.

The docks were busy with fishermen bringing in their catches. There were heavy clouds edging closer from the south, so the boats were in a little early today. From what he could see, they were not suffering from stopping an hour early.

He saw a man pointing towards parts of town to a small cluster of people. If there was a man here to get directions from, it was probably that man. Agmar headed towards him.

Closer up, he could hear the man reminding them to get documents signed when they were done, with whatever it was they were doing. Loading or unloading something, likely. Agmar stood outside the group a moment, wishing he had a staff to lean on. He supposed that was why all the other wizards always carried a staff.

Agmar never bothered with those affectations. No staff, no long beard, no pointy hat, not even a wand. None of that even helped, it just made it easier for others to look at one and realize, hey, that guy must be a wizard or something. In three days no one would need those clues to figure that out.

The group dispersed, most of them heading back towards one of the ships docked in the harbor. Agmar waited a moment more, as the man scribbled something into a large book he held, encased in a wooden cover. He closed the book, snapping a small latch into place before he turned and smiled at Agmar.

"Good day, traveler. What can I help you with?"

"Well, actually," Agmar said, returning the smile, "I'd be most obliged if you could point me towards any inns this town has to offer."

"Certainly! There's technically three inns in town. The Surf and Sleep, is back up the road a bit, and off to your right down the first crossroad. Lloyd's Beds is just off the docks, down there." He said, pointing. "They're a bit cheaper than The Surf, but they also don't offer food. Just the rooms. Then there's Lady Mary's, but um, most of her rooms are rented by the hour if you catch my meaning. Though I've heard she'll include meals for an extra charge." The man chuckled, giving Agmar a wink.

"Well, I am rather hungry," Agmar said with a grin. "Thank you."

"Sure thing, friend," the man said back.

Agmar nodded and smiled at the man before heading off to the Surf and Sleep. 'Just off the docks' did not sound restful enough for tonight.

Like inns everywhere, the Surf and Sleep had a sign hanging over the door. Enough people were literate that the name written at the bottom of the sign was sufficient to mark the place, but it seemed some unwritten rule that inns were supposed to have some sort of picture for their sign. Taverns were the same way, of course. In the case of the Surf and Sleep, the sign showed a four-posted bed floating on blue waves.

The building itself was a simple rectangle, two floors with one of the few slate roofs in the town. It had a covered porch that offered a rickety wooden rocking chair currently claimed by a fat tabby cat.

He stopped for a moment to scratch the lazy cat and found his first new friend in town.

The cat purred noisily at him while he scratched, followed by a long stretch when Agmar took his hand away. The cat's claws extended as he stretched his legs, rolling slightly onto his back as he did, and he yawned his boredom. He proceeded to stand up and hop heavily to the ground, the chair rocking back and forth as his weight left it. Agmar and the cat looked at one another for a moment, before Agmar turned and headed through the front door of the inn, the cat following curiously, a pace behind him.

The small foyer appeared empty as he entered, the light dim with only one of its lanterns currently lit. He noticed a door leading off to his left, where the main dining hall appeared to be, and stairs were in front of him, just beyond the counter, leading up to the second floor. There was also a hallway alongside the stairs, leading further back into the first level of the inn. Behind the counter, rows of numbered hooks with keys dangling on them topped small boxes for messages to be slipped into. As he leaned up against the counter, he noticed that the stool was empty, but a young man, about 13 years of age, was propped up on the floor snoring, his hand still marking the page he'd been reading in the book lying on the floor beside him. Agmar didn't see a bell to ring, as some inns tended to have, so he cleared his throat loudly instead.

The boy woke with the expected start, flinging the book under the desk with a reflexive jerk. He stood up, stammering his apologies while trying to straighten out his wrinkled tunic.

"How can we help you, sir," he eventually asked.

"I will be needing a room for at least three or four nights. Past that we shall have to wait and see."

"Excellent, sir. That would be fifteen kruppers a night, and then I can show you to your room. Do you have bags?"

"No," Agmar replied, reaching beneath his dark gray cloak for the specified coins. They were bronze, and named for some Lord Krupper, whose face the coins bore. He handed them to the boy five at a time. He noticed he was running low on them. He would have to get change from some more valued coins if the town was still here later.

"Thank you sir." The boy put the coins into a small locked box from under the counter, after making a notation in a ledger. He then took one of the brass keys off of its hook, and turned back to Agmar.

"Breakfast and Dinner are included with the room. Lunches are available, but at an extra charge. Breakfast begins at sunup and is available 'til midmorning. Dinner is usually available starting a little before sunset. Meals are served in the dining hall, right behind you there." He pointed at the doorway Agmar had noticed before. "Although meals can be brought to your room if arrangements are made in advance. If you'll follow me sir, I'll show you where the bathing facilities are on the way to your room. Might I carry your bag for you sir?"

He shook his head at the boy. "Lead on, I've got the bag." The boy turned and started up the stairs, periodically peering over his shoulder to make sure Agmar was following. He continued to talk on the way up, explaining that clothes could be laundered for a charge, and messages could be left at the front desk.

The baths were wood tubs separated from each other by folding dressing screens. There were four in the room. There was a fireplace on one wall with a giant cauldron of hot water. The boy pointed out the pump for refilling the cauldron, and buckets for taking hot water to the tubs.

"You can also pull that rope over there if the fire needs stoking, or if there's anything else needed. It rings a bell in the kitchen, so there's always that chance that right before meals it might take someone a few minutes to come up," the boy explained.

Then the boy led Agmar to his room. The room was nice enough, although not overly special. It was a single room, with a large bed taking up almost half of it. There was also a desk with a small chair, and a dresser with a small looking glass. A tall window stood open, letting in what was left of the daylight. There was a candleholder and fresh candles on the desk.

After confirming that Agmar had no questions, the boy handed over the key and left. Agmar set his bag down on the floor at the foot of the bed and just sat for a moment. He was hungry, but he decided he really should have a bath before dinner. It had been quite some time since he had had that luxury last.

He leaned forward and unlaced the leather cord that kept the largest portion of the bag closed, and rifled through its contents until he'd found a set of clean clothes to change into. He hadn't noticed soap or towels in the bathing area, so he pulled those items and a pair of shoes from the bag as well. He gathered his pile up in his arms and went back down the hall.

The room was still empty of others when he arrived, and he claimed one of the tubs close to a wall. He sat briefly to undo the laces on his thick leather boots, before pulling them off of his feet. He turned each of them over as he did, and small pepples and dust fell out of them onto the floor. He pulled the woolen socks off as well, before beginning to bring buckets of water from the pump to the tub. By the time he had it about half full, he was feeling extremely worn out. Seeing that the room was still empty, he quietly muttered a soft incantation and the large caudron lifted off it's hook and floated over the tub. He muttered some more, and it tipped and poured about half its contents into the tub before floating back to its place on the hook. With a small grin, he finished undressing and stepped into the now steaming tub.

He settled into the tub, which was just large enough for him to settle into comfortably. He focused his mind briefly on the pump handle behind him, and it began pumping water directly into the cauldron. He liked to leave things as he found them.

Shortly after the pump finished its work someone else entered the room. He listened to the movements. He could feel in his mind precisely where this person was, even with the privacy screens blocking his view. He heard the bucket dipping, and footsteps, and pouring, and then the process repeated itself. He considered looking over his shoulder at the cauldron behind him to see the person, out of curiosity, but he decided not to.

The next few days were going to be hectic. While he was somewhat hungry for human contact after having spent a fair amount of time away from civilization, he also wanted time to relax quietly first. Supper would not be so far off yet.

He had spent three months in the ruins of an ancient library. There he had found the answer to a set of bizarre sighting and incidents. There he had learned that events that had happened three times before were in fact part of a long cycle. It happened every two hundred years, at the second full moon of spring. That full moon was three nights off. Tomorrow or the next day the fishermen would notice the first warning sign. Of course they would not recognize it for what it was.

The other bather was at the next tub. Agmar heard undressing, and heard the person slip into the water. The comfortable sigh that followed belonged to a woman.

Something about the realization that there was a woman in the room with him, suddenly made him remember the soap. He reached over and picked it up. Lathering his arms, he reviewed in his mind the types of signs that he'd read about as leading up to events such as the one coming. He made a mental note to find the pregnant women in town first. A common sign was children being born early, or with demon horns or tails. In one instance all the pregnant women had given birth at once, all babies being born stillborn - even the ones who would have been old enough to be delivered at that point. He would not have wanted to be the midwife at that one, and hoped that something along those lines did not happen here. Other signs included crops suddenly dying, all milk going sour, and other such indications. In most cases, it seemed to occur over a large area, with multiple instances of the same problem.

In many places, the people would point fingers at the "newcomer" to town as having brought it down upon them. Especially if they knew he was a wizard. Agmar intended to hold that little piece of information to himself until he needed it, planning to pass for a scholar for the moment. Just because he'd needed magic to decipher the runes at the library, didn't make him any less a scholar for those last three months. And he'd certainly been around enough of them to know what they were like.

Realizing he'd just washed the same arm three times, he returned his attentions to getting the dust and dirt of the road off of his skin.

The sounds of the woman getting out of the water brought him back from more wandering. He hadn't even been particularly thinking about anything. That had been happening to him more and more often of late. He needed to relax. He promised himself that if he was still alive a week from now he would do just that.

He waited until he heard the woman dressing before he started out of the water himself. She finished up, and the door closed behind her as he was putting on his soft black shoes. Cleaned and dressed he was ready for supper, which would be available by now.

He dropped his towel and dirty clothes in his room before heading down. The dining room was not quite full, but full enough that there were no unclaimed tables. The crowd was mostly merchants and ship crews and travelers. The locals would be at their homes. With enough strangers in the room, nobody noticed one more.

Without taking the time to count them, he guessed at about thirty guests eating. Six were women, and he did find himself wondering which one had come and gone without a word. He picked one of the tables with more conversation, and selected one of three empty seats asking, "Is this seat taken?"

"Fine by me." The man sitting next to the empty chair shrugged. Agmar sat down in the chair and took a moment to survey those at the table as he grabbed one of the cups sitting upside-down in the center of it, and filled it from the large pitcher of water.

This particular table sat eight. He realized early on that it was unlikely that the woman sitting here had been in the bath earlier, as she was the wife of a local merchant. She and her husband were here conversing with a cargo ship captain and two of his crewmates. Another captain was also at this table, although his ship apparently did more passenger carrying than cargo. He had easily joined into the conversation, however, sharing his own stories of rough seas, pirates, and the occasional sea beast. The cargo ship captain had recently run into problems getting though a rocky pass, when a sudden storm came up. His ship had been dashed lightly against some rocks before they could drop sail, and had leaked some. They'd been able to patch it enough to get them to where they could have proper repairs done, but they'd lost an entire shipment of tea in the process. Some of the talk following his account revolved around the logistics of getting the boat fixed and the loss taken off the ruined tea.

Agmar listened quietly as he ate the dinner that had arrived early in the tale. It was a fillet of fish, served in a lemony sauce with some spiced rice and carrots. He hadn't had fish in some time, so it was a welcome change. He noted that the other man at the table, who'd agreed to Agmar sitting there, said nothing at all. He was a bulkier man than the others, who sat stroking his thick beard when he wasn't eating. He had his back to the wall, and seemed to spend as much time surveying the room as he did listening to the conversation at the table.

The rest of the table talk was the unremarkable conversations of visitors to a not overly large town. Agmar rather enjoyed it. There was some of the inevitable sharing of gossip--goings on in distant courts, the difference in prices from one land to the next, and the like. He listened to the stories of travel hardships, neither knowing nor caring how much of it was truthful.

Eventually he decided he had sat growing tired long enough, and excused himself quietly. His leaving did not seem to have any impact on the group. He had always been more comfortable on the occasions that he was able to remain anonymous.

He took the stairs gently out of habit, reducing the creakiness of them. He heard the stairs creak behind him with some one else's footsteps, but he did not look back. He went in his room and the footsteps continued. Two rooms down, he decided, feeling around with his mind out of habitual curiosity.

He undressed and climbed into bed. It was of only average quality, but was still the most comfortable place he had had to sleep in several months. Sleep came easily and he dreamt of the unknown woman in the bath.