The Hidden Vale of Cultured Brutes
Tomes of Amaxathroth > Scholars

The fat, pock-faced dockmasters of Calland greatly prize the blue-black horns of mountain jalsque. They grind the horns of that ill-tempered beast for philtres to ply upon Calland maidens, or as bribes for lustful sorcerors of Magak and Harumetha. Why, the great and reviled Massas had a horn to mount upon each and every torch bracket of her reception hall - until she was cut apart and burned by those captains whose labor filled her coin vault. This, I am sure you know already. Let me tell you a little more, however, for nearby lies an interesting tale.

Lulled from sense by Calland coins, the foolish have long traveled to the dolesome Grey Peaks, a wall of few doors that divides the lands of men. There, they seek the jalsque with spear and net. Most are caught and slowly consumed by winged demons, or crushed by the Garamek Worm that coils itself about an entire mountain. Yet there are some few who have made their names known by luck or skill in the hunt.

Torthen the Climber claimed the skulls of twenty jalsque in his years as hunter of the Grey Peaks, proof of his worth piled before his tumbledown tower outside the gates of Calland. Such was his renown, none sought to disturb his cobwebbed door in the year and day of a hunt.

It came to pass that Torthen followed a mighty red jalsque of great strength, far into the Grey Peaks, farther than any man of Callend had gone before. Steep and jagged were the mountainsides, lacking path and shelter - and the demons flew above, screaming to one another. For all his prowess with spear and slope, Torthen would have been carried away to torment by the winged horrors, but that a great storm of rain and sudden rivers came upon the mountains. In but a short time, the the treacherous rocks slid Torthen the Climber into a deep ravine, and pinned him there above a raging torrent.

Upon awakening as the storm had passed, Torthen found himself surrounded by misshapen brutes - shambling echoes of men, twisted of face and thick of limb, yet clad in well-made clothing after the fashion of craftsmen. They set upon him, binding him, and there was naught he could so ambushed and half-buried by rocks carried with his fall. The brutes carried him away, running like jalsque across slopes that no man of Callend could match, grunting to one another in a coarse tongue.

The brutes carried Torthen down and down into a green valley of grass and twining trees below the high peaks, and there he saw many more of their kind. Every tree was set precisely, and huts and halls of carefully-fitted stone formed a circle at the very center of it all. If not for the ill-shaped creatures before his eyes, Torthen might have thought himself within a sanctuary of those who built ancient Yorm, long before the sands overtook its well-formed streets.

Placed and barred within a hut, alone upon a well-crafted bed, it did not take Torthen long to slip his bonds. Was he not Torthen the Climber, who wrestled down his fifteenth jalsque and broke its neck across a high rock spur with his own hands? However well made and well tied, the ropes of half-men would be no obstacle.

Through barred and slatted window of finely waxed wood, then, Torthen saw a gathering of brutes from all across the vale. Such an array of faces and bodies - fit only for the drug-addled dreams of beggars in the spice markets of Alacran, or the waxen curse figurines that Magaken sorcerors melt to bring anguish upon their victims. Yet in form of the most peaceful and civilized people of ancient Yorm did these brutes consort themselves, gathering and speaking in turn as wise sages. About and through their ugly, polite throng passed a large and well-used book of leather, marked well upon its bindings by a blackened symbol I think you well know - yes, a tome of Amaxathroth.

Yet Torthen knew not then what he saw, more valued than all the jalsque horns of the Grey Peaks. Perhaps it is as well, for even had he escaped with the tome as well as his life - there are a thousand who would slay him for it. But escape Torthen did; whilst the brutes held council and debated in their gruntish tongue, he took stones from the far wall and slipped away, stealthy and unseen, as only a hunter can be.

I have heard like tales as this one. I have heard tell of Borok of the White Spears who sought to loot great red rubies from mines of the Reddened King in the mountains above the Edge-Walled City. Or of Nelphen the Sea Captain, run aground upon a fog-bound isle where the distant mountain-tops shone with gold. Yet there is always the hidden vale, and the brutes who act with a manner that is gone from the world of men - and there is always the tome of Amaxathroth.

More than this, I do not know. Perhaps there are those who do, but their price may be too high for one who desires to keep both limbs and blood.

[ Posted by Reason on October 21, 2006 ]