9 October 2026
A warm welcome back to all our readers! We remind all that last week, in the installment from the third book of our Redemption series, The Morgle Unmasked, Tevvy, on his way south to his father’s school and just north of the village of Kilnar, he found a mercenary and merchant, arguing about going back into the nearby Mariskal swamp to recover the merchant’s lost goods; the mercenary refused, heading off to the village. Tevvy, seeing the merchant was deranged because of what happened, put him to sleep with a potion and began to carry him into the village. . . . (4 April 2016) The full ebook version of this book is available for purchase from all ebook sellers. We remind all that the first book in this series, Chosen of the One, and the second book, Staff of Shigmar, are both free from Smashwords! Glossary links: Book 3, Book 2, Book 1
Chapter 4, Part 2
Half-an-hour later, Tevvy walked down the dirty street toward an inn owned by an acquaintance of his father, at the south end of the town’s single street, an inn called the Jakal’s Grin. About halfway through town he stopped, staring at the placard hanging above the door to an inn called the Green Beast. The sign bore the distinct outline of a morgle. He nearly turned aside to go in, but that voice–his grandmother’s–warned him that such an action would be unwise without first finding out what he could from his father’s friend. He walked on, turning aside when he reached the familiar sign.
“Does your village still have a healer?” he asked the Jakal’s groom.
“Yes, sir,” the young wethi replied.
“This merchant,” Tevvy went on, “Merik by name, is not right in the head. I gave him a sleeping draft so that I could bring him to town; he wanted to run off back to the swamp and rescue his wagons by himself. Take him there and let the healer know,” he said to the groom, then he pointed to the pouches hanging from Merik’s belt. “He appears to have plenty of currency, so make sure that it gets to the healer.” Tevvy flipped an argentu to the groom. “Then you can see to my pony.”
The groom nodded and took Tevvy’s reins. He wished the kortexi were here, so he could have seen how Tevvy had every opportunity to steal the incapacitated merchant’s purse, but he did not. Karasun! Wretched kortexi! Tevvy cursed to himself, and, shaking his head, he entered the inn.
“Good day, Jak,” he said.
“Tevvy, what brings you to this refuse heap?” Jak growled. He was tall and strong with black hair and beard, his arms covered with the same black hair. An eye patch covered his left eye. “Some business of your father’s, no doubt.”
“Ale,” Tevvy said, flipping another argentu onto the bar.
Jak filled a mug and set it down in front of the awemi.
Tevvy took a long drink from the mug before setting it on the bar and wiping his mouth. He sighed. “There is very little ale in Shigmar,” he said, “so that even your swill tastes good.”
“You were in Shigmar?” Jak asked, lowering his voice. “What happened? The tales we have heard are . . . unbelievable,” he finished after a moment’s hesitation. “Armies of purem and nekerpum destroying the city, marching on and laying siege to Holvar, the Fereghen and all his legions of seklesem destroyed, and,” he lowered his voice so that Tevvy had to lean forward to hear his final whisper, “a weapon that destroys mountains, cities, and armies.”
Tevvy leaned back and drank again from his mug, thinking hard about what he should say. He was surprised at how many grains of truth were contained in the rumors that had reached Kilnar and Jak’s ears. He sat down his now empty mug and waited while Jak refilled it. “Have you ever heard of something called the ‘Prophecy of Shigmar?’” he asked. Jak looked back at him blankly, so he went on. “It speaks of those ‘chosen of the One,’ who will come at the center of the ages to both ‘save and destroy’ the world?”
Jak’s brow wrinkled for a few moments with thought. “I think I remember my mother telling me something like that,” he said. “Does it describe each of them as being members of the different orders, like the kailum, and the kortexem?”
Tevvy nodded. “That is the one,” he said, and took a sip of his mug. He looked around the inn’s common room, noticing that it contained the usual assortment of late-afternoon drinkers, so he lowered his voice to a whisper and leaned forward. “I have met them, and traveled with them,” he whispered to Jak.
Jak’s eyes widened. “Are you saying . . . ?”
Tevvy interrupted. “We live in momentous times,” he noted. “Do you recall the one in the prophecy described as the ‘cunning mouse?’” he asked, still whispering.
Jak nodded, eyes riveted on Tevvy. “I think I remember that one.”
“He’s here, speaking to you,” Tevvy said.
Jak’s eyes flashed around the room. “If I did not know and trust your father, I’d say you’d been bathing in brandy!” He put his hand on Tevvy’s forearm. “That’s not something I’d mention too freely.” He raised his voice suddenly, so that the entire common room could hear. “You say you were at Shigmar when it was attacked?”
All heads turned toward the bar, faces eager.
Tevvy recognized the wisdom of Jak’s ploy, so he replied in the same voice. “I was, and I can tell you exactly what happened, as long, that is,” he said, “as my throat doesn’t get too dry.”
There followed many offers to refill his mug and the scraping of chairs as the inhabitants gathered around the bar. Tevvy launched into an account, carefully edited, of what had occurred at Shigmar. After a few questions, Marka, Jak’s barmaid, expressed the biggest concern of the locals. Marka was a thin, young wetha with dirty blonde hair; she would have been pretty had her nose not been so large and bulbous, looking out of place on her elfin face framed by all that dark gold hair.
“Who will train the kailum to be our healers?” Marka asked. “Our healer is old; where will we get someone to replace him if there is no school?”
“We cannot go to the red kailum,” Felrek, a local farmer, said. He was a stocky, weather-worn figure with chiseled features on his pock-marked face beneath a shock of black hair. “They do not help anyone but themselves, and the genewum are unreliable, too obsessed with nature,” he added, grimacing, making his face look even more chiseled.
“Not all the kailum are at Shigmar,” Tevvy said, “in fact, most of them are scattered across our land. So they will gather soon, I’d imagine, choose from among them those who will become masters of the school, and begin the rebuilding process. We may have shortages in the next few years, but I’m certain they will work something out. Have the green kailum ever let us down?”
Most listening shook their heads; the locals got up to leave and take news back to their families; the rest of the Jakal’s patrons turned back to their drinks.
“Well-spoken,” Jak said to Tevvy, “you’ve done your father proud, I think. Anything Wild Jak can do to help you out?”
Again, Tevvy looked around the common room warily before speaking in a lower voice. “I passed an inn on the way to the Jakal and got quite the surprise,” he said in a whisper. “On its sign was the likeness of the creature who led the assault against Shigmar, The Green Beast.”
“An ill name,” Jak noted, filling a mug for himself and taking a long drink before speaking again. “It opened several years ago, and the odd thing is, some of the people who frequent it disappear.”
“Disappear?” Tevvy asked.
“Not all at once,” Jak went on, “but a few every month. The person goes in one night and never leaves. The family investigates, employs help, but no trace is ever found. One family even went to Rykelle and asked for help of the seklesem, stationed in that city; they found nothing.”
“The seklesem found nothing?” Tevvy said, thinking suddenly of Rokwolf and Marilee: they would not have failed to find the truth, and neither would Tevvy. He finished his mug and stood up.
“What are you doing?” Jak asked.
“That beast is tied to what happened in Shigmar,” he replied, and then lowered his voice again. “One of the reasons I came south was that we believe the morgle who led the assault came from the Mariskal; I arrive in Kilnar and find its likeness on an inn that you tell me has a reputation for people vanishing.”
“There’s more,” Jak said.
“More?” Tevvy asked, eyebrows rising.
Jak nodded. “I suspect that their drink is drugged.”
“How do you know?” Tevvy asked, more interested.
“I sent one of my grooms over to investigate,” Jak went on, “a few days after it opened. He came back, funny, like he was drugged. The next day, he went back and never returned to work; he was one of many who disappeared.” Jak stopped and drank his mug dry. Tevvy waited in silence, giving the innkeeper time to recover. Finally, he spoke again, in his normal gruff voice. “Wait until the wagons arrive from Rykelle; there will be more coming and going, and people looking for places to stay.”
“How much longer, do you think?” Tevvy asked.
“Not too long,” Jak said, “maybe half-an-hour.”
“Good. Then you can tell me what is going on with the caravans going west,” Tevvy said. “I brought a half-crazed merchant back to town; I found him on the bridge, raving about monsters and wanting me to help him get his merchandise back.”
Jak frowned. “Over the last few months, there have been more problems on the road west, more caravans attacked by the creatures of the Mariskal, which is not unusual, as some years there are more attacks, some years there are fewer. Late this last winter, however, a caravan coming east was attacked near this side of the swamp, right at sunset. Only one of the mercenaries survived; he staggered into town the next day, blood-stained and white as an anemu, raving about monsters that would not die. He died two days later of a disease that our healer had never seen and could not cure. No one thought much about it, until more and more reports came back; fewer and fewer caravans were getting through, and now, there aren’t many willing to try. Merik was the last, and he had a terrible time hiring anyone to guard his caravan.”
“And they didn’t even make it past this edge of the swamp,” Tevvy added. “Anything else about these monsters?”
Jak sighed and refilled his mug. “From all that I’ve heard, and you can imagine how much the reports are inflated, the creatures are ten to twelve feet tall, very strong, green skinned, and they feed on living flesh.”
“Sounds like the wedaterem, but with green, rather than blue, skin,” Tevvy mused.
Jak shrugged. “They’ve been seen in the swamp before, but there were few of them, and they were solitary creatures–those did not come back to life after they were killed.”
“What?” Tevvy asked, spitting out and choking on his ale.
“You heard me,” Jak replied, “come back to life. All reports tell how the creatures are cut to pieces, the mercs turn away, thinking they have won, then the separate pieces grow into new creatures in seconds, so instead of fighting off, say, six, the six become twelve, or eighteen, or more, depending on how many pieces the original creatures were cut into.”
Tevvy discovered his mouth hanging open and closed it hastily. “Surely this is an exaggeration, since new creatures cannot form from each piece of a single creature: that is not possible!”
“I hardly believe it myself,” Jak replied, “but everyone who survives tells the same story, and the seklesem that have stopped here on their way to or from the Forsaken Outpost have corroborated the stories.”
Tevvy shook his head slowly. “And you thought what I told you was unbelievable.”
Jak smiled. “You said it yourself: these are momentous times.”
They fell silent for a time, the sounds of the other hushed conversations filling their ears. Jak wiped the bar, then picked up the tray of empty mugs and carried it to the kitchen. He came back a few minutes later carrying a tray filled with clean mugs and began to stack them on a shelf under the bar. He stood up when he finished and laid the empty tray on the bar, looking toward the inn’s front door.
“Sounds like the first ones might be arriving from Rykelle,” he noted.
“Huh?” Tevvy said, looking up.
Jak smiled. “You won’t find out what’s going on at the Beast if your thoughts are a hundred miles away, or have they wandered back to your father’s school and a certain . . . ,” Jak went on, but Tevvy cut him off.
“Watch it, Jak!” Tevvy snapped. “I was thinking about those creatures, wondering if the morgle who attacked Shigmar might have something to do with their changed behavior.”
“Why would you say that?” Jak asked.
“Something Merik said in one of his more sane moments,” Tevvy replied. “He said that it seemed as if the creatures knew they were coming, as if they were waiting for them to arrive, waiting to ambush them.”
Jak shrugged, then nodded toward the door and the street outside. “Look’s like now’s your chance to find out,” he noted.
“Keep my dinner warm,” Tevvy said, slipping out of the inn.
On Monday we will follow Tevvy as he enters this other inn bearing the likeness of the morgle who attacked Shigmar Until then, we remind all that the first two books of this series, Chosen of the One and Staff of Shigmar, are free from Smashwords. Get this book, The Morgle Unmasked, from the links provided. Good reading!
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