3. Fever Dreams (Jerr)

Fever Dreams (Jerr)


  • _He had come home, complaining of aching bones and a cough. Amith frowned at him but did not mention the time he had spent recently, singing in damp caves. The small cooking fire provided some warm broth and he went o sleep swiftly. His temperature rose in the night as he alternately kicked off the furs and pulled them so close Amith grapped another set for herself. The fever grew and he began to speak in his troubled sleep.

    "No, this is why i hate caves . . . . uhhhh . . . she comes for me, she smells me . . . . .ow ow ow, dammit why is there never a king spider? . . . . uh . . .hello . . . yes its me again. "_

    The sands were hot under the feet, warmed by a sun which never showed its face. He looked around and smiled at the skeleton, shaking his head to show he had, again, failed to bring a bottle of wine.

    He wandered about for a time before his feet took him back to see . . . her. There she stood waiting with a smirk on her face. She knew that he would come. Out of protest he was not wearing the rags that he awoke near and her eyes ran up and down his body. The smirk widened.

    He straightened up under her scrutiny and returned the gaze. If you could ignore the horns and the wings she was a thing of beauty. Even with them she was drop dead gorgeous. He would not bow before her. Others had been nearby. They might tell Amith but they would find someone . . .Khaya, or maybe Sy . . .

    She made her offer in the usual way and he refused. "My life is too rich for me to lose a single moment, now. I have family, I have my tribe . . . "

    She laughed and he remembered. . . things to come. The tribe dying, leaving, him not coming back, he could see his son, fully grown and his wife, remarried to a true elf lord. "her time is so long that loyalty to you is but a passing things, an unpleasant chore, swiftly dealt with. Come, come, come to me and lie here. Maybe I will not take so much from you . . . "

    His eyes filled with tears but he stood strong. "No, I have friends, battle companions . . . "

    "Who this moment are robbing your body. Battle companions only help those they respect or fear. They do neither, with you. You will find, when you return, things missing. Come, come, lie for a moment. Forget the years and feel young again." She ran her hands down her body in a sinuous motion that would have made the skeleton, around the corner, moan.

    "No . . . I love her. I know she doesn't truly love me, but I will not betray the oaths of marriage. I wouldn't then and I won't now."

    "Till death seperates us? news flash, handsome . . .you ARE dead."

    A shimmy that involves wings has an extra jiggle to it you cannot imagine.

    "Never."

    Her sigh did interesteing things as she slolwy stepped off of the dias. "Never isn't that long, for me." She takes him by the wrists and lifts them up slowly.

    NO!

    Amith tries to make him comfortable only for him to yell NO! and toss her across the tent with feverish strength. Caught by surprise she mutters an elven oath and goes back to his side. The heat from his body rolls off in waves as his murmers die down ad the thrashes the blankets off once more.


  • She built a fire to warm the tent, and his body. He continued to breath slowly, right on the edge of life and death. The muscles of his face were relaxed, for the first time in days, but from his eyes tears slowly trickled.
    The cold wind bit at his face and hands as he walked away. He did not have a destination, just further from where, as he had been reminded, he did not belong. Fingers went numb as the snows began to fall. Vision was obscured and limited to a few feet in front if him but he continued to walk neither speeding up nor slowing down. A shadow appeared out for the wind spun snow and became Wren. "Yer doin good, lad. Though the path be hard you got the legs for it."

    The next shadow to materialize was Eluriel. She stood, a piece of wood in hand, which she was swiftly carving down into a bow. Her eyes swept him up and down in an evaluating manner and she nodded pleasantly. A shaving of wood flew from her knife and the wind picked it up and carried it to him. He grasped after it with his numb hands and managed to clasp it. The wood carried an odor of life, of growth. He took a deep breath and held it and his heart sung for a moment, the cold was driven back, life called to him and somewhere, deep down, he answered.

    "Ah, so life still has a hold on you." The voice filled the snowy land, coming from everywhere, and nowhere. "Why? How?"

    Jerr looked around and El was gone, shadows of wolves ran in and out of his vision range. A chill howl filled the air. There was a moment of fear and then he smiled and knelt down and opened his arms. A single wolf ran in from the outskirts to lick his face and pant on him, warm breath making him blink as he smiled. "Heya Kell." The wolf gave him another lick and vanished back into the snows. He looked up. "The land, I call to it evey morn. I suppose it calling to me was just a matter of time."

    "I've heard you, you call to gods, to Lathander and Tempus, Mystra and Siamorphe. Not to the land."

    Jerr chuckled. "Then you heard the words, but not the song."

    "Perhaps I should listen more carefully?"

    "Not for me to say. I don't even know you, do I?"

    "You do. But that is for later. Move along now, you don't want to be late."

    "Late for what?" But he started to walk again, still smiling and rubbing his face where the wolf had licked him.

    The wind picked up and friends whipped in and out of his sight, carried by the snow. Some yelled words of encouragement, others just smiled and watched. Druids circled him for a moment. A group of sisters reached out and called him sister, laughingly. Tiggles pegged him with a snowball. But still he walked on. Zyph and Mirk whipped by and he wondered about whether he had ever heard either one sing.

    And with that, the song came bubbling to his lips. It was not a hymn, in the standard sense of the word. No gods were named, no thanks or promises. But it came from his heart and it filled him up untill he knew that if he did not sing he would burst with the immensity of the song. His voice rose to the sky and banished the wind and the snow, the world was gleaming in a predawn light, all blue and white.

    Still singing he turned slowly to look back, the way he came and he saw all of them behind him, smiling and looking over his shoulder at something he had missed. Amith and Bel were in the crowd and it tore him to not go back and hold them. Others that he had not seen in a long long time were there, Tontou and Cotton waved and laughed. He grinned a rakish grin and then slowly turned.

    She looked down on him and it was hard to tell whether she was smiling or about to eat him. but then dragons often are that way. "You've wasted enough time here." She said. "Go home now." And her great mouth opened wide and breathed out a roar of flame that hit him, warmed him, and spun him off to a distant image of light and dark that slowly resolved itself into the face of his wife, leaning over him with fear on her face.
    With shaking hands he reached up and took her, pulling her down into a kiss. Then looking deep into her eyes he whispered with a raw raw throat. "I'm back"


  • _It is not easy, watching your husband scream to the skies. Harder to watch your father do so. Amith knew this and sent Bel on errands, visits, anything to keep him from the tent where Jerr still, after a full day, was trying to shriek. Spell after spell she used and none brought him any measure of comfort. She could no longer get any food or drink into him and worried that he might die of something so simple as thirst.

    In an odd moment she chuckled as she could hear what Jerr would say . . . "I've got quite a store of food and water on me. I'll be good for a while" Then he would pat his belly and laugh.

    She needed even that short interlude as she bathed his feverish body and prayed. She prayed for his strength, and for her own.

    And still he arched his back almost to breaking point, his mouth open wide, teeth bared, air whistling across his teeth. Then suddenly, at sunset, he relaxed completely, pulse dropping to something only an elf would have in a period of meditation. Breathing slow and low. And the fever ended as his body swiftly cooled, and cooled, and cooled. Far below normal temperature, to the temperature of the room itself._

    The Crystal statue of the stag slowly toppled, unable to stop itself. A single outcropping of rock, no bigger than your fist, shattered the staue and the shards shot in all directions. With them Jerr's consciousness fled and blessed darkness brought a surcease from the pain.

    He opened his eyes to a scene he had experienced but once before. A long table, laden with food and ale stretched into the distance. Skeletons and warriors sat easy next to each other, joking and sharing tales of battle of long ago. A brisk wind swept across this reflection of the Nars but it freshened without chilling. Jerr relaxed, he had been here before, with Jarek. They had met a great chief and Jarek had received an axe, Jerr a wardrum.

    His eyes swept the crowd as he looked for friends from long ago. He saw some, here and there, and he moved towards the table to join them. An axe interposed itself in front of him and he stopped short. Looking back up the axe he saw Jarek, looking sadly down at him.

    "Not for you." He spoke the words softly, as though from a far far distance.

    "Why not?" Jerr feared the answer, but he asked the question just the same.

    "Only dead heros will be allowed to sit at the table, Jerr. Only the dead of the Nars. You walked away from us, remember?"

    Jerr hung his head for a moment and wept softly. "I . . . i . . . i did." He turned to go, to walk into the wind and away from the banquet. The wind was now a cold one that cut him to the bone, but he did not mind, it was what he deserved.


  • If anything, the fever had gotten worse. Bel had been sent to fetch Vroka but she had come and come saying that he was already fighting it as best he could. Jerr did not wake for the visit but moaned incoherently, for the most part. his eyes were open but nobody knew what he saw . .. . if anything. His hand reached out and touched his pack, it spilled open, showing his wedding clothes, white and gold spilled out almost lighting up the tent with the glow

    The white spilled out onto his hands and ran up his arm. He opened his mouth to cry for help but the fabric raced into it, smothering the shout. It pulled at his skin and he slowly stood under its play. There he stood as the tent vanished, his horned head rising up and shaking the rack of antlers. He had become a white stag.

    Bounding out of the valley he sprinted across the Jiyyd commons and out into the pass, clearing the gate in a single leap. Powerful legs carried him west, and then south. Nars pass flashed under as he ran as though he was riding the wind. The Gates of Norwick posed no more of a barrier than the Jiyyd one had. Then he was back in the Rawlins, where he had grown up. He looked out at the frozen lake and smiled, shaking the antlers again.

    Long had been the days, fighting the goblins and their like. he had drawn his first blood at these gates. Met Amith and fallen in love with her, here. He stretched out his senses and could feel the land thrum beneath him. A song rose in his heart and he started running, east then west, jumping over goblins and rushing around the Rawlins woods like a white blur. he saw the elven encampment and tossed his antlers as the elves nodded greeting. The land called to him, drew him in until . . . .

    he stopped

    his own younger voice came back to him, carried on the wind.

    I am Jerr, Skald of the Nars.

    Now he was TRULY of the Nars, he was finally a part of the land . . . but something wasn't right. A pain deep in his heart grew and grew till he reared up screaming a challenge. Wild eyes looked around for what was wrong but he could see nothing to fight back against.

    The pain grew until it was blinding, he looked down at his snowy breast and saw blood begin to flow as his chest bulged out. Something was pushing from with. Then, in a crimson burst, it the skin broke and a clear shaft of crystal pushed out of his chest. Horrified he watched as the crystal spread until he was a statue of crystal, still, but still screaming inside. The pain did not fade and yet he could not voice it nor could he escape.

    _His back arched almost to the breaking point as he screamed. Amith dove across his body and held him down murmering calming words mixed with exhoratations for her husband to fight whatever it was that attacked him.

    " <e>Fight . . . you no lose this one, I am here with you. Tempus guide him, help him in his battles."

    he screamed until his voice was gone and still he tried cry out, eyes wild and face red he shrieked at the tent top . . .</e>_