Of Winding Ways and Cunning Devices

18th of May 867 A.D.

Rather than answer her question, which would leave you with the choice of redundancy or revealing far more than you are comfortable you ask your own. "What is the meaning of the bird?"

"What is the..." She looks at you shocked and for a moment it feels as if you are seeing her vast a vast gorge of meaning, symbols, sayings lore and legends rushing below in a blind roar. Then she collects herself, one hand going to a pocket in her over-dress to hold something, parhaps a talisman against strange sorcerers. "It's the luck of the king."

Still making as much sense as an oar with a hole bored through it You raise an eyebrow in askance, finally getting your answer "Last year Thurseblot rang with dark thunder, the footsteps of giants, ill omen upon ill omen for the harvest before had been poor and the fish scorned our nets. It seemed as though the gods had turned their backs on the king. Many a dark murmor was spoken in the outlaying farms and in the meadhalls of the chiefs deep in their cups, but then as dawn began to break a strange thing came to pass: a heron flew over the house of the king and shed one of its feathers upon his cloak, a sign of the One Eye who is lord over all birds and ravens first among them. "

The lingering ache of power at your temples makes for a harder time than usual hiding your disbelief, though perhaps that is all to the good as it makes Thyra explain your 'offense' in greater detail. It seems as though in the raiding season to follow Rurick made his way into the lands of the Vindar, a folk to the south and west here with as many kinship as blood feuds and put flame to their city of Turso, but when their longships were traveling home, heavy with loot a cormorant flew against their prow and thence it was that an old fisherman on his last voyage called it an ill omen, but many of the warriors scoffed that they were not out to get fish not treasure and so the sign was not for them. As Thyra tells it though Rurick was wise remembering the bird which had heralded his good fortune and ordered the ships be put to shore, a deed proved wise indeed when a great storm raged down from the north unbidden such as would have likely broken the longships against the coast.

"Signs come in threes stranger," the priestess proclaims. "Once for good fortune, twice a warning, thrice death." She falls silent, but superstitions aside you can hear the words unsaid. Rurik king had given his son onto your keeping and now you had slain a mark of his good fortune against the Vindar.

Part of you wants to scoff at the whole thing, but a seed of doubt lingers in your heart. It had not been your will to slay the bird, but the power of Him called the Black Enemy of the World slipping your grasp. If ever there was a means and moment for that one to deliver mocking prophecy it would be in blood and death.

"No seer am I and I bear no ill intent to the king or his heir," you proclaim, doing your best to banish such dark thoughts from your mind. Wiser men than you have gone mad looking for the land of the Fallen Lord of the Earth n every shadow.

"Crows do not bring the storm, but it is a fool who discounts a flock of them suddenly descending on their hall," Thyra answers at length. "If you would prove that you mean no evil in this place than teach me more of your power that I may judge it for myself. What gods do you swear by, what strange troll-blood gave you that power?"

[] Tell the tale of the Edain and the ultimate defeat of the Black Enemy as though sorcery were the battle-gained right of those wars, that would likely resonate with a people who so love the warrior for his courage and the bright blade for its sharpness

[] Explain that you are a scholar, one who bends his eye on perilous things to be sure, but your arts are no more dangerous than any other. After all to the man who had never seen steel a fine sword might seem sorcery. If she doubts you... well you do have some of the craft of Numenor to show you of the kind many of the men of Middle Earth called just that

[] Write in

OOC: This is a lower magic setting than any of the other quests I have written, hopefully the atmosphere of ambiguity an uncertainty came through.