Adammair Walker

(OOC Note: I do't usually cross-post these stories here from The Fireside Table, but with recent troubles, I think it may have gotten lost over there.)


Adam knew something of the architecture of dreams, stonewalls of cloud blown by the dreamer?s mood, towers that extended up into the realms of airy madness, doors that might open anywhere.

Anywhere at all.

Alraune had built a place of dreams here in the waking world, her salon, her parlor. The room, its essence both here and in dreams, had been formed from the desire of her workmen, fevered sweat and the perfume of nightshade, inspiration in a kiss, a bite, the shared heartbeat of entwined lovers like a hammer on metal, the cut of an axe blade in virgin oak.

Silken pillows on thick fur, padded seats that caressed with a lover?s softness, the hearth like friction between skin, sensitive to the lightest touch, a finger?s trace from neck to hip, her portrait, gloriously naked, open to any gaze, sensuous yes, but more importantly, bare as truth, the seer?s imperative, no secrets that would not be shared with her client, nothing the cards might reveal that would be held back.

Adam paused at the threshold, his hand on the sturdy wood, aware of the possibility that her magic might truly have made a portal here, that the door of the salon might open into a wood he thought never to see again, the other Spiritwood that lay in the shadow of the Tower of Dreams, a world or more away from Trinsic, the place Adam and Alraune called home now.

He thanked Fate for all the distractions that had wandered into Alraune?s path of late, even her lovers, but especially for the girl Keina, whose plight had touched the warmth Adam knew lay ever in Alraune?s heart. He knew that she could help the girl, and the cause would keep Alraune from dangerous thoughts, from pursuing dark magic that might have fatal repercussions.

For his part, Adam was content to drift, like the water beneath the bridge over Trinsic?s moat, when he gazed down into it beside the mysterious lady called Kimi who had recently entered the city?s life. She intrigued Adam, even more now that he knew something of her true nature, and he looked forward to learning more of her past and what had brought her to the southlands, a tale that he felt might open like one of the cherry blossoms of her faraway land.

What was it that Commander Soulshadow had said?

?We all have secrets.?

Yes, that was it.

The commander was often in Adam?s thoughts. Strength and beauty were such a potent combination, one Adam had ever found irresistible, and the little he had learned of her race and the saga that had led the Kaldorans to Sosaria made him eager to learn more. The crossing of a sea was much like the passage through dreams and both might only be metaphors for the transitions that a man made in his life, from life to death, from complacency to damnation.

Most recently the Commander had told him of a man she had condemned to the depths of the dungeon Deceit, but who might yet emerge back into the light. A demonologist, she said, a man who knew something of the supernatural powers that shaped the darkest urges of men and women.

Such a man might have the answers Adam had been seeking.

If he commanded a demon named Hubris, he might well know of others.

Ancient history, Adam thought, and yet as immediate as the door that opened into the familiar forest west of Trinsic, bird cries and wind in the boughs, like the song of life itself, a tune anyone might hear.

But with words as secret as dreams.

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