RECAP

Low Dolina, 5498th Year of Rule of the Most Holy Highness

To My Friend, Suten-ka,

I pray this missive finds you in great health following your long convalescence. It brings me joy and reassurance that your beloved son has returned to you from his posting in the Kheprikel garrison. I know him as a reliable boy from his service as my aide-de-camp as a youth, and it is a weight lifted from my soul finding that he is there to help care for you.

The days are quite warm, with fine moisture in the air, even here at the mountain’s foot. A beautiful mist settles each morning among the trees and I wish I could fold it into this envelope for you to experience back in Amarnec. No matter, when you are fully recovered, you shall see it for yourself. We will take good southern coffee, chilled, rest our bones in the baths being built here, and watch the morning mist fray while we talk of old campaigns.

On that matter, the construction of your Manse of Withdrawal has encountered unavoidable delay. The weather so mild for our people is intolerable to the indolent beastkin I procured before leaving the Court. I fear that the fortifying effect of civilization is reversed in them, for life in Amarnec has enamored them of those climes. Indeed, disease has taken such a toll that I am forced to recruit local workers. The local beastkin show no such delicacy, despite their primitive means.

To facilitate this, I have employed a ptak known as Shaky Amkhu. A jolly and talkative crested fellow, he seems to have been something of an adventurer before turning his talent with languages to the procurer's trade. He claims to know everyone, even in tribes among the ozrut peaceable enough for the conduct of trade. This interaction with the most rustic of His Holy Highness’ subjects has availed me of many quaint tales of the region. Upon difficulty in acquiring stone sourced from quarries in the Serpent’s Back, I was regaled by a rumiany of ferocious mien and no less than five horns that the quarriers would not work for fear of “cursed ptak” descending from the mountain heights.

Despite his own apparent strength, he claimed a great fear of the supposed night-walking ptak, who feast on the flesh of the dead. With an eye to the resumption of work, I remarked that it was well they did not feast on the living, and thus we had little to fear, but he took offense at this. He insisted that these ptak were so terrible that they only lived in peace beyond the northern horizon, in a land of stone men who they could not eat. Neither papuga nor kruk, they are clever enough to use metal and have kings known as Wodz and magi known as Nyctae, but sometimes go mad with the moon and venture out to snatch the unsuspecting.

Finding no way to induce him to resume shipment, I asked Shaky Amkhu about these ptak. He averred that they were ten feet tall, with beaks like axes and talons like spears. Their feathers were hard like mail and they wore awful masks in the visage of Ash’s eye, which they worshiped. While ordinary peaceful and loyal ptak can understand their deafening screeches, the cursed ones will not listen and seek only to sate their monstrous hungers. When I asked where they could be found he became evasive, declaring that if the Great Snake (which he addresses me as) wished to see them the knowledgeable but humble Shaky Amkhu could organize an expedition for a certain expense. I declined. I find it more likely that I would be robbed blind by a ptak altogether more familiar to me.

Thus it is with much personal shame that I must report that your summer residence shall be completed beyond the schedule originally set. I must find a new quarry for the completion of the north wall, one hopefully not bedeviled by mythical ptak and very real malingering ozrut.

May the gods grant I have better news to report in my next dispatch. Pass my fond remembrance to the hierodules at the temple of the Queen of the Skies, and beg they make offerings on my behalf to protect me from her wayward children both actual and imagined. I hope to enjoy her gifts to the fullest when next I am able to visit!

Your Friend and (in this matter) Servant,

Oernuf, the 16th of his name