The Temple of Lore, Works of the Schola Options

[Black Hand]

This thread is for the stories of the members of Order of the Schola, for any questions you may have please click on the following link.

http://chorrol.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=3495

ANYTHING that is not a story or poem or whatever should be posted on the link that was just provided. Thank you, not trying to be mean, just trying to keep our sacred temple clean. Now then, an explanation.

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The Temple of Lore is a sacred sanctum of tomes, dreams, thoughts, abstracts, histories, stories, poems, and the written word.

It exists in the twilight, between reality and fantasy, it embraces all forms and images that attempt to define it. It is perception, and the perciever.

There exists an order of men, commonly known to the masses as the Writers Guild, more accurately called the Order of the Schola who have mastered this twilight abstract in the form of storytelling, they alone have the power to transcend to the Temple of Lore, and contibute and take from its threads of knowledge.

They exist amongst us as Journalists, Bards, Old Men sitting on a porch with a glass of lemonade recanting old experiences. If you ask nicely, and your lucky to find the chosen few, a Schola can breathe life into any illusion, any thought.

[canis216]

Alright, this fragment belongs here. Arise, Temple of Lore!.

* * *

The wind blows. A Second Seed wind, bearing sand and scratched retinas. A pair of Redguards force their way through it, aiming for the top of a low escarpment, a perch perhaps seventy feet above the surrounding badlands, the mal-i-pah. Both are tall, and clad in robes the color of rust and the Alik’r sands. The leader, the man in front, has short graying hair and a salt-and-pepper beard. He walks slowly but steadily. The man behind is younger and lets his long, unkempt black hair billow in the wind behind him. He appears to chafe at the older man’s walking pace but he maintains a respectful position to his elder’s rear. At the top of the rise the two raga gaze off to the northwest where thin white clouds dot the sky above Sentinel. Finally, they take shelter in the scant lee of a scrub juniper.

The younger man spoke. “You see the rain, Ansu-Haka?”

The old Redguard nodded. “In the afternoon.”

“This is good,” said the younger man. “It will keep the dust down.”

The wind continues to howl, insistently. “We used to call this month Tava’s Fury,” said Ansu-Haka. The younger man nodded. For five minutes more the two men sit out of the wind, the old man with eyes closed and a thin smile on his face, the younger man looking east to the mountains, still dusted with snow.

“It is still too early in the season, Cyrus.”

Self-conscious, the younger man smiled. “Two weeks, Ansu-Haka. No more. Then it will be time.”

“Indeed,” the old man answered, his lips still locked in his thin smile. “But we must not act and speak as if asleep. Your namesake—”

“We will go down to the others,” the young man countered. “We will ride.”

The two Redguards descended, traveling easily but gingerly atop the ridge, struggling to shield their eyes from airborne sand. At the bottom they turned onto a faint footpath down into a narrow gully—it was crowded with ephedra and willows and old man sage and smelled of water where the ridge top had been nearly bare. At the head of the gully could be seen cottonwoods, golden-green leaves in the morning light, and the nickering sound that horses make intermingled with the play of water upon the rock—familiar, pleasant sounds. Thirty men and their horses idled around the cold spring, waiting.

The older raga, the one called Ansu-Haka, entered the encampment ahead of his compatriot but said nothing, instead choosing to wander over to his paint horse, which was tied to a quinine bush. This was signal enough. When the one called Cyrus appeared all the men—Redguards dressed in robes of all the colors of the Alik’r, sabers to the side and bows on their backs—sat astride their mounts. Cyrus vaulted onto his own horse, a white stallion almost seventeen hands high. He hefted his sword, the cold curved steel, and gazed about at his cadre of bandits.

“Van-i-khamos,” he called, raising the sword skyward. “We ride south.”