Excerpt from Pneuma: Self’s Emissary — The Alabaster Griffin

A traveller arrives at Oak-Ur after hours in the rain, carrying no weapon and bearing no divine blessing. The tavern keeper has questions. The stranger would like a pint.

Read this passage from the prologue, “The Rain Falling on the Ruins of Oak-Ur,” in Christian Lukeka Michel’s Pneuma: Self’s Emissary.

At the Alabaster Griffin

The Alabaster Griffin tavern was packed that evening. The rain had driven the peasants from the fields and the woodcutters from the forest; they had all crowded into the large common room where the air was so thick with peat smoke and the smell of sour beer that it was almost too thick to cut.

The fire crackled in the monumental hearth, casting dancing shadows onto the lime-whitewashed walls that seemed to tell stories that human mouths had forgotten.

Above the fireplace, fixed to the wall by two iron pegs, a wooden fresco depicted a winged lion slaying a three-headed serpent. The wood was cracked in places, and the paint, a nearly faded lapis lazuli blue, was flaking off in patches.

The tavern keeper, a former Sar’s soldier named Branoc, would have been quite unable to say who had painted this fresco or how long it had been there; it simply had.

Like the Lamassu at the village entrance, like the standing stones sometimes glimpsed in deep clearings, covered in moss and symbols that no one could decipher anymore.

Branoc mechanically wiped a pewter goblet with a well-worn rag. He was a massive, broad-shouldered man with a grizzled beard that he braided in the Assyrian style, a habit he’d picked up during his years of service in the Sar’s armies and never lost.

A scar marred his forehead, a souvenir of an orcish spear he’d received in a skirmish on the border of the Scorched Lands. He walked with a slight limp on his right leg, but his grip was still capable of breaking a jaw with a single blow, as evidenced by the two or three drunkards who’d had the misfortune to dispute the bill over the years.

“Another pint, Branoc!” called a slurred voice from the darkest corner of the room.

Branoc looked up; it was Hew, the blacksmith. A red-haired giant whose arms were so thick that it was said he could bend a horseshoe with his bare hands, he was slumped on a table, his face glowing red in the firelight, an empty tankard in front of him.

“You’ve already had enough to drink for tonight, Hew,” replied Branoc, without stopping wiping his cup.

“The rain makes me thirsty,” grumbled the blacksmith.

“Everything makes you thirsty, Hew. Rain, sun, wind, the sight of a pretty girl, the sight of an ugly one too, and even the simple act of breathing. If I served you every time something made you thirsty, my tavern would be empty and you would have died of cirrhosis long ago.”

A few laughs arose in the room. Hew mumbled something unintelligible and rested his head on his crossed arms.

The door opened.

A gust of damp wind rushed into the tavern, making the candle flames and the shadows on the walls dance.

All heads turned toward the entrance. The figure standing on the threshold was tall, wrapped in a dark woolen cloak dripping with rain; the hood was pulled low over the face, revealing only a square jaw and a mouth that smiled slightly—that particular smile of someone who has just spent three hours walking in the pouring rain and who, against all odds, seems to have found the experience rather pleasant.

“Shut that door, damn it!” Branoc growled. “Do you want us to drown inside it too?”

The figure entered and closed the door behind them. Silence fell again, broken only by the crackling of the fire and the steady drumming of rain on the thatch. The stranger pushed back their hood with a slow, almost careless gesture.

He was a young man. Twenty, maybe twenty-two, it was hard to tell. His hair was brown, cut short but without any particular care, as if he had cut it himself with a knife and without the aid of a mirror.

His eyes, on the other hand, immediately drew attention. They were gray, not the pale gray of a winter sky, but a deep, almost metallic gray with silver highlights when the firelight struck them at a certain angle. Eyes that seemed to look through things rather than at things themselves.

His face was unremarkable; neither handsome nor ugly, with regular features, skin tanned by the open air, and a thin scar beneath his left ear, a souvenir from a low branch encountered during a nighttime run through the forest years before.

He wore simple clothes: a tunic of raw wool, breeches of thick canvas, and worn but sturdy leather boots. No visible weapon. No insignia, no coat of arms, no distinguishing mark that would have revealed his rank or origin.

He looked… ordinary. That is precisely what troubled Branoc.

Because no one, absolutely no one, walked the Oak-Ur road alone on a night like this. The woods teemed with wolves, bandits, and if the rumors circulating in the countryside were to be believed, with far worse things. Creatures that only the Emissaries of the gods were capable of confronting. But this man bore neither the mark of the blessed, nor the equipment of a soldier, nor even the iron-tipped staff of a pilgrim.

He only had this calm smile, a smile that said:

“I walked for three hours in the rain and it wasn’t so bad, actually.”

“Good evening,” said the stranger. His voice was deep, calm, with a hint of amusement that floated just below the surface like a feather on the water of a pond. “Can I have a pint? And perhaps something to eat, if it’s not too much trouble. The path from the Tor Mòr hills is longer than it looks on the maps. Maps, in fact, always lie about distances. It’s one of their most reliable characteristics.”

Branoc narrowed his eyes. There was something in the way this man spoke, an ease, a lightness, as if he were not a soaked and tired traveler but a neighbor who was stopping by to see how he was doing after a long absence.

—Tor Mòr? repeated Branoc. It’s two days’ walk east into the desolate hills; there’s nothing but ruins and standing stones, over there.

“And sheep,” added the stranger, stepping toward the counter. “You’re forgetting the sheep. They’re very important to the local ecosystem, for the wool and for solitude. A sheep makes an excellent travel companion; it doesn’t talk much, but it listens well.”

He sat down on a stool in front of the counter, rested his elbows on the worn wood, and looked at Branoc with his gray eyes that seemed to be amused by everything.

—So, how was that pint? Branoc hesitated for a moment, then shrugged. After all, he’d seen worse, and as long as the customer paid…

He filled a barrel-shaped mug with the famous Oak-Ur Brown ale, brewed with water from the sacred spring and wild hops picked in the clearings by the village children, and placed it in front of the stranger.

—That’s three copper coins. For the meal, there’s some mutton stew left. Four more coins.

The stranger reached into a purse hanging from his belt and pulled out the requested coins; they were clean and shiny as if they had just been minted.

Branoc took them, weighed them mechanically, then slipped them into his apron pocket.

“Where are you from, stranger?” asked Hew, who had sat up straight on his bench and was observing the newcomer with the instinctive suspicion of a drunk. “You don’t often see new faces in Oak-Ur. Especially not faces that smile after walking under the Zunnu for hours.”

The stranger took a long gulp of beer, his eyes closed for a moment and a small sigh of satisfaction escaped him.

“Excellent,” he said, setting down the mug. “Truly excellent. The wild hops were picked three weeks ago, weren’t they? You can still taste the freshness. And the water…” He took another sip, looking thoughtful. “The water comes from a spring that flows beneath an upright stone. A spring that never runs dry, even in the depths of drought. The ancients called it the Spring of Memory; they said that drinking its water was like drinking the tears of the earth. Poetic, isn’t it?”

A leaden silence fell over the tavern. Branoc felt a shiver run down his spine; he was the only one in Oak-Ur who knew the exact location of the spring where he drew water for his beer. A spring that, indeed, flowed beneath an upright stone covered in moss and illegible symbols. He had never spoken of it to anyone, not even his wife, before she died of winter fevers.

“How do you know that?” he asked, his voice harder than he intended.

The stranger shrugged.

—Beer tells stories. You just have to listen.

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