Riddle's History

How I dreaded the coming of the Hound of Olric. Once a year, sometimes as often as once a season, our game played itself out. I came to the Menagerie of Olric to steal away his lovely swanmay, and she dwelt with us a season until Olric noticed her absence, and sent his Hound to retrieve her.

I fancy that he and I looked forward to our encounters one with the other, in our own way. Although, he did not seem to appreciate it the last time we saw one another, when I offered him a choice: he might take one of two away with him. Which would he have - the swanmay, or his own dear sister Summer Riddle? His agony was delectable.
- The Raven King

Clay

Clay remembers very little of his life before Olric. Time in service to the Sorcerer-King, time in the prison where they were both taken, have worn away much of who he was before. He knows he had family. Mother and father, brothers and sisters. They didn’t want him to go, he thinks. But he also remembers coin changing hands, the glimmer and clink of it. So maybe he is wrong. Maybe he was merely chattel even then.

He remembers his first meeting with Olric clearly. The pain and the scars on his body make sure of it. He remembers defiance. At least, he hopes he was defiant, before the magic and the despair made that all but impossible. Sometimes he wishes that Olric’s sorcery had taken his mind as well as his will. Sometimes he’s grateful he was able to keep something that was his.

He was well cowed in those early years of training, when he was still more boy than man. He was an attentive student, out of equal parts fear and interest, and he sometimes learned more than Olric meant to teach. He learned that spells have limits, even terrifying, powerful spells like those Olric wielded. The geas that bound him was unbreakable, to be sure, and it let Olric work him like a puppet . . . but only Olric and only when the sorcerer thought to give very specific orders.

He didn’t really test the limits of the geas until later. He was too young, too fearful. He almost forgot he should. But some of the orders Olric gave him, some of the things he was forced to do . . . He still hates the feel of blood on his hands.

He started to push against the boundaries of the spell, to rebel in whatever small ways he could. For a while Olric didn’t notice, and later he ignored it, but eventually his patience wore thin. That’s when he introduced Clay to Melchior.

Melchior maintained discipline and order in Olric’s household. Olric couldn’t expend the time and energy it would take to magically bind all of his servants and bondsmen. He reserved such treatment for only the most powerful of his thralls; all others were Melchior’s responsibility. Olric called Melchior a seneschal, but no seneschal should have such a taste for cruelty and pain.

Melchior was in Olric’s employ voluntarily, and there were those who claimed he was a demon or a ghul. None truly knew what manner of beast Melchior was, but they did know that pain and fear were sustenance for him, as bread and meat are for normal men.

Melchior was a connoisseur of suffering--physical, emotional, sexual, psychological. He once told Clay that each act of sadism produced its own unique flavor. A beating was simple but filling, like a breakfast of cheese and warm bread. Berating a servant until he cried was like biting into a perfectly ripened apple. Rape was as sweet and rich as chocolate mousse. A prolonged bout of torture was a decadent, multi-course feast. Olric allowed Melchior to indulge his tastes however he liked so long as order reigned, no one escaped, and no permanent harm came to his property.

Clay became a favorite target of Melchior’s. If Melchior couldn’t find an indiscretion to punish Clay for, then he created one. Later, Clay realized that Melchior almost did him a service. Subservience never protected him from pain, submission never shielded him from horror, so he never embraced them. Obedience was always a thing that was forced on him, a chain around his neck, a mask that hid his rage. The spark of defiance in his heart never truly died out.

So the day the Jailers came, Clay helped them. Olric was too busy with the invaders to notice what Clay was doing, to remember that he knew all the castle’s secrets. Clay revealed the fortress’s hidden entrances, tore down its defenses where he could. He opened the doors of the Menagerie, allowing those beasts and beings who weren’t bound as he was to escape in the chaos. He sabotaged the door to the Vault, preventing Olric and those loyal to him from getting at the magical weapons inside. He laughed to himself that Olric’s greed might be his undoing, that he guarded his prizes so well he could not reach them when he finally had need of them.

When Clay had done all he could, he went to Olric’s cavernous throne room and waited. Waited for the fighting to reach him. Waited to be killed or rescued, whichever came first. One way or another, he thought, I will finally be free. He was wrong.

The battle spilled into the throne room, loud and tumultuous and savage. Clay got lost in it. When he came back to himself, he was . . . elsewhere. No longer in the Tapestry. And he was in pain.

There are healers, of a sort, in the prison. They tell him that Olric’s magic is broken now; the geas is gone. As are all the other enchantments Olric had laid upon him. That’s where the pain comes from. He had powerful magicks inside him for years, pushing at him, distending and distorting him, straining his mind and soul. And like a waterskin filled almost to bursting or a muscle stretching until it tears, he is damaged now. But he’ll get better. They’re almost sure.

The pain fades, eventually. Mostly. He is no longer a slave, but he’s still a prisoner. Trapped with Olric, his captor. With Melchior, his tormentor. And others from Olric’s castle. Some victims like him, but most like Melchior, who served Olric because they enjoyed it. They need someone to blame. They blame him.

He has to get out.

Olric

Old Man Olric of the wandering eye
will steal your malt and make you cry

Your ball and jacks
and your thumbtacks
and sit on them — who knows why?

He'll take your favorite deck of cards
pen-knife and boots — be on your guard!

He'll send his hound
to sniff around
and dig bones from your yard

— Sung by an altered music box retrieved by the Hound

Even before he acquired his Hound, Sorcerer-King Olric of Vorarl was famed throughout the lands of the Tapestry. He was descended from a long line of powerful sorcerer-monarchs, and that power had reached its pinnacle in him. A magical prodigy, he’d mastered the magicks of his ancestors by the time he reached the age of majority and, legend has it, all the known magicks of all the known lands by the time he was crowned King.

Olric developed his own knowledge and power as far as he could, then turned his sights outward. He began collecting magical objects; the more rare and powerful, the better, but if an object had any magic at all, he wanted it. His obsession spread to magical creatures great and small, and eventually even to people. Some souls were born into the Tapestry with innate gifts, magicks unlearned and unlearnable. If Olric could not himself acquire the power that these rare few were born with, then he would acquire them.

Olric didn’t care whether or not someone wished to part with their property or their pets or their children. If sentient creatures or talented people did not want to come to him willingly, there were other means of persuasion. When he could not purchase what he wanted, he stole it. When he could not steal, he threatened. When he could not threaten, he killed. And on those occasions when even Olric’s vast and powerful magicks did not get him what he wanted, he went into a rage that lasted for days, and his subjects suffered for it.

Thus Olric was elated when one of his agents brought him news of a Seeker living in a neighboring kingdom. Seekers were exceedingly rare, born with an innate ability to find anything or anyone. At the height of their powers, not only would they know where the object of their search was, they could also follow it anywhere--through walls, through magical barriers, even into other dimensions. If Olric had a Seeker in his thrall, then anything he wanted, anywhere in the Tapestry, would be his.

The Seeker was a farm boy called Clay Riddle, a peasant name if ever there was one. Olric made arrangements to purchase the boy from his parents. They were . . . reluctant, but Olric’s agents convinced them that giving up their eldest son in exchange for Olric’s gold and the lives of their remaining four children was quite a fair bargain.

Clay was barely fourteen, his Seeker powers in their infancy, but Olric did not have to wait for Clay’s ability to mature on its own. Olric put the boy through several grueling days of rites and rituals. First he bound the boy’s will to his own, insuring that Clay would be compelled to obey his every command. Then he amplified Clay’s power, forcing it to its apex with a complex and dangerous enchantment that pushed the boy to the limits of his endurance. Olric was quite pleased that Clay survived. He was also fascinated to discover that the arcane symbols he had drawn on Clay during the spellcasting were now seared into the boy’s flesh. Olric theorized that the mystical energies of the rituals interacted with Clay’s inborn magic to cause this intriguing side effect.

Olric set about augmenting his Seeker in other ways as well. He laid further enchantments on Clay, making him stronger, faster, more resilient, veiled to the eye and the ear. By the time Olric was done, black occult brands flowed down Clay’s body, starting on his forehead, trailing past his right eye and down to his throat, continuing along his collarbone and across his chest, circling his torso twice before spiraling down his left leg to the ankle. Olric would discover later, to his delight and puzzlement, that when Clay used his Seeking ability, the scars reacted with a brief, cascading flare of blue-gold light.

Olric hired the finest tutors he could buy, blackmail, or threaten to train Clay in swordplay, archery, woodcraft, burglary, espionage, and diplomacy. Olric himself trained Clay in spellcraft. Clay’s Seeker powers would open any doors and negate any magicks designed to keep him from his goal, but they wouldn’t get him across a raging river or protect him from an armed guard. Olric wanted his Seeker to be unstoppable, and his efforts did not go unrewarded.

His greed unchecked and a Seeker at his beck and call, Olric became a scourge to the peoples of the Tapestry. There was nothing that couldn’t be stolen, nobody who couldn’t be kidnapped, and no one who couldn’t be murdered. Mothers warned their children to be good, to be humble, lest the Hound of Olric come and claim them in the night. The greedy and the powerful cut out the tongues of their guards and their maids and their bookkeepers to prevent Olric from ever hearing of their riches. Cities closed down their borders, kingdoms wrapped themselves in obfuscating magicks, and entire lands disappeared from the Tapestry to hide themselves from Olric’s covetous eye.

Thus Olric’s legend and power and menace grew too great and caught the eye of the Jailers. They saw what he had built--his trove of powerful artifacts, his menagerie of mystical beasts, his stable of magical bondsmen--and they tore it down. The lesser relics were scattered; the greater destroyed, or perhaps confiscated. Most of the creatures were freed, and those slaves who posed no threat. Others, Clay among them, were taken along with Olric. Their guilt or innocence was irrelevant. They were dangerous, and they were taken.