Altriona: If Mallion Ye Would Be

My dear brother,

If you are indeed my brother Mallion, I owe you a lifetime of apologies and amends, and Valadar too - indeed our entire race.  I am not sure yet if I hope that is the case.

It would seem there are two of you.  One is with us, changed in form certainly, but I am convinced that he was once my beloved brother.  Among other reasons, he passed the test I am about to give to you.  However, Lorandara (who did not abandon you - she believes that she came on this voyage in order to stay with you as your loyal and loving wife, and her guilt over this possibility is great) wonders if it is possible for the magic that changed our Mallion into his present form to have split him in two, leaving you to wander the wood insensible for a time. 

With this being the case, and knowing that this Mallion needs us much more than you, we could not come with Gallos at this time.  If you are my brother, you will seek to understand and forgive that.  It is certainly not the least of the things you will have to forgive us, should your identity be confirmed.

The following is an excerpt from one of your own poems.  To the best of my knowledge, the working copy - the only one ever committed to parchment - is amongst Lorandara's books on the ship.  I was there when it was written, there through much of the work that followed in an attempt to make it come right, and there when it was abandoned, nearly finished, but unsatisfactory.  I suggested at least one simile that you adopted.  I enjoyed it and regretted that you did not, so I remembered it - at least the stanzas you seemed to like.

I will give the first stanza.  You will give as much of the rest as you remember.  You will recount some of the changes made to it, the details of its composition, the purpose you had had for it.  And if you convince me, we will all three of us return to Marienberg to face the Family and make such amends as we can.

Letters in gold that twist and distort
Music in notes none can hear
Pictures in colours that none here can see
Visions beyond all we know *

It is your turn.  If ye be not my beloved brother, know that our vendetta as stated will continue.  I think I hope that ye be he, whatever punishment my crimes may warrant.  Know too that I acted in what good faith I could muster in a situation where no firm course presented itself, and would retain at least that small measure of honour, slim though it be.

With your own signet ring, I seal this letter.  Please give my kind regards to my mother; would that I could spare her this heartache at the heart of her family!

One who may yet be again

Your loving sister,

Altriona




* Excerpted from a poem entitled Magical Moments, by Graeme Montrose.

Altriona: Were we mistaken?

Everyone who hears our tale of vengeance is baffled by it.

I would expect them to be bemused, for our vendetta is private, based in a supposition of crimes as yet unproved.  But I would not expect them to remain baffled when we reveal the name of the beastman who travels with us.

The reason for their confusion?  They say they have seen Mallion alive and well in Marienberg.

At first we believed this to be a simple hoax.  We were certain of the identity of our own Mallion, despite his bestial appearance.  But time went on, and it became clearer and clearer that people who should have known better had been taken in by the hoax.

We committed a horrible act of piracy and murder in the name of this vengeance.  We treated with skaven to purchase warpstone with slaves - an act which will make us very rich - though the amount of warpstone we will send into the Empire to an unknown buyer could bring down the Emperor and permanently shift the balance of chaos in our homeland.  We set a city to civil war.  We leave mayhem in our wake wherever we sail.

And now, having committed ourselves to this course of action, having committed crimes to heinous to admit forgiveness, a letter comes from Marienberg - written in Mallion's hand and borne by Valadar's most trusted man.

The seal, of course, is not Malliion's.  It is Father's.  I wear Mallion's signet on a chain around my neck even now, knowing that I have no right to use it.  But the wording, the writing, the sentiment - had I not left my brother in Sartosa to come to the meeting where I received the letter, I would have had no doubt but that my brother had written it.

Gallos, for it was he who was sent to talk to Lorandara and me, asked us to return with him to Marienberg.  He had letters of passage allowing us to traverse the Tilean city-states where we are wanted as criminals.  He would not compel us, but he asked.  Everyone who knew of the request urged us to go.  I refused.  I informed Gallos that I would write a letter, the answer to which would prove if the person who had written to me was, in fact, my brother Mallion.  The letter contained two lies.  One was that I had tested the bestial Mallion using the same test I was about to give the pretender, and that he had passed.  I had not yet tested him when I wrote that.  The other related to the piece of poetry I used as my test.  If he is my brother, he will recognize that lie and challenge me on it.

Lorandara did not come to the meeting with me.  She waited behind for Mallion, and told him of my destination when he came out of the meeting which Lord Rackam had arranged to occupy his attention.  I know not what transpired when Mallion and Lorandara returned to talk to Lord Rackam after she informed him of my departure, but whatever it was, he was tense and upset when he arrived at the meeting. 

I told Mallion of the letter, and gave him a different test: a piece of poetry he had written many years ago, the theme of which was peculiarly appropriate to our situation.  I hated my doubt and needed to lay it to rest.  I needed my poet brother to be himself, to pick up the rhythm and rhyme and meter as of old, to duel with words as once he never would with a weapon.

He could not do it.

I think I hid my terror from him well.  It struck me soul-deep.  It helped that I went with the men in the rowboat while he and Lorandara took off flying for the ship.  I had time to take hold of my emotions and conquer them, to convince myself that the loss of one poem was hardly proof of anything.  I determined to set him another test, to give him another chance to show that he was my Mallion.

And yet my heart quaked.  Was he ever my brother?  Had he been my brother, but changed?  How much could he be my brother if the poetry, that which so defined him, was lost to him?

He passed the second test, quoting verses that I helped him write, verses known to none but us two.  We have decided to work with Mallion to keep his poetry alive in his soul.

So our Mallion is truly Mallion.  What will we do if the pretender passes the test - if he knows that which only Mallion knows?  How will we live with ourselves should our vengeance prove to be a hollow thing founded on a hellish misunderstanding?  How so if Valadar is innocent of the patricide with which we have sullied his name?