My first post!  I hope I've got the technical bugs worked out on this end,
but if any of you have trouble pulling up the attachment, please let me know.
 (I put all of this in as an NRPG to the post, and only then remembered that
it wouldn't do any good if the post came through unreadable!)

Also, please note that I'll be using a different E-mail address from now on.
 The new one is Trissana@aol.com.  

I look forward to working with all of you!


John
a.k.a. Trevor & Trissana, Cleft Warren

     "Whoa!"

     Trevor quickly tugged back on the horse's reins to reinforce his startled command, having looked up from his sketching just in time to see the low-hanging tree branch coming toward him.  Jojo snorted, turning his head to regard his rider with a quest
ioning look.

     "Dummy, you're supposed to be watching where we're going!" Trevor scolded, climbing down and walking around to stand in front of Jojo.  He waggled a finger in front of the horse's eyes.  "You were going to knock me off on purpose, weren't you?" he as
ked, half teasing.  "Do that again, and your sugar ration's going to get cut in half tonight!"

     Jojo gave another wet snort in his rider's direction, but otherwise just continued to look placidly at him.  He knew that his master's bluster usually meant little in terms of any actual punishment.  And, of course, Trevor couldn't really blame the h
orse.  He himself should have
been paying closer attention to his surroundings - one didn't tend to survive very long out in the wilds of the Dragonlands by letting one's attention wander.  If that had been a wraith  instead of just a tree branch, he'd have been in real trouble.

     Still, he'd been lucky so far on this trip.  Despite Master Dilmer's dire predictions that he'd be set upon by wraiths or wind up as dinner for a wild dragon the moment he got out of sight of Ralengarde, he'd seen no sign of either during the weeks s
ince he'd left the city on his journey to the southeast.  He couldn't help but chuckle as he remembered the old cartographer wringing his hands and bemoaning the loss of the best apprentice - journeyman, now, actually - that he'd ever had, and wondering w
here he'd find a replacement.

     The problem was, of course, that Master Dilmer had never actually been out into the wild country himself.  The old man was an excellent cartographer, and Trevor had learned a great deal from him during his apprenticeship; but it seemed that the only 
thing he'd ever really 
done during his long career was to make copies of old maps that his predecessors had drawn - sometimes centuries before! The very thought of exposing himself to the dangers that lay beyond the city were unthinkable to him - particularly during the last co
uple of years, since the wraiths had again begun to make their presence felt.

     Trevor, having grown up as the son of dragonriders at Keldarra Warren, had a different perspective on the whole thing.  Certainly the wilderness was a dangerous place, but the idea that every part of it was constantly infested by wraiths waiting to a
mbush unwary travelers was sheer nonsense!  That was what the warrens and the dragons were for, after all, to keep such dangers at bay.  He'd spent much of his time at Keldarra hunting, camping, and generally exploring in the surrounding mountains, and ha
d never felt himself in any particular danger except from the occasional wild animal - and they, unlike wraiths, could be dispatched if necessary with a well placed arrow.  On one or two occasions over the years, predators who had thought to make a meal o
f him had ended up becoming one themselves.  

     He had contingency plans, of course, that *might* let him survive an encounter with something more dangerous.  If he did encounter a wild dragon, for instance, he'd simply abandon Jojo and give the horse a good slap to the backside to send him off at
 a full gallop, and then dash off himself for whatever cover might offer itself in the opposite direction - and then count on the dragon taking more interest in the horse than in himself.  Jojo would, of course, make a much bigger meal for a dragon than T
revor would.  If it were a wraith...well, he had those two skins of flammable oil strapped to either side of his saddle.  Having dippers-full of burning oil flung at it just might convince a single wraith that he was more trouble than he was worth.  Then 
again it might not, but at least it was better than nothing.

     Hopefully, now that he was only about two days out of Cleft Warren, his luck would continue to hold.  He could have been there sooner, he supposed, if he'd kept to the roads; but the only road leading to Cleft made a wide loop to the east about a hun
dred miles north of the warren before swinging back around to the southwest; simply following the course of the Dragon River, whose rushing waters had formed the Great Cleft where the new warren had been established, provided a far more direct albeit more
 difficult route.  Besides, he felt it part of his duty to "check out" the accuracy of the old maps that covered his route, and he'd learned that the areas ajacent to cities, warrens, and major roads were seldom inaccurate since they were so well traveled
.

     Much of the territory which lay in the triangle formed by Ralengarde to the north, Whiteriver Warren to the west, and Falagund Warren to the east, had been extensively mapped by Karmo the Elder nearly five hundred years earlier; certainly Karmo hadn'
t been the first to explore the territory, since all of those places were much older than that; but most of the "detail" maps of that region bore his name.  Trevor knew, however, that most of them had actually been redone some twenty-five years later by h
is son, Karmo the Younger.  The elder Karmo, he'd heard, had had a less than perfect eye for distances and a questionable memory of what he'd actually seen that led to many of his maps being grossly inaccurate.  The son had spent much of his life re-doing
 his father's work, and Trevor could pretty much tell from his own surveys which maps had been corrected by Karmo the Younger and which hadn't.  This morning, for instance, he'd discovered a small tributary of the Dragon River - almost fallen into it, for
 that matter, because it was almost a mile north of where it was supposed to have been.  Some of Karmo the Elder's work, he presumed.  The "big" maps, those showing entire regions of the Dragonlands, were surprisingly accurate - but this was primarily bec
ause their lack of detail concealed errors such as the one he'd found this morning.

     "Well," he announced, turning once again to address the horse, "it's about sunset anyway.  Let's see if we can find a good spot to camp for the night, eh?"

     A quick survey of the surrounding area revealed an excellent spot to set up camp, a small hollowed-out spot in a nearby cliff wall, whose rocky overhang would help to conceal his small fire from the dangerous enemies who searched out their prey from 
above.  After getting his fire going and seeing that Jojo was properly fed and watered, he sat down and chewed thoughtfully on a piece of jerky that he carried in his pack.  The hunting had been poor for the last couple of days, and with his goal so close
 he didn't mind subsisting on trail rations for a bit.

     Though it didn't show beneath his stoic expression, it was hard for Trevor to keep himself from literally quivering with excitement as he thought of what lay ahead of him.  Cleft Warren!  The very name of the place, taken from the Great Cleft in whos
e rocky heights it was located, spoke to his explorer's heart of wild, mysterious, and unexplored places.  Places where no human had yet been - or at least had not recorded their passage as he himself intended to.  For the Great Cleft was, above all, a ga
teway to his real goal - the NomadLands.  And the new warren located there would provide an ideal jumping-off point for their full exploration and mapping!

     Not that the NomadLands were entirely unexplored, of course.  The Horse Nomads who had lived there since times immemorial probably knew the land quite well, and the dragonriders at Cleft had doubtless overflown large expanses of it while carrying out
 their patrols.  Still, no one had ever truly charted out the vast plains, arid deserts, and - if rumors were true - even tropical forests that lay in those wide lands that lay to the south of the Great Cleft.  He would be the first.  And, better yet, if 
the Warrenlady Cynthia agreed to his proposal for a mapping expedition, he could have the entire job done before anyone else could even get there!  He doubted that even the Dragonlady Christalla, who had requested that Master Dilmer organize just such an 
expedition, would expect such quick results!

     Yes, he could see it all now.  In future times, when people from the Dragonlands inevitably moved south to build roads across the NomadLands, when they began to establish new cities and warrens there, they would go in using maps that all bore Trevor'
s name!

     And, he reminded himself, he had yet another reason for wanting to visit Cleft Warren:  His mother, Kellie, and her dragon Varie, had been among the initial group of dragonriders who had left their home warrens and transferred to Cleft.

     As he sat before his fire, listing to the chirping of the insects and the other comforting sounds of the wilderness, he wondered yet again why his mother had chosen to leave Keldarra and move to the new warren.  She was, after all, one of the relativ
ely few dragonriders who managed to survive the dangers of their profession and reach their fourth decade.  At that age, he wondered what had made her decide on such a radical life change, leaving the relative comforts of her lifelong home for the trials 
and dangers of a new warren that was - literally - being carved out of the wilderness.  Trevor himself would have jumped at such a chance in any case, but he knew that his love of exploring new places hadn't been inherited from his mother.

     He wondered yet again, with a certain pang of guilt, if it had had anything to do with his leaving Keldarra for Ralengarde the previous year to study cartography under Master Dilmer.  Perhaps, with her mate now seven years dead, Trevor's own departur
e had left such a gap in her life that she'd felt the need of a change.  But what else could he have done?  At a warren, you were either a dragonrider or...or you weren't!  And Trevor wasn't, despite having stood as a candidate at several hatchings and de
spite being told that he possessed the necessary dragon affinity.  And he'd once longed so much to join with a dragon, the great, black-scaled and blue-eyed dragon of his dreams...a dragon like M'del's Tareen...

     With an angry frown, he forced those thoughts from his head.  He could never be like M'del, and there was no point in even pretending that he could.  Even if he'd become a dragonrider, he could never have approached the standards that M'del had set! 
 No, his only choice was to try to proceed with his life in his own way, choosing a career which he himself could perhaps excel at.  It had seemed only natural that he should develop his innate talent for exploring and for drawing maps.  And the training 
he required for that was simply not available at Keldarra.  So, when the opportunity to study under Master Dilmer had presented itself, he'd jumped at the chance.  When he left for Ralengarde, he'd of course intended to return to Keldarra when he finished
 his training.  Now, however, there seemed little point to that.  But Cleft...Cleft was simply brimming with possibilities.

     As he wrapped himself in his bedroll to try and get some sleep, he allowed his mind to wander along the path of his more distant dreams.  One day, he told himself, one day he would be the first to explore and map the vast, uncharted wastes that surro
unded the Dragonlands on three sides and stretched, or so it was said, to the edges of the world.  At that thought, he let out a disgusted snort that would have done Jojo proud; no land, however vast, was infinite!   No mountain was so high that it could 
not be climbed, no ocean or desert so vast that it could not be crossed with the proper preparations!  And he, Trevor, would be the first to go out into those unknown lands - and return.  Return, with stories of distant and magical lands, and leather foli
os bulging with maps!  One day...

     He couldn't have said at exactly what point he drifted off into sleep; all he knew was that suddenly, his lovely dream of exploring the wastes was replaced by one far darker, one he'd relived so many times over the years that he'd lost count.  Sudden
ly he found himself in a dark place, hot and claustrophobic, in a confined space so tight that he found it hard even to breathe.  And then, as always, he suddenly felt another body next to his.  Strong arms enfolded him, caressed him, touched him in the m
ost intimate ways.  Warm lips pressed against his own in a passionate kiss.  And then the lips drew back, and he saw the face that, in real life, he had not seen in fourteen years.

     The face of his dead brother, the face of M'del...

     "NO!"  Trevor sat up with a start, gasping for breath.  Off to the side he heard the nervous whinny of the startled horse, and realized that his scream had not been just the product of his dreams.  Still breathing heavily, he quickly stood up and wen
t over to calm the animal down.  That done, he sat down again and stared into the dying embers of his fire.  He realized that he was still shaking, and cursed himself for his weakness.

     He hadn't had that dream for almost two months now, and took its recurrance tonight as a reminder:  A reminder that even if he traveled to the farthest edges of the world, he couldn't escape the curse that had plagued him from childhood, the curse th
at would never allow him to be truly close to any other person.

     For only by keeping himself at a distance from others, he reminded himself, could he protect them - and himself - from the dark tangle of his own twisted desires; the foul, hated desires that made him, in his dreams, desecrate the memory of his M'del
, one of the finest dragonriders the warrens had ever known.

     M'del...the very thought of his idolized half-brother's name made him want to cringe with shame.  What would M'del have thought of him, for this?

     Trevor did not sleep again that night, nor did he even try.



Respectfully submitted by

John Pepper

Trevor, Journeyman Cartographer
En route to Cleft Warren


     

NRPG: Well, I *think* I've got most of the technical problems worked out on this end.  However, if any of you have problems reading this post, please let me know!  This is written in WordPad 1.0, if that's any help.  Also, please note that I'll be using a
 different E-mail address from now on - the new one is Trissana@aol.com.  I look forward to working with all of you when Trevor gets to Cleft!

--PART.BOUNDARY.0.25586.emout12.mail.aol.com.873864019--