Short Storying: A Tale of the Eyes of Ollogriath

THIS IS A DRAFT OF A STORY IDEA.  I WOULD APPRECIATE COMMENTARY ABOUT THE FORMAT AND THE NARRATOR IF AVAILABLE.


Here told is the tale of the Orphan Girl, one of the stories most commonly given by the Dagger of the Eye.  I, as have my colleagues, have pondered over this dreamlike tale many times, wondering what is its intended meaning.  The girl is human, or so it would seem, and not of any particularly high cast in society.  Her language and decorum have been altered to suit the needs of the observer, and sometimes even her vartem or race as well.  Perhaps the Eyedagger manufactures its tales from the memories of its bearers, or perhaps there is another reason this strange story has been told so many different ways with basically the same results.  I cannot say. 

My purposes here are merely to record the tale as it is told through the writings and recollections of one Hekelair Stopes of Allorinia, who is an authentic Daggerbearer.  The history of Hekelair himself is near inconsequential, except that he did bear the Dagger for a time in his life.  He was a trader or merchant of rather modest means, buying and selling vegetables and fish, though it is known he did deal in contraband for a time, mostly head powders and magical delusion potions.  The history is unclear and much of it might have been fabricated by Stopes himself in order to gain notoreity.  He lived a much more well-to-do life after finding and speaking of the Dagger and his ledger, where he recorded his experiences with the blade, have become something of a sought-after piece of information, particularly among the Qwestori.  Quite a few of them have in the time since, fostered and patronized those who have even the smallest legitimate claim to having been within a mile of the Dagger of the Eye, even if they later lost it.

Here then is my brief obligation to Stopes's legacy for the purposes of translating his journals and notes into a coherent story about what he saw while handling the dagger.  Hekelair Stopes was from Southern Allorinia, was of the Xomirian humans of that land.  Details of his features end there for the most part.  It is perhaps a denial of any familial heritage that causes this, as those who suddenly find themself rich and prosperous often find relations to be as easy to grow as weeds in a garden.  So, his ties are unclear.  He was, as most historians agree, of an age of five-and-twenty, unmarried and without children or any noticeable beneficiaries.  Probably he had brothers or sisters, and even more likely, he had parents, but who they were and what has become of them before, during, or since the Encounter, I will not address here.  Uncles, Aunts, Grandparents, etc. will also be omitted from this account.  He was given the Dagger, he said, quite by accident.  According to him, a man without name, handed it off to him in the market place.  The man, who Stopes has described as having long black hair, being at least a head or hand taller than himself, and lean of stature, shoved the dagger into Stopes' posession before running away again.  The dagger was wrapped, Stopes said, in a blood-stained shirt.  Who this man was is, unfortunately, lost to history forever.  Stopes never saw him again, and he never recorded whatever the Dagger told him.  Stopes just happens to be the next lilly pad the frog of history has found fit to light upon.  Stopes would later give up the Dagger in much the same way as it came to him; that is, he left it, he said, in a market booth and someone took it.  Likely, he was pickpocketed in some marketplace of Larnale or similar city.  In any event, the Dagger came to him and left him and told him stories in between, and here finally is what has been taken from his notes:


The little girl --> going to be basically like a story of King David.  The girl watches her parents die, her family, her village.  Reason: Invading Army.  War between two kingdoms, etc.  Will need to find out who the two kingdoms are, but probably will employ the blank space (and call it discretion on my narrator's part. 

It was during the reign of King ____________ of _____________, when he wanted to unite the two kingdoms and rebuild some of the glory of the fallen Xomir.  King ____________ claimed kinship to some member of the Xomirian Counsel of Lords would be suitable basis for reestablishing the empire and reuniting the various dissident city states and kingdoms the empire had broken into.  Nevermind the fact that several other lords and ladies all over the continent claimed more or less kinship to everything from the cousin of the gatekeeper to an Imperial Palace to the Emperor himself.  Nevermind also the fact that the empire had long since crumbled on its own when the Counsel dissolved itself.  The last shred of the Xomirian Empire was washed away and gone, the most of its records and histories scratched in fading ink on scrolls as unsteady as itself. 

This king insisted his dream was more than just what can be supped on during midnight perusals of some dusty library, and he would conquer and annex his neighboring kingdoms.  So began the long and ardous war of invasions west of his kingdom known as King _______________'s Upstart.  It was his desire, perhaps, to push first westward to the ________________ Ocean and eventually establish trade west with Morrigar, the newly established kingdom across the sea.  Perhaps King _____________ had eyes on eventually reconquering Morrigar and realigning it with Xomir as well.  For now, however, he would be satisfied merely with trade, and possible traderoutes south to Frosomia. 

Though the king was no emperor, he had a great deal of success.  Largely because very few of those he attacked and conquered really saw it coming.  Spies delivered news across all the borders.  They saw the armies gathering.  They saw the making of swords and shields and armor.  They saw the banners, but until his soldiers stepped foot onto the soil of another kingdom, they thought it mostly a bluff.  Or, the newly established kingdoms were too small to do much about it.  Part of the difficulty of the division of the Xomirian Empire into its respective districts as their own entities of course left many without much. 

So, the king managed to carve for himself a path to the sea, burning and pillaging as he went.  He'd likely neither brook nor be offered any treaties, and as he made his way, he probably gained great deals of confidence.  But it was to be a rather short lived venture, and would ultimately win the king a little more land than he had before, as well as the hatred and spite and vengeance of several of the lords and ladies, kings and queens, upon whose feet he'd stepped to get it.

The little girl, who historians name Ania, didn't know any of this history.  She was a peasant, somewhere in her tenth or eleventh year, like her father, who happened to live in that westerly swath of land between King ___________ and the ____________ Ocean.  She just happened to be in the fields near her familial home, picking berries off the thorn-covered bushes, like her mother, and her grandmother, and their mothers before them when she found the Dagger.  Their father fought with the plow behind a broken-down horse.  They were not anything or anyone special, except for that one day in mid spring.

If the sun had been an hour further up or an hour further down, or if perhaps a passing rodent had not shifted the dirt, or if perhaps her mother had not sent her back for the berry bucket at that moment, her story would have been lost forever.  It would have been the story of one grain of sand on a beach of uncountable grains.  But the sun was just in the right place, and the leaves and the trith under it had been shifted just enough, and she had been sent back for the berry bucket, and there it was, as plain as that.  It glinted like a star on the ground, and anything that glinted like that, to a peasant, must be worth something in the village market.  Perhaps she could even sell it to nearby lord for comfort.  It was in the side of a ditch, where it had rested for maybe two or three hundred years unnoticed, and when she frantically dug it out to look at it, she marveled at how perfect and unspoiled it was.  To her, it had just been placed there, perhaps even buried there within a fortnight.  The dirt slid off the sheath and the hilt like snow off the roof of a house, leaving only a trace of damp on the glistening metal.

Her fingers, almost lovingly, traced the gold inlay, and the perfectly polished and smooth metal of the sheath.  It looked like the inside of a clam shell, and when she turned it this way or that, the metal had a sort of oily look to it, like a luminescent rainbow. 

And then, there was the jewel.  The jewel was shaped like an eye, and was just at the cross of the dagger.  It did not shine, but was a dark, dull color.  She turned the dagger this way and that, but could not decide if it were blue or green or purple.  It was as smooth as the shell of an egg, but hard as glass.  Instinctively, her fingers dug at it, around the side of it, to see if it would pry loose and fall out onto her hand.  The dagger would be one prize, the jewel another.  She could not get that beautiful gem to even hint at being loose.  She didn't dare strike it against anything to see if it would break.

By this time, her mother wondered if she'd been eaten by something, or simply dawdled too long, and came looking for her.  By the time she stood beside the bucket, the girl had drawn the dagger from its sheath.  Now, she heard her mother calling her, and she yelled a reply, but her mother did not seem to hear her.  Ania saw her mother standing beside the bucket and heard her call for her again.

"I am right here, Mama," she cried, but the woman did not hear her at all.  She stormed down into the ditch and passed right by where Ania stood.  She didn't even look at her, and kept yelling for her as she went deeper into the woods.  Ania followed her, shouting at her and waving her arms about, but her mother didn't so much as turn around.  When she reached up and touched her mother on the shoulder, it frightened her, and she turned around, but Ania was completely invisible and silent to her.  Ania could touch her, even push her, and she felt that, but it only frightened her mother all the more.  Her mother ran away and back to the farm, leaving the bucket and the berries behind.  Ania followed after, dagger still in hand.

She got about halfway home when she thought that perhaps it would be dangerous to run around with a knife like that, and so she sheathed it.  Apparently, this caused her to reappear for here came her father and mother back again to find her.  Her mother was still terrified, claiming a ghost had come for them.

"No, Mama, it wasn't a ghost that pushed you.  It was me.  You didn't see me.  I don't know why."

"Where were you?" asked Papa.

"I was right there, trying to get her to hear me, but she only ran away."

"Don't lie to me.  What did you do?  How could she not see you?  You were playing a game with her, weren't you?"

"No, Papa.  I was right there.  I answered her, but she didn't hear me."

It was then her father noticed the dagger in her hands.  "What's that then?  Where did you get that?  Did you steal that?"

How she could have stole such a prize, when all there was for miles around them in just about every direction was nothing but farms and fields and forests, her father did not seem to care.  He quickly snatched up the dagger from her and admired it.

"I found it, Papa.  It was in the ditch down yonder by the road.  It was half-buried."

"Hmmm," her father considered.  "Perhaps a thief hid it there.  If a thief had it, it must have belonged to someone once.  Probably someone around here, one of the lords.  I'd bet they'd like to have it back."

"That still doesn't account for her behavior.  Dagger or no, she shouldn't have run off like that.  If there are thieves around, that means she should be even more careful."

"Mama, I was right there.  I was the one that pushed you."

At that time, Papa unsheathed the dagger and promptly disappeared.  Ania pointed at where he had been standing.  "He's gone.  Look, Mama."

Papa reappeared, holding the sheathed dagger again.  And so it was they discovered how the dagger worked.  When it was out of its sheath, it made you disappear.  The three of them played with it for quite some time before understanding exactly what was happening.  That the dagger was magical was obvious from the moment Papa disappeared.  What exactly the dagger was, or its importance, none of them would ever know.

Papa took the dagger inside their home and put it inside a chest and put the chest up in the loft.  He told his family not to speak of the dagger to anyone, not even friends or family.  Instead, they should all listen to see if anyone speaks of it again.  Maybe someone would say whose it was.

Ania asked him why they shouldn't just ask their neighbors or people in the village, and her Papa told her that it might bring grief upon them if someone should mistakenly think they were the thieves who stole it to begin with.  The people of the ground were nothing special to lords in their big castles and high towers, and it would be nothing at all to simply kill them all and rent out their home and farm to another needful family.  Perhaps it was destiny alone that caused Ania's father to be so wise.  Some think it may have actually been the dagger itself telling him not to speak of it.  No one will ever know.

Aside from the occasional question about whether or not another member of Ania's family had heard anyone talking about it, the dagger went the way of so many precious possessions found along life's way.  It was admired, meddled with, and left in the chest for a long time and all but forgotten by people who have no time for magical knives that do nothing but hide someone.  There were fields to be planted, crops to be harvested, and berries to be picked.  Ania very often looked back towards her house on the hill when the thought about the dagger occurred to her, but mostly she thought of dirt and water and manure and whether or not she would ever learn to read or count above twenty.

She went back often to that ditch whenever she could and looked around for other treasures.  Maybe it was a thief's hiding spot and maybe other things were under the ground.  What wonderful future could she have if she found the rest of this stuff and gave it back to the lord?  But there were no other treasures to be had, not even from the same spot that had given her the dagger.  Eventually, she grew tired of being both a farming peasant and a digger in the woods at he same time, and so gave up looking for other things.  And her eyes turned up to the house every so often each day.

When harvest time came and the village families came together to help each other in the fields and load the crop up in the neighbor's wagon, it was not talk about the dagger that was the big news.  Nor did anyone talk about thieves or buried treasure.  Instead, the talk circled around the wars.  An upstart king had been on the march, pillaging and murdering as he went, and apparently his armies were heading towards them like a great storm on the horizon. 

"What does he want?" Ania asked her father.  "Why is he making war?" 

"I don't know child.  We make crops, and they make wars."  Her father only answered her quickly and then asked one of the neighbors more.  Ania tried to listen and understand, but she was very young.  She only knew some of what was said.  The way her parents talked was the same way they talked one time when Ania caught fever and they thought she would die.  Her mother sang to her, but spoke to her father as though she knew a terrible secret.  They didn't know Ania knew about death.  How could she not, living on farm and being so poor as she and her family had always been.  Ania let them think she was ignorant then, but she knew.  Now, though, she thought the secret much more difficult. 

"This might be the last market day," one of the other farmers said.  "They are not far now.  People are leaving _____________ town and going into the woods and wilds.  Whole towns drying up like a bad well."

Her Papa sighed a lot all the way into town, and in town quite a few people didn't even show up for market.  Ania liked to sometimes beg her mother to buy her pickled fishes.  On this side of town, it was difficult to come by much fish.  A creek was near her home, but there were not many fish in it.  But a nice big lake was on the eastern side of town and people pickled fish over there and brought them to market.  They also brought clams and seaweed to eat.  She liked to play ____________ board game with her friend Shex from the other side of town. 

But there were no pickled fish in the market today, and Shex wasn't there either.  They said King ____________'s army had burned out three nearby towns and laid siege to the castle of Lord ____________, who was her family's lord.  The armies were very close and would come this way soon.  These armies of the upstart king were demanding that Lord ____________ surrender all his lands, and all his food, to the soldiers.  They also demanded women.  Why did they demand that?  You couldn't eat them or use them as weapons, could you?  Then again, maybe it was much worse than she thought.  Maybe these invaders did eat women...and children. 

People were all talking about leaving, just abandoning everything, taking some clothes, and going and living in the woods.  Winter was coming though.  Already, there was a bite in the air.  How could they just go off and make a new house in the woods.  Where would they get the rocks or the lumber?  How would they have enough time?  How could they carry all their food out there?  Ania hoped her father wouldn't do this, because she did not want to sleep out in the briar patches like that, in some stick house with cracks in it where the wind would get in all around.  Surely these soldiers would only want to take over castles, not farmhouses in the middle of nowhere.  After all, weren't they already only camped out around the castle and demanding it to open up?   
 
"Will we have to move away, too?" she asked her mother as they were riding home in the back of the wagon. 

Mama squeezed her close and kissed the top of her head.  She said, "I don't think so, sweetling." 

"Do you think we could give them...something...and they would go away?" 

"We do not have enough as it is.  We have our stores of food and that is all.  If we give it away, what will we have for the next soldiers and the next after them, and what will we eat?" 

"I wasn't talking about that, Mama, I was talking about...." 

"I know, Ania, my godschild.  I know what you meant, but we have nothing but food to offer them." 

What if this war business was about the dagger?  What if they were looking for it, because it was magical and special and could make people become invisible?  Maybe if she gave the soldiers the dagger, then they would go away.  They would take it back to their king and he would be happy again and he would not have to hurt anyone.  Maybe he would make Papa a knight or a lord or something because they gave it back and did not try to keep it. 

These were silly thoughts, she knew.  That's what her parents would say if she asked them.  It didn't work that way when people grew up.  Everybody seemed to always be upset or angry when they grew up. 

At least, she could get the dagger away and take it out in the woods and hide it somewhere.  Then, if the soldiers did come and take all the food away, Papa could sell the dagger and buy new food with the money.  Ania thought herself very clever for thinking this way.  She thought Papa would think this way, too.  The soldiers wouldn't find it out behind the berry patches.  They wouldn't bother going there and getting eaten up by chiggers and the itchy leaves when there was a perfectly good road nearby. 

But despite all her good plans, as soon as they were home again, Papa was making arrangements for the driver of the wagon to come help them leave their house and go into the woods.  She tried to speak with him about her ideas, but he would not listen to her. 

He took the chest down from the loft and left it in the middle of the house, but both Mama and Papa were in and out so often, getting what they thought they needed, she couldn't even get a glimpse of the dagger at all.  That, she thought, was very unfair.  They didn't trust her, for one thing, and she had found it.  By rights, it ought to be her dagger, shouldn't it?  She didn't try to open the chest, but she knew they would stop her. 

"Stop standing there, Ania.  We have to get our things together and leave," Mama said to her several times.  "Go up into the loft and fetch down the quilts.  Get any of your toys you need, too." 

Toys?  She wouldn't need a dolly out in the middle of the woods when she was freezing her fingers off in a stick house.  She got the quilts and laid them out on the chest.  She picked up one of her rag dolls, the one she called Pixy, but she put it down again.  Soldiers wouldn't take a doll would they?  She'd had it ever since she could remember, and it was one of the only things made of cloth she'd ever owned that she had not seen rot away completely.  Even so, it lay up in the loft, as her family loaded their belongings into the back of the wagon that evening. 

"It's going to be a tight fit," said the driver of the wagon, laughing.  Ania did not think it very funny.  Nothing is funny when you think you'll never see your house again ever.  She sat on the chest.  Mama made her sit on the chest and stay there, even though the wagon's bumping and flouncing in the road threatened to toss everything and everybody out into the road.  Once, an old lady sitting next to her, Granny Fexa, had to hold her in place like a fencepost not yet steadied. 

The wagon went gods knew where from her home.  Over the hills, down over the little creek, and just kept going and going.  The farmer driving the thing had given up his laughing by nightfall.  He kept saying "not much further," again and again, until no one listened to him anymore.  Eventually, they had to stop and make a camp.

The other farmers were just shapes in the night.  Ania ate some kind of broth with some chopped up things in it.  She couldn't see it very well at night, but it was food and she was thankful.  She had to say she was thankful out loud three times, or it wasn't really her food, or so her parents taught her.  So she held her bowl up and said "I am thankful for this food, I am thankful for this food, I am thankful for this food."  She guessed the gods liked to hear things three times.

She didn't think she'd sleep, but she did, and she didn't dream at all.  When she woke, everyone was packing the things back into the wagon and already her body ached from thinking about sitting on that stupid chest all day again.  Thankfully, her mother sat the chest and Ania sat at her mother's feet.  With her fingers, Ania toyed with the chest and the tattered edges of it.  She pulled a splinter out and looked at it for a long time.

The wagon went out into a place in the middle of some woods.  She had no idea which direction home was in, and she didn't care.  It made it easier to forget about going back.  As soon as the wagon stopped, everybody jumped off like stirred up flies and set to work.  The men said they would go out and start getting sticks and branches, and the women set about clearing a place in a grassy clearing for a fire.  The few children there were chased each other around the glen or argued.  Shex was not here, and though Ania knew most of the people around her, she didn't much care to talk.

Instead, she watched that chest, and after awhile she thought that maybe it was watching her back.  She sat down and wove grass together, and she leaned against the chest while she did it.  Some of the children were recruited to help their families, but people ignored Ania.  Her mother looked at her and scowled at her, but she said nothing to her.  Probably because she didn't want to draw attention to the chest.  Everyone assumed there were only clothes inside, but Ania knew better.

"Wonder who owns this place out here?" one of the children said.  It was Beexa, an older boy, but only by a couple of years.  "Lords own everything, so I wonder who owns this."

Ania didn't know if he was talking to her or not.  She didn't answer him until he turned to look at her.

He turned to her.  "Maybe the lord what owns this place won't mind us being out here.  Do you think he will?"

"No, I don't think so.  But maybe nobody owns this place?  Maybe we'll be safe because no one knows about this place and no one cares.  Maybe the gods own it."

"Someone owns everything," Beexa said.  "The whole world is owned by someone, even if it doesn't know it."

"Not everything.  Otherwise, how could anyone find things and make them into something.  People dig up gold and things and don't wonder who owns it do they?"

"Well, if everything isn't owned by someone, then why do they always quarrel over it?  The wars people fight are always over who owns this or that land, isn't it?  I think people even own us."

"We're not slaves.  We're farmers."  Beexa was a lean, wirey boy.  He looked like a walking tree.  His skin was tough and brown from years in the sun, and his hair, if ever he got it wet in the river long enough to clean it, was a dark, rich brown color.  He was not nearly as strong as he thought he was, but he was pretty strong.  Ania found herself staring at him longer than she meant to do.

"No, the lords own us too.  We're not slaves, but they own us.  We just jumped right out of their cages and now we're out here.  My Papa says we'll make a big house and all live in it, and no one will know and we'll be free.  He said we'll go hunting and eat wild rabbits and squirrels and all the meat we can find.  Even deer and lornik if we can get them.  It will be like the time Papa and me went hunting with one of Lord ______________'s guests and had to help mind his things.  We'll live like that, but we'll eat the meat this time and not just berries and vegetables and wild birds like before." 

"Well, I never went hunting with Lord ___________ or his guests so I'm not so happy about this like you are.  I want to go home."  Ania wished she hadn't said it, but she did and she looked away.  "Besides, maybe we're poachers now and that won't be a good thing when the lord who does own this land finds out and comes looking for us." 

"Oh, I don't think a lord will care about it now, even if he does own this land.  They're all too busy fighting the war.  Hmmm.  Maybe this is just the gods' place anyway." 

Ania shrugged and leaned her weight against the chest behind her.  Beexa stayed around as though he'd run out of things to do and they didn't talk all that much after that.

The men chopped down trees and the boys, Beexa included after a moment more, dragged them into the clearing.  They would build a very simple house out of these trees, but now it was supper.  The one pot was brought back out.  Probably, it was never emptied and only more stuff was added to the ever-present and reheated stew.  The broth certainly tasted the same to Ania.

Such was life.  For long days, the refugees worked to make their camp livable.  A permanent cooking area, complete with log benches, was made.  The wagon driver ventured back to the village with a few others of the men to go and fetch some of their woodworking tools and to see the damage done by the soldiers or if they even came.  

"The soldiers hadn't gotten to our farms yet, but it was so quiet and still.  We expected to see'm every moment, so we left off quick.  We got the tools we went for and brought 'em back here, but every inch of the way we're looking back over our shoulders," the driver of the wagon said.  He said everything with a smile and a little chuckle behind his voice.  Ania hated it.

She sat brooding on most nights, staring at the chest, waiting for an opportune time to get at the dagger again.  It seemed to her, more and more, that all they would have to do is go to a nearby city and sell it and live in the city.  She put her knees under her chin and rubbed her hands up and down her legs.  The other children seemed to find her odd and would not really speak to her much anymore.  Even Beexa left her alone now.

When asked, she helped the others in their little makeshift village.  They built a longhouse and covered it over with more sticks and branches and then a tarp from the wagon.  They slept in it as the autumn nights grew chill.  Finally, Ania had her chance.

She could not sleep.  The snores of the men in the longhouse kept her awake.  That, and the nightmares.  She'd been having them consistently for nearly three weeks.  Horrible, terrible dreams about people she did not even know, dreams about them murdering and being murdered again and again.  She watched them in her mind sneaking up on each other and stabbing each other in the head and the back and in the stomach.  And they people being killed never seemed to see it coming.  It took them by surprise every time.

In her dreams, she saw the dagger.  She'd never forgotten what it looked like, nor how she came to find it.  If she were given a hundred pieces of paper and a piece of coal, she could draw it out and make a perfect copy.  Somehow, she knew every bit of its decorations and exactly how it looked.  She remembered again and again.
 
Tonight, her moment came to get at it.  Carefully, she picked her way over the sleeping bodies.  She nearly tripped on one old man's legs and she stepped on another person's calf.  She waited for the woman to wake, but she only rolled over and grunted.  Both women and men snored.  The children snored.

Outside, her Papa was at watch, sitting by the low-burning embers of the cook fire, his back to her and the longhouse.  This was, she realized, how she managed to get up.  He had not been with her and Mama that night.  Out here in the camp, they did not fear the soldiers as much.  Out here, they feared the wild animals, the wolves and lorniks.
 
As she knelt by the chest, she watched her father leaning against a staff he'd carved from a spinestick tree.  They made rules among this little village.  They said a man had to stand up to keep watch or at least keep his head up.  He couldn't sleep.  Her father wasn't sleeping, but he looked like he would soon enough.

Ania opened the chest and there it was, beautiful and shiny even in the darkness.  She took it from the chest and quickly stuffed it under her shirt.  The cold metal nearly made her cry out.  She thought about getting to the woods with it before taking it from its sheath, but she'd never be able to move that quietly.

So she unsheathed it right then and there.  If the dagger made a noise coming from its sheath, Ania didn't know.  No one responded to her.  She walked right out of the longhouse and right up behind her father's back.  He didn't even turn his head to look in her direction.

She danced and cavorted and kicked dust around, but he didn't move.  She tried whispering at him.  Nothing.  She filled her lungs with air and screamed as loud as she possibly could, but no one heard her.

"They will never hear you, child," a voice said to her.  "You can see them and you can hear them, but they will never notice you.  It is my particular talent."

"Who are you?" she said.

"I am the dagger."

"Which dagger?"

"The dagger, the most important dagger ever to exist.  I am the Dagger of Ollogriath."

"Daggers do not talk."

"As you have already found out, I am not ordinary in any way.  I am special.  I am magical."

"Yes, you are.  Why are you talking to me, though?  Why didn't you talk before?"

"I found you.  I like you.  I have been hoping you would get me out of the chest again."

"You didn't find me.  I found you.  I found you in that ditch."

"Let us say we found each other.  In any event, I know what you are thinking about.  I have been inside of your mind since you first picked me up.  I know you would think to sell me, but there is no place near here that could give you a worthy price.  I am in your hands for a different purpose just now.  As I said, I like you, and I want you to have me.  When the time comes, you will take me west and together we will go to Morrigar."

"Morrigar?  Where is that?"

"It is in the west, far away.  It is across the sea.  You will use me to board a ship and we will go together to Morrigar.  I have business to attend there."

"Business?  What business?"

"I must escape my brother, who is looking for me."

"Your brother?  How does a dagger have a brother?  You don't have a Papa or a Mama."

"You have seen the jewel in my hilt?"

"Yes."

"My brothers were all made with similar jewels.  These are the Eyes we are named for.  I have three brothers.  One of my brothers is looking to find me, so that we can be reunited."

"I don't have a brother, but if I did, I don't think I'd run away from him.  But, if you're a talking knife, what're your brothers?"

"Other things.  It is unimportant.  I do not wish to see them or talk to them."

"See them?  Talk to them?  You're a talking knife.  Do they talk?  Are they like talking shields and stuff?"

"Yes, they are like that.  But I do not wish to speak to them.  I do not wish to be around them.  So, when the time is right, you and I will go to Morrigar."

Ania thought this a very strange dream.  A talking dagger wanted to go traveling.

"What is the good of being a talking knife anyway?" Ania said.  "Why would someone make a knife that can think.  You don't have legs or arms or even a face.  All you can do is lay there in my hand like that.  I don't have to take you anywhere, do I?  If I don't want to go, I don't have to go to Morrigar.  I can stay here."

"When the time is right, you will probably have no business here anymore."

"Does that mean I'll get to go back to my home near the village?  What do you mean 'when the time is right' anyway?  Can you see the future?"

"Not exactly.  I understand my brothers.  They wish for us to be together.  This is not my wish.  We must leave this place, you and I together, and go elsewhere.  It is not safe to tarry."

"Not safe?  What's that mean?"

"It is dangerous to be here.  We must leave."  Ania looked to her father, as she did quite often, and most when she had some kind of decision to make.  Her father had a switch in his hands, some crooked tree branch broken off from a larger log, and he poked sparks awake in the fire with it.  Far in the darkness of the woods, wild animals made their noises.  When one was particularly loud, he looked up.  Once, he looked over his shoulder and directly at her, but did not see her.  Ania thought she must have been dreaming.

Within the long house, someone stirred.

"Your mother wakes.  She will look for you.  Go into the woods and pretend to make water."

She had to anyway, so it would not be a complete lie.  She went, and then she stood at the edge of the clearing.  The dagger told her to wait.

"Ania?  Where are you?  Ania?  You answer me?"

Ania put the dagger into the sheath and appeared again.

"I had to go make, Mama," she said, stepping into the clearing.  Her father jumped up from the log and turned to her.  He looked as though she were an undead come to bite his neck.

"Ania?  What are you doing over there?  How did you...why did you?"  By now, she'd hidden the dagger under her shirt.  She stood waiting for him to let her pass.  "I didn't hear her get up?  Ania, you have to tell us when you get up.  You can't just go out into the woods at night.  There are all manner of horrible creatures around here."

The others in the longhouse complained about their noises and Ania was allowed to go back inside the longhouse to sleep.  She kept the dagger.  To attempt to put it back in the chest would have been caught by both of her parents.  She kept it and listened to it speaking to her.  No one else could hear it talking to her.

The conversations that are said to have happened between Ania and the dagger, which I record here, have been captured, recaptured, caged and recaged in the writings of many a philosopher.  They have been translated, studied, and reworked several times.  Unfortunately, the only extant interviews with Hekelair Stopes have undergone such visions and revisions, until it is difficult to say what was actually said and what was added later by those scholars and scribes who think they know better.  Often, when the Dagger is involved, its dialogue lines up with other, better, recordings of dialogue, and often, the Dagger says much of the same things about itself in every historical recording.  It refers to the Other Eyes as its brothers.  It says that the ring is looking for it and wishes to be with it.  Usually, it is trying to get somewhere other than where it currently rests.  It indicates that it can read minds, at least enough to be able to tell when someone is awake or asleep and whether or not someone is noticing the bearer.  It tends to connect with and obsess its bearer, as we can see from Hekelair Stopes' tale and my retelling of it.  The fact that Hekelair Stopes' tale aligns with others, and particularly others about the little girl Ania, are indications that he is telling the truth about having possessed the Dagger in the first place.  Hekelair Stopes was not what many would call a well-educated man.  He was only passingly literate, and if he had been asked about visits to a library before he was noticed, he would have asked what a library was.  I only mention these things to make it clear that yes, I do find it necessary to offer a little more armor about the story, in that I interpret the information given in hour-long interviews into an actual story about this little girl.

Know, dear reader, that I have not changed the facts of the case in my interpretation of it; merely, I have added a little flavor, a few extra scenes perhaps, to give the story a bit more character and interest.  Hekelair Stopes was not a man with political interests, given to changing the nature of a story simply to make it more appropriate for a particular audience, as some would seem to have done.  Hekelair Stopes grounds his story in Allorinia, and so most who have read it would say that this means the story does take place in Allorinia, in some of the free kingdoms that were offshoots of Xomiria.  However, others of the Qwestori have made claims that this story was translated from another tale that took place in Frosomia among Kunjels attacked quite suddenly by soldiers of Morrigar.  Another version claims this was something that happened during the Kinto-shah Civil Wars, which were started by the twin princes of the Emperor.  It is quite possible those stories bear some of the truth in them, or perhaps the dagger likes to be in the possession of children.  My point in discussing this matter here is to suggest that Hekelair Stopes' story is more plausible than the others, as he had no real knowledge of these other places, and no evident knowledge of much beyond his market booth, so why else than to tell the truth, would he ground his tale in his homeland.  Surely, by mentioning the Upstart King, he risked political censure or embarrassment.  The Upstart King had many supporters in his kingdom, and many enemies outside.  Stopes would risk a great deal of difficulty in telling this story if he intended to live where he lived thereafter.

In any event, I digress and would now get back to the story.  Suffice it to say that much of this time was without great deals of intrigue.  Ania and her parents continued their work to build their refugee camp.  After the longhouse, the men set to work building individual houses in the clearing.  It could be said that, among peasant farmers, the almost animalistic ability to build a nest for oneself grew into an instinct akin to what birds do, or bees, or burrowers.  These peasants were not far removed from those generations of their kin who lived like this all the time and knew no different.    

Winter was coming and the mornings were growing cold and brittle.  Leaves were long since fallen, and game grew somewhat scarce.  They dried meat and stored it as best they could.  The women went to a nearby creek and put together pottery.  Nothing like what they were used to, but a good basket, and a few dried mud pots, were some comfort.  When they could not find any more game, they had a few things saved that would hold them.  In the meantime, they improved their homes, covering small, close, cozy huts with waddle and daub and adobe.  They made clothing from animal skins, which included a pair of fuzzy boots for Ania to wear.  She felt strange in them, but they were warm and comfortable.

Ania kept the Dagger with her.  She never put it back into the chest, and her parents never asked her to do so.  The Dagger never told her if they wanted it back, nor did it seem to care.  She dug clams and ate them with it, cracking open the obstinate shells with the blade.  She met a wolf in the forest, not far from their camp.  It seemed to be going there, and so Ania sneaked up behind it.  Only the moving branches gave anything about her presence away, but not the sound of her.  She stabbed the wolf to death from behind and then stepped back to look at what she'd done.  The dagger had given her great power, she realized then.  She could kill wolves with it.

Sometime later, as she considered what she could do, she crept up on a deer.  For a long time, she watched it, standing only a few feet away.  Her stomach always reminded her that she needed food.  When first she saw the deer, she thought only of killing it and taking it back with her.  She wasn't strong enough to drag it herself, but she would get Beexa to help her get it.

Then, she looked at the deer.  It was beautiful.  She'd never seen one quite this close.  If she had wanted, she could have patted it.  She could have grabbed one of its bony antlers and yanked it off its feet perhaps.  Not even her beating heart and heavy breathing startled the deer.  The dagger kept her completely covered and hidden.  She thought about letting it leave, letting it go without even knowing she was there at all.  She had the absolutest power to do this.  But she killed it instead.

She took the Dagger, which seemed infinitely sharp as well as silent, and dragged the blade across the animal's throat.  Blood fell like a waterfall and splattered on the ground around her feet.  The deer tried to run, but only got a little distance in the undergrowth of the forest before falling over and dying.  The blood that fell on her hands simply sloughed off as though she were nothing but a strong breath of wind in its path.

Again, she stood over the deer, like she had the wolf, and just stared at it for a while.  She killed a deer.  Without a bow.  Without a spear.  Without anything but her hands and a knife, she had slain an animal that weighed nearly twice what she did.  What horrible, terrible power she had.

But now, what could she do?  She killed a stag, an animal that could feed her entire family.  Its skin could make blankets or even a wall for their hut.  She could not just leave it there to rot, but how would she explain what she had done to the others?  They would know that a girl her age, her size, and her knowledge couldn't have done this.

She got her father to see what she had done.

"You have the Dagger out of the chest, don't you?" was what he said after long tortured moments of silence.

"Yes, Papa, I do."  She showed him the weapon.

"I thought so.  When it went missing, I couldn't ask anyone if they'd seen it.  I had hoped you were the one to take it.  I didn't want to suspect anyone else."

"Do not give me to him," the Dagger said.

"Give it to me," Papa said.  She stepped back from him.  "I said give it to me, Ania."

"No, Papa.  I can't."

"Can't?  Give me that damned knife, child.  You don't need to be going around like a shadow and sneaking up on people with it."

"It doesn't want me to."

"It doesn't want you to do what?  It's a Dagger.  What do you know about what it wants?"

"It talks to me, Papa.  Did it ever talk to you?  It told me I have to keep it."

"Why?  I just want to put it back in the chest or keep it safe with me."  He sounded pained, as though she had said something terribly troubling.  His eyes looked so sad, so worried and desperate, she almost gave it over. 

"I will not go to him," the Dagger said.

"Why not?" Ania said to it.

"Why not what?" her father said.  His concern was growing towards anger.  "I am your father.  Now give me that knife, or I'll have your hide for it."

"No, Papa."  Her father was never described in any form of the literature as a vengeful or violent man. He was not cruel nor a drunkard, but Ania's behavior with the Dagger was something he would not tolerate.     

She had been acting strange ever since she discovered it and this had not gone unnoticed.  Her claims to hear the voices of the Dagger was not something that would set any parent's mind at ease, but her willful disobedience in turning it over was something else entirely.  That being said, his anger got the better of him that time and he lunged for her.  He caught her by the arm and clamped his fist down tight enough to hurt.  If he'd any leverage, he might very well have broken her arm.

In all the stories, her father tried to take the Dagger away from her in some fashion.  Some playwrights end the tale here.  Ta-Kufrara ends his Maiden Dagger Bearer saga here, and writes that her father killed her by accidentally flinging her down and having her hit her head on a stone.  Gamren Felinor, the kunjel who wrote the famous opera entitled The Stabbing of Light, How Dreadful the Scream, entails his play with three endings, none bloodless.  In the first, Ania stabs her father, but does it only to get away from him; in the second, her father attacks her to wrest the dagger from her and in so doing, as is the case with Kufrara, he kills her.  In that ending, he pulls the dagger from its sheath and lays it in her hands, to hide her body and then he runs away and is never heard from again.  Unfortunately, even though neither of these endings to this tale are supported by the real story, they are the two most commonly voted to happen when kunjels see the performance of the tale.  During the Declaring before the Third Act, most often the wooden chips are placed in those two boxes.  The third resolution to this tale, in the kunjelic mind, is closer to what actually happened. 

Ania unsheathed the Dagger and disappeared to her father.  He let go of her in sheer surprise, and no matter what he tried to do, he could not catch her after that.  She pushed her way through some bushes and she was gone.

She did not know where she would go.  She made sure, at the very least, not to run through camp.  She did not want to be with them, nor have them attempt to comfort her, nor did she wish to see her father's face after that.  He'd never tried to hurt her before, and her arm stung and ached from the tight grip he'd had on her.

She came upon the remnants of a road, perhaps the very one her village had used to find the campsite.  She followed it until it led her to an old, broken down keep.  She'd never been inside a castle in her life, and here was one no one wanted anymore.

"Anything wrong with me going into that castle?" she asked the Dagger, but the Dagger had been silent for a long time.  She shook it, like she was trying to wake it up.  "Hello?  Are you there?"

"I am here."  

"What is wrong with my father?  What did you do to him?  Why did he try to hurt me?"

"He did not.  He wanted me."

"Why shouldn't he have you?"

"Because you are the one I am to be with."

"Why?  Tell me what is happening.  Tell me why I shouldn't just let you go.  Why shouldn't I just give you away to the next person I meet?"

"Because I will save your life."

"Can you predict the future or not?" she said.

"No, but I know my brothers.  I know they will try to find me.  I know that when one king decides to attack and kill another king's country with swords and armor, sometimes it is because of me or my brothers."

"So, they are looking for you.  You were stolen from them.  I should give you back and the soldiers will go home.  Then, I could go home, couldn't I?"

"If you wish for the soldiers to leave, it would be better if you do not give me to them."

"Why not?"

"Because, I am not meant for them either.  I have chosen to be with you, so I will stay with you."

"Are your brothers making war?  Is that why the soldiers are marching through here?  Are they looking for you?"

"It is possible.  I prefer to avoid war.  My brother might be among them."

"Which brother?  What is he?"

"A ring.  The ring prefers to be on the hand of kings.  It makes war to find me sometimes.  It has in the past.  It is possible this king is looking for me.  I do not wish to be found by just anyone.  You know what power I give.  You killed a deer and a wolf, so you know what I could do in the hands of the wicked or the greedy."    

"I'm not wicked or greedy, then?"

"I do not judge.  It is what you choose to do with me that makes you what you are.  I am power and the ability to achieve wisdom, but I provide also unlimited capacity for evil."

"What do you mean, evil?"  

"I will say no more of this.  I chose you for a purpose.  If you wish to go into the castle, go there.  It matters not to me."

"Will my Mama and Papa be safe?"

"I do not predict the future.  I can say that it is better I am not near them.  If my brother is looking for me, and they are found with me, they will be killed.  You must carry me to Morrigar.  I wish to go there."  

"Why do you care so much what happens to my parents?"

On this point, the Dagger was silent.  However, it did say: "There are two ways to hide: hiding to cause harm, and hiding to avoid it."  That much has been repeated in several of the stories coming from the Dagger over the years, not just in this story.

We know little more of the interaction between the girl and the Dagger here.  Whether or not she went into the castle is a matter for interpretation, really.  I choose here to describe it in scant detail mainly because some of Stopes' descriptions give us this information.  If it helps the future Qwestors to find the Dagger and do what is best with it for our world, then perhaps this simple clue may rest in posterity and lead us closer to our best fate.

Hekelair Stopes describes the castle in his dreams as being a large, broken structure.  He says there are five towers, or at least their foundations.  The castle had a keep that rested precariously over deep cellars and dungeons, some of which were laid open "like a hollowed-out skull."  Moss and trees and giant mushrooms grew on its walls and along its battlements.  The castle's only inhabitants were the wild animals who'd put their burrows and nests all over and through the walls.  Here, in many visions of this place, is described a wonder-filled examination of the interchange between natural beings.  Nothing in this place took notice of the girl walking through it or living in it.  They did not see her, smell her, or hear her.  To them, she was nothing more than a light breeze or a heavy insect moving through the bushes.

When she needed food, she took it easily from the animals.  She lived in this castle for quite a time by herself.  She did not know how she would face her father, nor how her father would face her, and she decided, to avoid the tempting her parents or anyone else into stealing the Dagger from her, she stayed away.  It is hard to imagine a ten-year-old girl staying away from her people on purpose like this for a long time, and it is more probable that the Dagger demanded her stay away.  In fact, the conversations people say they had between them were regarding why she could not go back.  The Dagger gives several reasons, though most of them hinge on the Ring, which is the seeker.

"The Ring will find me, and where the Ring finds me, it will have killed those who keep me from it."

"The Ring sees much.  It orchestrates many terrible things."

"The Ring has moved many people.  It has been the cause of many migrations.  It has raised kings and lowered them.  It has launched ships and scuttled them.  It has begun wars and foreseen their treaties."

"The Ring is the seeker.  The Ring is the one who seeks our reunion."

"The Ring seeks out its own future.  It makes itself go here or there."

"The Ring makes kings it wants to rule and peasants it wants to obey."

"It is not the Ring that is evil, but the people it moves.  The Ring knows like a farmer knows the animals it manipulates.  It knows their power, and it knows their desires, and it is merely the difficulty to move a powerful being towards what it wants to keep it within its bonds.  It is the way of the herdsman to move his herd willingly where he wants them to go, to make his goals their goals as well, else the fence is broken, and the harness undone, and the chains snapped.  A rope is only so good as the belief it will hold, a chain only so good as it is not tested too far.  The Ring knows and sees ahead.  It tells its bearer the sunset will not burn those who walk towards it."  

Ania found a throne room, or some great hall, without a roof or a throne, but she knew the sort of thing it was.  She played as a queen there, commanding this or that imaginary knight or lord or servant to fetch her things.  Perhaps, she asked for wine, even though no one in her family had ever tasted the sweet wines that touched the lips of royalty.  Maybe she wanted the grapes instead.  How often peasants would spend their precious coins on grapes as a reward for an entire season's labor, or something like grapes.  As I record and study the mind of this child, I wonder what sorts of things she could have in her imagination.  It is astounding how the upper classes deny or did deny them so much and yet they have so many dreams.  Stopes claims the girl imagined sumptuous fare at a phantom table.  She put crowns on her head like no one has ever worn or seen, and which no neck, least of all her own, could ever bear up.

If Ania had magic or something else about her, then perhaps she would have been made rich, and then perhaps she could have learned to read, which was a dream about as attainable to someone of her station as flight.  And yet, how much this girl probably learned, merely from talking to this Dagger.  Even if she did not learn a thing, if not a single word of wisdom stayed in her head but escaped like a beetle flying from an open jar, we have benefited and seen through her eyes by means of the Dagger.  Even Hekelair Stopes becomes a sage, a prophet, by means of sharing his knowledge of this Dagger.  

Because this is not really Ania's story, but a story about her, I will not detail here all the various histories and dreams Ania herself is alleged to have had.  Different scholars say she saw quite a few differing things.  It is believed that the majority of this education came while Ania explored this castle.  Some discredited accounts have the Dagger telling her about this place she had found, but again, these are stories that owe the entirety of their existence to only inconsequential vapors of pure guesswork.

She did however learn about many of the previous bearers of the Dagger and many scholars say that this time spent in this castle was a time of great weeping.  The Dagger showed her horrors her little mind had never even attempted to contain, pouring them down into her heart like a man forcing liquor down the throat of some initiate who only knew purest water before.  It showed her thieves and murderers and rapists and abusers of its power, one after another, until their stories blurred within her.  Maggar Menderin Tharneliir and several of his disciples have said the Dagger is the most evil of all the Eyes, even though research says other.  Most of the knowledgeable say it is the shield that is truly evil.  It mocks the attempts to stop its work.  The Dagger has no control, or at least these stories and visions would suggest it does not.  I firmly believe, based on what I am writing here and studying here and now, based on Hekelair Stopes's and every other story I have found, it seems that the Dagger is the conscience among the rest of them.  It is the part of whatever these sacred or powerful artifacts are that sees their terrible works and weeps.

So, Ania wept heavy, heartbroken tears as the Dagger showed her its agony and its pain.

The Dagger let Ania go back to her home to find it had been occupied.  The plow horse's bones were left where soldiers had eaten it.  They roasted it over a fire like some kind of wild pig, and they had gathered around the nag like jackals around a deer.  The fields were trampled and the berry bushes picked clean.  What stores her family had left behind had been eaten to the very last stain, and the jars or barrels or boxes either taken or destroyed.  Even the rain barrel had been emptied and left for dead.  Out of spite, the soldiers had gouged a hole in it, like they were bleeding a pig to drink its blood.

She slept that night in the loft, clutching her little dolly, Pixy, to her chest.  She comforted it, telling it that everything would be alright.  She never saw her parents again.  They did not return to the village the soldiers had rampaged through, and it was a good thing.  After the ebbing of this army, another army would soon come seeking vengeance from the Upstart King and they would come here, too, not find anything of value, and move on.

Ania walked all over the kingdom, following the soldiers, finding things to wear and things to eat and muddy water to drink.  Stopes describes this time as like following a herd of monsters.  They left things in their wake like the wandering tribes of Terrilia.  It was a wonder to Ania they had anything at all, they wasted so much.

She came to several villages and hamlets along the way.  Some stayed about and picked up their lives from the dirty ground like people after a storm.  They complained about the soldiers and what they did in terms Ania could not have understood before that time she spent with the Dagger.  Now, she knew it all.  She knew the words "rape," and "murder," and "pillage," quite well.  She knew what it was for a soldier to "have a get from a girl" or "have a go" with her.  She heard them talking in every village and every town about the soldiers carrying off the men to fight with them, putting a helmet or a bucket on their head and handing them a sharpened stick.

"The general just sicced them on us," she heard one woman say.  "Said they had to replenish the ranks."

"Lined us up down the road.  Took the menfolk by the shoulders and shoved them t'ward the soldiers.  Told them others to 'have a go' where they would and be quick about it.  Quite a few of us, they took with 'em.  Borrowed them, they said."

The army borrowed quite a few of the people in the villages along its way westward.  These expendable souls were put forward in the lines as fodder for the enemy.  

Ania made her way west, following the devastation of the soldiers until she found the armies.  She slept in inns and haunted various places along the way, staying inside of a house here, or by the fire of an inn there.  She dipped her fingers into soups, carried of whatever food the soldiers didn't manage to find and eat, and drank beer and ale and wines and whatever clean water she could find.

The Dagger has always seemed displeased with any misuse of its power, including its use for theft.  The Dagger would encourage Ania not to steal, but here is recorded the conversation where Ania describes her situation and convinces the Dagger she is right.  Ania was a very strong young woman by the end of her bearing of the Dagger.

"You must not steal," the Dagger said to her.  "Do not use me for thefts or murders or violations of the sanctity of life.  I am burdened with the hiding of people, but I will not help them lie in wait like wolves, to sneak around victims like gremlins."

"If I appear, and make myself known, then people will want me.  If I am caught, you will certainly be taken from me, and you will certainly be sold to the nobles of this land, or their families for favors.  I must remain invisible, but I must eat.  You cannot expect me to just carry you for miles and miles with no shoes, no clothes, no food, and nothing to drink."

"It is not fit to steal or take advantage of me."

"You are a tool.  You are a Dagger.  You don't have to eat.  You don't have to sleep.  You have never lost your father or mother or whole family.  I will eat and I will drink, or I'll rid myself of you."      

And to this, apparently, the Dagger fell silent.  At least, no further argument between her and the Dagger is made here.  Ania became a thief.  Many would say this transformation to theft was inevitable.  As the philosophers have repeated the words of Orthonian the Shadow: "Power corrupts the souls."  Some have compared the power of the dagger to rust over iron.  Eventually, all become corrupted by it, no matter its desire to do otherwise.  Even Ania was corrupted by it, though far less than most of the people who ever had it.

Ania may very well have slept in the tents of the warlords marching through her native country.  She kept the Dagger for nearly an entire year to herself.  She spoke to no one, and made herself visible to only a few people during that time.

She became a ghost haunting the soldiers.  She stole food from the campsites.  She stole and broke their weapons.  She scattered their money along the roads, such that soldiers fought each other over the coins she threw away.  One of the lords riding forth in the name of his king reported in a diary that forty horses were killed in one night with their throats cut open.  This lord, who by this time had earned his way up to being Baron __________________, was where we think Ania stayed for most of the time she kept the Dagger, as his were the warriors with the most unexplained difficulty.  Chicken crates were emptied, pigs were killed.  She never repeated the horse maneuver, but did hobble quite a few of them, making them useless to be ridden.  She cut open containers, drained water barrels, tore up clothing, and generally reeked havoc upon the soldiers such that they believed they were cursed, haunted, or both.  About the time they reached the Broken Shadow Pass, they were thoroughly convinced that leftover spirits from the age of the Qwadro were tormenting them.

This warlord had gone farthest west, all the way into COUNTRY TO THE WEST.  He was poised, or would have been better poised, to take the City of ON THE BAY OF XOMIR OR WHATEVER.  Had he not been plagued by so many strange misfortunes or his people so demoralized.  When he arrived at the city, he lacked the strength to do anything much to it, until the others arrived behind him.  Of course, the Upstart King's Armies all turned back, but this Baron was the first of them to so turn back.

We know, at one point in all of this, Ania had the Baron under her knife.  She had the Baron and all of his men under her knife, and yet she did not kill any one of them.  She left warnings for them.  She made marks all over their campsites.  She cut ropes, she killed horses.  She opened and emptied barrels or spilled them.  She set fire to supply tents and wagons.  She made holes in armor with the Dagger and sliced open boots and clothing.  As the armies went westward, more and more fell out of their ranks.  Lords and generals and knights took their soldiers and entourages back home.  Some took more persuading than others, but Ania bled the armies of their men with terror and fear until they felt their cause was a bad one.

Unfortunately, this plan only enraged the conquered kingdoms more and more as the Upstart King's armies fell away, completely demoralized.  The conquered kingdoms and those who were harmed most were naturally angry and vengeful, but what's more they saw the cowardice of the Upstart King as insults to their honor.  He had pillaged and raped and destroyed villages and people's lives by the thousands, but when his armies finally met their equal, the Upstart King proved to them he was merely a bully, pulling back when threatened like a child shirking out of a fight he'd provoked.

This stumble in his plans was enough.  The western kingdoms would pay him back.

But we know Ania had a conversation with the Baron.  She came into his tent at night, while he slept.  She sheathed the Dagger and stood before him.  She roused him from his sleep and spoke with him.  The Baron records this event in his journal quite clearly:

I rose with my own knife in hand.  Since the attacks, I slept more comfortably with a blade to hand.  I had even experimented with ways of sleeping with some form of armor on my person, but to no avail.  What magicians I had, I employed to provide warnings of any and all access to me or my generals or supplies, but again to no use.  Whatever it was that had been after us, that had my men afraid to sleep, afraid to be men, was unstoppable.  It had claimed no lives, except those guards I at first put to death for negligence of their duties, but all assumed it would eventually turn murderous. My men spoke of ghosts and angry spirits, demons roused from slumber under our marching boots.  Perhaps it was the vengeance of angry lost souls, which is wrought upon the heart that would seek an empire after a prior empire is overthrown and thought forgotten and forsaken.  


When I waked, I stared into the eyes of a child.  She could not have reached more than her twelfth or thirteenth year in age.  Her hair was long and hung down around her shoulders, raggedly cut and of a color that may have been brown or black.  It was difficult to say for certain in the darkness of my tent.  Her eyes were the eyes of someone insane or unwell in mind.  She may has well have been a wild animal for all the civility that shone behind those eyes.  She held a dagger sheathed in her hands of such obvious and ornate beauty it drew my eye unwittingly to it.  


I do not know what woke me at that moment.  I believe it was her touch upon my foot.  This poor creature wrung my heart of sympathy for her.  Though she was not physically ill, at least not by what my eyes could say of her, she did not look well.  I would have perhaps offered her food or the use of my healers or whomever would have done best by her, had she not spoken to me.  I thought perhaps she was the daughter of one of the peasants we carried along with us to war.  I thought perhaps she came to trade this dagger she found with me for her father back maybe.  Then, she spoke to me, and dispelled any such notions with the very first edge of her voice.


"I have thought many times of killing you," she said to me.  "I will let you turn back and give all you have taken back to the people you have robbed."  Those were her only words.  She drew the knife and she immediately disappeared.  


Terrified, I leapt from my bed and went for my sword and shield.  I waited for hours for an attack, but nothing happened to me.  I walked among my men, near naked, and in complete terror.  I know that my appearance and my manner probably turned a hundred of them homeward, and perhaps flamed several conspiracies against me and my family as well.  I know that night earned me a reputation for cowardice among my men.  


They had seen nothing or no one come and go from my tent.  No one had seen her but me, but I knew her for what she was.  She had been the one haunting me and my men all these many days.  An entire army had been crushed and broken by a child.  She had been the one who murdered my beloved mount, Belophelos, the bay I had grown up with all my life.  There was nothing I could ever do about it.  I told my men and my advisers that I did indeed meet a ghost in my tent, and it was angry spirits we had roused.  


I say this only here, but I believe I know the Dagger she carried.  It was the very one the legends speak about, the Dagger of the Eye.  One in my place does not grow up Xomirian without knowing of these objects.  I had met a Bearer that night, who had every right and ability to kill me, and there was nothing at all I could have done to stop her.  No horn, no guard, no magical device could have saved my life.  I took her up on her offer and turned my soldiers toward home.  We struck our banners and our tents.  My men, despite how cowardly I may have appeared to them that night, did not seem to object over much.  We shrunk back from our goal, which was to reach the City by the Sea, and I, along with several of my sergeants, developed a blindness to the people leaving our ranks, and an inability to count or remember the names of our own.  

Clearly, the dagger chose this girl for her ability to give mercy.  Or, I suppose, some would say that she was a coward, too weak or too pitiful to kill a human.

But it was clearly her who helped stop the Upstart King.  I believe this is one of the most important stories the Dagger ever tells, and I believe there is a reason why it tells everyone this story, or some derivation of it.  Sometimes, it has changed the details of its story, but I've already explained the reasons behind this.  The Dagger wants to show mercy in power.  It wants us to see that it does not wish to kill or destroy.

The people call these things 'The Eyes of Ollogriath.'  They think the Dagger, the Shield, the Sword, and the Ring were all made from the broken mind of the First Dragon, Ollogriath, himself.  Perhaps this story, the story of the merciful girl who did not kill the soldiers who took her life away from her, is a testament to Ollogriath and his state of mind.  The Dagger could be Ollogriath's desire for redemption, or at least his attempts to resist the evil that took hold of him and destroyed him.  Perhaps the Dagger proves that all creatures have something within them that could be considered a spark of divinity or goodness, even creatures like Ollogriath who nearly destroyed everyone and everything in this world and all worlds attached to it.

The tales the Dagger tells become tragedy unlike any the entire universe has ever seen or duplicated.  Imagine a creature with such godlike power, which falls out of favor with the morality of the all of existence, and knows its own crime.  Why does that part of us all which tells us the right from the wrong speak so softly, so subtly, as to be only a small spark of goodness within us all, like this Dagger?  For if the Dagger truly is good, it is only a shard of good, a tiniest flash of light, within the evil that was Ollogriath.  How many burned alive in the fires from that dragon's breath?  How many were crushed, bone and sinew, beneath his feet and within his claws' grasp?  How many smashed upon the rocks like lost sailors in the gusts from his wings?  And yet, within him, was that soft, subtle voice begging him to reign himself in, to deny himself his power and not destroy the peoples of the Trith.  There was, within him, a whisper not to steal, not to rule with terror, not to kill or destroy.  The voice was part of his power, and yet it did not wish to be what it was.  It is as if a hammer gained a conscience as it broke open an enemy's skull on the battlefield.  Isn't this what Ollogriath was, the Hammer of Doom, the Hammer of the Gods, the Wrath of Highest Power?  The being who was made to judge the world.  He was corrupted with his power, but still a certain strength remained.  It was like the iron corrupted by water, perhaps.  Until the rust got completely through, the iron remained strong.

It is difficult to unravel this mystery of Trithofar.  Many try, and I only add a single drop to the ocean of knowledge and thought devoted to these peculiar, elusive, and enchanted items.  I have devoted my life to understanding them, and perhaps, one day, even finding or seeing them.  Perhaps, one day, I will understand why, or will help someone else along the way do so.