Additional Notes: I just hate it whenever Microsoft Word crashes and I didn't save, and *then* it forgets to Recover Document. Grrr. Anyway, sorry about using this character (Nalfein) again, and with a different personality at that, but I tend to get over fond of some of the characters who actually have tiny roles in the books. Sorry.
Intersection
"I had hoped that you had given up."
The Mage looked up from whatever he had been studying with the unhurried dignity of age, vaguely curious, slightly affronted, but lacking the irritated impatience that he would have exhibited centuries ago.
"I never give up," Jarlaxle said with an impish grin, removing his hat archly and bowing in an elaborate greeting.
"Act your age, mercenary," the Mage returned to the scroll, tracing the symbols lovingly. The candlelight threw burnished highlights on the black skin of his hand, fashioning a resemblance to the hue of polished bronze viewed in deep water.
"I always feel young in the presence of someone older than myself."
The Mage snorted, not even bothering to glance up. "Go away."
"So I ask again, do you still hold to the wager?"
"Yes, yes," the Mage said absently, then tucked a lock of white hair that had fallen over his eyes behind a pointed ear. Tentatively, it slid out again, slipping across keen black eyes that seemed to hold the knowledge of several lifetimes. "Just go away. If you see fit to bother me with more females, this time, try to find someone with a higher intellect than a snail."
"I will hold you to it," Jarlaxle said with satisfaction, then bowed and left the room with a spring in his step that the Mage, immersed in his parchments, did not notice.
**
"This city is beautiful," S'kaerik said happily, when she returned to the room prepared for her and saw Jarlaxle waiting in it. In her excitement, she forgot to scold him for dropping in so unexpectedly. "It's so beautiful!"
"And to think I had to persuade you to come," Jarlaxle said dryly. "Mages like beauty. Some think it is a character flaw."
"Oh no, it's not," S'kaerik smiled. "Sshamath was built by mages, then?"
Jarlaxle shrugged. "I do not know. It was certainly improved by mages, bit by bit, over the years."
"But everything seems so… sculptured and graceful. And what kind of stone did they use? Smooth and nearly as white as marble, but…"
"In certain angles or under some lights, you could swear there are veins of precious stone or metal in them," Jarlaxle finished, seemingly quoting something. "It is difficult to find, and expensive, but mages will be mages. It was not like this when Menzoberranzan was still alive," he added, a little pensively.
"And you can't even see all the machinery," S'kaerik grinned slyly.
"Machinery, Lady Cat?" Jarlaxle feigned astonishment. "Why, can your lovely eyes see through stone and metal?"
S'kaerik blushed. "Stop teasing me. The hints are out there for anyone with half of a working mind to see. There's an efficient sewage system, very modern-looking fountains, a very well hidden and highly advanced electricity network, and the clocks seem very advanced. That sort of thing."
"Your insight will put the entire learned world to shame, Lady Cat."
"If you're trying to tempt me into fighting with you, it's working."
"Actually, I wanted you to meet Nalfein, but if you do want to train, I am always available." Jarlaxle grinned when S'kaerik visibly flinched at the last.
"Eh… no, no thanks," she said hastily, tail twitching nervously. "Once is enough. As to meeting Nalfein…"
"That is, if you are not too busy." Jarlaxle looked pointedly around her room. Unpacked travel cases were stacked neatly near the comfortable bed, and the generator sat sullenly in a corner, as if eyeing the power outlets set neatly into the wall with envy.
"Would he know anything about engineering? I would greatly like to speak with an engineer," S'kaerik said. She had inspected said outlets earlier, and had marvelled at how the Dark Elves seemed to have channelled electricity – she would have to find what source they were using – to homes without wires all over the place and hanging over the streets. Was there magic involved?
That was quite a likely possibility, and this was a Mage city, after all… the Company and the Surface World would definitely benefit from this venture, if the Mages were as forthcoming with their knowledge as they were with money and resources. The light bulbs that had come with the train were very solemnly and ceremonially received, though not by the senior Mages themselves.
"He is a Mage Lord, here," Jarlaxle said, with a grin when she looked up sharply.
"I thought the Mage Lords of Sshamath only spoke to the senior staff, if at all," she said cautiously, suddenly uncertain about the entire business. She had only seen glimpses of the rulers of Sshamath in their finery, watching the Company unload things and people. Emissaries had been sent in their stead to welcome the train, as if anything less than a Mage Lord was beneath their notice, which was rather obviously the case.
"He was not originally of Sshamath, and these days, he is somewhat more interested in history than magic."
"That certainly sounds strange," S'kaerik smiled, sitting down cross-legged on her bed, and inviting Jarlaxle to take a seat at the sofas. "Though not as strange as the fact that he's older than you are."
"That was actually mildly insulting, Lady Cat," Jarlaxle grinned, "You make me sound positively ancient. 'Older than you' indeed."
"But you are ancient," S'kaerik smirked. "Every time I look at you I have to prevent myself from jumping on you and putting you away in a museum in a glass tank and a bronze plaque. But seriously," she said, before Jarlaxle could retort, "How much older, actually?"
"I lost count, Lady Cat," Jarlaxle said with a grin.
"I don't believe you. And have a seat, please, you're making my legs feel tired."
"I was going to ask you to meet him right now."
"Now?" S'kaerik looked a little panicky. "But I won't be a very good conversationalist – I'm a bit tired, and I haven't bathed, and my hair's in a mess…"
"Cats always look – and smell - fine," Jarlaxle said with a wink. "And I am sure you will charm him in any state, Lady Cat."
"If I didn't know better I'd think you were flirting with me," S'kaerik said dryly, but allowed herself to be led.
**
"He doesn't seem to be a very sociable creature," S'kaerik remarked, when Jarlaxle explained that the reason they had to go first to Bregan D'aerthe was because there were only two spots in the city where there was something that could lead to Nalfein's place – Bregan D'aerthe headquarters and the Mage School.
"Those are for outsiders. He can go anywhere he wants to, but generally he cannot be bothered to nowadays," Jarlaxle said, considering whether or not he should reveal the nature of the wager to S'kaerik like he had to previous females, and then deciding not to, "He thinks it is more interesting to use his mind to 'walk' around. Perhaps you could persuade him otherwise."
"And what makes you think a Mage Lord would listen to me?" S'kaerik smiled nervously. Jarlaxle realized with some amusement that she was devoutly wishing that she had insisted on cleaning up a little first, by the way she surreptitiously combed at her hair and glanced at her reflection worriedly in the glass of some illuminated shop windows. Her ears were nearly flat against her head in anxiety, and her tail kept moving across the long, fur-covered legs.
"Everyone would listen to you, Lady Cat," Jarlaxle said expansively, and grinned when S'kaerik blushed, as he knew she would. Needling her was still a noticeable source of fun.
"If he turns me into a toad, it's your fault."
**
Her first impression of the place was that of sinister majesty. A 'pocket plane', Jarlaxle had called it – one of the last few remaining. Most of them had become unstable after some incident on the surface, long before the Awareness, as the Weyr-Cats generally called the start of their civilisation proper, and it had not been well-recorded in histories. After all, few Surface people actually did use pocket planes.
"You had one, I think," S'kaerik said to Jarlaxle, when he told her about it.
"I had several," Jarlaxle's smile was wry, as if at the memory of a loss. "I also had a lot of things I liked inside them, when they all folded up into oblivion."
"Folded up?" S'kaerik looked warily around them. They were in a tall, domed room, with graceful buttresses and arches that merged toward the very centre of the ceiling and seemed to plunge down in a glittering, frozen waterfall of gold flecks that, on closer inspection, turned out to be a cunningly wrought crystal chandelier illuminated from within with a golden magelight hearts. The flecks seemed to tumble towards a water-filled stone bowl, a metre or so in diameter, held up to the height of S'kaerik's shoulder by some sort of dark sculpture whose form seemed to evade her eye whenever she tried to find the details. Just looking at it made her skin crawl, anyway, so, with the prudence of a Cat, she carefully ignored it.
"Do not worry, Lady Cat, I am relatively sure this plane is stable," Jarlaxle, that rogue, smiled rather evilly when she shot him an apprehensive look. The smile widened when she held up a hand, pretending to examine it, and slid out the claws for a moment in warning.
"We should not keep him waiting," he said, and wandered off towards one of the four large metal doors. S'kaerik sighed, and followed, trying to ignore the carvings and sculptures that decorated the walls. Some of them were particularly disturbing. In marked contrast, the floor was made of plain stone tiles.
Life-sized stone statues of Dark Elves, male and female, in armour or robes, crouched on ledges above each door. Their eyes were closed, as if in meditation, lips curled as if in a snarl. Those were disturbing too, and S'kaerik kept as close to Jarlaxle as she could without being intrusive. She was definitely worried about this now.
Jarlaxle put his hand on the door, and S'kaerik had to bite down a cry of fear when the stone Elf above that door opened his eyes – white stones against black obsidian - and slowly, grindingly, looked down at them. Jarlaxle chuckled, but ignored her glare.
"We seek Nalfein," Jarlaxle told the Elf conversationally. "I am Jarlaxle, and this is my companion, S'kaerik." S'kaerik shuddered visibly when the stone Elf looked searchingly at her, and then let out a sound of relief when he closed his eyes and leant back into his former position.
Noiselessly, the door swung inwards.
"More statues!" S'kaerik tried, with some success, to keep her voice from turning into an undignified squeak of horror, when they stepped into the long, high-ceilinged corridor. The dusty, rotting path of red carpet was lined on either side by statues of Dark Elves. Each statue, its arm outstretched slightly, held in a palm a dim magelight, as if in supplication. Behind them, on both walls, was some sort of picture, details so worn as to be nearly invisible. Despite herself, the historian part of S'kaerik tried to get her to take a closer look, but she managed to restrain herself.
"It is a metaphor," Jarlaxle explained, walking unhurriedly through the silent parade of stone.
"For what?" S'kaerik asked nervously, sniffing the air. Thankfully for her sanity, these statues seemed inanimate. "You came here recently?"
"I always visit him when I come to Sshamath," Jarlaxle said, reaching the end of the corridor – another door, this one, thankfully, without an awakening stone statue. The door opened before them to show the most massive library S'kaerik had ever seen. "As to the exact metaphor, I cannot really remember."
The light was brighter here, illuminating most of the titles, though the faint scent of decay was just as present here as it was in the corridor. As they walked past towering bookcases and untidy stacks of ancient tomes, S'kaerik wondered aloud how big the room was. Looking up, she could just barely see another level of bookcases, with a graceful stairway leading up to it.
Jarlaxle shrugged. "He keeps adding extensions to it. A few centuries ago it was nearing the size of Melee-Magthere."
S'kaerik's eyes were shining, and her ears had pricked up. "I think you may just have showed me something more beautiful than the city," she admitted. "The value of all these books must be immense."
"Not all of them are history," Jarlaxle smiled at her enthusiasm. "He keeps the spell books on another level.
"I can only see one other level."
"If you walk a little more into the library, you will find entrances to other floors, like the one that just contains scrolls," Jarlaxle said, "And, without the proper knowledge, you will get lost."
S'kaerik realized she could not see the door anymore, nor anything around them other then bookshelves. "I would greatly like to read some of these… are they all in Dark Elven?"
"No," Jarlaxle said, "He collects books a little indiscriminately. Some of them are in your Surfacer tongues, Lady Cat."
"Okay… what do you mean by indiscriminately?"
"The subject of Nalfein's books range from Nature to machinery and even fictional works," Jarlaxle shrugged. "Eternity is a long time."
"Do you have a library like this too?" S'kaerik grinned.
"No," Jarlaxle said, with mock modesty, "But I like to think I have the value of its equivalent in my vaults and in my influence."
"He collected books, and you collected money and power?"
"Something like that, Lady Cat," Jarlaxle grinned. "Money, and certainly power, give me quite a bit more pleasure than towers of books and parchment."
"Does he just read books all day long?" S'kaerik asked enviously.
"No, sometimes he spends a little effort collecting some more," Jarlaxle said dryly, "And since he likes to read slowly, he has not as yet finished reading all the books in this library."
"I should think not," S'kaerik breathed. They turned a corner, and had to walk in single file – the bookcases were packed very closely here. "I am beginning to envy you Elves your lifetimes. How does he find anything?"
"Apparently a filing system exists, but I have never figured it out," Jarlaxle admitted. "Personally I think he just magicks whatever he wants out of the shelves. He is very… sedentary. Only goes out of the library for Mage Lord meetings, but since the other Lords are as inclined to privacy as he is, the meetings do not happen very often."
"Do they have massive libraries too?" S'kaerik realized she was asking questions like a child from a teacher, and began to feel nervous again. Most of the books looked much older than she was.
"Not as large as this one," Jarlaxle said. "You might like to know that you are the first non-Dark Elf to step into this place, Lady Cat."
"Should I feel honoured?" The hollow, faint echo of words was mildly disturbing.
"If you wish."
It seemed to S'kaerik as if they had been walking for ages, taking so many turns that she was by now quite hopelessly lost and slightly claustrophobic, though she gathered the mage would not appreciate her climbing to the top of the shelves to take a look around her.
"How can he stand to stay in one spot for all of his life?"
"Do you not love books, Lady Cat?"
"I'd go stark staring mad if I had to stay by myself for the rest of my life, even surrounded by books."
"Perhaps you could charm him out of the library, Lady Cat," Jarlaxle said archly, "With promises of wonder and the outside world."
"If he doesn't turn me into a toad."
"He might not know what a toad is."
"I doubt it," S'kaerik said dryly, gesturing at the bookshelves. The path had widened, such that they were able to walk together again. "There are probably a few hundred books on them here."
"Perhaps not that many, Lady Cat," Jarlaxle smirked. "And you can always hope that he has forgotten how to use polymorph spells."
"I notice that the older Mages get, the more they surround themselves with wands that have the spells for them," S'kaerik said dryly. "He may have rooms full of those things."
"Maybe that is what the other doors lead to," Jarlaxle suggested thoughtfully, and she got the feeling that he had, in the past, provided some time towards trying to find out what was behind the other doors.
"You've never been in those?"
"He has never allowed me in any other area other than the library."
"I wonder why," S'kaerik grinned.
"Are you suggesting something, Lady Cat," Jarlaxle said, pretending to be hurt. "I am quite sure I do not know what you are talking about."
"Oh really."
"I was quite well known to his family."
"Perhaps that was the problem."
Jarlaxle raised an eyebrow at her. "Sorry," S'kaerik said sheepishly. "That was rude. I get impolite when I'm nervous."
"Why are you nervous, Lady Cat?"
"I'm in a massive library, lost, and about to meet a powerful Dark Elf mage when feeling tired and dressed in work clothes?"
"Ah." This seemed to amuse him, to her mild irritation.
"Must we do this now?" S'kaerik asked plaintively.
"You did agree, Lady Cat."
S'kaerik sighed. "The dwarves had better suggest to the Company that I get a pay rise."
**
Nalfein Do'Urden exuded a different aura of power than Jarlaxle, S'kaerik noted. Jarlaxle's had always seemed to be organisational – the power of Bregan D'aerthe, while Nalfein's power seemed to radiate from within – a mage's power? He looked up at them from his writing, and the magelight in the room intensified a little. Jarlaxle he favoured with a vague look of mild astonishment mingled with irritation, but the piercing gaze lingered curiously on herself. S'kaerik bit her lip, feeling more like an intruder than ever.
The eyes turned back to Jarlaxle, and he said something in the High Tongue sharply, too quick for S'kaerik to catch, the music in his voice managing to convey petulance, annoyance and curiosity at the interruption all at once. S'kaerik realized that Nalfein's hair was unstyled, not like the other Dark Elves she had seen – it was just a long mane of white that flowed down to his waist.
Jarlaxle replied, apparently amused, and then bowed mockingly to Nalfein when the other elf sighed.
"Have a nice day, Lady Cat," Jarlaxle turned to her suddenly, tipping his hat as if in farewell.
"We're leaving already?" S'kaerik looked at Nalfein nervously. His handsome face was unreadable, but the stare was beginning to make her feel very skittish. Now she knew what a mouse felt like when cornered by a house-cat.
"I am leaving," Jarlaxle corrected, then grinned wickedly when she began to protest. "When my business concludes, I will return."
"But…" she glanced at Nalfein again. This time, he inclined his head politely in greeting, tendrils of white dropping down over his eyes, and then gestured gracefully towards one of the chairs. The books that had been lying on it lifted up and piled themselves neatly against the wall. This managed to unnerve her even more than his stare.
Warily, she sat down as demurely as someone dressed in shorts and a tank top could, mind racing, wondering what to say. Jarlaxle said something to Nalfein again, then tipped his hat to the mage and left the reading room, quickly disappearing into the bookshelves outside, leaving her alone with the ancient, obviously powerful mage.
The pay rise had definitely better be substantial.