It had been five years since Jenna had taken her Test, and only now was she on her first Conclave mission. Jenna and her companion had been riding for hours, and the sorceress, who was unused to such activity, found herself in some discomfort. She glanced over at the black-robed elf, who showed no similar signs of distress, and strenghtened her resolve to hide her own aches and pains.
Jenna had naturally been tought how to ride a horse, but had always done so side-saddle. Such a thing was impractical on this mission, for which speed was of the utmost importance. She disliked the red split tunic and trousers she wore, feeling them...inelegant. Nonetheless, she had to admit their practicality.
Dalamar slowed his horse until Jenna was beside him. "Not quite what you expected for your first Conclave mission, eh?"
"It is my privilege to serve where and how I'm needed," Jenna responded. "Of course, I would not object if my next assignment were in a well-apportioned inn and requiring to more travel than could be accomplished by teleportation."
Dalamar smiled wryly. "I'll see what I can arrange."
Jenna decided to take advantage of this rare moment of camaraderie to ask the question that had been weighing on her since yesterday. "Did you know any of them?"
"Not well. They were Qualinesti." The dark wizard spurred his horse faster, ending the conversation.
Dalamar and Jenna had been sent out to discover what had happened to a missing party of travelers from the Qualinesti House Mystic. Neither had been prepared for the utter carnage they stumbled across in that meadow yesterday morning. The party of Elven mages had been literally torn apart. After the gruesome task of searching for clues as to what, or who, had done this - (the severed arm), they had determined that it would be impossible to gather all the body parts together for burial, and Dalamar had called down fire to burn the entire meadow. Jenna had been profoundly shaken, and though she had not known any of the party, she could feel, inexplicably, waves of grief threatening to break through to her conscious mind. (The scream! But there had been no scream.) Dalamar had been grimly silent from that day to this as they followed the trail of the men - men, not beasts - that had done this. On her first Conclave mission, Jenna found herself unexpectedly pressed into the role of assasin.
At length they came to a village, one of several which were beholden to Wayreth but did not appear on any map. Jenna gasped. (She had been here before.) Dalamar looked at her sharply. "Are you all right, Mistress?"
The mage shook her head to clear it. "Yes, I'm fine."
"Have you been here before?"
"No, I've never seen this village before in my life." And it was true. She had never been here before. So why did she feel she had lied?
Dalamar kept his piercing gaze on her for a long moment before he finally said, "We should enter the village."
As they continued down the main road, Jenna was struck by the furtive, suspicious glances of the villagers toward the mages. This would not be unexpected in most of the villages on Krynn, but on a demesne of Wayreth it was shocking. Surely Jenna and Dalamar weren't the first mages the villagers had ever seen.
Some intuition caused Jenna to turn. For no discernable reason, her heart began pounding and her throat went dry. "Her," was all Jenna could manage, pointing to a wasp-faced middle aged woman in a stall selling produce. Dalamar immediately stopped his horse and dismounted in one fluid, graceful movement. He strode towards the produce-seller with complete confidence in Jenna's assesment, although Jenna knew he didn't know why Jenna had singled out the woman.
"The necklace," Jenna blurted. The sorceress wondered whatever was the matter with her. Everything felt...unreal, wrong.
"Ah, yes," the black-robed wiard commented as he approached the stall.
"Go away," the woman hissed. "We don't want your kind here."
"My kind?" Dalamar raised an eyebrow and smiled pleasantly. "And what, Mistress, is 'my kind'? Elven? Wizard? Black-robe?" His voice darkened. "Powerful?" The peasant woman seemed at a loss for words, and began to back away. Dalamar raised his hand, and she froze.
"You seem to be doing very well for yourself, Mistress," he continued converstionally. As swift as a snake, he reached out over the stall and grabbed the silver necklace she was wearing, yanking her towards him. "A lovely piece of jewelry. Elven make, if I'm not mistaken. I had no idea turnip vendors were so wealthy." He glanced back at Jenna. "Perhaps we should change professions, my dear." Abruptly he returned his attention to the terrified peasant woman. "Where - did - you - get - this?" he asked in a cold voice, all mocking gone.
"Don't know. I found it," she squeaked. "Let go, pig!" she tried to swat his arm away.
The black-robed wizard's eyes narrowed. "I am on the Council of Three at Wayreth, which makes me your liege lord. You will address me as such." His grip on the necklace tightened, forcing the produce seller to lean forward over the cart. "Now where did you get this necklace?"
"It was a gift, my lord," the peasant stammered.
"From whom?" As Dalamar continued the interrogation, Jenna experienced the strangest sort of vertigo. She was watching the scene from atop her horse, but also from Dalamar's perspective. Yet she could not, no matter how long she stared at it, truly see the necklace. Its very shape eluded her. Jenna's hand strayed unconsciously toward her won neck to feel for an item of jewelry...that she was not wearing; that she had never worn.
"I sense, Mistress, that you are keeping secrets." Jenna came back to herself and realized that Dalamar was still speaking to the peasant woman. "Secrets can be terrible things. They writhe inside you, choking off the very air from your lungs." The terrified woman began gasping for breath. "The only remedy is to release the secret."
Jenna looked intently upon the tableau, trying to read any stray thoughts escaping from the peasant. Suddenly the mage called out, "Dalamar, I have it! The man who gave her that was one of a group of men who are in the tavern of this village as we speak!" Dalamar raised an eyebrow and abruptly released the street vendor, who fell to the ground gulping for air.
The wizard nodded to Jenna, and then turned back to his victim. "Could you direct us to the local tavern, my good woman?"
"P-please, milord," said a frightened vendor in the vicinity who had been crouching behind his own booth the entire time. "It's down the main road but a quarter mile."
"I thank you," replied Dalamar as he swung back up on his horse. Without another word, he and Jenna continued along the main road.
As they neared the place, they could hear raucous laughter from inside the rudely contructed wooden building - an odd sound for the middle of the day. Dalamar drew his horse up to Jenna's. His expression was grave.
"These men are likely the killers, but I doubt such as they would have the courage or initiative to embark upon the foul and dangerous crime they committed unless they were ordered to it. We need to find out who is behind this." Dalamar's eyes bored into Jenna's. "Can you do what must be done?"
"The men in that building slaughtered mages - my people. I am sworn to protect al who are aligned to Wayreth. I am prepared to - to do whatever is necessary to find out who is behind this." Jenna's voice was steady, but inwardly she found herself trembling with fear. What was wrong with her? She knew a day might come when she would have to kill, and this was merely justice. So why was she so reluctant to step foot in that tavern?
"Very well, then." Dalamar dismounted, and then held a hand to Jenna to help her from her horse. The act seemed to Jenna incongruous - a courtly gesture from a man about to torture and kill a building full of people. After she dismounted, they tied the reigns of their horses to a nearby tree, away from the horses nearer the tavern. They proceeded towards the door with Dalamar going first and entered.
The tavern, such as it was, reeked of sweat and ale. There was only one room with a dirt floor, and only one door, which stood behind Dalamar and Jenna. There were perhaps twenty human men, all heavily armed and rough-looking, though their clothing and accoutrements were of surprisingly good quality. As far as Jenna could tell, there were no locals, nor even the tavern-keeper, for the man serving the ale drank as much as he poured, and the jeweled sword at his side belied the lowly profession of tavern-keeper. So much the better. There were no innocents in the room.
At first the mercenaries didn't notice the newcomers, but then one saw the mages at the door and alerted his fellows. Suddenly every eye was fixed upon the mages at the door.
One of the mercenaries, whose velvet cloak marked him as being of some wealth, slowly stood up and drawled, "Well, now. Come to join the fun?"
Dalamar stepped forward, leaving Jenna to guard the door. "That all depends. What...fun...is there to be had?"
"For you, elf, none. I'm sure we could provide the lady with entertainment, however." Malicious laughter rippled through the room. "We don't like Wayreth folk. But I bet if we get rid of that robe for her she's a woman like any other."
Jenna blocked out all the commotion and focused on the spell she was weaving so subtly that it did not attract attention, even when she was being directly threatened.
Dalamar's voice was pleasant as he smoothly replied to Velvet Cloak, "Ah, well, I'm afraid I cannot permit that. The lady's father would never forgive me if I allowed her to witness such...entertainments."
"You think you could stop us, elf? We slew fifty of your kind not two days ago. Wizards don't scare us."
Dalamar raised an eyebrow. "A confession so soon? And so freely given. I had thought that I would have to be more persuasive with you. But as you are so talkative, tell me, my good man, who is it that hired you?"
Velvet Cloak smiled and called out to his men, "Ten gold pieces and the second turn with the witch to the man who brings me the black-robe's ears."
"Dalamar," Jenna said sharply. "The spell is finished." The tavern seemed to ripple almost imperceptibly as Jenna's spell sealed the door. The only way anyone would leave would be at Jenna's word - or her death.
"Thank you, my dear." Dalamar brought his right hand up in a dramatic gesture and made a fist. Velvet Cloak grabbed his chest and fell to his knees in agony. No one moved save the man now writhing on the dirt floor. At last he fell still, his now lifeless eyes remaining open.
"I asked a question," Dalamar continued calmly as he surveyed the room. "Who was it that hired you?"
Now leaderless, the men in the tavern muttered to one another and reached for weapons. Outwardly cold, Jenna centered herself with a silent prayer to Lunitari. The thoughts of the men swirled around like a cloud of locusts - too chaotic, angry and frightened to hold much sense in them. Jenna realized that she and Dalamar would have to thin the crowd and concentrate on the few individuals who might be able to give the answers they sought.
She spun around at a yelp behind her. One of the men had tried to sneak out the door, only to be pushed back by Jenna's shield. He skittered away from the sorceress as quickly as he could. The mercenaries reacted with alarm as one by one they realized they were trapped.
"You are prepared for this, Mistress?" Dalamar spoke to her in Silvanesti.
"I am," she replied calmly in the same tongue. "Proceed."
Her word released the paralysis that had lain upon the tavern. The mercenaries drew their weapons and attacked. With an inhuman speed and grace Dalamar savaged the horde, using his daggar as much as his magic. His emotionless, icy calm was terrible to behold.
Jenna did not have much time to watch. While most of the men seemed to have identified the black-robed wizard as the greatest threat, a few had apparently worked out that Jenna was responsible for their imprisonment in this tavern that had become a slaughterhouse. She barely had time to think before committing her first murder...second...third...fourth...
At last Jenna had no more opponents. The fighting seemed to last for hours, but Jenna realized with a start that it had only begun twenty minutes earlier. Now that she had a moment to catch her breath, the sorceress took stock of her surroundings. There were more dead than alive in that tavern. The stench was such that the bile rose in Jenna's throat. Only six mercenaries were left alive, and they were terrified, desperate, with their attention focused on the black-robed monster in their midst. Jenna glanced at the bodies of the men she had killed, and then quickly looked away. She had studied physiology, of course, and had been taught to both cure and kill. But theory and practice were quite...distinct. Nausea threatened to overwhelm her. I have taken lives, she thought with despair. And for what? She had been able to get nothing from the mercenaries. There was, as both Dalamar and Jenna had expected, a block on certain memories, but something else was not quite right.
Jenna realized then that these men were making foolish mistakes. They were not behaving as fighters experienced in battling mages, an odd thing for the company which had massacred over two score of mages for the Qualinesti House Mystic. Whatever charms had protected them from the Qualinesti elven wizards seemed not only to have faded, but to have been replaced by counter-charms leaving them woefully undefended against mages of the calibre of Dalamar and Jenna. Whoever had hired them did not mean for them to survive.
Only five human men remained. This was no longer a battle. It was now time to exert whatever pressure was necessary to discover the source of the attack against House Mystic. Jenna grimly confined the innocent young woman she had once been to a small, still cell in the back of her mind and turned to the task at hand.
The surviving mercenaries were more terrified of their mysterious employer than they were of their captors. No bribery, assurances, threats or ...harsher methods...could persuade them to talk. Nor was it possible to penetrate the shields around their minds. Efforts to do so lead to the deaths of the victims.
"Well, that's it, then," Jenna said, grateful that she remained calm and her voice didn't shake. "There's no one left to question."
"Not quite," the black-robed wizard responded. He grabbed hold of an overturned wooden table and flung it across the room. "Your turn, lad," he said in an almost playful tone. A terrified boy of about fifteen years crouched on the dirt floor. His clothes were ragged and he had no weapon save for a small daggar that was sheathed, forgotton, on his belt. This boy clearly was no mercenary.
"Now, my boy," Dalamar continued in silken tones. "I trust you are wiser than your fellows. Who is it that hired you?"
"P-please, my lord. I don't know. I'm not important enough to be told anything!" Tears streaked the boy's dirty face.
"Surely you must have some idea. Did not someone outside your band come to speak with your leader? Where were you before coming to this part of Abisinia? What were your orders?"
"I don't know!" cried the boy.
"Liar!" Dalamar snarled, and back-handed the youth.
"My lady, please!" the boy turned to Jenna with frightened eyes. (My lady, please!) The words cut through Jenna, reminding her of...of what? She stood frozen to the spot.
"Do not look to the lady for mercy," Dalamar said coldly. "She and I are of one purpose in this." He began chanting a spell, a dark, cruel spell designed to make the youth do anything to make it stop.
Jenna stepped forward and laid her hand on the wizard's arm, interrupting him. "Wait, Dalamar. Let me."
His eyes were hooded, unreadable. "Very well, Mistress. You may try."
The sorceress knelt by the boy. "How are you called?"
"Egon, my lady," the boy stammered.
"You needn't be afraid, Egon," she said gently. "Tell us what we want to know and no harm will come to you." She reached out to touch his cheek, and was startled when Egon violently recoiled. Jenna looked at her hand for the first time. Blood was dripping from her fingertips.
Jenna felt dizzy. (The bloody hand was reaching out to her, and the sleeve was black.)
Jenna took a deep breath. She must focus! She could feel Dalamar's cold eyes staring at her, staring into her.
"Egon," she began again, "where are you from?"
"I don't rightly know, m'lady. I've just travelled with my father for as long as I can remember." His father. Likely one of the mercenaries lying dead in the room.
"Were you a killer like him, boy?" Dalamar cut in. "Did your sword cut into elven flesh?"
"No, my lord! I don't even have a sword! I just set up camp and tend the fire and fetch and carry. I took no part in -" He abruptly fell silent.
"No part in what, Egon?" Jenna urged. "Were you there in the clearing between Wayreth and Qualinost?"
"I don't know where those places are!"
"She means the massacre of the elven mages, boy!" Dalamar snapped.
"Egon," Jenna murmured. "Why were they killed?"
"I - I - " The youth fell silent, shivering.
"Tell us what you know," Jenna said urgently.
"I cannot!"
"Are you afraid? I promise I'll protect you. We just need to know who ordered the attack."
"This is ridiculous," Dalamar interrupted. "You cannot simply ask the boy to tell us what he knows and expect an answer. You've had your chance. He's mine now."
"Dalamar, no. I just need a little more time," she pleaded.
"Stand aside, Mistress." The black-robed wizard's voice was icy.
Jenna rose, shielding Egon from Dalamar. Her countenance was aloof, even haughty, but inwardly she trembled. "You cannot have this boy."
"Do not defy me, young one." The endearment was a taunt. "You cannot hope to win."
"This lad has done nothing wrong. There are less...savage...ways of convincing him to help us."
"I am the voice of Wayreth here. You will obey, or be counted among Wayreth's enemies."
"What you propose to do is not the will of Wayreth," Jenna retorted.
"I warn you one more time, Mistress." Dalamar had become oddly calm. "If you fight me you will die. Now stand asi..."
A tavern chair moving of its own volition slammed into Dalamar's legs, toppling him to the floor. Jenna hastily let down the barrier around the tavern, and began to chant even before she turned to grab Egon. By the time Dalamar had righted himself, sorceress and boy had vanished.
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Jenna sat serenely with her legs crossed on a large rock, waiting. She did not wait long.
The black-robed wizard who materialized in front of her was in a cold fury. "Where is the boy?" he said without preamble.
"Beyond your reach," Jenna replied.
"You have betrayed Wayreth."
"Not at all," she answered. "Surprisingly enough, young Egon was more disposed towards sharing information away from your presence than in it. He knew no names, but there should be enough here to convince House Mystic that Wayreth was not behind the attack, and to give us new directions in which to search." She handed him the scroll case containing her report, prepared while she was waiting for Dalamar to track her magically, as she knew he would. Dalamar took the case suspiciously and stowed it within his cloak.
"This does not alter the fact that you disobeyed me, that you dared attack me."
"I apologize for that, my lord, but it was unavoidable."
"Unavoidable?" Dalamar raised an eyebrow in disbelief. "Young woman, do you realize that you have committed treason?"
Jenna drew in her breath. "I have disobeyed you. I do not believe I have endangered Wayreth. And I know that Lunitari is not displeased that I chose mercy when severity was unnecessary. Nevertheless," she rose, and placed her hands in her sleeves, "I am prepared to face whatever consequences you deem appropriate for my actions."
"Then there remains only one option open to you."
"What is that, my lord?"
"Wake up."