Edwin: 21 Flamerule
"This cannot be. (It is not! It has not!)" But his sole deductions were that. It had not happened at that time. His fingernails ripped into the fiction he held in his hands; actual fiction, dug up as leftover property of the Iron Throne, reading to relax the mind with the insipid tale of a foolish young girl who for some reason did not wish to marry a Duke, ran away from home, and engaged in all sorts of insipid and implausible adventures. (Why refuse to marry a Duke of this city? It would be much like refusing to marry an Odesseiron of Thay.) He felt himself losing control at last and let himself rip the page in half. (Pathetic western pseudo-literary attempts.)
Cythandria teased and tormented him by news of the circle-casting. A very clever man, Winski. Share the mental capacity of Semaj and myself for purposes of gathering the threads of the Weave, and direct by his own divinatory powers alone, for after all I do not engage with such a foolish school though I am reckoned quite powerful.
The Farseer device as component of strong divination castings. It haunted him: that the geas on him would kill him in slow pain; that Sarevok Anchev would slice through his body in quick pain. His own flesh and blood had never felt so soft to him before, or so preciously valuable. (The brain inside as the key point, naturally.)
He sees enough death in the times ahead to raise twenty Lords of Murder, Cythandria said, her green eyes glittering with an abstract and unknowing glee of what that could mean to those dragged by fools to the thick of it. (Such minds as theirs belonged distinctly outside the battle. She felt the same way as himself, he knew.)
And of two little birds about to enter the city to sing, she added. One a former guest of Rieltar's; a dwarf he gave to enjoy hospitality in the Cloakwood. He must be killed as a fait accompli; Rieltar must not demand to take him and allow him to escape a second time.
A dwarf, Edwin had thought in shock; probably a dwarf with an awful name.
The other? Cythandria gestured gracefully. A songbird we know not. And more behind him, a stream of ragged souls hidden to the south yet with a tale of injustice should they be willing to speak... Now, Odesseiron, I've an appointment that I intend to keep. And in one of her most attractive robes, perfumed and with her hair a golden waterfall about her she went to their master.
Oh, divinations were foul and fidgety and ridiculously difficult to interpret at the best of times such that you'd be much better off summoning hordes of conjured creatures yourself to solve your problems instead of worrying over how to understand some pathetically overly embroidered metaphor that belonged to pseudo-literature to entertain the merest of children and fools all. If diviners could conjure, of course. That was the trouble: they simply couldn't accept that conjurers and Edwin Odesseiron were better than they were and to settle for a life at gasping at their greatness.
People sometimes gasped as they died. And they stank; loosened their bowels. Not an end a noble wizard wished to contemplate.
I have not betrayed Sarevok Anchev I owe him no more under geas...
Edwin ripped out another page of the novel and threw it upon the fire out of pure spite. Destroy all foolishness. Destroy all divinations. Destroy all those with knowledge of his face and his deceptions. No delusions that the mooncalf bard wouldn't erupt in hypocritically righteous fury at Edwin's so-called betrayal of that crying insipid pathetic submissive stupid little twit of a girl. Foolish delusions of goodness, that pathetically undefined word that was simply exploited by those who did not understand that what they truly wanted was superiority. That what he himself truly wanted was to return to Thay, attain a zulkirdom, all the power and all the magic and all the respect that he could desire...
Well, boy, a full-fledged geas to Anchev was more incompetence than I expected of you. Allow me brief frankness: were you truly foolish enough to believe that the affairs of these western barbarians are of such great import to us? You, of official rank of apprentice, were the least that we had to spare. Should you succeed in bringing us the child in defiance of my expectations: you will be suitably rewarded. Should you fail: do not expect that your family name will clear your way once more. Your esteemed uncle has ever been willing to trim dead wood from the family tree. Or possibly the family ingrown bush.
Denak. Correspondence he had been obliged to burn for fear of discovery, and cast spells against reconstruction upon the ashes.
A knocking at the door threw him from the reverie, and he jumped; spilling components and pathetic novel alike. Then he realised that those who troubled to knock he did not likely need to fear. Resolved to give a firm and well-deserved reprimand to the incompetent slave who dared disturb him, Edwin wrenched open the door and stared into empty space.
Then he looked down and saw Alora.
"Odesseiron! Double good and done, I knew you'd want to hear," she burst out excitedly. His and Cythandria's little spy, crawling about within rafters and hidden passages to overhear, thieving spell components; she was a touch conspicuous, but one found it quite difficult to dismiss Alora Lapineblossom (of the large and respectable halfling clan of the Iriaebor Lapineblossoms, so she happily said to any who even vaguely hinted at inquiring). "Somethin' big on over at the docks! I overheard it, one of the Throne warehouses on fire, Anchev just came out with Cythie and grabbed a few of his other people and went—"
"Stay here," Edwin commanded the girl, his hands flying to the spell components he had prepared for himself. Of course he'd his daily memorisations ready; Edwin Odesseiron could smell the stench of opportunity when it floated to him upon the breeze... "I mean that," he instructed Alora; "remain here and listen. (Mages' work! At long last!)"
He ran from his rooms and out to the docks; none too far. Undoubtedly there was smoke; but it was night, and against the dark smudge of the sky he could see only the crackling of flames. As he drew closer he could identify figures further: Sarevok's bulk, the glitter of Cythandria's robes, an inhuman figure even larger than Sarevok with arrows piercing it as it yelled, shapes from the gang serving the Iron Throne that he recognised as those known as acolytes to Sarevok. There was a small army of massed, dark figures that attacked the burning warehouse, surrounding it, striving to drive the men back inside it. Some raised swords, some axes, some halberds; all were dark, and as Edwin hastily completed his incantation for night's vision he saw that they were all masked men, uniformed by thick black cloaks. Apparently not the local forces of so-called law and justice, Edwin considered. They outnumbered Sarevok's men it was obvious, and they'd managed to set the warehouse aflame; and any priceless contents lurking within...
Something about the fire made Edwin believe it was magical; the colour of it was Fireball, the slight hint of Weave-texture to his eyes. An enemy wizard to fight. He rushed up to join the contingent of the Throne, searching to understand, reaching for the Weave in this battle. Cythandria stood still, lurking behind Sarevok with her robes and hair flying about her like a painted bird by a giant hawk.
"Cast at the sniper," Edwin heard Sarevok order her, pointing to a roof at which he himself could see nothing; and the large man ran for the battle, the vast sword drawn easily from his back.
"Invocare sempram," Cythandria began a chant, "invocare nosotros—" She stopped: it was a spell that hit her, flying missiles. She screamed, and upon instinct her ogres appeared for her; but they only had the cloaked soldiers to fight, and could not stop the next attack upon her.
Edwin looked, and could see: two figures by each other, a hooded one undoubtedly the arcane caster, flanked by one taller figure with hands likewise raised. Not far from them was a man almost the size of Sarevok Anchev, battling four at once of the Iron Throne's folk. There was only time for action. Edwin brought forth his considerable conjuration powers to bear, armed and made ready by countless battles in the field:
A swarm of kobolds appeared about the enemy casters, and they faltered. Anchev himself was fighting his way to the giant ape of a man; he cut down three of the cloaked army, who fell in a tangle of their own billowing uniforms. Then the two combatants met, both huge men armed with thick two-handed blades.
Another arrow came from the sniper's bow; the target was a half-ogre of some sort among the warehouse men, Edwin could see now, a vast orange-skinned creature—then the recognition came to him, the very one at the bandit camp that had finally shown Shar-Teel the meaning of defeat and her proper place. And at that moment it screamed of poison, and fell forward like a rotten tree-trunk, six arrows embedded in its thick hide.
One of Sarevok's men stepped back from the battle, casting; Edwin saw dark yellow flames upon that distant roof, divine power, his senses as a wizard instructed him. The enemy spellcaster had cast some flares at his kobolds; he saw them dance in pain away from the hooded figure, several burned already. Edwin cast the summoning again; an eminently serviceable spell that he could direct where apropos in the battle, kobolds to keep them all busy. As his great wizardly might had been so serviceable in that time in the Cloakwood— Never mind that. He drew his reagents of hide and wax candle; moved the threads of the Weave that another selection of creatures would arise. In his genius he felt it yield to him, a second grouping of kobolds arising from his power. (A great victory by his sole hands!)
Then he heard the voice.
"Minsc! Retreat now, I bid thee!" The hooded enemy mage was a woman; Edwin heard the cadences of her accent cacophonous as they were, heard the name of her escort. He knew it all; in as shocked horror as Cythandria but for his own reasons, paused and thought it. There was no reason for her to be here, if anything she ought to have been trudging about the wilderness servicing yet more madmen, he had never expected... The hulking ape. The rubbishy barwhore of a Witch. That rendered the third the ill-tempered cleric.
Edwin thought, and acted. His requirement was telekinetic power on a grand magely scale, the hand of a wizard that wrought changes to the world plucked from the fabric of the Weave. He reached for it, his voice not quite trembling by sudden amazement and awe at his own deductions. He grasped at the clothing of the enemies, the dark masks and cloaks, and blew them all away in half a minute's worth of casting. As he had expected: pale skulls glinted upon their heads. A deception of Witch and cleric.
"They are not soldiers but merely undead!" he called to Sarevok's men; and some stepped back from their foes with their new lease of information.
"In the name of the Lord of Murder!" called one, raising a carven skull to the air; Edwin could see the force of belief, a skeleton shattering in response to that cry even though it was at the behest of a human who was yet a human for all that he could do... They were undead. Sarevok's underlings began to turn them to the dust they deserved.
Edwin looked across once more; there was Sarevok Anchev, broad and terrifying; but the figures he fought were... Apparently non-existent. Anchev searched. That was it, obviously, the Witch had hidden them with her magic— An area-effect spell would seize them nonetheless even as Anchev chased, yelling a battle-cry and almost godlike by the light of that sword reflecting the flames—and did his eyes glow? It mattered not; he could not risk an area-effect in the vicinity of this ally; the inspired idea came to him; at the exterior of mines Edwin could recall ash and shadows and shapes—
"Cythandria!" He grabbed her left shoulder; she'd been hit by the Witch's magic, her hair and bodice stained by smoke and her head shaking in disbelief. "Invisible—I have no dispelling abjuration to hand (inferior school!), two summonings—" Clever magicians such as Edwin Odesseiron made usage of the tools at hand; he'd seen her cast five— "I require not fire but smoke! Which components of the spell govern the smoke?"
She spoke slowly, still disoriented. "Somatic, obviously. Resultant magical effects depend on continued gesture control. Elementary proof. Ah. Clever of you." Her fingers went to the pouches upon her waist. "Low sulphur ratio," she said, spinning quickly together the small ball within her fingers. "Now, then."
Her casting managed to be both fast and accurate as her target practice. The fireball gave smoke more than fire, and in that smoke were three shapes running. Sarevok Anchev's sword slashed through the air. In the confusion of it and his remaining kobolds Edwin saw vaguely the running figures, the big berserker wounded, stabbed deeply in the chest; what must have been the cleric grasping him with no doubt divinely-granted strength and trying to run with the body; the sword cutting through both of them. Edwin heard a cry that must have been from the Witch, herself barely touched by Cythandria's smoke, a grey form trying to conceal itself within the threads and hollows of the Weave. Those two things which lay upon the ground turned visible, in the time of a few seconds but appearing gradually so. A sign, a definite sign; to the spell over his eyes Edwin saw blood as dark rather than bright, a deeper shadow over the stilled items that lay there.
The Witch. She must have seen too that they were dead; Edwin gabbled some words to Cythandria to tell her to cast again, and she did. Smoke filled the air once more, covering an invisible form as Anchev struck again with that blade—
Fire erupted from the Witch's hands even as she fled from that strike; something on the ground; hard to see in the smoke but surely she had been caught wounded, Edwin thought. Thick clouds of black smoke erupted around her; then all vision was taken bar for the shine of Anchev's blade through it. The next moment, she was gone. He heard Cythandria chanting a proper banishment, reaching through the Weave to slowly untangle spell-threads. But she had gone—
"Gardush!" Anchev was yelling; calling for one of his followers. "Through the sewers! Follow her—"
The fires spread. The Flaming Fist had begun to arrive, an impromptu brigade to save what remained of the warehouse, to prevent the fires from further destruction. The Witch lived, Edwin thought in despair, running a hand across his sweating face; she knew his face—
Amnian sabotage and a Cowled Wizard. That the magefire had spread to a Silvershield warehouse next door was proof of the random choice of it. A Captain Dosan listened to their accounts of it—
A dead half-ogre by arrows.
(Tazok was one of few survivors who had seen him; and it was the red cowl of respect that was more often noticed than the face within. He often wore dark brown these days.)
An elf killed by divine fire atop the eastern building, property of the Counting House.
(He noticed that there were green and black marks across the elf's oddly smiling face. It vaguely reminded him of a figure he had glimpsed at some point in the fight against the bandit camp; but that had been rather complicated and he did not particularly care.)
A muscular, fair-haired woman and a large bald ape of a man, dead together by Sarevok Anchev's sword.
(A Rashemi berserker and unnecessarily belligerent cleric. Transmuted to Amnian agents. He had barely met them in any case.)
The Cowled Wizard— "I used a casting of magesight before she fled," Edwin said; "she is a woman; a hooded cloak; about my...shorter than me, of course; coarsely dark, far more so than sir Anchev..."
"How observant of you." The Fist captain's dark red hair was greying below his open helm; though he was tall and more or less of warrior's crude build, his form had gone rather to seed, the armour he wore obviously light on him. (Western barbarians.) Yet there was something about the way he narrowed his beady eyes that slightly unnerved Edwin, a sense of vague and unpleasant familiarity. (Undoubtedly indeed! No doubt he had seen the man on some trivial patrol elsewhere in the city.)
Cythandria had conjured water for herself to wash her face; her hands moved through her hair, neatening herself and gazing up at Sarevok Anchev. Ladylike grooming; as deft as Skie had been, careful to maintain herself even just after battles, returning her hair to an amazing order. "You were useful, Odesseiron," she praised him, looking briefly into his eyes; and then Anchev placed a hand upon her arm. She nestled her tidy head against his armoured shoulders.
"An escaped Cowled Wizard with a great vendetta against this city," Sarevok Anchev said grimly, an amber-gold light still flaring from his eyes. "We are fortunate enough to have lost little this night; the storehouse being the least of spared storage. Less so can be said for Silvershield, though Entar's purse can bear it." The man could mouth the jargon of merchantry well enough. Dosan laughed, once and hollowly. It had been a rather fortunate plan of the enemies who lacked the lawful proofs that I and Skie happened upon, Edwin realised, his knee-joints suddenly empty. Resulting from it a destroyed warehouse; the dead half-ogre; men wounded belonging to Sarevok Anchev; the trick of the skeletons; the near escape. If a series of such surgical strikes upon the properties of the Iron Throne—more losses; Rieltar depriving his adopted son of authority; investigation by others that would surely reveal their own corruptions...
A Witch, a criminal; daring to strike in the night. Daring to bring out Sarevok Anchev's half-ogre to the very city streets. Daring to slay it.
But in the end her treachery is his advantage. Sarevok Anchev craves and desires, and what he demands is so much more than can be contained in warehouses.
Long before dawn, all the city knew of the treachery of Amn.
—