Edwin: 26 Flamerule
Alatos Ravenscar blinked, the motion vaguely reminiscent of the quick lowering and raising of a reptilian's third, translucent eyelid, or somesuch of the sort of entity that tended to live under damply unpleasant rocks. "Proven yourself, then."
"I'm just so glad I decided to make you my new friends!" Alora said. "You've taken back all the bounties on me for non-guild thieving, right? Because friends just don't do that to friends..."
Alatos fingered his forehead as if a headache was rapidly developing. He did not touch and indeed hardly seemed to look at the three artefacts and the scroll Alora held high above her head. "Lord Resar, as contracted."
The Halruaan in his long robes stepped forward to take the objects. He paused, first, to examine them for the magic he expected would inhabit them. Edwin took the opportunity to glance about at the room full of thieves. He was merely here upon sufferance, for assisting Alora in the tasks she had done in advance for this; since before even the so-called Amnish attack a fiveday ago, preparing for additional force upon a problem close at hand that Cythandria had successfully apprehended. (Defeating, in fact, the other agent of Anchev's within the guild; whose pitiful efforts were as nothing compared to minds such as his own. Internal squabbles were beneficial insofar as they served to elevate those worthy above those clearly less so, and he alone would in all likelihood have failed.)
"They are correct," the Halruaan said, running a long and bony finger down the scroll's text. He placed all four items carefully within the sleeves of his robe. "And yet the daughters lie dead for the botched burglary. You've attracted attention against the contract."
"That wasn't anything to do with me," Alora said. "They were mean to the servants, but I didn't do it. I don't like those nasty things." She shook her head fiercely.
She spoke the complete truth, Edwin thought. It would prove a liability soon; Alora had indeed covered for the murders as a thief, for assassin acquaintances of Cythandria's had done the task. A nauseatingly slobbering pair of hedgewizardess and thug.
"A shame," Resar replied, arriving at the point Edwin had been told to expect of him. He reached for the spell trigger set within his own sleeve. "All loose ends must be tied. I doubt that you understood this, little one—" Which, of course, Edwin thought very bitterly, for subsequently there would be no time either, Alora had not apprehended the contents during the brief time she had held it in custody— "but Halruaa must keep its secrets."
Now came the time. Alora squeaked, jumping as Resar began his chant: "Eeek! Can't you play nice?—Odesseiron, Cynthi! Help me!"
The trigger for the dimension door from the street just outside activated. Equally to Cythandria even though he had expended the energy of casting rather than a trigger, Edwin's magical missiles reached the Halruaan's hide—only two fewer than her this time, he thought, pleased. The Halruaan snarled, but a dark green shield had sprung up around his body; magic of that foul country, no doubt, Edwin thought. Perhaps he would be able afterwards to get his hands on—but it was best to think on this. Cythandria cast the second spell they had planned. With his tuition and their careful planning she had retained her composure so far, casting mechanically and in the order they had depended upon. Edwin began the summoning incantation to clear a path for them. So far the thieves had not intervened in a battle between great mages.
All of nine images of the Halruaan appeared, chanting in unison. An illusion; Edwin cursed mentally, not faltering in his own summons. Cythandria would be better to dispel that one. And then in the Halruaan's hands was the beginning of the very Fireball—to destroy this wooden building, to destroy everything bar in all likelihood his own shield (and he would certainly take that spell for himself, most certainly—but no time for those musings and Cythandria would not be varying her patterns—)
The summoning fizzled; the danger too great, and even this imperfect. Edwin cast his missiles in its place, disrupting with the greatest haste possible, at five out of the images present. Odds: five in nine; zero point five repeater; the misplaced grade of that enchantment class... Better than half. The mages in motion faltered, but none of the mirror images had blinked out. They shifted their positions once more, so he had not even an idea which of five had been the true one. The Halruaan began yet another spell.
Cythandria's casting concluded; and as planned, Edwin could hardly see its effect. "The protections," he called to her, for one of her spells was an eminently suitable whip effect that acted solely on an enemy. And neither the Halruaan nor any of the thieves bar Alora could now see; Cythandria had first called darkvision upon the three of them, and then magical darkness to shroud all in sight. Alora had run, and had somehow disappeared from view; the thieves stumbled, confused, but waited for the outcome. Cythandria's voice was still clear.
Summoning. He certainly had the mental reserves remaining, Edwin told himself. The group of five kobolds appeared; milling around, causing due disturbance, absorbing targeted attacks. Let the thieves think twice; Cythandria would not summon her standard ogres within this setting, but if there was a chance for it she would try additional summons.
Then Edwin saw the Halruaan's next defensive spell finish. A pale globe enwrapped both he and his images, shielding him; this would most certainly protect him from Alora. It was mage-built and tangible for each mirror image, Edwin's wizard-sight instructed him. And the Halruaan's hands had already shifted into another spell, and within his grasp—rock fragments. Cythandria stripped the wards; Edwin's mind searched for a proper counter, but neither acid arrows nor fine missiles would pierce the globes to disrupt. He moved as if searching for the answer; he saw the Halruaan's pale eyes fixed upon him. Certainly he would be the target; superior wizardry was recognised (or just possibly the first attack, but he would not think about that—)
The incantation to turn flesh to stone left the Halruaan's fingers, and at the last possible instant Edwin stepped behind a thief and used that body to shield his own. The spell hit; the man's body turned grey and cold and dropped to the floor, not quite an effect he could reverse at the moment; but he himself was intact and free of effect. This, Edwin thought, was true wizardry: the contact of mind to mind, the purest strategies taking shape out of the very Weave itself...
Cythandria's spell completed. She had targeted the globe, seemingly altering the phrasings and varying components in mid-spell to do so; a casting she had experimented upon in the past. The globe vanished, and only nine Halruaans stood. Alora became visible once more from the room's dark shadows, and stabbed the first of the nine in the back of the knees. It promptly ceased to exist.
"—All of you are mean, mean, mean! No wonder nobody else likes you and the rest of your nonuplets!—" Alora called in place of a battlecry, whirling back to hide behind the legs of a human thief, preparing once more to launch herself into the shadows. The Halruaan's shields over his illusionary forms must offer protections from fire, Edwin thought, deducing from what the mage had attempted to cast; and he launched an acid arrow out of thin air. One more of the duplicates blinked out of existence, but the casting was not interrupted. Unexpectedly it ended: small meteors launched themselves out of thin air, almost blindingly bright, flying about the room unerringly at their targets...
"Help! I'm burned, please help!" Alora shrieked, and Edwin felt a black stain in his own robes—he was burned himself, just below his ribcage, the expensive fabric ruined. All of his kobolds had been murdered by the storm. One of Cythandria's contingencies had at least activated, protecting her, and she still cast the dispel...
He ought to have summoned instead. Edwin began the incantation again, trying desperately that his voice not shake with the pain of burning. They had gifted Alora a potion of healing; the little flibbertigibbet surely had sufficient brain to employ it. The Halruaan's hands moved in a similar pattern. He was faster, Edwin thought; he must be faster and he must be fitter; he must be capable.
He managed three hobgoblins this time; quite large ones, he thought in satisfaction. Cythandria's second stripping hit the Halruaan, and suddenly there was only one of him again, still with that green shield. But the Halruaan had finished his own; and it was a golem he summoned, a giant of baked stone with the rune glowing on its forehead. The golem smashed aside a hobgoblin with a single hand, and Cythandria paused in shock. It would easily harm her, Edwin thought, as easily as brutal things harmed he himself. They were robed wizards, they were not for such crudities...
Edwin aimed Larloch's drain; a fast spell, easier upon his mental energies. But it bounced from the golem's hide; lore of golems, he tried to frantically remember, and of course the Halruaan had another casting. The thieves ran from the creature so heavy as to shake the floors. His remaining hobgoblins had brought swords to the wizard, who spewed a cone of ice now from his hands.
"Cythandria—" he began. She ducked and ran from the golem, which was faster than her by simple virtue of its wide tread.
"—Resistant to magic; but I can't focus to cast those spells! Clay—stone—flesh are weak to poison—floods of water or ice—Odesseiron!" she screamed.
The Halruaan had slain one hobgoblin and murdered another. Edwin directed missiles at him; the next spells would be deadly. He had neither water nor freezing spells available within his memory.
"Controlled—activated—rune—" Cythandria thought it through on his encouragement. She tripped across her robes and fell to the ground; the golem raised its fists. "Rune—"
Alora appeared once more out of the shadows and the combination of the mild enchantment upon her shortsword and her surprise cut into the Halruaan's knees, severing a tendon. After all, Edwin thought, the enemy had foolishly concentrated his resources upon defence of spells; underestimated importance of diverse strategy— But Cythandria was on the floor, and there was no spell he could cast; rushing forward with his staff to save her would be hopeless, Edwin thought, half frozen to his place knowing he could do nothing. She raised her hands in a last defence of herself, a line of grey and twitching spell component between her fingers: she summoned a simple, single ragamoffyn, a dark creature made of tattered skeins of cloth. It flew to the golem's face, and rubbed its fabric wings on the rune upon it. The golem stopped. Alora brought down her sword for the second time to the Halruaan's back. The ambassador's body shuddered still and he screamed in pain even as the light in the golem's eyes blinked into darkness. Cythandria was alive on the ground, and Edwin aimed his last selection of missiles to ensure that the Halruaan would not rise from where he lay. He saw that part of the golem's rune had been rubbed away, and Cythandria stood;
"Emet to met," she said, "truth to death. I have read of that classic formula." Edwin saw her slowly pulling herself together once more; standing, wincing to set weight on her right ankle, tidying her hair to place below her dark hood. Alora jumped away from the Halruaan's body, looking sickened.
"That'll teach you to play nice!" she said. "I don't like it when I have to do that! Even if you did want me gone for nothing at all."
Edwin managed a tone of more dignified menace, kicking at the stoned body of the thief. "Betrayal, monkeys," he said in the noble accent of his country. "Do you desire to continue to make of us enemies?"
Behind him, Cythandria raised her hands in a casting pattern; "What he said!" Alora added in confirmation, her hands at her hips, still carrying the bloodied sword. "And they're really, really powerful wizards, too, so you shouldn't mess with us and our team!"
The guiildmaster spread his hands. "I knew nothing, of course. You're welcome to any trinkets from his body."
The gambit: is predictable, and duly succeeding. Edwin tried to share a satisfied glance with Cythandria, but she remained impassive.
"The thieves' guild," she said, her voice carefully soft-toned, "are responsible for the death of the Halruaan ambassador. The Halruaan ambassador is responsible for seeking out thieves. Our friend will keep the prizes of her kill."
The thieves bristled with weapons; but did not make a move against the pair of powerful wizards, Edwin thought. And of course the halfling thief. Alora examined the Halruaan's pockets and pouches, retrieving the skyship components along with his purse, his casting materials—but when she touched the spellbook, it burst into flame and ashed fragments. Edwin could not resist a cry of pain at the loss.
"In these times of unrest," Ravenscar replied, "no further—melodrama—is considered particularly necessary."
They departed the Guild.
"Fieldwork," Cythandria said, once they were sure of no longer being followed, "I see its nature."
"You have improved through my tutoring," Edwin patronised, and she sniffed. He could generously admit to her magical power, her potential and knowledge and theories; he rather liked carrying with her experiments.
"Fun 'cept for the killing parts!" Alora passed over the skyship components to Cythandria, as they had planned; and went through the Halruaan's platinum pieces and jewellery herself, happy to let the gleaming metals slip through her hands. Then she looked back up at them, her brown eyes concerned. "But all these rumours with Amn. You were there that night..." Edwin tried to keep an impassive face; the girl was inquisitive, and it was not entirely to her own good.
"You are optimistic by nature," Cythandria said, tolerantly. "And I think it would be good for you to remain so."
Alora nodded. "You can take any load a hundred pounds heavier if a smile on your face's lightening it up for you!" she said. Cythandria shook her head.
"Your robes are quite ruined," she said to Edwin; and she even touched them, lightly, where their burnt edges gave way to reddened skin that ached. "I suppose you'll need replacements."
Alora, upon her cue, spoke: "Pink! Or purple. You think pink robes or purple for him, Cythandria? Fashionable, I am!" Her lucky rabbit's foot swung over the collar of the pink-and-purple leathers and soft cottons of her costume.
"Surprise me." Cythandria cast the cantrip to allow herself entry to the first of the doors that led to her laboratory of the Throne; she stepped within the building. "I have much to do. Thank you for your...efforts today, Alora."
Much to do; much to be concerned for. Edwin thought of the dwarf's body in the bowels of the Iron Throne, dead quickly below the shadows of Rieltar's custody; of the story that a human bard was gone, and of his own intact neck. Of the Knights of the Shield who had come but could not see the official master of the Iron Throne, for he lay badly ill. So many secrets and so little time. The Iron Throne would not yet collapse under weight of its own plots, he thought. Power came in so many different forms.
Alora tugged on his sleeve. "Let's go straight to the marketplace! I need someone to carry my things."
—
30 Flamerule
He rested at the small, well-polished table within the fashionably expensive Helm and Cloak; the elven bard in attendance played a tune on her small harp he thought rather saccharine (as if he could not have done better, despite a lack of practice for quite some years), and they talked of many other things. For Cythandria and himself it was a break in the tension; a moment of rest between all the magic they had undertaken. All the tasks of the election of the newest Grand Duke. All the death in the streets. Some of the ignorant masses wore black to mourn the assassinated Duke; even Alora, naively enough, had tied a black ribbon into her hair upon the day of the funeral. Though, considering that she had pickpocketed it from the opportunist merchant selling them, Edwin reflected, it was all too fitting a memorial for the obviously incompetent Eltan of the Flaming Fist.
"They always said he was a decent chap, for all he did to folk like me," Alora explained, an incongruously sad look across her rosy face. "Some of those guards were such nice types, let me off with a warning when I explained how pretty shiny things look to us rogues and halflings. And it's always so sad when anyone dies, isn't it? I've had friends die before, and it's still sad."
Cythandria gestured emptily to the air. "We have killed the friends of others."
"—But they were nasty, mean, and trying to kill us," Alora said. "I like you, Odesseiron. You're nice to me."
Edwin felt guilt, but suppressed it.
"It's really not fair," Alora went on happily, "Cynthi gets a gold-edged invitation to the coronation, and you 'n I don't!"
To the supplier of skyships to Baldur's Gate: a duchy. They said in his younger years Rieltar Anchev had been powerful, but he degenerated upon drugs he himself sold, distributed duties to his son and died a pathetic death in bed. Edwin had, of course, no other information.
He imagined a house of cards, dukes and queens and staves and swords, cups and coins and wizards and fools, each a death laid upon the other in a staggering pyramid; cut through as pasteboard by a single sword in the end, and a voice and eyes that blazed with god's power.
"Wear the fleur-de-lys emeralds," Alora went on, "they're the ones that go best with your eyes, and they're so pretty! The filigree work's tiny as one of us doing it, or maybe an elf."
"Explain to me how you untangled the locks upon my jewel box," Cythandria sighed; tolerant of her once more.
"—Or you could wear the rubies, fire agates, sapphires, emeralds, the turquoise, the blue diamond, and the purple garnets, and your neck would look like a rainbow!" Alora suggested. "You've got lots of it."
"And I know each one that I have," Cythandria replied, taking a graceful sip of red wine of the same shade as the velvet dress she wore tonight. Though the cut was modest, she wore a darker cloak over it; a subdued red compared to his homeland's colouring. At her bodice the dress was cut in subtly shaded strips, clean-lined and interlaced in woven braids. About her fine throat gold and red shone; Edwin thought the collar-like necklace might have been a gift from Anchev. Most western barbarians were not particularly generous, but allowed their concubines freedoms. A gifted mage was...more of an underling, really. A rather important one within the Throne's structure.
"—I still think you should wear pastels," Alora said, "and lots of ruffles and lace, that's always nice for formals."
Cythandria raised her eyes briefly to the painted ceiling; "Gold; the classical lines of avatars of power."
"I think he's kind of scary, really," Alora said; Edwin agreed all too well, and chose to turn the conversation to irrelevant frivolities.
Cythandria gestured imperiously to order further wine, and poured it herself for the three of them from the pewter tankard in elegant gesture, her fashionably long sleeves hanging down in velvet triangles. Alora giggled, her cheeks flushed. "'S very good stuff," she said, "we can tell even better than you longlimbs, you know!"
"There is nothing wrong with celebrating," Edwin mused; he raised his own glass for another toast with the young halfling. He reached for one of the elongated sweetmeats set out on the porcelain plate, a twist of white cake baked with honey. One or two resembled delicacies he knew from his homeland; inferior, of course, but...almost satisfactory. Perhaps it was the wine affecting him, though he had consumed slightly less than Alora. Luxuries might grow rare in the time to come, but never for the rich or powerful. "(However prematurely.)"
"I'm sure the coronation will be inexpressively tedious; and you have already seen my new gown," Cythandria said. Edwin could imagine the colour of cloth-of-gold, antique and rich laces over shimmering silken panels in heavy elaborate layers, deepening the shade of her hair; and coloured to match Anchev's power. But her eyes were green, and clad in a particular shade of jade they became more vibrantly emerald and bright, with rubies banded at her throat to give the effects life. Or in even her accustomed yellow-and-white robes she was neat and quite attractive.
"'S rushed and cheap compared to the last time years and years ago, they all say," Alora said, disrespectful of how much the remark could provoke her audience, "but it's understandable 'cause of the war talk and all. I don't hate Amnians myself no matter what those dod-gasted Cowled Wizards do; but I like this city and probably they're pretty bad..."
"They're even worse. Treacherous and evil and vile and worthy of eradication from the face of Toril!" said Edwin, with appropriate vehemence against the harlot Witch; but saw Cythandria looking at him, and decided to allow it to lapse. "You must surely agree that the Amnian restrictions upon magic are most repulsive. Attempt to imprison a powerful wizard for a few simple Fireballs? Ridiculous!"
"Indeed; but neither of us have experienced their rule," Cythandria said.
"Not personally, no," Edwin said. "(Though of course I am quite a cosmopolitan and well-learned traveller.) Amnians. Natural enemies of our sort, of course."
"I know the feeling," Alora said, taking another sip of her wine, "'s like those guards who want to arrest you for a few simple poking in around shiny pretty things. Shiny pretty things! So pretty."
Cythandria smiled at her, and beckoned the elven singer to their table; "Is there anything you would like to hear, Alora?"
She sat up, and clapped her hands merrily. "Oooh, I'd like the Sunshine Song, pretty-please. And maybe the great adventure story of Hannilla the Henna-Haired Halfling and her Heroic Heistings?"
Cythandria slipped gold pieces discreetly into the singer's hand; the elf muttered something along the lines of it being lucky that she had travelled with a few halflings before, and began the song with melody Edwin considered...frankly, nauseating. Alora smiled, laughed, and helped herself to sweets and wine.
"You're good friends, you are," Edwin heard her manage, incoherently, after her fifth song request; "all of us! Doing nice things! Being happy! I love you all! Wuggle."
She fell head forward over the table, from her high stool; just in time, Cythandria slid back the porcelain plate to save her from injury. The inn's room had gradually emptied over the night. Edwin, groaning at the weight, picked Alora's sleeping form up (for a halfling, she was—well, highly born wizards hardly needed to lift much of anything). Cythandria left a large tip in platinum for payment, and once more they stepped into the cold night.
The Helm and Cloak was in the north-west of the city; Edwin groaned while they stepped across the cobblestones. The night was busy even at this hour. Preparations and intrigues, extra patrols of guards; but two well-dressed nobles and a drunken companion were unlikely to be halted. Cythandria shivered in the cool of the evening, drawing her cloak about her body, and then cast a spell of strength upon him. They walked together as revellers in advance of the morrow's coronation, reeling slightly and occasionally pausing to listen to gossip and crowds still on the street. Edwin found it not difficult to feign; perhaps he would have a hangover on the next day.
By the city gates their intended destination waited. They slipped into an alleyway that at last they had found deserted, where Cythandria summoned their requirements from her interdimensional storage. One of few remaining caravans departed the city; its owners black-robed. Zhentarim deserting, Cythandria had so explained to him; their numbers insufficient to protest scapegoating. It matters not. They claim to act as merchants.
Edwin stepped forward and helped the carters to heave the heavy, wooden crate with its slats firmly nailed down up to the cart. Express to Neverwinter, the label read. In the back of the cart was a cage of small chattering monkeys, some import from the Baldur's Gate ships; Waterdeep-bound, Edwin thought he could make out. He was pushed away from reading further into the mysterious containers.
Was there a banging noise he could hear while the wheels of the cart squeaked and it set off, between the eyes of four guards, atop the temporarily-down bridge? Perhaps it was only the monkeys. The caravan would travel to the north, passing through the city where snow never fell. They watched it vanish beyond the night's horizon.
"Cythandria, I admire your conjuration of that neverending plate of supplies," Edwin complimented her.
"Odesseiron, your enchantment of the self-filling water flask I could hardly have done better myself," she returned.
"Indeed it was masterful. And your sleeping potion also deserves a fair recognition; in fact I took the liberty of penning it within my own book," Edwin said.
"As I your cantrip to seal the nails until the destination. Most effective," Cythandria said.
They turned.
"I may, perhaps, miss her," Edwin ventured.
No longer foisting herself upon their attention; skipping from step to step and providing them details of some new and exciting discovery or chance of thievery. No longer enthusiastically rapping at his door at ridiculous hours of the morning. No longer joke-telling or encouraging the pair of them to wear more cheerful colours and smile more often.
"Be quiet, Odesseiron. I need simple beauty sleep; and I will need you to complete the list of potions tonight. Let us return in due haste."
He offered her his arm, escorting her as a gentleman to return to the Iron Throne.
"I know perfectly well that you lied to Alora of the coronation to be expected to be uninteresting," Edwin said.
—
9 Eleasias
Ten days after the Amnian attack of the city, and immediately following the murder of the Grand Dukes upon the date of Shieldmeet, war had officially begun.
Cythandria supported the mage Winski in the large-scale skyship-casting; Edwin watched and envied for Thay. (It would pay for such a prize long-envied from the Halruaans. But it was only a standard wooden nausea-inducing conveyance that happened to float in the air and therefore of much less importance to Thay's future than a certain intelligent being of great magical power, and Cythandria was quite observant.) Then the ugly wench Tamoko had summoned him, and he could not but go to the new rooms of Anchev within the ducal palace, far from the gold-drained husk of the Iron Throne.
He was posted as a battle-wizard with a company of the Flaming Fist, south to Nashkel, to the mountains of the Cloudpeak. For death, apparently. The impulse to rule; the impulse to rule as a very deity; the eyes blazed gold, the armour polished and dark, the face within of pure menace. (Subservience he detested. Necessity he did not.)
"It...will be done, Your Grace," came from his mouth.
Was there, perhaps, a cruel smile below the helmet's demon-like maw? "I will death itself; and so it shall come. Get out of my sight."
He prepared; reported to the captain in question. An older man running to fat. It did not precisely inspire confidence. But his magical gifts; he knew how to use them to genuinely seek power. He would conquer. Who knew but there could not be room for a wizard-governor of Nashkel below the sphere of the divine (until, of course, sufficient research and accumulation of power—); there was room for survival—
But he seeks death itself. He can rise on the death of servant as well as foe. He cares not; a war is different to the squabbles seen before (be silent, Edwin! You are a great and powerful wizard the likes of which Faerun is highly privileged only to behold...)
He simply packed the most that he could carry, far less than his personal needs required; continued to revise his most important spells for purposes of raining destruction upon his enemies. He chose the components he required methodically from Cythandria's stores; neither she nor Perorate had yet shifted laboratories to the palace.
"Tamoko is a whore," Cythandria said; she had entered silently, that doppelganger behind her. Edwin straightened up from where he had been plundering a low drawer. (It was her laboratory; he ought not to resent silent movements. But he had been in a position very undignified for him.)
"Very uncouth and ugly. I was unimpressed with her from the beginning," Edwin replied.
"Too blatantly dissatisfied with present events. Thank you, Sherdis; leave the components there." The doppelganger departed; the door to Cythandria's laboratory closed with a soft click. "Did she show the usual miserable-as-a-wet-chicken face to you, Odesseiron?"
He had not particularly observed.
"She would restrain him, restrict him, force him to remain human," Cythandria went on. "To bind us all by limits. Could you imagine to will against the power of a god?"
From the expectant, distant look on her face, Edwin fancied that Cythandria perceived herself the consort of a deity. To be close to that power was quite within his own goals. In his own imaginings...
(The death of Philias, for instance. Another stray musing to lay aside as they had disposed of the halfling's presence.)
"I have always held it unwise to set limits upon ambition," Edwin said.
"The human is all she wants. Yet still he keeps her," Cythandria said, and she drew closer to him. Edwin caught the piquant spice of her perfume.
"A shameless harlot unworthy of your rivalry, my dear," Edwin said.
"Go to the Cloudpeaks," Cythandria told him, but her body blocked his path.
"Bid me farewell," he ordered her, and that was when the space between them closed. His mouth was across the soft skin of her neck—he would leave no mark, that would be inadvisable—and she gripped his arms with both of her hands, staring at him with her eyes sharp and green and marble-cold as if to remind herself of whom she was—and not—with. He led or was led by her up deserted sidestairs, to a small bedroom that he doubted was properly hers; he aimed a locking cantrip at the door, and a silencing one for good measure. In a way, imprisoning her; imprisoning them both. On the bed boots came off, heavy mage's robes stripped quickly and yet so as not to destroy them.
"No; keep the gauntlets—" Cythandria commanded of him; those which made his fingers more nimble—and she gave orders readily enough, the floods of her golden hair falling over her pearly shoulders and cool against his skin. Beautifully proportioned—moving against him—he listened to her, it seemed useful advice, and then thrust his tongue inside her mouth and she was silenced for a moment.
Far less pleasant he could have seduced, he thought, in a brief passage between attempts, rolling between the bed's tangled sheets. For the sake of similar advantages, perhaps he would have been willing to try Anchev—but that would have been much less attractive. (Quite intimidating.) He would convince her to miss his presence when he was gone; she was an ally here and he acted as a powerful Red Wizard adept in the onslaught of these arts. He sat up, freeing himself from the sheet about his midsection, and bent over her once more; "Lower—no, higher now—" she whispered in his ear, her nails raking but not piercing the skin of his back. She could yield like the petals of a rose but drew one into her like a graceful trap baited by honey, and their bodies slapped against each other as yet another time they drew together. He would have gloated for his own powers of endurance, but there was no time for that; Anchev would send him south, he had bare hours for this...
(Better not mention this to anyone, of course.)
Cythandria's legs wrapped around his waist and on his shoulder he felt her red mouth. In Nashkel, the fireball burned—
—