25 Eleasias
The number was above two hundred. Many Flaming Fists; one of the acolyte-priests (may he rot in the Nine Hells); many innocents. Scar. Taros of Ilmater, who had escaped the doppelganger capture, using his own body to shield a group of others. Duchess Belt had opened her estate entire for the relief of suffering citizens, sheltering us also; Ajantis had managed to live through the aftermaths, irritated as he was at Faldorn for refusing to allow a suicidal charge against Anchev.
Imoen and I sat below a painting by Shiras of a girl carrying fresh cornflowers in Sauriram's private study, sipping weak tea.
"We've never had a duke who thought he was a god before. Mind you, there was the one who thought he was a small pot plant; but that was before your time, dear. Sometimes I wonder about the lifelong aspect of these things," the Duchess said. I didn't tell her that I'd heard of that one.
The presence of the medallions had multiplied in the city until they were openly and ubiquitously displayed, their meaning revealed to all; seemingly overnight, for Imoen and myself. We had been trapped for almost five days.
"There was news you were dead; executed by Captain Dosan himself," Sauriram said, gently comforting. "We thought they must be true, simply because it would have been so practical to see it immediately done, when that mad child troubles himself only with martial law these days."
A limited leverage, then, over Shar-Teel's father; for whatever that was worth. How much was the life of one girl worth, when yesterday far more than that number had been murdered in the city? I hated that I'd thought it.
"I cannot imagine your ordeal with that abomination calling itself your stepmother," Sauriram said. "The creature has not since dared to venture forth; your estate is heavily locked and guarded. Annaclair of Helm found and fought three of the creatures before the invasion, and for that at least the rumours have begun to fly."
If there is unmistakable proof that the monsters are linked to him; but he would not be stupid enough to travel with a doppelganger by his side. Perhaps their uses were over with him.
"I've got a magely idea of what to do next," Imoen said, already reaching a decision; her mobile features were set stiffly, her expression clear and focussed. "Who was that wizardess who thought up the salt trick on the sahuagin? I could work with her."
Sauriram nodded; her eyes in her wrinkled face were black and bright, as lively as if she'd been fifty years younger. "A good choice, my dear. Claudia Besancon is a distant cousin of the Jannaths; Emerie works her hard. If one can convince her to speak she is quite helpful."
I looked at Imoen, waiting for more; but she added no details of her wizard's plan. "I'd like to know more of Angelo Dosan," I said. "Especially information of the properties he owns." If I had to, I could break into the offices of the bureaucratic wing of the palace; they wouldn't be well-guarded in these times. But Sauriram's gossip would be more reliable.
The Duchess told her knowledge succinctly and thoroughly; I'd the urge to scribble down notes on spare parchment from Imoen's lately-restocked supplies. Imoen looked approvingly across, understanding it even as she did not give details of her own plan to non-mages. Perhaps we could not understand her magery; perhaps she was unsure of success.
—
Shar-Teel, we rescued your daughter on our own, you can come back now; because without you we're not strong enough, I imagined saying boldly to her, having overcome things on my own exactly or even better than she would have done, since after all—(I was silly and incompetent and a failure at everything—) I was less emotionally tied to it. I'd have hidden someone I kidnapped in property I didn't own on paper; intermediaries, less of a trail, the sort of dishonesty my father ranted about at the rare times he dined with us. Angelo owned most of a supposed merchant house called the Withered Violet; its sigil was on a group of small, poor houses in the north-east, and what was by rumour something between a House Of Ill Repute (my dears, I am an old enough woman to be quite unshockable, Sauriram had expressed) and a den of black lotus.
Shar-Teel, do you remember that orange half-ogre in the bandit camp who beat—whom you really wanted to fight again? Well, he worked for Sarevok, of course, and then Sarevok had him killed just to substantiate a rumour of an Amnian attack. Since you can't fight him any more, wouldn't you like to try fighting the one who killed him? If she'd been here, perhaps saying that could have worked.
There was a smoky miasma that seemed to hang over the black-walled building, and a large half-orc stood outside the door reading a book clutched in his wide hands. Paradoxe— I read on the grimy title of it, and tipped him first a silver and then a gold to be allowed entrance. Eldoth would have known the first time, but everyone has to start somewhere.
Inside the grime was worse and the smell stronger. Greasy, blackened strips of cloth that might have once pretended to be tapestries hung across the walls and from the low, cracked ceiling, dividing the rough stools and benches into loose partitions. The bottles beside the blackened wood slab that served for a bar were streaked by liquid dirt; some of them were oddly shaped for wine, made from smoky glass of different colours. The man behind the slab wore a stained apron, some lines and splotches darker than others. He was almost bald with a crown of grizzled, brown-grey hair, and a face with pockmarks of some past disease. Low murmurings had gone silent as I had entered, and began again while my eyes grew more used to the place's darkness.
Be confident as if you belong. Ask for an ale first, and then of the environs. If a child was kept here; and the reasons for that would be very wrong.
Two women had stood, from two different corners of the dark room. They'd walk on, I thought; but instead they circled. One's shirt was as tight and low as some of Viconia's clothing; the other wore a filmy grey dress made from scraps of material that were, I realised, translucent. If they wanted to pickpocket, I'd notice—
Then a third woman approached me and spoke, dressed in ragged priest's robes with no visible insignia upon them.
"Some say gods can die," she said in a thin high voice, raising long pale-fingered hands as if she warded away something that only she could see. I could see no way to step around them. "Some say gods are an illusion we create for our own amusement. Some say gods are an illusion we create for our fear of living. Some say gods are an illusion we create for our fear of dying. Where is the other?" She did not wait for a reply. "Some say gods can be born. If gods are an illusion then Leira is the one beacon of truth in a pantheon of lies, for Leira is the Lady of Mists and the Guardian of Deception and the Mother of Illusions and the Mistshadow. Some say that Leira died by Cyric's hand betrayed by Mask. Some say that Leira was born again. Shaella sees you in the mists of the lady and beside you Shaella sees the other. Elnaedra knows this Shaella not and sees once more through the mists."
Sarevok Anchev certainly thought gods could be born.
"She feels one with void," the first woman said; she wore a sword at her waist, and ugly gauntlets that seemed to be made out of a wrinkled green skin. "Your life means nothing to us. I am Desreta, my soul sister is Vay-ya. Shaella sees entropy."
"Charmed," I tried to say; I'd stiffened for an attack, but they had only spoken so far. The three women paced and twined themselves around me.
"Life has no meaning," the woman in the translucent dress said. "We know wondrous, sensuous entropy. It inside you like sweet ice scent. Let us show you entropic pleasure, mmm?"
Shaella had been perhaps slightly more understandable. "What does Leira want with me?"
The priestess shook her head. "Shaella is not here! Elnaedra walks in the Lady's mists. Elnaedra knows that gods can die and mysteries are to stay mysteries."
Desreta reached out to grab my arm; though I moved, her fingernails ran down my sleeve. "Feel pleasure of entropy. It delight you with icy touch."
"One with void," Vay-ya echoed, her grey silks rustling. "Come lie cold with us in eternal dance."
"...Please leave me alone." The barman was being very dedicated to minding his own business; I saw no sign of friendly aid offered from the shadowy figures about the room.
It was very easy to think of how Shar-Teel would handle this.
"You feel pain and a lack of answers. The mists of the Lady open to give your soul freedom," said the priestess of Leira.
"Life is empty and you endure pain no longer," Desreta said, and drew her sword in a sudden swift motion.
I flung myself to the ground between the other two. The sword went down and pierced the floor: the blackened wood shattered and splintered as if a giant had pummelled it. I brought the priestess tumbling down, then rolled behind her. She was a shield, and the next thing I knew was that blood soaked and stained me.
There was a vacant stool not far off, and I seized that for a makeshift shield for the next blow. Desreta's sword tore through the wood in a loud crack that hadn't seemed to summon any aid against her. Vay-ya was calling the words of a spell; I pirouetted and rushed her, drawing the shortsword. Her skin was stoned over. The blade scraped harmlessly along it, and then Desreta had caught up. Her strike in the air was high; I moved under it. The mage's words had faltered for that moment. If it was possible to get under Desreta's range and to some of the bare skin she showed...
A light tenor voice spoke up, somewhere behind. "Damsel in distress! I see signs of adventure call always."
Then he was striding into the fray, a tall elf with a garishly painted face and carrying a longsword that he seemed to know how to use. "Down, Desreta! I wonder now if I should have accepted your noble-spirited offer."
The swordswoman turned with a flashing strike that ought to have bisected the elf, but somehow he leaped up and away in time, faster even than Shar-Teel or Viconia. "Foolish elf, you reject pleasures of entropy. Feel them now."
"'Twas a subtler pleasure I envisioned," the elf said, duelling her in flashes of shining steel that reminded me more of an exhibition scene than true fighting. "A bed, your sister, the concept of the delights of disorder of the universe—is't not true upon the Planes there are those who believe that decline is in the merry chaos of life itself? Alas for cruel responsibilities!"
I used the pommel of the shortsword to hit the caster's jaw. Blunt force worked even through stone-shielding; she fell to the ground in her tangle of silks, somewhat indecently exposed. The priestess bled badly on the ground, a deep and gory cut through breasts and stomach, and no other came to her aid. I wouldn't.
The duel between the elf and the swordswoman continued; she seemed not to notice that her friends were fallen. The elf leapt from stool to bench like a frog, using anything that came to hand; pulling down a curtain and throwing it into her face, mocking her in words. I flanked her from behind.
"The dance starts to grow unfair, beautiful ladies—" the elf said; and then broke off in pain as Desreta's sword tore into his shoulder, ripping through the leather jerkin he wore. Her blade whipped around to me; I stepped aside, and that time she tore through one of the wooden slats that stretched between floor and ceiling.
"Ye owe me five," a man's voice said, a cloaked figure dressed almost as if he deliberately wanted to look shady; followed by a murmur in reply, "No—yer bet was on new-girl alone, not fool elf—" I turned back, still unable to break through Desreta's defences.
"Structural damage is strictly forbidden," boomed the half-orc from the doorway, the book secured in his belt; and as he lumbered in Desreta tried to fight on. He carried a club that seemed less a proper club than simply a plank of wood with rusty nails driven through it by a none-too-accurate hand, and I stepped out of his way as best I could.
Then he hit the woman in the back of the skull with it, and she fell with the back of her head bleeding and misshapen. The elf looked sickened.
"—They started it," I said hastily. Already it had attracted far too much attention. The bouncer glared.
"They pulled that entropy crap once back in Kythorn on this crazed paladin," he said at last, still swinging that makeshift club in one thick, green hand. I suppose I was cringing enough for him to forgive. "Not all get that one shouldn't presume a closed system when applying the laws of thermodynamics...aww, sod it." He picked through the bodies himself, shoving aside the skin gauntlets with a look of disgust at their similarity to his own arms, and threw some coin across to the bartender. There was the unexpected sound of a crying baby, and the elf looked pained.
"—Fair maid, I beg you to excuse me to one no less fair," he said; his voice was a smooth tenor, and he sheathed his blade as part of an elaborate bow. Then he leapt back over the dirty furnishings. In his dark corner was a baby swaddled in grey cloth and a neatly stitched child's dress that seemed out of place for this setting.
"Er, she's lovely," I said. "Do they usually keep children here?"
"Oh, that she is," he said, "you see how strongly she flails her arms? How she follows your movements with a preternaturally focused look? ...How much milk she manages to drink to fuel her growth," he added with a sigh, feeding her from a pewter bottle with a narrow neck. "I am Coran: archer, blade, adventurer—and now parent to this little lady Namara." Then he cooed over her in an almost disturbingly childish manner.
"...Call me Edwitha." Rather an awful name. The child was half-elven, by her looks; she seemed to have her father's blue eyes, and a small amount of hair the colour of straw over slightly pointed ears. "Where do you come from, Coran?"
He spread one arm expansively, holding his daughter with the other. "The forests of Tethir," he said; from where the navigator Dradeel had also come. "Green beauty that stretches further than eye can see, than eagle's eye above flying from one end to the other in a year and a day; merrily rushing waterfalls with the charm of bells and a hundred maidenly flowers of pink and yellow and white flowing across the delicate fronds by the water's clear spray; secret groves with the smell of fresh pine needles and soft darkness to welcome sleep; noble deer and graceful fawns that fear not the approach of two legs in wandering and grazing with wide eyes; the pale wings of moths at dusk and powder of their wings spiralling up to clear skies and glimmering stars and constellations; leaves in the season of fire scarlet and golden while tongues of flame race through the undergrowth; trees evergreen in the midst of winter below pure snowflakes, the white flowers of snowdrops rising from harsh cold; spring suns gently melting as a kiss; summer rains cool amidst bright blue-glaring skies. And it is deathly boring."
He laughed; he was amusing. "Too pale and pretty a flower should not grow here," the elf said; in another gallant gesture he had my hand, and raised it to his face for a ghost of a kiss. "What further tribute do you seek here, fair and new-ripened damsel?" Hardly sincere, I thought; but a talkative Tethyrian elf was the last person to serve Dosan's Fist.
"Knowledge of one of those who own this place," I said softly. "I can pay—"
My purse was missing; and on the smallest finger of the elf's left hand was a filigreed ring glittering with a small emerald fragment.
He slid the pouch back across the table. "You likewise take an interest in these arts and devices, I take it? I would deprive beauty of only a small memento." Inside the purse, the ring was in fact all that was missing; I kept a hand carefully on it.
"If relative cleanliness is beauty, then I am. Do you know anything useful? Does he keep...anyone here?"
The elf frowned; some of his mood seemed transmitted to the baby, who began a low whine. He tipped the end of his tankard toward her before realising a mistake, and instead fed her from the narrow-necked bottle.
"The one who would easily make Namara twice an orphan, for his friends? Hanali save all fair innocents; Tymora favours the daring," Coran said. "Of course that one, I see, elegant Edwitha. The name I give is Safana, unless the saucy wench has escaped the city already; perchance haunting the Undercellars still. You do not know of where they open? Why, even the Ilmatari frequent it upon missions charitable. There now, and a further hint that the gauntlets of the skin of our doorguard's kin are of value—"
He threw a dagger into the body that lay there, where a man who openly carried the veil-like symbol of Mask had bent over the corpse.
"And so Coran pays for a small tale; and ends the richer for a short-lasting memory. May the Lady of Luck show a fairer face to thou than she has done my daughter; for in eyes and slender grace there should be time's loss indeed..."
I tried to leave quietly, listening to him no longer; it seemed that hostile eyes burned to the back of my cloak at each step.
—
At least she wasn't shivering and shaking in her own boots and jumping at her own shadow like it'd suddenly turned to a drow come to get you, Imoen thought. Ramazith's tower was bigger 'n it looked close-up; certainly imposing; but they didn't even have anything against him. That Mistress Claudia was a bit of a skeerdy-cat but she knew her way 'round the magic in town; and if it didn't work out—well, Imoen'd just have to think of something else. Claudia's grey outer robe tossed every which way about her sticklike frame in the wind, and her sparse, mouse-brown hair was a tangled mess. She looked timorously down at the ground, and it was Imoen who stepped forward and dared to knock. Her own dress'd belonged to one of the nice ol' Dowager's married nieces, rich and thick and well-made even if it was mostly a boring brown that wouldn't catch too many looks in the street, and the skin below it was a perfect sparkling clean from the Duchess' baths despite the horrors of the dungeon only a day ago. A pink silk petticoat she liked better swished merrily around her bare calves above her boots, her hands healed and fresh below lilac calfskin gloves soft enough to cast with. Clothes making the woman and all, a womanly archmagess in a pink silk petticoat couldn't help but be smart and ready.
The door opened slowly, but with nothing behind it.
"Y' can do that on just wires," Imoen whispered as cheerily as possible. "Don't even need magic. Kid stuff, really."
"There's a w-ward in the air," Claudia pointed out softly.
"Master bids... Master bids you wait for him to finish his experiments!"
Shar's puckered black winkle! Imoen blasphemed. She'd not seen the imp come out of thin air, flapping ink-coloured wings in a cloud of brimstone, she thought; fair enough, that was pretty impressive magic. It didn't matter, because this one they weren't going to do nothing interesting to. The imp gestured with its pointed tail down a long corridor, seeming to be longer than the circular tower was wide around its diameter. Imoen saw a lamp that looked as if it was made of spiderwebs spin above their head, shedding golden light; and on the walls ran runic patterns that melted into the distance as soon as she dared to look at them. A magical design, no doubt worth much gold if he hadn't done it himself. The colours were bright and made her head hurt: Ramazith the abjurer's taste seemed to run to the vivid, confusing, and maybe outright pornographic if you squinted or were the mage himself. Imoen was sure that was a naked buttock somewhere between the moving paints, fleeing her eyes, and a pair of large bosoms tossing and turning in a bold green veil between the runes that the Weave let her see of its enchantment.
"—Will you tell him it's about Ragefast? Nasty mean toady mutton-mongering Ragefast?" Imoen improvised, since her companion was being as quiet as a mouse. She glanced back uneasily to the door they had entered, which was still there. She could almost feel Ramazith's abjuration fields pressing in on them.
What passed for a waiting-room contained two backless chairs made from a dark substance that could have been either painted metal or stone; a blank grey table that looked as if it had been carved all from the same lump of featureless stone; plain walls; and a door. Imoen leaned against its open hinges in a way that she tried to make it not look like leaning, and Claudia stayed standing as well. Y' never knew what to trust about some wizards, the mean ones who weren't as nice as her anyway. Like grumpy ol' Ulraunt.
The imp flashed red pointed teeth at her in a way that made Imoen think it knew exactly what she was doing, and then it vanished in smoke that forced Claudia to cough. Imoen let herself relax. More little miss Besancon's plan than hers, anyway—or was she Lady Besancon or Miss Besancon Her Grace or the Honourable Mistress Besancon? It didn't matter, she didn't stand on titles and Imoen wasn't one to give a time of day to those idiots who did.
Claudia stood quietly with her arms wrapped around herself, as if she was frozen cold. Still, she didn't stand as if she was cringing away or running away, and that was something, Imoen supposed.
"Ramazith's tower is so beautiful," Imoen said; 'cause it never hurt to butter up the mark first, and the thought flashed through her mind whether and how many things Ramazith had worth nicking, and if she dared to go look for them and try, and if maybe that was real gold spread on his roof and maybe some daring thief could make off with it in the night. "He must be very busy at wizarding." She'd almost said: He is such a great and powerful and magnificent wizard! He may spend a month before seeing us lowly worms, and quite right too— But she wouldn't grovel to anyone, and she'd a feeling that maybe it would have gone far enough to have them diagnosed with deliberate and intentional overbluffery.
"Well," Claudia said, "I s-suppose it is good company to wait with. Have you read The Ilmater School for Shocking?"
Then the girl began whispering at great length about the words to some play that Imoen figured after a little bit wasn't a secret code after all. Maybe it'd have been a funny story if she'd watched; she wasn't. Right, yeah, pick a distraction to talk about so's he won't know all the secrets— Fair enough, she'd brought the other mage along to be an extra set of mage hands.
Then at last the tower's abjurer himself strode in the door, wiping a smoke-darkened hand on the front of his once-white robes. Above them was a mage's suit in a red-and-green astronomical pattern, belted tightly around his waist. He was white-haired and white-bearded, but looked younger than most with hair of the same colour. Thick-bodied without being fat, as if he worked manually as well as practised magic. Imoen had some idea of how powerful he was; and of course—being, after all, Lady Imoen the Great and Terrible Pink Transmuter Wizardess—kept her confidence and composure.
"Good mornin'; thanks for seeing us," she said. "We've picked up a bit of a grudge against Ragefast, and they say you're the wizard to see."
An easy story; apparently it worked.
"A disgruntled female apprentice," Ramazith muttered; "I see. But I'm afraid I am not sure if you are what I want. After all, Ragefast is only my rival in the art; a sophisticated man cares nothing for the private enemies made by those he very impersonally dislikes and trusts to continue in long life."
Imoen's mouth wavered. "Gee...I wasn't quite suggesting that." And she really wasn't; wouldn't do anything really wrong. "I'm more of a...relocator and removalist in my spare time. Not about the hurting people. And I've got friends who like relocating and removing too."
The wizard's thick red lips, like slabs of raw steak between the white beard, quirked into a grin that struck Imoen as almost savage. "So lacking in subtlety! Is it gambling debts of the inferior branch of the Jannaths that drive you to affiliated associations; a crude bluff; or simple insanity?"
Some of this conversation Imoen wasn't sure she was actually having. "We're just looking to get advice," she said. "Sometimes you get to wondering what shiny things certain conjurers like to keep around. Y'...know?"
Well, if even half the stories about Ramazith and Ragefast and the things they did to each other and the collateral damage of folk in the way were true, it wasn't as if he'd the moral high ground to stand on. Imoen tried to keep her cool.
Ramazith quirked an eyebrow, and Imoen gulped. He'd an odd trick of pulling the threads close on himself, inside the patterned shield around his own body; made it tricky to read. But she didn't even care about the abjurer in the end.
"But, my dear, the Flaming Fist have already played the part of burglars come to take all the city requires from our wizard's stores; from the dregs of feuding necromancers in the eastern shacks to this very tower," Ramazith said; more elliptical words that completely danced around the point. And yet it had to be the best plan she had.
Claudia gave a short nod, her face sculpted still and peaceful as if she knew exactly what was going on. It was a good bluff for a girl who acted 'fraid of her own shadow. "We ask for no help," she said, not quite stuttering, "only any words that would not inconvenience you to offer. I understand if apprehension of Ragefast or other retaliation is..."
"I will give you words, girl, make no mistake of that," Ramazith said. "Ragefast is a hedge-wizard distracted! —My experiments progress, so I shall come to a point, though I expect little from incompetent fools. Surely you know of his new toy? The outrage of a sapient creature?"
Claudia claimed she had; Imoen imitated her.
"Then I suggest you to investigate the truth of this rumour; free the poor thing and bring her to me." The elderly wizard rubbed his hands together; Imoen thought she saw something distinctly wolfish in his grimace. "Anything else is at your discretion, for I am a generous man and his arts have ever been the inferior. You swear that you know specialists of arts other than magic?"
"Know a girl who can find her way through a lock or trap faster 'n lightning bolt through grease," Imoen boasted, "a swordfighter who's real strong against evil wizards; a nice divine priestess who'll heal you up quicksticks..."
"Precisely what I have hoped to find amidst the vultures feeding from the present turmoil," Ramazith said, and this time Imoen decided that she definitely did not like his smile. Then he raised both hands, and cast too quickly and powerfully for them to do anything for it. Not in his own tower.
Imoen looked down at the lilac-covered backs of her hands; he'd not turned them into toads.
"I see you," he said simply.
"—No, you did more than s-scrying. You added a c-condition of harming if we do not, within...I will find it..." Claudia stuttered. Imoen felt the Weave-threads banding her chest, a settled braid that hung just at the topmost join of her ribcage. Perhaps if it tightened she would fall. Claudia was right; a connection to the other mage that meant he'd be spying. (Should she not undress or bathe for the next few days, Imoen thought, the consequences of that flying up inside her head? Ick! She wanted to backstab him.)
"In three days; I am generous to pretty apprentices," he said; though it was meant to be mocking to Claudia, who blushed red in humiliation.
"—We want details," Imoen said. "You hire us, you spy on us—let out all the wards you know about."
"In brief," Ramazith said, with a smirk that made her want to slap him silly, feeling dirty with his Weave-braid nestled—not far at all from her breasts; that Ragefast mutton-monger conjurer just better have what she needed to make it all worth it—
—