A/N: Okay. I hate to do this, but I could not figure out a way to resolve the language barrier in any believable manner. You might think that I could fall back on the trade language of Common as a universal language, but in my readings on the subject, this language is extremely limited in its ability to convey complex or abstract ideas. Plus, there is no reason to assume Violet would know Common. After all, it isn't English. So, I am going to commit the great sin of a lot of fantasy writers: I am going to assume everyone can understand one another. Please forgive me and kindly suspend your disbelief for the sake of the story.
Chapter 23: Queens and Rabble
Violet circled the dais to stand beside the regal woman behind the young ruler. Sending a silent prayer to the goddess, she reached out and grasped the woman's forearm just above her many bracelets. At first nothing happened, and Violet was afraid her plan wasn't going to work, but then the woman's golden eyes flickers and she turned her head towards Violet with a frown.
"How dare you? Unhand me!" she asked in an imperious tone and tried to pull her arm away.
"Wait," Violet pleaded with her. "I just need to ask you…,"
"Guards!" the woman called out in alarm and struggled to free herself from Violet.
"Stop it!" Violet gave her arm a shake. "Look around you! Something has happened to your people!"
The woman's eyes shifted from Violet standing over her, to the people around her. She went still as she took in the scene.
"What has happened?" she whispered.
"I don't know," Violet answered in a gentler voice, dropping to kneel by her side. "I was hoping you could tell me."
Her eyes flickered to Reed standing awkwardly behind Violet to keep his hold on her skirt ties. "Who are you?"
"I'm Violet and this is Reed, a guardsman from Highmoon."
"Highmoon?"
Violet nodded, "in the Dalelands?"
The woman snorted, "that land of peasants and rabble? There are no habitable cities within those forests."
"Um, what year do you think it is?" Reed asked from behind Violet.
The woman lifted a finely plucked eyebrow, "it is the fourth year of the glorious reign of Ra-Thos the fourth."
"And what year would that be for the rest of the realms?"
Another frown, "why would I care about the rest of the realms?"
Before Reed could respond, Violet cleared her throat, "why don't you tell us who you are and the name of this city."
Looking as though she smelled something foul, which wasn't far from the truth in Violet and Reed's present state, the woman looked down at Violet's hand wrapped around her arm.
"I'm sorry, but that's the only way I can cancel the spell's effect on you." To make a point, she released her hold and stood to move to the other side of the woman and grabbed that arm instead.
The woman started when she was able to move again, looking at Violet speculatively.
"You're a sorceress?"
"Yes, but this isn't my doing if that's what you're thinking. We just stumbled across your city here in the underdark just a little while ago and we're still trying to figure out what's going on." Violet smile depreciatively, "well that, and trying to find our way back to the surface."
"The underdark? Back to the surface?" the woman asked, confused. "Are you saying we are underground?"
Violet nodded, "I'm guessing that's not where you thought you were."
She briefly told the woman about finding the city and making their way through it.
"Everyone is frozen? Like this?" the woman waved her hand to indicate the people around them.
At Violet's nod, the woman seemed to shrink in upon herself.
"This is the doing of Sabah Taf-Nekhta," she said half to herself. Pushing herself off the cushion to stand, she gripped Violet's hand with surprisingly strong fingers. "We need to find Aseiohiamenti."
Descending the back side of the dais, she led Violet to a set of stairs tucked behind a fat pillar. As they took the stairs up to the next level of the palace, she introduced herself.
"I'm Queen Seteta, mother of Ra-Thos, King of Neitia."
"I'm afraid I'm not familiar with that, your majesty," Violet responded, barely able to recall what she had managed to read about the kingdoms and nations around the Dales during her stay in Highmoon.
"We're a small, but powerful kingdom in the heart of the Sea of Sands. Neitia was built on the edge of At'ar's Looking Glass. Most of our wealth comes from trade of the jewels we mine from under the desert."
At the top of the stairs, Seteta hurried down a cool corridor, finally stopping in front of a carved wooden door bound with copper and inlaid with colorful stones. The queen pushed the door open and swept into the room beyond.
The room was a cluttered workspace, every table and flat surface covered with books, scrolls, and everything a practicing witch could hope for. Violet's breath caught in her throat and she looked around at the treasure-trove around her. There were spell components in bowls, vases, boxes, vials, jars, and just scattered loosely around. She could see at four different cauldrons made from different materials as well as at least half a dozen mortar and pestles both full and empty. Crystals and jewels caught the soft glow from a nearby window and casting their prisms of light across the room.
In the middle of the chaos stood a wiry man, dressed in the same fashion as the rest of the city's denizens, but with a robe worn over everything. The skin on his shaved head was as thin as parchment and peppered with unattractive age spots and moles. His eyes were hidden in the depths of heavily wrinkled lids, and his lips were pulled back in what could have been either a grin or a grimace, exposing yellowed teeth. He appeared to be in the middle of casting a spell involving a large sapphire that he held aloft triumphantly in a bony fist.
"Aseiohiamenti!" Seteta called out, dragging Violet through the labyrinth of the room.
Reaching the man, she put a hand on his shoulder.
"…you!" he crowed. Then turned look at the woman at his side. Blinking several times, he licked his lips before speaking. "My Queen, I didn't see you enter. Please forgive me!" He made a low bow to her.
"You idiot!" she snapped. "What have you done?"
"I don't understand," he said, confused.
Not letting go of Violet, Seteta grabbed a fist full of the robe and pulled both him and Violet back out of the room. As they rushed down the corridor, Violet almost snickered at the sight they must have made: The queen dragging the old man by his robe with one hand and Violet with the other and poor Reed hurrying behind holding on to Violet's skirt ties. Looking back at Reed, she saw he was grinning at her as if he was in on the joke.
Back down the stairs to the throne "room" as Violet had silently named it, the odd group stopped and Seteta yanked the old man forward.
"Look what you have wrought!"
He looked at the stone-still crowd then down at the sapphire in his hand. His eyes darted to Violet and Reed in contemplation.
"What year is it?" he demanded.
"1463," Reed answered.
"1463…," the man mused and fell silent.
"Well?" Seteta asked.
The man spun, pulled Violet's hand out of the queen's grasp and shoved Reed backward with a wave of his hand, knocking him back against a pillar and causing him to lose his hold on Violet. Both the queen and the guardsman instantly froze into place with shocked looks on their faces.
"Hey!" Violet protested fighting against his hold.
"Come on, girl," he told her, tapping the back of her hand with a bony finger. "They're not going anywhere, and we have work to do!"
She stood her ground and twisted her hand in his grasp, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't pull it free. Behind him, Nori appeared and launched herself at him with a hiss. Another wave of his free hand and Violet's familiar disappeared in a flash of purple.
"Nori!"
Her captor regarded her with a new spark of interest in his eyes.
"You aren't what you appear, are you, girl?"
Angry at his disregard for Reed and frightened at his display of power, Violet refused to answer.
Not bothered by her silence, he went back up the stairs, pulling her behind him, and back into his workshop, not bothering to shut the door behind them. After all, who was going to barge in?
Back at his work bench, he moved Violet's hand to grip his shoulder, saying a quick spell that held it there before releasing his grip on her. With both hands free, he stood appraising her.
"Now, quickly, tell me what's preventing you and all you touch from falling under this spell?"
"Why would I tell you anything?" she asked heatedly
"Because I may be able to use it to free my city," he stated flatly.
Violet noted that he hadn't asked how Neitia had been bespelled.
"Seteta was right," she said slowly, "you know what caused this."
He snorted, "of course."
"Did you cause this?"
His short laugh was more of a dry wheeze than mirth. "Don't be stupid, girl. Would I have been caught up in a spell of my on devising?" Before she could answer, he dropped the large sapphire on the table in front of them. "Sabah cast this spell."
"Who's Sabah?"
"A jealous bitch who would rather bring the whole world crashing down around us out of spite than to admit I am her better."
Eyeing the sapphire, she asked, "is that hers? Did she do this to Neitia because you stole a jewel from her?"
Aseiohiamenti gave another wheezing laugh, "no, stupid girl. She did this because I imprisoned her in it."
"What?" Violet gasped. "There's a person trapped in there?"
"Not just any person," he rubbed his age-spotted skull. "Sabah Taf-Nekhta was one of the most powerful sorcerers of our time, second only to me."
He was pretty full of himself, Violet though.
"Well, that makes this easy," she said. "Release her."
"I didn't go through everything I did just to release her at the first hint of trouble!"
"The first hint…?" Violet would have thrown both her hands in the air in exasperation, but one was still stuck to this odious man's shoulder. "An entire city is trapped underground and frozen in time, and you consider that just a hint of trouble?" She stopped as another thought struck her. "Wait, do you know how long you've been like this?"
He waved a dismissive hand, "two thousand years, or so."
Turning away from the sapphire, pulling Violet helplessly along with him as he walked over to an elaborately carved cabinet. A hand gesture and curt word unlocked the double doors, then he hefted a small coffer from its interior and carried it back to the work bench, setting it down heavily next to the sapphire. Moving swiftly, he snatched Violet's free hand and raised it to examine her ring that was glowing faintly in the soft light filtering in through the windows.
"Hum, just a simple negation spell? I expected something more complex." He released her hand. "Obviously, I was giving Sabah more credit than she deserved."
"She did manage to move your city and freeze it for two thousand years." Violet couldn't understand his blasé attitude about it, still reeling from the revelation. "All while trapped in that sapphire."
Apparently, waving his hand dismissively was Aseiohiamenti's thing because he repeated the gesture, "stupid girl, that's not possible. No, she must have had this spell set up beforehand and trapping her triggered it." He tapped the coffer with a skeletal finger, "smart, but not smarter than me."
He opened the coffer and dug through its contents. Rings, pendants, broaches, earrings, and other less easily identified jewelry were carelessly heaped together in a glittering assortment of metals, gems, and stones. Impatiently, he deposited a handful on the workbench, carelessly scattering them as he sifted through them in his search.
A simple silver ring with a carved milky blue stone rolled to a stop in front of Violet. Picking it up, she examined it curiously. About the size of her pinky nail, the stone was carved with an unfamiliar rune. Violet guessed it might be a moon opal. It was a notoriously fragile stone, so the artist that had carved the designs into it had to have been an expert craftsperson. She was tempted to slip it on her finger to admire it further, but the sorcerer swatted it from her hand.
"That's not what we're looking for," he snapped. "Levitation will not help us."
The ring clattered back to the tabletop as he scooped out another handful of jewelry and deposited it in front of her.
"Make yourself useful," he directed. "Help me find another negation spell in this pile."
"All these are enchanted?" Violet was shocked. There had to be over a hundred different pieces in the coffer and scattered on the bench. She had never seen so many enchanted items in her entire life!
"Of course," he snorted. "These are all simple spells that any low-level mage or sorcerer can create. I keep them to use as spell components."
Spell components? Aseiohiamenti collected enchanted jewelry like she collected herbs and crystals. She was so far out of her depth.
"Ah!" the sorcerer announced. "Here we go."
He held up a dangly earring set with a black, cut crystal, maybe a black diamond or tourmaline. Shoving the coffer and the loose jewelry aside, he pulled a heavy grimoire close and paged through it.
Eyeing the ring with the levitation spell, Violet took advantage of his distraction and casually placed her hand over it, acting like she was leaning in to peek at his grimoire. She had to admit that she was interested in its contents. The only other ones she had ever seen were those of her family members. Aseiohiamenti was on a completely different level from the struggling witches she was descended from and she was eager to learn what she could.
Noticing her interest, Aseiohiamenti sneered at her, "you think to steal knowledge from me, girl?"
Stepping back from his hostility, she withdrew her hand from the work bench with the ring cupped in her palm.
"Learning isn't stealing," she countered, defensively.
"It is if the teacher isn't willing," he snapped. "You're not worthy of my tutelage."
"There's no reason to be nasty about it," she snapped back, already tired of his attitude. "I am the one that found you and released you from the spell."
He snorted and turned back to his grimoire, angling his body to block her view of it, "just stay out of my way."
"Kind of hard to do with my hand glued to you."
"You could give me your ring."
And trust him not to leave her frozen for a couple thousand years? "Not on your life, buster."
As he went back to paging through the heavy tome, Violet dropped the ring she had stolen into her pocket. At least she now had a way to get up the cliff and escape this underground hell she had been trapped in for the last few days.
Finding what he was looking for, Aseiohiamenti gathered other items that he needed. A delicate piece of vellum the color of freshly churned butter, a dusty blue quill with a gold wire wrapped around its shaft, a vial of a fine powdered substance that looked suspiciously like dried blood, a slim gold chain intertwined with a long lock of golden hair, and heavy mortar carved from a solid slab of black-veined quartz. Seeing her curious look, the sorcerer snorted, but otherwise ignored her.
Frustrated, unable to watch him, but stuck at his side, Violet absently sorted through the magical items in front of her. Here was more magic than she had access to, and she had no way to identify what each piece did. She made a mental note to learn a spell for identifying magic items, if such a spell existed as soon as she got back to the surface world. Such a spell would come in handy in the future. Idly, she wondered if magic users here took on apprentices. Surely, they did. How else would new magic users learn their craft, she reasoned. Maybe Elminster could recommend someone willing to take her on as their apprentice?
Her hand paused in its sorting. Becoming someone's apprentice was a long-term commitment. Something she couldn't do if she planned to return home as soon as she found a way. She picked at the thought. What did she have to go home to? A lonely cabin in the middle of nowhere. No family. No friends. No job. She was willing to bet her disappearance hadn't even been noticed yet. It was as if she had never really existed there in the first place.
Since she had been in Faerun, she had made several friends. People that cared enough about her to go out of their way to help her. Even the grumpy Tamival. People here were accepting of magic users in a way that people of earth would never be. Setting aside the danger she had been in almost since she arrived, she had never felt more alive and vibrant in her life. The shear thrill of having magic at the tip of her fingers….
Her thoughts trailed off. That magic wasn't really hers, though. It was a gift from a powerful entity that had its own agenda. One that might not align with her sense of right and wrong. Then, there was this disconnect she felt with the goddess. Despite Ailluin's assurances, she couldn't be sure that distance wasn't caused by this new power she welded. Or this world. That thought alone kept her from discarding her plan to find a way to return to earth.
All the power in the world was not worth the loss of her goddess's favor.
Her attention returned to the here and now at a satisfied noise from Aseiohiamenti. As he stepped back to admire his work, Violet could see that the vellum was balanced across the top of the mortar and covered with a network of runes surrounding the earring pinned to the center of the sheet. Minute mounds of the dried substance formed the points of compass around the earring and runes. The chain lay to the side, ignored.
"What now?" she asked.
"That depends on you," the sorcerer replied, picking up the chain and drawing it through his fingers.
"What do you mean?"
"Even though it's been two thousand years, from my perspective, I just completed the spell imprisoning Sabah. I'm still spent. We need your magic to complete this spell."
"My magic," she squeaked in surprise, stepping as far away from his as she could with her hand on his shoulder. "No way. I don't even have complete control over it, yet."
He held up the chain, "that's what this is for. It will allow me to control your magic."
She held up her free hand with the glowing ring, "you forget that I have this."
He snickered, then patted her hand frozen to his shoulder, "that only works on evocations." He gestured widely, "like the one that holds us here. It's useless against other types of spells."
With a flick of his wrist, the chain wrapped around her wrist and pulled taunt.
"Èist tairneanach stuadhan!" she called out in a panicked voice.
Aseiohiamenti grinned when nothing happened. "Did you really think you could best me? I am the most powerful sorcerer on the continent. You are untrained and untried. Your patron must have a malicious streak to gift you with such power yet leave you ignorant."
Keeping a grip on the chain, he turned back to his handiwork, "now, let's put an end to this and return Neitia to its rightful place in this world."
As he began chanting the spell, the runes on the vellum started to glow with a dark light and the piles of powder spread out and flowed like liquid to join with the glowing ink. The chain around her wrist grew bitingly cold and Violet felt an uncomfortable tug at her core. It was like someone had a string tied around something near her heart and had pulled it taunt. Aseiohiamenti continued to chant, and the string pulled painfully hard, bringing tears to her eyes. If she hadn't been held in place by the force of the spell, she would have collapsed. Instead, she gripped the edge of the work bench with a white-knuckled hand.
The dark gem of the earring glowed with the same eerie light of the runes and the vellum began to smoke. Violet moaned helplessly as her magic was ripped from her and funneled into the spell, one of her fingernails splintering against the bench.
Across the room, a bright light flashed, momentarily blinding Violet. She thought she saw a figure inside before everything disappeared in the glare. Beside her, Aseiohiamenti faltered in his spell casting. A chime, clear and pure rang in her ears as the cold chain around her wrist disintegrated, freeing her and her magic from the sorcerer. She fell back, away from him and the work bench, her hand suddenly free from his shoulder, and tripped over a pile of books on the floor, landing in an undignified heap.
The light faded and died out, leaving only the soft glow from before. Her ragged breathing broke the absolute silence of the room around her. She lay still waiting on her vision to return.
A chirp and light weight on her chest startled her.
"Nori!" she hugged the fae close, ignoring the mrrow of protest. "I'm so glad you're back."
Releasing her nonplussed familiar, she clambered ungracefully to her feet. Looking around, she saw that Aseiohiamenti was frozen in mid-spell, his lips parted as he uttered the chant. On the work bench, the vellum had fallen off the mortar and no longer glowed or smoked.
Violet looked at Nori, "I don't suppose this was your doing?"
"Merrow?"
"Yeah, I didn't think so," she sighed.
Skirting around the still sorcerer, she grabbed the sapphire off the tabletop and the earring from the spell. Her hand hovered the pile of jewelry as she contemplated scooping up a handful, but she hesitated.
"There's no reason to be greedy."
Nori cocked her head and chirped questioningly at her.
"Do you think I should take them?"
Another chirp.
"Of course, you do," she sighed. "They're shiny."
Violet grabbed a handful and dropped them into her dress pocket along with the sapphire.
"Let's get out of here," she told Nori as she hurried towards the door.