Bahlzair got up to collect the reagents, and for all the bone-weariness he seemed to project, he moved about like a small child. With bottles and small dishes placed carefully on the floor, according to his own specifications, he began to grind roots, put blood in one vessel, and spit in another. Some dirt from the ground went into still another, and I found I could only watch him work. His movements were not unlike Silveredge's as she danced, and I begrudgingly recognized Bahlzair as an artist in his own right- a master, a genius at work, measuring, mixing, and checking for the exact reactions he wanted in each vessel.
For just a moment, I found myself worried about my stealth skills. Was I as good a rogue as Silveredge was a dancer, as Aleksei was a fighter, or as Bahlzair was an alchemist?
Hurried footfalls down the hall drew me to turn my head, and a frantic Ylyssa popped her head into Bahlzair's arch.
"Syjen wants you to go back to Uirrigan- I think he's going to try the domination spell again," she whispered. "Do you think he may have discovered-"
"Is it yet night?" I retorted, standing and crossing my arms. "We'll never get this done if you stand around being useless."
"You must come, or Syjen will become suspicious," Ylyssa frowned. "He wouldn't enter, but if he sends that wench in here, she will tell him everything she sees."
I turned without another word and began to follow, but Ylyssa looked around at the walls for a few moments. "Nothing," she sighed, her frown deepening. "Will you at least be done with this part soon?" She gave a frustrated grunt, and I assumed that Bahlzair had given himself some hours to complete his task.
"Well, what do you expect? I'm supposed to be here, not elsewhere, when this is drawn up. Whatever Syjen wants, we'll have to keep it quick, or all of this will have been for nothing."
And back down the halls we went, twisting and turning in the halls until I had to again turn sideways to get into Uirrigan's sizable work space. Aleksei was pleasantly snoring on one side of the entrance, completely reeking like a brewery. I stopped to poke at him, and he shifted, muttering something in a language I knew wasn't Common.
"Oh, he'll be like that for a while," came a familiar voice. Uirrigan suddenly appeared some five feet away from me, looking down at the peacefully useless Dragonborn. "With all the thick and bitter porters, stouts, or Dwarven 'ales' he throws down, sweet drinks like Dragon's breath do nothing but confuse him- until he's out cold."
"What did you find in my blood? A special magical property? Something you can use?" I asked simply, crossing my arms. "Some blithering idiot turned my weapons to stone, so I can't give you any more to work with than I have."
"Ah, yes, the stone weapons," Uirrigan smirked. "I did hear about that. I'm afraid I can't give your weapons back. But they'll return to your hands soon. Right now-"
"Right now, Uirrigaen and Ylyssane are going to do me a favor," Syjen rumbled from the back of the room. "They're going to help me convince you that Jyklihaimra belongs to me, just as you will belong to someone else very soon." Syjen strode to the center of the room with a sick smile. "Jyklihaimra, come."
And Silveredge followed him to the center of the room, eyes perfectly focused on the ground. Her bodice had entirely disappeared somewhere, leaving her with her loose and battered blouse and her skirt. Her hair fell around her shoulders like a solid sheet of ice. I began to feel my cheeks flush with frustration and insult. Hadn't I just promised that she wouldn't have to go through things like this?
Syjen walked all the way around Silveredge, cutting pieces of her blouse and skirt off until they finally fell off her and to the floor. She stood, stark still and gloriously bare, trembling slightly because of the cold.
"I bet you want to cover her," Syjen smiled. "Want to protect her, to take her into your arms and shield her?" He ran the bone knife that had just done so much damage to what was left of her clothing down her shoulder, and a thin cobalt shimmer appeared. If it were painful, not even her mother would have been able to tell, from the blank look on her face. "Come on, move. Make a move to protect her, witch."
The sensation of being cloaked enveloped me, and finally, a realization clicked into place.
I closed my eyes.
"Go challenge Bahlzair again, see if he does anything else but ignore you when you dare him. The day he takes up arms against you, so will I."
Behind me, Aleksei sat up and muttered something in his own language. Ylyssa turned around to shush him, but he simply said it again more loudly- I couldn't tell what it was, but I could tell that he wasn't pleased.
"Silence that lizard," Syjen demanded.
"Why don't you?" I retorted. "You- great master, untouchable lord- if you want Aleksei quiet, you quiet him, then! Or is that the slice of power you promised her? That she would get to feel like you do, every now and then? Get to be in command once or twice?"
Syjen was absolutely frozen for a few seconds, and I decided to push my luck a little farther.
"Simple, greedy, artless bastard- you don't even want Jyklihaimra. You'd kill her, if you had any hope at all that I wouldn't be as furious as Bahlzair is when you did. Because it's not her you want. It's me. You want to somehow convince me to desire you; want to compel me to crave your 'power' for myself- like you clearly, at some point, did to your oh-so-loving wife. Now, if you want to prove me wrong, then by all means, consummate the union between yourself and Jyklihaimra. Right here, right now. Where we can all see how much you truly desire her."
20 September 2011
07 September 2011
1:21 The new mistress.
The halls were no less stone, and Ylyssa's flame cantrip was no less annoying than it had been when I'd first been marched down the winding pathways. The sudden lights seared my eyes as though each magical torch were a spear lit aflame.
Bahlzair's oven was hotter than last I remembered it, and an extremely high pitched tapping made Ylyssa's nose crinkle even before we got within twenty feet of the place.
"He must be repairing Syjen's weapons again. He can do all but enchant them," she groaned. "And he can do nothing without making the most horrible noise- it rings through all the hallways."
And just as she said so, the noise stopped. When I peeked into the room, Bahlzair was sitting immediately next to the fire with an orangy-red blade in his hand.
It was one of Silveredge's katars. The strangely beautiful weapon did not escape Ylyssa's notice. She leaned on the side of the arch and crossed her arms.
"A lovely piece, Drow. You were hiding it all this while?"
And some scribble showed up on the wall just to Ylyssa's right, a few inches away from her shoulder. She turned and looked at it.
"And you say he does not write or read?" I asked tentatively. "What is this, then, that words simply appear on whatever surface he chooses?"
"That's no doing of his," Ylyssa laughed. "It's the will of the Drow women who once had their feet on his head. He does not speak, but whatsoever he thinks appears in the written language of the lookers on. Apparently someone was quite the story teller, when once he had a tongue."
"But can't he read what thoughts have displayed themselves upon the stone?" I asked, now stepping inside the arch.
"No, not a chance. I've not met a single male Drow who could read or write, and this is no exception. In fact, aside from cooking, some meager armory, and truly interesting alchemy work, the poor thing's quite dim indeed. I imagine that's why the women in his party were comfortable with leaving him behind." She straightened up and fixed me with a stare that I was sure was supposed to frighten me. "Can the spell be worked soon? In an hour?"
"It must be night," I said firmly. "Someone must go to the surface and ensure that it is night. I cannot tell from here, but demons would know day from night anywhere, and will hold me accountable if I perform an evening ritual in the day."
"I'll put Aleksei in shackles and send him," Ylyssa nodded. "The kobolds will not think anything is amiss to see him wandering around, and if he tries to escape, I'll know it. Please hurry." Before I could even get anything out of my mouth, she'd turned down the hallway and put some distance between herself and I. When I was sure she was out of earshot, I raised a careful eyebrow at Bahlzair.
"Where did you learn Gutteral?" I asked, sitting at his feet.
He held the deep red katar immediately above my head, and I could smell the heat of it. Then, he used the katar to point over my left shoulder, and I looked at the side of the oven that was pretending to be a forge. A moving picture in which Silveredge was painting a scroll emerged.
"And do you have a tongue?"
The edge of the thin, ashen grey lips pulled and stretched until Bahlzair was smirking. He opened his mouth, and I bit my lips, thinking that I'd be greeted with some horrible stump that would wiggle in his mouth like a dying fish. Instead, there was a perfectly normal, if a bit long, tongue. It did not move at all, but there were wicked stitches on either side of it- down the length, and in unexplained circles near the root of it. I nodded, understanding, and in that moment wondered how he'd managed to keep all his teeth. He put down the katar he'd been holding and took all the scrolls from me, tossing them into the flames. When I gave him the vial, he gave a slight snort and tossed that in as well. The fire raged a hideous smelling green for a few seconds, then died down to its own normal orangy-red hue.
"I've decided on Syjen," I managed. "Although I think you should make a conscious choice whether to bump off Ylyssa or not. She talks of you as somebody would talk of a dirty pet. Noble, vaguely interesting, but only worth two copper, since it's rabid."
Bahlzair lifted his head for a few moments, his eyes turning away from me as though he were remembering something far away. Then he briefly gestured to the far wall where he had not long ago illustrated many a grand story for me. I turned my attentions to it, and he started with an empty field. A heavily-clad Drow woman strode into the field, attended upon by four male Drow. It seemed as though she were weakened or wounded in some way- I couldn't tell how. A fifth Drow was on a chain that was connected to her hips. That one had a book in his hands, and, via some spell that caused the book itself to speak, was reading. Every now and again, the woman would turn and smack the Drow at her hips with what looked like a thorny riding crop. It took a few moments for me to realized that Bahlzair was actually showing me his mistress, the rest of her entourage, and himself. At that moment, it didn't seem at all like the surface raid that Aleksei had described.
I crossed my arms over my chest and looked at the dark Elf. His eyes were closed, and a calm, meditative look had smoothed over the sharp lines in his face. I wondered what the history between himself and his mistress had been before, and why they had miraculously decided to walk the surface at all.
Before long, Syjen stopped the travelling Drow woman as though he had been a highwayman, or some sort of petty official, while Ylyssa hung back, waiting. Syjen carefully considered Bahlzair, and offered money to buy him. The Drow woman refused. Syjen then seemed to offer jewelry, a few kobolds, and Eladrin magic knowledge. Again the woman refused. Knowing no shame, Syjen offered Ylyssa herself. The Drow woman laughed at him, which was apparently the worst possible thing she could have done. Syjen attempted to attack, but the Drow woman defended herself expertly. Ylyssa stepped in to support him, calling forth the kobolds to help. In response, the male Drow drew weapons and began to attack. Even with Ylyssa's ability, Syjen only very narrowly bested the Drow woman. I had little doubt, as I watched Bahlzair's moving images, that the only reason the prancing Elves could have defeated their dark counterpart at all was the fact that the Drow woman was already hurt. Even after her death, the other male Drow fought bravely, but were still eventually overcome by the kobolds. Bahlzair was the last Drow standing, and instead of allowing him to be killed, Syjen grabbed up his chain and yanked it back savagely. Bahlzair finished the killing at hand and turned to see Ylyssa, using magic to literally halve his former mistress so that she could fit the chain to her own hips.
"You miss that crop, I bet."
The images faded from the wall, and when Bahlzair opened his eyes again, they looked more than weary. There was some faded, distant longing in them, some untouchable tender quality that quite nearly terrified me. But then I considered my brother, pulling no punches, tearing around the city, through the shadows, behind buildings and in alleys, chasing me with his throwing knives and his poisoned spikes. Every feint he tried on a Dragonborn scout, he'd already tried on me. If any minor foot soldier fell at his hand, it was because they weren't as quick or as smart as I had been trying to get away. Somebody somewhere would recoil at a brother using his sister for genuine war games. But had anyone stopped me in the streets to ask me, I would have told them I loved him.
"We'll kill them both. I'll take care of Syjen, but do whatever you want to Ylyssa."
And a brief image of Silveredge feeding me appeared.
"Did she tell-"
Bahlzair held up a single, slender finger to quiet me first, then used it to point back up to the image. In the background of the image of Silveredge and I, stretching like a warped shadow, was an image of him kneeling to offer his mistress food. She, in her throne, kicked the food to the ground, and watched with a strangely contented smile as he sat and ate it himself. Any man who attempted to clean up the mess was driven back with magic missiles or shards of frost.
"But I would never do that- I'm not her mistress," I objected, looking up at Bahlzair. An odd smile had pulled its way across his face, but the wonders would not cease there.
With a low, throaty, derisive tone, the male Drow laughed.
Bahlzair's oven was hotter than last I remembered it, and an extremely high pitched tapping made Ylyssa's nose crinkle even before we got within twenty feet of the place.
"He must be repairing Syjen's weapons again. He can do all but enchant them," she groaned. "And he can do nothing without making the most horrible noise- it rings through all the hallways."
And just as she said so, the noise stopped. When I peeked into the room, Bahlzair was sitting immediately next to the fire with an orangy-red blade in his hand.
It was one of Silveredge's katars. The strangely beautiful weapon did not escape Ylyssa's notice. She leaned on the side of the arch and crossed her arms.
"A lovely piece, Drow. You were hiding it all this while?"
And some scribble showed up on the wall just to Ylyssa's right, a few inches away from her shoulder. She turned and looked at it.
"And you say he does not write or read?" I asked tentatively. "What is this, then, that words simply appear on whatever surface he chooses?"
"That's no doing of his," Ylyssa laughed. "It's the will of the Drow women who once had their feet on his head. He does not speak, but whatsoever he thinks appears in the written language of the lookers on. Apparently someone was quite the story teller, when once he had a tongue."
"But can't he read what thoughts have displayed themselves upon the stone?" I asked, now stepping inside the arch.
"No, not a chance. I've not met a single male Drow who could read or write, and this is no exception. In fact, aside from cooking, some meager armory, and truly interesting alchemy work, the poor thing's quite dim indeed. I imagine that's why the women in his party were comfortable with leaving him behind." She straightened up and fixed me with a stare that I was sure was supposed to frighten me. "Can the spell be worked soon? In an hour?"
"It must be night," I said firmly. "Someone must go to the surface and ensure that it is night. I cannot tell from here, but demons would know day from night anywhere, and will hold me accountable if I perform an evening ritual in the day."
"I'll put Aleksei in shackles and send him," Ylyssa nodded. "The kobolds will not think anything is amiss to see him wandering around, and if he tries to escape, I'll know it. Please hurry." Before I could even get anything out of my mouth, she'd turned down the hallway and put some distance between herself and I. When I was sure she was out of earshot, I raised a careful eyebrow at Bahlzair.
"Where did you learn Gutteral?" I asked, sitting at his feet.
He held the deep red katar immediately above my head, and I could smell the heat of it. Then, he used the katar to point over my left shoulder, and I looked at the side of the oven that was pretending to be a forge. A moving picture in which Silveredge was painting a scroll emerged.
"And do you have a tongue?"
The edge of the thin, ashen grey lips pulled and stretched until Bahlzair was smirking. He opened his mouth, and I bit my lips, thinking that I'd be greeted with some horrible stump that would wiggle in his mouth like a dying fish. Instead, there was a perfectly normal, if a bit long, tongue. It did not move at all, but there were wicked stitches on either side of it- down the length, and in unexplained circles near the root of it. I nodded, understanding, and in that moment wondered how he'd managed to keep all his teeth. He put down the katar he'd been holding and took all the scrolls from me, tossing them into the flames. When I gave him the vial, he gave a slight snort and tossed that in as well. The fire raged a hideous smelling green for a few seconds, then died down to its own normal orangy-red hue.
"I've decided on Syjen," I managed. "Although I think you should make a conscious choice whether to bump off Ylyssa or not. She talks of you as somebody would talk of a dirty pet. Noble, vaguely interesting, but only worth two copper, since it's rabid."
Bahlzair lifted his head for a few moments, his eyes turning away from me as though he were remembering something far away. Then he briefly gestured to the far wall where he had not long ago illustrated many a grand story for me. I turned my attentions to it, and he started with an empty field. A heavily-clad Drow woman strode into the field, attended upon by four male Drow. It seemed as though she were weakened or wounded in some way- I couldn't tell how. A fifth Drow was on a chain that was connected to her hips. That one had a book in his hands, and, via some spell that caused the book itself to speak, was reading. Every now and again, the woman would turn and smack the Drow at her hips with what looked like a thorny riding crop. It took a few moments for me to realized that Bahlzair was actually showing me his mistress, the rest of her entourage, and himself. At that moment, it didn't seem at all like the surface raid that Aleksei had described.
I crossed my arms over my chest and looked at the dark Elf. His eyes were closed, and a calm, meditative look had smoothed over the sharp lines in his face. I wondered what the history between himself and his mistress had been before, and why they had miraculously decided to walk the surface at all.
Before long, Syjen stopped the travelling Drow woman as though he had been a highwayman, or some sort of petty official, while Ylyssa hung back, waiting. Syjen carefully considered Bahlzair, and offered money to buy him. The Drow woman refused. Syjen then seemed to offer jewelry, a few kobolds, and Eladrin magic knowledge. Again the woman refused. Knowing no shame, Syjen offered Ylyssa herself. The Drow woman laughed at him, which was apparently the worst possible thing she could have done. Syjen attempted to attack, but the Drow woman defended herself expertly. Ylyssa stepped in to support him, calling forth the kobolds to help. In response, the male Drow drew weapons and began to attack. Even with Ylyssa's ability, Syjen only very narrowly bested the Drow woman. I had little doubt, as I watched Bahlzair's moving images, that the only reason the prancing Elves could have defeated their dark counterpart at all was the fact that the Drow woman was already hurt. Even after her death, the other male Drow fought bravely, but were still eventually overcome by the kobolds. Bahlzair was the last Drow standing, and instead of allowing him to be killed, Syjen grabbed up his chain and yanked it back savagely. Bahlzair finished the killing at hand and turned to see Ylyssa, using magic to literally halve his former mistress so that she could fit the chain to her own hips.
"You miss that crop, I bet."
The images faded from the wall, and when Bahlzair opened his eyes again, they looked more than weary. There was some faded, distant longing in them, some untouchable tender quality that quite nearly terrified me. But then I considered my brother, pulling no punches, tearing around the city, through the shadows, behind buildings and in alleys, chasing me with his throwing knives and his poisoned spikes. Every feint he tried on a Dragonborn scout, he'd already tried on me. If any minor foot soldier fell at his hand, it was because they weren't as quick or as smart as I had been trying to get away. Somebody somewhere would recoil at a brother using his sister for genuine war games. But had anyone stopped me in the streets to ask me, I would have told them I loved him.
"We'll kill them both. I'll take care of Syjen, but do whatever you want to Ylyssa."
And a brief image of Silveredge feeding me appeared.
"Did she tell-"
Bahlzair held up a single, slender finger to quiet me first, then used it to point back up to the image. In the background of the image of Silveredge and I, stretching like a warped shadow, was an image of him kneeling to offer his mistress food. She, in her throne, kicked the food to the ground, and watched with a strangely contented smile as he sat and ate it himself. Any man who attempted to clean up the mess was driven back with magic missiles or shards of frost.
"But I would never do that- I'm not her mistress," I objected, looking up at Bahlzair. An odd smile had pulled its way across his face, but the wonders would not cease there.
With a low, throaty, derisive tone, the male Drow laughed.
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