The Master Inquisitor walked all the way around the slender, pale skinned female, who obligingly removed her hood to reveal her radiant red hair. The few tell tale grey streaks that poked out in the mane tried to indicate her true age, but the easy way in which she had slipped in the second story window of the Bone College made them seem out of place. When the mage- whose dark hair at the roots of his four mohawk spikes were more obvious when he stood near the natural redhead- had inspected her twice in both directions, he decided to stand just to her left side, nearly behind her. It was a small relief for the female, who wondered how he could possibly be comfortable appearing before her in nothing but burial bandages.
"This side, isn't it?" he asked distractedly, crossing his arms as though perturbed.
The woman bit her lips for a few moments, trying to think of a suitable question. "What are you looking for?" she asked at last, unable to think of any other option.
"Excellent- we've worn off on you," the Halfling replied. "Have your familiars found the female we sought?"
A shrug of her shoulders troubled her river of hair just slightly. "With what the operative described to me, the real question is if there was anything of the female to be found. But there's these- I know enough about them to realize that you ought to have them."
And with that, the woman reached into the satchel on her left side and produced two stones- one a smooth, white flecked obsidian oval and the other a sharp-faceted quartz with what seemed like a liquid blue core at its center.
"This is answer enough, yes, answer enough," the Master Inquisitor replied, extending his slender, burned and mottled hands for the woman. It seemed that just touching the stones excited him, as his dark eyes suddenly flashed with what that woman refused to allow herself to believe was sheer madness. "A thousand gold, as agreed. On the table to your right. No use to me. I can't eat it."
"We hadn't agreed upon a thousand gold," the woman warned quietly. "I'm not out to cheat you, Master Semnemac."
"Of course not, of course not," the Master Inquisitor replied, his eyes darting up and fixing upon the green beauties of the woman he was addressing. "No insult meant, no accusations. But there were two. I know. And your own time is valuable- you could have sent these with your familiars."
The female, not surprised that the male famous for sniffing out even the best kept secrets would have known about both her operatives, smirked her amusement. "Thought it would be best to come myself. When it comes to the College, I pride myself on my- customer service, as it were."
"Ah, yes," the Master Inquisitor smiled easily. "This is wise of you. We will get to the bottom of whatever questions arise in our minds."
"Of course," the woman replied. "Insatiable curiosity is a quality to be expected of everyone in this place."
"The answers discovered all have their price; the truest ones rest quietly in the bones, move with power in the flesh, and run deeply in the blood. May the Lord Torturer be pleased with the chorus of screams that herald your footsteps."
And the woman that most in the Bone College called only "the She" bowed with a quiet smile to the Master Inquisitor. There was a soft knock at the door, and the moment he turned his attentions from her presence, the She was gone- back out of the window, the way she'd come. By the time Lady Kaionne actually entered, the only thing that had changed about the Master Inquisitor's room at all was the fact that the rather large purse that had been sitting on his study desk was gone- replaced by a leather bound tome of some sort.
"Perhaps Alpha is hiding his coins in plates of acid, or is sleeping on the gold like a dragon- again?" she asked, stunned.
For a few moments, the Halfling stared at the Shifter furiously, as though he'd never seen her before. The Shifter, reminding herself not to be upset, reached out her right hand, palm up, so that he could see a deep scar that ran from her fourth finger to her wrist. At the sight of the scar, a quiet embarrassment came over the small-framed male.
"Kai-"
Kaionne lightly brushed her outstretched hand on Semnemac's chilly hands, and was surprised to sense the presence of magic strongly in whatever he held. "Peace, Alpha. We have recovered Ourselves. Now, your question."
"Is the She not gone as well?" Semnemac nearly whispered, still deeply troubled.
"Ah," Kaionne sighed. "All these years, and this one has yet to meet her- it almost seems that she is not real. Yet, she has done much for the Bone College. Has she brought Us Questioner Seyashen's girl?"
With a sheepish smile, Semnemac merely held out the quartz stone with the blue center. "Does this look female yet?"
"An answer, Alpha. It is good to see you return to transmutation." Kaionne passed Semnemac with a kiss on the cheek to get to the journal on the desk. She hardly had to flip through half of it before a confused look settled on her wolfish features. "These are your dreams they are writing."
"But they didn't find the Nameless," Semnemac insisted, sitting down on the floor to lay both stones in front of him. "They trapped another girl, instead." He held out his own right hand, palm scarred from the fourth finger to the wrist, and Kaionne placed the journal into it. After just a few moments of browsing, the Halfling began to nod. "Questioner Seyashen is thinking of checking on me- and take this dark stone to your study room for later use."
"I'll do so immediately," Kaionne replied as she took the obsidian stone. She easily and quickly moved past him and through the hanging curtain to the open hallway. The Master Inquisitor continued to read- at roughly four times the speed of most other literate creatures- until Seyashen cautiously tapped him on the shoulder.
"I'm here, Master Inquisitor. It's unlike you to let me sneak up on you."
The Halfling, who seemed unusually tired to his student, merely sighed in response. "Water and flame are necessary, but one orphaned by flood or wildfire will be angry when you tell him so. Here, read this- slowly, for comprehension, not completion."
Seyashen took the journal and found he had to read rather slowly indeed- most of it was written in a form of Elven with which he was mostly unfamiliar. What he could understand of the journal at first seemed to document Arlwynna- the rest days that she took to gather potion ingredients or to travel to Cormyr, her insistence upon sewing all her own garments, and her fondness for practicing not only ancestor worship, but divination rituals. Just one day after this realization, the Phoenix commandeered her shop and home under the guise of interested buyers. From that point forward, the journal turned into an experimentation log.
"I am working, Pharen- speak, if you have anything useful to say."
Seyashen looked up from the writing to find his mentor holding one hand to his brow as though he had a terrible headache. He began to move forward, but found the Grand Torturer's hand on his shoulder.
"How can you possibly get anything done through all that din?" Pharen replied just moments before the glimmer of his outline became visible for Seyashen. "The echoes of the souls you ripped from their bodies are- deafening."
Semnemac closed his eyes and waved over his shoulder as though he were batting the spirit's words away. "Their pleas are my psalms- the endless cacophonies, the soul tremors in the screams- helps me focus. Slip free to touch the beyond-ness of immortal truth. The pristine quality of it-" Picking up the quartz stone again, he ran his hands along the edges and bowed his head as though he would soon pray. "Eternal, perfect in its brutality. The material reality- that which appears real at first glance- so close to the ethereal and to the wild, fantastic imagination that they each carry within themselves each other's offspring like a depraved, inbred family- I can see the cracks, yes, the dawn- it's here. Right here. In the make of the thing, that's the answer- Questioner, you've finished with the log?"
Seyashen looked up with an embarrassed half smirk. "I'm- only about a third of the way through, Master Inquisitor. It seems like they were toying around with soul trapping because they realized that the girl talking to them was actually in the stone of Urmlaspyr. I hadn't thought of that- good realization on the part of this writer. Interesting that she seems in greater torment right at the end of her cycle- right when the body decides that it will not have a child... the dreams she charts- are all familiar-"
"You said you would bring back Arlwynna," Pharen crabbed. "I'll help you get to your girl once I have mine."
"Here she is, then," Semnemac shot back acridly, putting the quartz crystal down and gesturing to it. "If you can get her out of there, do it."
A few moments of bitter silence passed before Pharen finally whispered, "You know that I can't."
The Halfling nodded slowly, looking like a patient parent. Without another word, he turned back to the crystal stone, leaned forward to sniff it, then moved his right hand from left to right over it very slowly. Seyashen was dumbfounded to watch the stone slowly grow and change from a solid object into a female form. The edges became softer, the high polished surface melted into soft dark flesh, and by the time Semnamac reached the raven-haired woman's feet, she quickly sat up and opened radiant, yellow-green eyes.
"You- now what do you want!?" she cried immediately. "Wait- no. I'm sorry, I- where am I?"
"Tell her I'm here," Pharen demanded. "Tell her she must get away from this place- get a hold of that armorer and run as far from this gods-forsaken place-"
"Where have you been?" Semnemac smiled gently, laying his hands in his bandaged lap. "A question for a question, an answer for the same."
"And you've just given me- okay, I can do this, I think. I'm- a little woozy, but- I was in a palace made all of crystal, with a perfectly blue lake," Arlwynna replied. "I slept on a bed that looked like ice, and I bathed in the lake every day- and I could feel other spirits, doing the same. We couldn't talk to each other, we were too far away. But I- I don't know, I just knew they were in the same city, or something, somewhere."
"You're gracious- that's much more than just one answer," Semnemac admitted. "I owe you a few, and I pay my debts. This is the Bone College, the study hall of those who travel the unending path of Afflux. This male behind me, he is Questioner Seyashen, who your great grandfather approached so that we may bring you back from that palace- which is now a permanent part of you."
Arlwynna looked around herself, then struggled to get herself to her feet. Kaionne moved forward to support her right side while Semnemac simply allowed her to use his shoulders and arms for balance. "I had always wondered about this place- about you all, what you were like. Is it true that you torture people here- oh, that's a question."
"Wouldn't you expect questions here?" Semnemac volleyed. "They are our passion, our lifeblood. All the various forms and planes of existences are to be questioned, to be pulled apart, to be deeply studied. When torture is necessary to further understand that which is being researched, it is done, without remorse or moral equivocation. Not every answer can be discovered by being polite."
Arlwynna giggled for a few moments, and as she did, Kaionne moved back a half step to allow her to stand on her own. "Oh, I- ah. It felt as though I wouldn't be able to stay up, but- I suppose I can."
"Try walking- to Questioner Seyashen, over there," Kaionne suggested. "The female will go and get you food. You speak of sleeping and bathing, but not of eating."
Seyashen looked up from the journal to catch the pleasant eyes of the half Drow. Three baby steps were troublesome for her, and the Tiefling quickly moved forward to keep her on her feet when she began to totter. "That's good for being kept in a soul gem for weeks."
"You spoke to my ancestor, right?" Arlwynna laughed quietly and shook her head. "Oh- that means you're going to give me a question."
"No, only the Master Inquisitor does that," Seyashen smiled. "The title, after all. Pharen- your ancestor- is very concerned for your continuing to live here."
"Oh, I'm moving as soon as I can put more than three steps on the ground," Arlwynna said, her face immediately becoming grave. "The war between Sembia and practically everyone else around it isn't really over- that truce is just a glorified time out- and I'm sick of the way the guards can't seem to do their jobs. Where else could I get my shop broken into by a known gang in the light of day?"
"Emmech, for one," Seyashen replied. "But their war against Thay is beginning, not ending."
"How can anyone tell the difference between the ending of a war and the start of one?" Arlwynna sighed quietly. "Death is death, even when it consumes those who do not yet know its name."
Both Semnemac and Seyashen stared at Arlwynna with shocked eyes immediately, and when Kaionne stepped into the room with some warm oatmeal, she paused at the door, knowing that either something very wrong or unexpectedly right had happened.
"Say that again," the Master Inquisitor urged, crossing his arms over his chest. "Two mistakes may have produced the right answer to a question not asked."
"I- said- that death is death," Arlwynna repeated, concerned. "Even when it consumes those who don't yet know its name."
"Those are not your words," Semnemac replied simply. "You heard the Nameless."
"I'm not sure, but- okay, I know there was a girl- this sounds silly- but there was a girl in the palace whose voice I heard every night. She cried all the time, but I couldn't make out much that she said- she was too far away. I thought perhaps she'd lost her mother, and since she only cried at night, I told her stories. She seemed to like the one of my great grandmother the best, for some reason. She was executed, in her old age, along with two younger Shadar-Kai, when my mother was very young, and-"
"Gods, how I repent me," Pharen lamented. "Miye was a stubborn, prideful bitch of a woman that cawed my name like a damned raven. I never loved her. But she didn't deserve-"
"-she never forgot it. She touched her grandmother over the rail of the cart, when it went by, and her grandmother said-"
The Master Inquisitor closed his eyes and covered his face. "And she said, 'They cannot kill us.' The Humans made sure all of her children and grandchildren were right in front of the gallows, searched through the crowd specifically to find them and bring them."
"Oh, gods, don't," Pharen choked, the outline of his spirit fading slightly as he turned himself into a corner. "Don't."
"They flogged her, and she smiled. She laughed at them," Arlwynna continued, closing her own eyes to remember the tale as her mother told it. "She screamed at them, 'This is nothing!' At her age, she still remembered the tortures of Thultanthar."
"They stripped her naked and derided her, goading the crowd, who cried out that they wanted to see her magic. They wanted to see the power of the Shade mages displayed before them, like a sideshow at a circus," Semnemac continued, laying down on his side with his face still covered. Kaionne moved to his table, put the oatmeal down, and knelt down to put his head in her lap. "But she would not do it. She only said, 'Cursed be Shade, and cursed be its children, who share my blood, but not my heart.' They did not understand her, and they began to throw stones."
Pharen's image nearly disappeared into the corner, now pulsating with a radiant shock white. "There was barely enough of her left for them to hang, at the last. And they told me justice had been done. Somehow I knew even then that it had been the worst mistake of my life. Though she was descended from a Human, Corellon Larethian turned his face from me the moment I turned mine from her. And... I- bloody well deserved it."
"Then, do not turn your face again, Pharen," Seyashen encouraged quietly. "There is still a choice you can make- choose well."
"Is he here?" Arlwynna started, an energy jolting through her body at once. Seyashen let her go, knowing she would want to kneel, which she did instantaneously. "Oh, most honorable ancestor, I know it is you that has worked for my safety. I thank you for bringing me here. If you will it, I will live my life here, and enlighten myself and others through diligent study, as you had done in your early youth."
"Gods, she couldn't be more earnest- or more wrong," Pharen despaired. "Why should she pray to the male who sent the only mate he could claim to her death?"
"Speak, Nameless, with these borrowed words." Semnemac muttered, crossing his arms over his chest with his eyes still closed, "Plead for your lives, miserable mortals- the compass shattered, a crest aflame. Plague the child with boils- let them scream, I tell you!"
"Do what you must, Alpha," Kaionne soothed. "Old watchdog is here."
"Is he always like that?" Arlwynna asked quietly, turning her gaze to look upon the Shifter and the Halfling who was in a near-fetal position on her lap. "I'm sure there must be a way-"
Kaionne looked up with a warm smile. "Worry not. It is the spirits. Either they will spur an answer, or I will make sure he does not hurt you. The oatmeal may be cold by now, yes?"
"Oh- you're too kind, miss- um-" Arlwynna began as Seyashen helped her over to Semnemac's table.
"Lady Kaionne," the Tiefling supplied easily. "when she's not presiding over a vivisection."
Semnemac sat up and opened his eyes, but was immediately wrapped in the protective arms of the Shifter behind him. "The tongues of the whips, the blessed spikes that expose the bones- the charred bones, yes, unformed child of ash- speak! You will vomit until your gut bursts- and then I'll take specimens from the inner flesh."
"Gods, why does this building still stand?" Pharen asked disgustedly. "Is the town guard aware that he did things like that to living creatures?"
"You know, she only cried at night- maybe she had the dreams, and was afraid," Arlwynna suggested, forgetting the oatmeal. "I don't think I'll ever forget them. They were so vivid- especially the one with all that fire."
"Yes, that's the worst one," Seyashen admitted. "It was the first one I got- tore my nerves to shreds. I thought I was being burned at the stake."
"You were," Semnemac pronounced in a markedly lucid tone. "And I, and she, and every magic worker who touches their dreams or speaks with the spirits. This is the beacon, and the calling, and the end."
"Yes, those execution records," Pharen nodded, having turned around. "The Phoenix are led by Dresan Hawke, who I've discovered keeps all the old records in his own manse. But, there's a problem."
"The problem is that Dresan Hawke is a shark who pretends at being a jellyfish," Semnemac commented, suddenly reaching up to mercilessly yank on one of Kaionne's braids. Arlwynna fixed the pair with an utterly confused look, at which Kaionne simply shrugged.
"Well, it's clear that he's not going to let us just walk into the house and take them," Seyashen began. "Perhaps he can be persuaded to simply let us take copies for the Bone College. It may take a few months, but the scribes are careful, and-"
"No, no, no, boy, you don't understand," Pharen sighed with frustration. "There won't be any reasoning with a man who thinks that razing the entirety of Cormyr to the ground is a good way to solve customs charges and taxes on magical equipment. You'll have to acquire the records some other way- they're hidden in the manse, but I can at least tell you precisely what seals you want to look for."
"Good enough, Pharen, thank you," Seyashen nodded.
"Most blessed ancestor- you continue to shape the world with your guidance, besting death, as your mate said you would," Arlwynna smiled peacefully.
And Pharen's ghostly image, visibly struck by his descendant's words, moved forward and placed his hand over Seyashen's hand. With an understanding nod, Seyashen reached that hand forward and brushed Arlwynna's cheek.
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