Magister Ivonne Der Lang, her whispered steps barely audible on the stone floor of the hallway toward Kronmyr's office, came upon the Shadar-kai woman she had begun to think of as Mordren's pet project, accompanied by the dog who was called Hammer and Niku interchangeably. Silveredge, whose other name no one but Kronmyr would even try to pronounce, had traded her normal peasant shirt and training pants for a long, worn white dress that looked as though it had come from either a prison or a convent. The simple dress was rolled up to her light blue knees, which were, at the moment, pressed to the floor. Just to the Shadar-kai's right, almost under her gal-ralan bedecked forearm, lumbered the toffee colored fighting dog. He sniffed at the floor just in front of the woman, and only when Ivonne had nearly stepped through the stone archway she realize that Silveredge had five pages spread in a semi-circle in front of her.
Apparently, the dog was most interested in the paper that was closest to him, and nosed at it, leaving wet spots on it in the process.
Silveredge sighed, scratching the dog at the nape of his neck and between his ears. "So, not that one, eh, little brother? Well, I didn't like it either. Too pretty for a fighter, isn't it? You know best."
And the dog picked up his head and butted Silveredge's side, just hard enough to challenge her ability to remain centered on her knees. The Shadar-Kai smiled at him in response.
"Truth that you don't like is still truth."
With that, Silveredge smartly took up the semicircle's fifth paper and began tearing it to bits.
Ivonne was startled at the utter destruction of something that must have taken time to create- while she wasn't familiar with the mechanics of forgery, she knew it wasn't an easy pass time. She stepped into all the way into Kronmyr's office, uncertain about whether or not her eavesdropping had been noticed.
"The handmaiden welcomes her lady into her company," Silveredge said immediately without lifting her eyes, dispelling all Ivonne's misgivings.
In place of the unsure sensation, however, an unease that arose at being detected without having a chance to announce herself sprung up in Ivonne's being. "Mordren sent me to tell you that it's quite late, Silveredge," she began in a warm, sisterly tone. "I don't believe Kronmyr intends to work with you tonight."
Silveredge looked up and sat back from her work as quickly and smoothly as if the movement were part of some choreographed floor show. The dog, not as convinced that the interloper was deserving of admiration, or even undivided attention, laid down and put his head on his paws as though he were bored.
"The handmaiden is sorry to cause you to search for her," Silveredge began. "She thought that it would be unwise to leave this project until tomorrow."
Ivonne fought a valiant battle against the urge to frown, since even Silveredge's natural circumlocution was insufficient to hide the fact that she was telling her that she shouldn't have wasted her time coming all the way into the Sunfire Mercenaries' basement to put a stop to her work. "Perhaps you might rather take some tea, then," Ivonne finally managed, a tight-jawed attempt at compromise.
"The handmaiden humbly thanks her mistress, and hopes you will not trouble yourself," Silveredge replied, lowering her eyes with perfect meekness. Ivonne naturally lifted her head, again annoyed at the very polite dismissal, and the dog snorted as though disgusted.
"I wonder at Howler's permissive nature lately," Ivonne smiled, forcing herself to continue being just as polite as the Shadar-kai before her, "Not to mention Mordren's. I don't believe any other mages here are permitted to train or keep familiars."
"My lady is gracious, and honors Niku more than is deserved," Silveredge answered, her tone light and innocent. "He has never been trained as a familiar. We work together when it is Niku's will to be together, and part when it is his pleasure to depart. My lord Howler has far more say in his movements than the handmaiden can claim."
"How... humane of you to allow a half-trained fighting dog to come and go at his, or Howler's, leisure," Ivonne commented, folding her hands in front of her like a schoolmaster might. "Is it that every male and masculine thing is your lord, even mere animals?"
Silveredge took the briefest of pauses to recognize that Ivonne had not bothered to distinguish which being she considered a "thing" or "animal"- Niku, or Howler. "The handmaiden humbly serves her masters, be they male, female, or anything else," she finally said calmly, her eyes never moving from their gaze at the floor. "Of course my lady may command me to do as she pleases with Niku."
Frustration finally undid Ivonne's caring tone and manners. "While it is nice to know that I may inflict you on whomever I wish, that was not my point," she crabbed, moving purposefully to the wall on Silveredge's left. Once there, she lifted her right hand and began using prestidigitation to write out a spell and factor the potential magic energy necessary to power it.
Silveredge waited in silence, without moving, for about a minute. When Niku whined- a quiet, whistling sound that could be confused with the beginning of a request for food or a treat- the Shadar-kai lifted her gaze from the floor to him with an easy smirk.
Patience, little brother.
With that bolstering thought, Silveredge flicked her eyes up to glimpse the spellwork being done on the wall.
Oh, evocation. Poorly written, though. I wonder how she intends to avoid the scar ceiling, with a targeted spell intended to do that much damage. Well, no accounting for wisdom in magisters who want to be strikers. One would think they would simply train to be a spellsword and be done with it.
The silence Silveredge's pause for thought left behind was deafening- and concerning. Ivonne peered over her shoulder just in time to watch the Shadar-kai first will a bright orb of light into being without saying or moving anything, then reach over and scrub at the dog's head.
"Agus ann an solas na grèine, ciamar a tha e a 'coimhead?"
Niku issued a short, sharp puff of breath, then got up to sniff at the four pages that were left untouched. He took longer to issue his judgment than he had before, and at last mounted Silveredge's lap with his forepaws so that he could nose at the second page without disturbing the others.
How did such a big puppy learn so much? Ivonne wondered. Without a moment's worth of training? Howler certainly didn't teach that mongrel to pick up papers in his teeth or judge the quality of forgeries, and what is this language she's speaking to him, as though he understood? Idiot creatures can't read or learn languages- she wants a falcon, or a cat, or anything that can actually retain what she's saying to it. Howler has never bred one familiar in his life.
"That one? But I did this one in the near blackness of this place!" Silveredge laughed freely, as though she had forgotten Ivonne was there. "Chan eil thu a 'ciallachadh sin."
Niku flopped all his weight back on Silveredge's chest, sending her to the floor so suddenly that Ivonne turned all the way around in genuine concern. But there was no cry of pain or words of rebuke- Silveredge simply rolled onto her side, kicking her legs out as she did, and began scratching the dog's side and belly.
Ivonne blinked stupidly at the two of them, then whipped herself back around, her full, ivory cheeks burning with embarrassment.
Why is she beautiful? Just effortlessly... beautiful... like she was at the tavern, when she read the note. Mordren should have come to do this himself.
As could be expected, the four remaining letters suffered some shifting- some due to the movement of nearby air, some due to accidental pushing by a leg or a paw. Yet, after about a minute of play, Silveredge sat back up and began dusting her thin dress off. Niku, still excited but somehow careful of Silveredge's work, rolled up onto all four paws and took one bound away from her to spend the rest of his pent up energy by chasing his nub of a tail. He panted heavily, offering half-growls and sharp, high yips from time to time.
"Please don't use your voice, little brother," Silveredge urged, tapping the floor to get the dog's attention. Niku bent the front half of his body close to the ground, leaving his bobbed tail high in the air. The force of his heavy breathing rocked his entire body, but he otherwise held still, miraculously enough. "Our lady has reminded us that it is very late; we must be careful, because our friends are all sleeping."
Niku dropped his entire body to the floor and rolled around, excited but quiet, and hopped back up to chase his tail some more- this time, without any other noise.
Silveredge gathered the pages back to herself, tore up the page that Niku had indicated before the desire to play had struck him, and somehow dismissed the light, leaving the room much darker. Ivonne looked over her shoulder and noted that the only mundane source of light was a two headed candle sconce mounted on the back wall at the far right side of the room.
Well, Myr is Drow, after all, Ivonne sighed to herself.
"I wonder if it would disturb your work if I cast an actual light orb?" the Human mage asked innocently. "That what you had was so helpful- I didn't realize you weren't going to leave it going."
"Of course my lady may cast whatever spell she wishes," Silveredge answered, again stopping her work and bowing her head at once.
"You don't have to- well, perhaps I'd better ask your lord?" Ivonne said with a note of exasperation.
As though he'd already understood the insult, Niku stopped his tail-chasing tantrum, focused on Ivonne, and growled. Ivonne prepared to comment on it, but just before she could open her mouth, Niku abruptly stopped growling and sat down as though someone had commanded him to do so.
Again, Ivonne turned away from Silveredge, wrapping her arms around herself and biting the insides of her cheeks.
If he were here, he'd cast a detection spell at once, she chided herself. There's no explanation for that, but that some charm spell is in play. But she's casting whatever-it-is without a word, or even a twitch- like watching a show at a faire, but the puppet is real.
And again, behind her, she could hear the Shadar-kai rustling the three remaining papers.
"Feumaidh sinn obrachadh gu luath, no chan eil sinn a 'crìochnachadh a' phròiseict. A-nis, dè an ìre as fheàrr de na trì?"
Ivonne could hear the dog's paws make soft slapping sounds on the stone as he padded over to sniff at the three sheets of paper yet again. She counted to thirty in her mind before she heard the scrape of paper on stone that meant that Niku had cast his judgment.
"Uill, eadhon ged nach toil leam e, is e an fhìrinn a th 'ann. Tha sin fìor."
With that pronouncement, one of the three remaining papers was torn to bits, just as the other rejects had been. Ivonne cast a glance over her shoulder and saw a pile of ripped paper just under Kronmyr's narrow wooden desk that she hadn't noticed before. It was much larger than just four or five pages would have produced, and she realized why Mordren had complained to her that a single forgery, although fabulously well-done, seemed to always take Silveredge an entire day to produce. Yet, despite Bann's desire to continue monitoring Coalwater's contracts, and Kronmyr's desire to continue using her as a spiked chain fighter, since those were so rare as to be guaranteed to catch almost every adversary off guard, Mordren had retained Silveredge for personal training and the handling of every single forgery that any Sunfire merc, despite rank, needed. His jealous guarding of her, rapidly becoming something of a joke between Bann, Kronmyr, and Howler, was more of an irritation to Ivonne than an object of laughter.
"Do you have time to look this spell over for me?" she interjected before Silveredge could do whatever she was going to do with the two remaining pages. "I can see you're... ehm... both trying to concentrate, but I hesitate to go all the way back upstairs and fetch Mordren for a spell check."
Without a delay, a word of protest, or even a sigh, Silveredge put down the bits of paper she was holding and shifted herself on her knees so that she could look at the factoring that had been neatly written, via bright red illusory script, on the wall. Niku put his butt on the floor with his chest forward and his head held high, as though he were preparing to be shown to a prospective breeder. Ivonne stepped back and thought of casting a light orb, but then remembered that not only did her spell glow, Kronmyr and Silveredge shared the ability to see in low light.
Yet Shadar-kai are classified as descended from Humans, she complained in her mind. Make the most beautiful candles, produce the some of the most interesting forms of mageflame, but don't need either- I say Elven blood runs in those veins.
"What does my lady wish the handmaiden to comment upon?" Silveredge asked after a few moments of silent contemplation.
Ivonne blinked and looked over her shoulder at the writing. "Let's say the practitioner who will be casting this evocation spell is capable of powering it as a druid as well as a wizard. What would serve it better- naturalist transcription and factoring, or arcanist?"
Silveredge bit her lower lip- an uncharacteristically open display of some kind of emotion. Ivonne found that she couldn't tell whether the Shadar-Kai was simply thinking, or was dismayed, confused, or embarrassed in some way.
"Or pact," Ivonne added, as the strangely charged moment dragged on. "It wasn't originally written with a warlock in mind, but... if I add soul characters to the root formula..."
"My lady knows more intimately the importance of the precise factoring of this spell than the handmaiden could," Silveredge answered when Ivonne trailed off in thought. "The handmaiden must admit that the spell, as written, is not given to widespread practical usage."
"It- I mean- that's the point of the- !" Ivonne sputtered, immediately furious. "Look, leaving how I should factor and power it aside, how would you factor and power it? Against any target; think of whatever modifiers you want, if you have to actually finish the thing to answer the question."
Niku snorted his own annoyance, but remained perfectly still. Ivonne bit the insides of her lips and pushed the flesh of them between her teeth slowly, causing their natural pink to almost glow with fresh blood.
It is insanity to wonder whether he is feeling his own feelings or reflecting hers. Insanity. I refuse to be insane with the likes of Howler and Kronmyr. Clearly she herself must be annoyed. Clearly. I've annoyed her. I've annoyed her, and she is somehow forcing her... familiar... to express feelings that she will not allow herself. That's how she's doing it.
Silveredge quietly squared herself with the archway in front of her, stood up, stepped forward over the two remaining pages, then turned on her heel and walked past Ivonne to look more closely at the spell. She put the index finger of her right hand over her mouth, backed up, and looked at it again for what seemed like an eternity. At last, she looked over her shoulder and fixed Ivonne with an unwavering platinum gaze that unsettled the young-faced Human mage.
"This spell, as written, must be factored out to a potential energy point that falls between the target's efficacy threshold and the caster's scar ceiling. It demands intimate knowledge of those two points, and precision to balance potential power between them- it is the handmaiden's belief that only a wizard who has specialized in the school of evocation is capable of making this spell functional outside of a practice hall. Other evocation casters, more accustomed to broader and simpler calculations, will fail far more often than they succeed. Earth and air weavers, such as warlocks or templars, may even hurt themselves and their companions in the effort."
"That... it's not called a 'scar ceiling,' it's called the 'burn threshold," Ivonne managed through a tight throat, feeling as though she were defending herself instead of the name of the concept. "And what do you mean, 'earth weaver'? 'Air weaver'? What kind of talk is that?"
"In Enmech, where the handmaiden once traveled with her master, a spell scar pilgrim overpowered an evocation spell too close to a patch of plagueland that was unknown to himself and his companions," Silveredge admitted. "The sickness ate into the pilgrim's being the moment the last word of the incantation left his mouth, and they were an hour's walk from the city. His sojourners sent word ahead of themselves, cast protection wards as soon as it was safe to do any magic at all, covered their companion thoroughly to prevent contagion, and met a healer outside the city, but all was too late. The pilgrim died screaming, as though he were burning at the stake. Perhaps some Cormyrean mage discovered the error by less mortal means, and named it accordingly, but that man's death song echoed, through the tale of the descendants of those scar pilgrims, for many years, and across almost all of Mulhorand."
Ivonne looked at Silveredge, and Silveredge looked straight back at her. There was no wavering, no fondness, no sense of gentility or pity anywhere in the Shadar-kai's tone or posture. This was not a story meant to soften the Human mage's heart, Ivonne realized. It was simply a retelling of why she absolutely not recant the terminology she'd used. The subtext was, clearly put, "my words are as good as yours."
"So, some mage in Enmech taught you?" Ivonne asked quietly, a new respect for the woman before her budding in her spirit.
"The handmaiden was not permitted to attend classes or services of any kind, on pain of breaking and retraining," Silveredge answered. "She would be compelled to bake and soak the straps, and prepare the salt bed, with her own hands."
Ivonne turned around so that she faced the spell work on the wall, the breath in her mouth sour with the threat of vomit. "Fix it. Rewrite it so that it doesn't have a... so that common casters can make it work."
From the corner of her eye, Ivonne could see that Silveredge stood quietly contemplating her. Finding that the study of the Shadar-kai bothered her, she closed her eyes.
Silveredge, for her part, looked back at the factoring on the wall. For a few moments, there was silence.
"The handmaiden has done as you have asked, my lady," came the solemn pronouncement, about a minute later.
Ivonne opened her eyes, and bit the insides of her lips at once. "Who taught you to write like this?" she asked when she could speak at all.
"The handmaiden was not permitted-"
" '-to attend classes of any kind,' you're right," the Human mage sighed. "It's just- it's just that I- I can't- I remember seeing this sort of writing in Historic Magical Practices class. It's... Silveredge, this form of transcription is ancient. No one has written like this in- gods, in- I don't even remember the- look, can you- can you factor out the pure arcane bolt spell this way? With this form of writing?"
"If the handmaiden were to factor any spell, she would do it this way, unless clearly instructed otherwise," Silveredge admitted. "This is the transcription most familiar to her, as she learned it first."
"So, this is why- the terminology, the methodologies, and forms of notation- all of this is defunct. You have somehow taught yourself to practice modern day spells with... with... with a way of understanding the very fundamentals of magic that predates the rules and classifications taught by the brightest minds in spellcraft for centuries. And you cast spells with it- cast all your spells with it, don't you?"
Ivonne turned so that she faced Silveredge, who was still looking at the wall, and the silver prestidigitated characters that undulated from time to time, as though they were breathing. It seemed for a moment, especially since it was not her practice to leave even the most obvious hypothetical questions unanswered, that Silveredge hadn't heard Ivonne at all.
"What is the classification for this spellwork? What's the name for it, and the transcription that goes with it? What- what kind of caster do you call yourself?"
Niku gave two deep grunts- not snorts or growls, but the sort of long suffering exhalations that sounded as though some painful body blow had been struck.
Silveredge smiled a small, sad smile. "The handmaiden does not know. My lord Svaentok asked me similar questions, and so did my lord Ranclyffe, and so did my lord Mordren, but... the handmaiden does not know. She has never known, though she would learn it, if she could find it, or was told."
Ivonne pinned her lips firmly between her teeth and sighed a long, quiet sigh, gazing unabashedly at the woman beside her. "Perhaps I should ask Mage Commander Caeleh. Or just send you. I'm sure... I'm sure she would... would tell you; she... she's the one who taught all my history classes. If she weren't nearly stone blind, she'd run the entire History of Magic department by herself, and... I'm sure she'd be pleased to tell you, Silveredge. Shadar-kai or not, she'd... she'd tell you."
Upstairs, in the comparative comfort of his own study room, Mordren turned away from the scrying mirror.
"Return to me. No, I will not come down there; she needs to be alone with her companion. Return to me, now. We- you, and I, and every worthwhile mage in Cormyr- learned magic in guided classes, couched in and protected by great privilege. She learned magic fearfully, by herself, as a slave. We cannot imagine that. Cannot commiserate with it, change it, and certainly not solve it. Your pity is not comforting. What will be comforting is your absence. Do not make me repeat myself a third time."
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