Mae strode through the market place, glancing idly at items that others
gasped at, like jewelry and rare cloths. She then gasped at things that others
sneered at and merchants shook their heads. They knew that she was rich and
could afford anything here at Allcome’s market, yet she seemed taken
with bits of dog fur, owl feathers, drops of oil and scraps of wool. Wizards
were a lot that merchants will never understand.
She stopped by the swordsmith’s shop to pick up a new weapon. She was
used to using two weapons at a time and was angered that a Xorn had eaten
her favorite dagger. It was a great dagger imbued with magic and it was now
lunch for a Xorn, who had also eaten one of her new prizes: a rod nearly a
foot long, of solid gold, and heavily enchanted to boot! She glared with anger
till she realized that she was glaring at the smith who had backed away. She
shook her head and apologized. He smiled back but remained ready to run at
any minute.
She found a short sword that would serve in place of her beloved dagger till
she could find something else. It was a good sword and worth the high price.
She bought it without haggling as a further apology.
As she was leaving the smithy, she saw that a face in the crowd quickly turned
around. Mae stared at the women’s back trying to place her. The face
she saw was vaguely familiar, but too far distant to remember. She marked
the face in her mind. “Something will come of it,” she thought.
She was too much of a thief to shrug it off. Since the woman posed no immediate
threat, Mae continued with her shopping.
Near the evening and with half her traveling money gone, Mae’s familiar,
Pearl, reminded her of eating. “Ham would be good!”
Mae smiled at her rat. “How about some mutton or a big fresh fish.”
“Yech! Mutton left me with a bad tummy last time. Greasy. Fish, bah,
common! I want ham! They lock that up, so it must be good!”
“Ham it is then.” She was rewarded with some happy little thoughts
from Pearl. It amused her that her familiar had a similar taste in the high
life as she did. She might not buy the richest items in the market, but she
lived very well.
After dinner, with Pearl fat from ham and curled up and asleep in Mae’s
bowl (she didn’t finish her fish chowder, so he helped), conversation
settled on when they should ship out.
Dugal shrugged, “I sent off a letter to Tunley stating that if he’s
not here within the week that we were leaving with out him. We can leave then.”
Mae, Niamh, and Hinnom nodded. The troupe lapsed back into silence and listened
to the bards playing their seafaring songs.
Mae noticed Hinnom scratching his cheek under his veil. He glanced at her.
“Get all your shopping done?”
“Yes, if the trip over to Akaris is boring, I’ll be able to write
some scrolls.”
Hinnom chuckled, “If it’s boring?” He scratched again.
“You know us, if it’s out there, it’ll attack us.”
Mae found herself scratching her own cheek. She knew that the Maeli were bound
by custom to hide their tusks under a veil when not in their native land.
“If you like, I know a place where you could take that off…among
other things.” She whispered to him.
Hinnom smiled and rose from the table. “I’ll see you there.”
He tossed a few coins on the table and left.
Mae waited what seemed a very long minute before following. She was unwilling
to let Dugal and Niahm know about her and Hinnom. She didn’t know why;
Dugal the big human was married to a Halfling and Niamh the half-elf to a
man. In her heart she knew that it wouldn’t matter to them, but her
mind said otherwise.
After their “engagement”, they slept well. They had once again
surprised each other with their strengths and gentleness. It was a time of
awkwardness for them. Mae was still getting used to kissing someone with tusks
and Hinnom was still getting used to her agility, and the fact that she didn't
simply break in his hands.
Pearl huffed and curled back to sleep in his sack.
Mae awoke straight from her sleep with her rapier in her hand. Old habits
die hard, she mused. She glanced at Hinnom, still asleep. She heard the noise
again, a heavy thumping sound outside on the street. As she was trying to
place the sound, there was a crashing and tearing as two huge hands of stone
came through the outside wall and into their bedroom.
Mae pushed back a wave of panic as she recognized the Shield Guardian of Allcome!
Its stone hands fumbled around the room and made to backhand her. She slipped
under its swing and made a pathetic stab with her rapier. Something nagged
at the back of her mind but refused to come forward.
The Guardian then turned its attention upon Hinnom and slammed him against
the far wall. He tried to hit it with his maul hammer, but to no avail. Mae
wondered how they could possibly miss something so large.
The statue swung again at Hinnom and Mae could hear the cracking of ribs and
arm.
“Get out!” she screamed. “Get Dugal and Niamh! Tell ‘em
to go outside and find out who’s controlling this thing!”
At the sound of her voice the Guardian’s hands swung to her and made
a grab for her. She tried to tumble past it to the now accessible outside,
but found herself in its grasp instead. She felt the hands squeeze and as
it did so the nagging came to the front of her brain; this wasn’t Allcome’s
Guardian, this was a much larger one! How could it have gotten here? Worst
of all, she noticed that the control medallion was around the Guardian’s
own neck. How could it function?
She mentally called for Pearl to jump onto the statue and take the medallion
off. That should stop this thing. She felt his fear and sent back encouraging
thoughts.
The statue turned and started to walk off. Mae struggled in the Guardian’s
grip and wondered what was taking the others so long.
Pearl did his best, leaping across the gap just as the thing turned. Mae could
hear his little claws scratching for purchase. With a sigh of relief she saw
him crawl up the statue’s arm and find a safe place on his shoulder.
He started to tug on the chain that held the medallion only to find himself
in the grasp of the statue.
Mae felt the panic that was Pearl’s and hers changed to dread as the
statue threw Pearl against a wall and continued to walk on. She reached out
to feel his mind, but there was nothing there.
Mae tried again and again to escape only to have the grip tighten around her.
The Guardian had stopped, before a townhouse. For a moment, the great stone
behemoth seemed to hesitate as it regarded the empty house. She snatched at
the opportunity, slipping from its grasp to the ground below. With unusual
speed, it whirled back to her, and it seemed that its blank face bore a grimace
of utter hatred.
She then thought of another strategy to stop the Guardian to try for the medallion
herself. It took a bit of maneuvering but finally she managed to reach the
chain around the neck and lift it away.
Unexpectedly, the Guardian did not stop in its tracks, but seemed to dwindle
and melt. In its place stood the form of young half-elven woman, the one she'd
seen in the marketplace. Mae looked at the medallion and back to the woman,
“Nice trick. Now what the hell is going on?”
For an answer, the woman's hands flashed in a complex gesture and Mae found
herself held fast. Mae cursed herself in her head for not preparing a counterspell
against an opponent who so obviously knew magic.
“I knew you when I spotted you, you little bitch," she said, “You
destroyed my father. Now I’m going to do the same to you, except slower.
You’ll die, so slowly.” She drew out a punching dagger, a nice
weapon for assassins. “I want you to suffer as he did, as I did. One
bit at a time.” The woman played around Mae’s neck with the point.
Mae would have responded if she could, but until the spell released her, she
could do nothing!
“Oh, but that would be too easy, wouldn't it! Don’t you have a
lover? I saw the two of you, you know. You’re not fooling anyone…you’re
so perverse! Maybe I should pay him a visit anyway. He must be lonely by now,
and well, a man is a man.” The woman turned and started to walk back
the way she came as a statue. “Maybe you can see him one last time before
he dies…if you’re fast enough.” Her laughter made Mae’s
blood run cold. When would this spell end?
A few seconds later, Mae felt the spell give way. She slashed her rapier in
the air in anger. She gave a quick glance at the medallion, nothing special
she noted, no runes, signs or arcane marks, and then looked at where she was.
It was the rich section of town. All of the houses behind stone walls with
plaques to tell everyone who lived there. She looked at the one nearby, it
read, “Francisco Alvarez”. Mae repeated the name to herself and
suddenly remembered him, and knew who her tormentor must be.
In a flash, she remembered her first visit to the town. Several years ago
she and Dugal had come here, and learned of several deaths. They had listened
to a crazy old coot, Benner, who told them that a statue had walked and when
they investigated, they found the Stone Guardian. It had stood on its pedestal
at the center of town for over a thousand years and none knew its power. Only
the founder’s family had kept the secret, until we came along. Now the
Guardian was in the hands of a madman who killed all in his way, beginning
with his daughter’s lover.
Dugal and Mae had confronted the man only to have him call the Guardian to
rescue him. They had seen it standing in the front hall, frozen in position
after it had crushed a housemaid. Francisco had collapsed in despair and surrendered
the medallion to them. They had let his family take the madman away, and had
given the medallion to the church for safe keeping. The family had rewarded
their discretion. Dugal and Mae had left satisfied, never giving Francisco
or his daughter a second thought, although they had been to Allcome several
times afterward.
Mae cursed her selfishness. This was the second time something like this had
happened, but she would punish herself later, this daughter was as crazy as
her father and was on her way to kill Hinnom.
Again, something nagged at Mae. She looked down at her wounds and was astonished
to find them healing or healed. Was this a cruel joke on the woman’s
part? Was this part of “dying slowly”? She ran on.
She came to the place where Pearl had been thrown and was relieved to find
him well, though groggy. She carried him in her hand as she had no pockets
in her thin night clothes. Waking up in the middle of the night and being
carried off had its disadvantages. She was only glad that she never developed
the habit of sleeping in the nude.
As she made her way back to the inn, she was again astonished to see that
there was no damage to the place, no one running around in panic at the crashing
sounds (it could not have been more than ten minutes ago), and no Dugal or
Niamh at the ready with weapons drawn.
Something was terribly, terribly, wrong.
She rushed inside the inn to find the front room nearly empty. Dugal and Niamh
were playing a card game. She passed them and slapped Dugal on the shoulder.
“Come on. We got trouble.”
“Well, then handle it,” he said. “We’re busy.”
He laid down another card to prove his point.
Mae brought herself up short. She blinked twice at the two of them. A gush
of sense rushed in her brain. This is a dream! We’ve been in these before!
This explains everything, it’s a dream!
Well then, time to go rescue my lover!
She bounded up the stairs and listened outside the door.
She thought she heard the sounds of lovemaking, then a grunt. She burst open
the door and tried to cast a flare into the room. She felt her own spell fizzle
in her throat as the other woman, a perfect image of Mae, dispelled the flare.
Mae saw her withdraw her punching blade from Hinnom’s throat. To Mae’s
relief, he wasn’t dead. For sometimes, what happens in dreams, happens
in real life.
“We won’t be having any of that,” Maribel said, for Mae
had recalled the woman's name at last. Once again she tried to hold Mae fast
with a spell. She failed this time and Mae stabbed her rapier into Maribel’s
shoulder.
“Oh, we’ll be having a lot of this. I suggest you give up and
quit. You’re just as crazy as your father was.”
Maribel hissed and froze Mae in place. Another damned hold spell. This was
getting annoying, Mae thought. She shuddered at seeing of her own face on
the woman she was stabbing. That would explain why Hinnom allowed her into
the room, into their bed.
Maribel pried Mae’s rapier from her frozen fingers. “What a nice
weapon! I see that it’s magical. What does it do?” Mae would have
refused to respond but the spell took care of that. Mae kept time in her head
as to how long the spell lasted. She bided her time.
“What does the rapier do?” Maribel’s words became more forceful
as Mae felt a prodding in her head. Maribel was gripping a peculiar pendant,
a blood-red sphere that pulsed with an inner light. “What does it do?”
The prodding started to hurt, but Mae kept building up a solid mental wall.
“Fine, let’s ask your little friend there.” She looked down
at Pearl. “What does this do?”
Mae heard a squeak as Pearl did his best to resist.
“Fine!” she yelled. She turned to Hinnom and whispered the question
in his ear, trailing her tongue gently along its rim. Mae heard mumbling and
Maribel smiled viciously. “It can store spells! How wonderful. Now what
spell shall I put into it?”
Mae’s eyes would have gone wide with horror if they could. She saw this
woman cast a spell into her sword and then pierce Hinnom’s back with
the rapier. Mae for a moment wished her knowledge of anatomy was not telling
her that the point was somewhere inside her lover's heart now. She gave the
final word and released several gouts of live steam into him, killing him.
Mae raged in her stillness.
Maribel laughed and wiped off the blade. “Hmm, that spell on you should
be wearing off soon. I guess I'd better take care of you now.” She cast
that same vicious spell into the sword, but to her surprise, Mae was already
moving.
From Mae’s hands sprung forth a ball of acid that exploded and covered
the room and everyone in it, including Mae, in acid. She then cast a spell
to take Maribel’s strength away. She put all her anger into the spell
and watched with glee as the woman fell to the floor and collapse with weakness.
Maribel’s laughter was not the sound of happiness, but of insanity.
She began to cackle another spell as Mae recovered her blade from where Maribel
had dropped it.
Mae drove the point home and watched the blood spurt from her neck.
Then something began to grow. The talisman from around Maribel’s neck
was now the size of a fist. It rolled off her and onto the floor. Mae readied
a strike. Then she heard a whisper in her head.
“You are weak. Come. End your stupid game.”
Mae was about to answer when Maribel screamed. Mae saw her body being dragged
towards the red glowing talisman, her fingernails clawing at the wooden floor.
The red sphere, now as large as a dwarf's head, swallowed her up, and the
room was silent once again.
The voice whispered out of nothingness again.
“You are strong. Join me.”
Mae looked at the lifeless body of her lover. “What?”
“The other was weak. Petty. You are strong and mighty. Join me.”
“Go to hell.” She told him. “My lover is dead. I’ve
got things to do.”
She walked downstairs to find everything as it was. Well not quite, Dugal
had one sock on, there was a pile of clothes on the table, and Niamh was just
as nearly naked. She was still in the dream. How in the blazes was she going
to get out?
“You’re playing strip poker aren’t you?”
“Sure!” said Dugal, “Wanna play?”
“But you’re married…”
Dugal huffed, “It’s not like I'm sleeping with her.” He
pointed to Niahm with his cards.
Mae shook her head and turned to go back upstairs. Well, at least they weren’t
real.
“I’m real,” Pearl said, “and I can help!”
“How?”
“He said he could change me into a rat-dragon and I could rule the world
and get all the ham I want!”
Mae smiled. “That thing was lying. It’s not real.”
She felt his frown. “But a rat-dragon! And, and a world of ham!”
he whined.
“It’s a lie, it’s all a lie. Nothing is real.” She
dreaded going back up to her room. Hinnom may have been real.
The glowing red ball gave the room a strange feel.
“I knew you would return. You have reconsidered?” it whispered
in her head.
“What?”
“I can give you everything you desire if you follow me.”
“Who are you anyway? What’s going on here?”
There was silence. Mae felt the now familiar prodding in her head. It was
trying to read her thoughts.
“You want power, wealth, and honor. I can help you get them.”
Mae grabbed Hinnom’s maul. “I only want two of the three. Guess
which ones!”
Silence. Prodding. Then nothing.
“Listen, if you don’t tell me who you are and what’s going
on here, I’m going to smash you to pieces!”
“You are a supreme trickster, are you not? I could guarantee that no
one ever catches you.”
“I'm no great, lofty trickster. I’ve never tricked anyone, I'm
a thief.” She hefted the hammer over her head. It was heavier than she
thought.
“I can help you!”
Mae swung down shakily and missed it. She kicked the ball up against a wall
instead and muttered curses.
“Don’t do that again!” it shouted now. “You could
endanger all of us, even him!”
“It doesn’t matter.” Mae cried. “This is a dream.
He’s dead. So it doesn’t matter! It’s all a dream!”
She swung the huge maul again and this time connected.
There was a hoarse scream. “Noooo!”
Mae awoke in her bed. She heard the quiet snoring of Hinnom. Frantically
she woke him up, just to make sure that he was alive. She gave a sobbing sigh
of relief.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
Almost in tears she told him of her dream. She had to walk the floor as her
body was restless with emotions. Hinnom listened in his quiet way in disbelief.
“Maybe you are just preparing yourself for when it’s my time to
die. Elves do live longer than we do.”
Mae put her hands to her ears. “I don’t want to talk about that.
I’ll handle that many years from now…Ouch!” Mae bent down
to pick what she thought was a splinter. What she held was actually a fingernail.
“See, see, I told you! It’s not a dream!”
Hinnom rose out of bed to see what she held. It was indeed a woman’s
long fingernail. He looked out the open window and under the window seal.
“Well, it would explain that!” He nodded to a nap sack lying under
the window.
Mae gasped. Looking into the sack she could see a large red ball glowing there,
pulsing, like the heart of a demon. There were also two books inside. Mae
summoned her mage hand and carefully pulled out the two books. One was plain
brown and the other was elaborate and a faint pink with silver trim. She felt
whispering in the back of her head, but it had no words. She eyed the ball
and dared it to come out so she could smash it in the real world. It stayed
put.
She opened the plain brown book to find Maribel’s diary. Scanning over
it all, it told of how her family found out that she was a sorceress (by having
things fly around whenever she was excited. Mae recalled with a smile, that’s
how Niamh found out that she was a sorceress too; she had blown up her mother’s
kitchen in a fit of anger); how she had found a lover, a woman who understood
her; the fights she had had with her father over her responsibilities in marriage
alliances, heirs, property; how she had waited for days for her lover, and
the chilling entry that began with cold simplicity.
"I think my father is killing people."
Mae looked up to Hinnom. “This is where Dugal and I came in.”
Mae read out loud about how two strangers came after her father and how they
“drove him to the breaking point” and how she had struggled to
find the body of her lover, Kolyra, to have her raised. If only her father
had been lucid enough to tell her. The matter was still a secret when he died
years later, and his spirit still refused to return, refused to tell. The
last entry was eight words long.
"I don't know what I'm going to do."
Mae glared into the bag. “We gotta get rid of that thing!”
“How? Anything we do, it will simply attack some other poor fool through
their dreams.”
Mae pondered for a bit. “The Meer!”
“What…oh,” he said, nodding.
“We can put it someplace safe and then drop it into the deepest part
of the Meer. But where to put it in the meantime?”
“My backpack! It’s magical. It shouldn’t be able to whisper
to anyone then.” He reached over the bed and grabbed his pack. Mae watched
with a certain thrill as he did so. Hinnom emptied the pack and held it out
for her.
She very carefully picked up the knapsack and lowered it into the bigger pack.
Near the end she thought she heard it give a small scream then nothing. She
smiled in relief. “It worked!”
There was silence between the two for a few seconds. “What about Dugal
and Niamh?” Hinnom asked.
Mae shook her head, “They can’t know about any of this till it’s
over.”
“Why?”
She raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Because Dugal will want to play
with it and I don’t think Niahm can resist it. She’s very young
you know.”
“She’s not that young…”
“You know what I mean.” Mae put her hands on her hips, a sign
that Hinnom knew as ‘putting one’s foot down’. “I
want to keep them safe, so they mustn’t know. We’ll tell them
after we dump it in the Meer.”
Hinnom nodded. “Fair enough. You may be underestimating them, but this
is your decision to make.”
Mae looked at the fancy book. It had a lock on it. Simple stuff, she thought
and picked it open. The interior held a solemn legend, "Property of the
Library of Akaris," through which a black line of ink crossed before
a flourishing signature, "Kolyra Mitani." The next pages were more
interesting by far. She and Hinnom felt their eyes go wide with delight. It
was all about sex. You could tell from the pictures! Mae quickly shut the
book under Hinnom’s protest. “We can read this on the trip over!”
She smiled and kissed his arm as he tried for the book.
After another celebratory “engagement”, Mae laid in Hinnom’s
arms. It was too late in the night to go back to sleep or perhaps too early
in the morning. Whichever it was, they were both awake and chatting lazily.
“You know, Mae, there will come a time when I will die and you will
go on.”
Mae sighed, “I know. I think it’s why I never took lovers before.
I don’t like saying good-bye that often.” She rolled over to see
his face. “Some elves I know love that arrangement. Have a lover for
twenty or thirty years, take a new one when the old one dies, that sort of
thing. But I hate that.”
“What will you do?”
“I don’t know. As I said, I don’t want to think about that
right now.” She kissed him gently between his tusks. “Currently
all I want is the here and now. The future belongs to itself.”
“Being prepared is a better…”
“You have a choice, O Priest. You can have more excellent sex, or you
can keep on talking.”
Hinnom opened and shut his mouth. He knew a good thing when offered and he
smiled as they rolled together on the bed.