We ate with Rathkin in a small dining hall, large enough for at least twenty yet still somehow intimate. Laneston served and likely cooked. We never saw another servant while we were there. In deference to Margrin the meal was a hearty vegetable stew served with small baguettes and an excellent dry white wine that easily cut through the heavy main course. Desert was a blackberry flan. So we were well-cared-for and, as an inn, I would give the place a stellar review with one caveat.
There were few doors in Rathkin's dockyard sanctuary. And we were once again told that the kittens had free reign. As much as I like cats, and as cute as those kittens were, I barely slept a wink. I couldn't roll over without something hissing at me or howling in imaginary pain. They were on my chest, belly, around my head. They wrestled, they drooled, they fought for position, my earlobes were a favorite toy. And as annoying as it got, I had to keep reminding myself that I didn't want to be drowned in a tub. No, I would trade sleep for life any day.
The next day, Laneston woke us and we were summoned for an audience with Rathkin in his receiving room. When we arrived, Marts was already there, looking like he'd been up all night as well.
“Ah, gentlemen, good morning! Did you sleep well?”
“Like a stone, Mister Rathkin. Your hospitality is very much appreciated.”
“Well, Laneston, chairs for our guests please!”
Laneston pulled out the same wooden chairs we had used yesterday and we were seated before Rathkin who was on a slightly raised dais and looking down at us.
“Very well, Marts, tell them of your findings.”
“Yes, Mister Rathkin. Well, first of all, they are at the villa as I suspected. Terribly remote place. It's just your father, Mister Bascombe, and Cralix. I don't know if Half-Elves require sleep …”
“They do not.” interrupted Margrin.
“Well, at any rate,” continued Marts, “she didn't have any.”
“There's a basement to the villa with windows level to the ground around the place. You don't see much looking out of them but the sky. However, from a proper vantage point and with a good telescope,” he patted the brass tube sticking out of a coat pocket, “one has an excellent view of what's going on inside the room.”
“And?” I asked.
“Patience, Mister Bascombe,” Rathkin scolded.
“As I said,” Marts continued, “I could see everything she was doing. She's got a set up down there, I can tell you. There are dozens of vials, glass jars, mortars and pestles, all sorts of alchemist's implements. But her favorite tool seemed to be a small hammer of the type jewelers employ. She was using that to crack open pieces of amber, then poking around inside them with a very pointed pair of tweezers.
“She's extracting inclusions,” I said, and Margrin agreed.
Marts went on. “ You'd think she was making jewelry, but I kept seeing bright flashes of light, magical light in greens and oranges and purples. I could see on her work table that there was a lot of crushed amber, so she had been at it for a while.”
Marts stopped for a moment, seeming to be steeling himself for what he had to tell us next.
“It was almost daybreak when there was a great flash and much smoke. When it cleared, I thought I was seeing things, but there, in the center of the room, was a creature. Not a creature of this world, mind you, but something from the nether planes. An aberration. A devil. It had a man's shape, but the head of a huge toad with unblinking eyes and rows of sharp teeth and tusks. For the love of the gods, it had horns like a goat, hooves like a goat! Bat wings! Its hands ending in knife-like claws. I was frozen there looking at this thing. Drooling. Its spit sizzling as it hit the ground. And then it turned to me, its face filling my view, and it screamed, the sound like the very gates of the Abyss squealing open!”
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“I ran, gentlemen. There's nothing for it. I was trembling so badly I could barely keep my feet under me, but I ran. I ran until I got back here. She's messing around with dark powers in that basement. The kind that one should leave be. Her soul is forfeit. I wasn't going to lose mine.
“Sirs, I'm sorry, but we have no power against such as that. Infernal beasts.”
“Mister Rathkin, you know I don't scare easily. I'm a good soldier. So you know, when I say I'm scared, there's something to be scared of.”
“Don't worry Marts,” Rathkin said consolingly, "you are right to be scared. We've nothing to throw at something like that . We're criminals, not heroes.”
“Mister Bascombe, Mister Ephisieryón, I'm afraid we can help you no further. This is beyond our scope. You need spiritual assistance. I can offer none. I'm very sorry and I wish you all the best. Now, good day.”
Laneston appeared immediately to escort us out. I didn't blame Rathkin for being done with us. This wasn't his fight, for now. But who knew what Cralix ’s ultimate intentions were. When you're crazy, world domination seems like a reasonable goal.
We agreed to get back to Nez Ambríl as fast as we could. We pulled out our scrolls and recited them carefully, then … nothing.
Nothing happened. We were in the same place.
“What goes on here?” I yelled. “Did we get malfunctioning scrolls?”
“We got them from ?rdelon himself,” Margrin reasoned. “Maybe they're old?”
We tried them again, and again nothing.
“What now? ”Margrin asked. “I don't know any Wizards around here and I believe Rathkin wants done with us. He's our only hope.”
“Perhaps not,” I said. “Maybe we can find a Wizard for hire or a scroll shop.”
“What good will that dó, Bascombe? Neither one of us has our cheque books with us.
I smiled, “I've got 2,400 royals in my purse, Good Sir!”
Not even an hour later, we were back in the war room in the Tree Palace. May, Palisir, Mestil, and Field Marshal Everyón were crowded around their usual table talking strategies, debating troop strengths, just like we left them.
“Welcome back my travelers!” May was effusive. I could tell that she really had missed me and it meant the world.
“We've much to go over, My Queen. We have not been idle, nor has the enemy.”
“Very well, Gentlemen, to my quarters.”
Taking seats around her table, May ordered tea and biscuits and we filled her in on everything.
“Mister Bascombe, you have my utmost sympathy.” She looked so sad saying this. “To have to deal with something like this, and involving your own father is unimaginable for me. It must cut deeply.”
“I never thought the man to be a saint, but neither did I imagine him to be a devil, and he certainly seems to be much more the latter.”
“And Mister Ephisieryón you've no idea who this other Elf might be?”
“Your Majesty, if I spoke on my intuition, I could be doing someone a grave injustice. I'll hold my tongue for now.”
Then I remembered, “Your Majesty, I need to get two magical items to my mother in Wikehold immediately and I need ?rdelon's assistance. It shouldn't take long. I need three Teleportation scrolls, but not like the last ones you gave us.”
“Why do you say that, Mister Bascombe?”
I explained that they didn't work and how we managed to get back. “We could have been stuck down there, that's a trip of three weeks, if not longer”
“That's not possible, Mister Bascombe.”
“Of course it is, My Lady, five hundred miles at twenty-five miles a day …”
“No, you dolt! The scrolls! ?rdelon has a stone you can look through to test the efficacy of scrolls and potions so that sort of thing doesn't happen. Were your scrolls sealed with an emblem of an owl wearing a crown? If so, that stamp is on that stone so there's no forgetting. It would have to be the result of sabotage.”
“Well I still need to get to my mother, and quickly.”
“?rdelon is not here, he had to go to Wikehold for supplies. You know where he keeps those scrolls, in the pile by the pile by the dust, right?”
I chuckled, that was ?rdelon alright.
“Just go get them yourselves. You have my permission.”
“Your Majesty, if I may, how went the talks with the Hobgoblins?”
“Not completed yet Mister Ephisieryón, but it's looking promising. They have 30,000 troops. Mister Plogue should be concluding negotiations with them today, why?”
“Oh, it's nothing, Your Majesty, personal curiosity.”
When we arrived at ?rdelon's workshop, the door was locked.
Pulling out a kit of Thieves' tools, Margrin playfully said, “Stand aside. Here's where it comes in handy having a criminal companion.”
In a matter of seconds, he had the door open.
The late afternoon sun shone through the room’s lone leaded glass window, capturing the swirls of dust as the door creaked open. There's something unsettling about a Wizard's workroom. Gods only knew what went on in there, and the Mana never diffused completely, making one's skin tingle. Margrin went immediately to the pile of scrolls in the room's far corner. “Okay,” he said, “here's three. See if he has a satchel we can put these in.”
I found the satchel I frequently see ?rdelon wearing and tossed it to Margrin. As it arced through the air, three or four good sized pieces of amber clattered to the floor.
“Gods, the stuff's everywhere you look around here. Those are included pieces. Must have had them for his experiments.”
Then it dawned on me. “What experiments?” I asked.
“Are you daft, Man? We just spoke of them the other day.”
“Let me ask you a question, Margrin. How often, if you were to guess, does ?rdelon clean up in here?”
“Never, is what I would guess.”
“Do you remember Marts’ description of the workroom where he saw Cralix?”
“Of course,” he replied. “There were vials, jars, jeweler's tools, alchemist's tools, a small hammer, mortars, pestles, crushed amber all over the tabletop. That's all I remember.”
“Good enough, Sir! She and ?rdelon are ostensibly working on similar projects, extracting and refining the inclusions. How much of what you just listed do you see on ?rdelon's work table?”
He stared at the table as if willing something to appear. “I see nothing, Bascombe. None of it. Then what in blazes has he been doing down here?”
“To me,” I said, “it looks like he hasn't been here.”
“Well, yes,” Margrin said, almost defensively. “Queen May said he's in Wikehold.”
“Or, perhaps Sandlise,” I suggested. It occured to me that, when I heard my father speaking to that figure on the pier, he used the word ‘order.’ But the word wasn't ‘order,’ he said ?rdelon. And that sack he handed my father was amber.”
“I don't know what sort of treachery we're dealing with here, but we need to alert Queen May, now!”