Khaeru
Returning to the Strong Arms, Mehmet immediately found himself in demand; a wealthy lady of matronly proportions had requested his services for a night of relaxation. His mind elsewhere, the archer was only moderately successful in making her evening enjoyable, though the stein-swinging bar evidently fulfilled her desire for vulgarity well enough. He redeemed himself slightly with courtly words as they parted, for which he earned a five-mark tip and a saucy wink.
While this was going on, Percinious was working rather harder at keeping the peace. Two boisterous youths had entered the bar section of the Arms, and were knocking back ales whilst making fun of the 'merchandise'. This was exactly the sort of thing the burly Nutbolter had been hired to deal with, and he went over and had a quiet word with the two.
One seemed more sober than the other, and quietend down when it became apparent that trouble was looming; the other, deeper in his cups, flicked in an instant from boisterous drunk to aggressive brawler. Snarling, he swung a punch at the half-Khyle, but Nutbolter swayed casually out of his path and the forward momentum carried his attacker past and down to the floor, where his face hit the boards with an anticlimactic thud.
Aided by the more sensible drinker, Nutbolter hauled the subdued troublemaker up and marched him out of the front doors. For a moment, he considered the idea of following them, finishing the job, and relieving them of their drinking money; but further thought left him with the conclusion that it wasn't worth the effort; they'd not looked overly well-heeled, and there were two of them which made it less easy.
Around half an hour later, Mehmet returned, and they compared notes over a drink. Shortly after that, Najan returned, ready for the answer to his offer of the previous day. When Mehmet pointed out the need for 'cover', he slipped into a camp voice and made a play of discussing the establishment's rates - very skilfully, as if he'd done that sort of thing before.
Mehmet haggled with him, pushing for more up front, and finally secured 350 marks downpayment with 650 to come at the job's end. Najan opened his cloak and counted out seventeen crowns and ten marks into each of two pouches, closed them, and handed them over, before standing to leave. "No tip?" asked Mehmet in mock-outrage. Najan simpered camply, and walked out.
After a week of working nights at the Strong Arms and training during the day, both men were weary. Mehmet had successfuly completed the basic training at the Sharp Edges, though he had a long way to go in learning the rapier, and had mastered the spells Silence and Multimissile. Percinious, however, was having great trouble with the higher healing skills, and it took another week before he got to grips with Heal properly.
Finally free from lessons, the pair were out walking one afternoon when a commotion caught their attention. The street was moderately busy, so the first sign that they had was noise, followed by a single individual bursting from the crowd ahead and pelting down the street towards them.
Long, greying hair and beard wildly framed a strained, sweat-covered face, as the man, dressed in plain robes of brown and running blind in the panic of death, approached.
Behind him, people began to emerge from the cover of the general street occupants. Shouts and cries drifted down the street to
Mehmet and Percinious: "Get 'im!", "Kill the sorcerer!" Burn the Khylar bastard!" and
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so forth, left them fairly clear on what was happening. With their knowledge, one look at the man was enough to show that he was no Khylar, nor even half; whether he was a sorcerer was not something they had time to go into.
Nutbolter moved into the fugitive's path, while Mehmet stepped to the side of the road and into what cover he could find, and worked a swift spell. At its completion, a Darkwall sprang into being, cutting them off from the crowds and the mob, visually at least. At that moment, the man reached Percinious and tried to swerve around him, but the agile Nutbolter was too quick for him and grabbed him. The man was foaming in terror, and utterly impervious to Percinious' attempt to explain that he was being rescued, so the half-Khyle simply strongarmed him around a corner and down an alley. He took several random turns, until the sound of the mob receded into nothing behind them.
Meanwhile,. Mehmet had prepared himself for the arrival of the mob. Ripping his tunic a bit, he rolled over in the dust, making himself look utterly dishevelled and incidentally blurring his half-Khyle features a little more.
As he did so, he noticed a young lad, twelve or so, watching him. The boy glanced down the alley Percinious and the fugitive had disappeared into, back and Mehmet, and was obviously coming to some conclusions. To forestall him, Mehmet dug in a pocket and flicked some copper fingers at the youth, gesturing in the general direction of away as he did so. Half the coins were caught mid-air, and the lad collected the rest and made off, amnesia clearly setting in straight away.
No sooner was he gone, than the first mob members pushed their way through the Darkwall, emerging into the light on the other side with some relief. As they came level with Mehmet, now slumped pathetically in the roadway, he moaned and pointed.
"He went that way! Inhuman bastard, he beat me up and stole my purse!" he cried. Not stopping to consider the likelihood of a man fleeing a lynch mob stopping for a petty theft, the crowd roared in excreation and hurried in pursuit. For a moment, Mehmet was in real danger of being trodden underfoot, but then the mob was past him, and gone, and peace descended.
Standing up and brushing himself down, he slipped into the alley. As he reached cover, a word and gesture dismissed the Darkwall, and the street was nomal once more.
He headed for home.
Percinious meanwhile had managed to get the fugitive calmed down, and made some progress. The man named himself as Kaheru, and thanked the half-Khyle profusely for saving his life. He seemed unafraid to admit his sorcerous skills to his saviour, perhaps because of Percinious' racial mix, but the thief thought to himself, "I can see why he was being chased by a mob!" Nonetheless, he asked the man to come back some other time and see them, and whether he'd consider 'taking a trip', in case they could use him next campaign. Then they parted and Nutbolter went home.
The next night, as promised, Khaeru came back to see them. He'd altered his appearance as much as possible, cutting his hair and beard and changing his clothes, and was carrying a tall staff with an iron ball on the end. He bought drinks for the pair, and reiterated his gratitude for their rescue. Gathering their confidence, our heroes decided to ask him to take a look at their Khyle artifacts, and took him up to their tiny garret to show them to him.
Seated at a table, he stared in wonder at Portalis, before casting a spell over it. Any doubts as to his power vanished at this point, as the words of the Old Speech rolled across the room and the power built. The spell was different to any they'd ever experienced before, slower to invoke but with a sense of much greater potential. At its' conclusion, Khaeru sat back and chuckled. "This," he said, "is an item of incalculable value. It is a controller of Gates, and I have never seen another one. You should be careful who you show it to. It has three functions; one point of magic will cause it to direct you to the nearest Gate. Two will open that Gate, though more may be needed to pass more than one traveller. Three can Draw a creature through the Gate, and again, more power is required the more or mightier the target of such a drawing."
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Nutbolter showed him the Maugre Claw, with which he was also quite impressed, but the real interest for him was in Percinious' book. He spent many minutes paging through it, pausing in several places. Finally he looked up, pale-faced. "May I borrow this?" he asked. "It contains much I would know."
Nutbolter handed him paper and a pen. "Write your notes here," he said. Mehmet added, "Does it refer to any items you know where to find?"
Khaeru tore the paper in half, and began to read and make notes. The majority of them, on the larger piece, were obviously his own, written in the Khylar tongue, but the other piece soon had two items written on it:
"The Crimson Cloth: Akmin, Hawkmaster at the Palace"
"The Chalice of Ryien: Varroth, Goldsmith, Merchant Quarter"
Between Mehmet and Percinious, they knew both of these people.
The other sheet was written in Khylar, but Percinious had a good grasp of the ancient script from his own studies of the book, and he easily read the following:
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As the sorcerer bent fascinated over the book, Percinious very quietly took his sap out of his bag next to him on the bed where he sat, and moved up behind their guest as Mehmet drew the man's attention to a picture in the book. Without warning, Nutbolter struck, swinging the short cudgel quite hard in case the sorcerer had some sort of magical protection. Unfortunately, he hadn't.
The sap smashed into his head, a terrible blow, and his skull fractured with a plastic breaking sound. Blood and brains splashed across the book and table, and Khaeru fell dead without a sound.
Percinious muttered darkly. His precious tome was now smeared in brains as well as blood, and he hastened to clean it off and stow it safely away. Then the pair stripped both their beds, wrapping the leaking body in one sheet and converting the others into a makeshift rope.
A quick search gained them a small piece of carved ivory, probably enchanted, a stout staff with an iron ball on the end, and a tattoo on the sorcerer's right palm. This was almost certainly a spell matrix and Mehmet quickly flayed it off.
Mehmet slipped down the stairs and out through the back door. Percinious, a trained member of Heldorn's thieves' guild and a sailor as well, made sure of the knots and then lowered the soggy bundle down to his comrade. That done, he too descended, and the pair shouldered the unfortunate sorcerer's corpse, now wrapped in all the bedding, and headed for the nearest of the bridges over the river - fortunately not too far away.
Luck had been with them up to now. However, it chose this moment to abandon them. As they reached the bridge, they were taken aback to realize that they were not alone; a full patrol of the watch was loafing around on the bridge. The sergeant straightened, and sauntered towards them with an expression of anticipation. As he did so, Mehmet and Percinious recognized two of his men from Nutbolter's mistaken identity ealier in their stay, and Mehmet also spotted one watchman who'd been in the mob chasing Khaeru. The pair lowered the bundle and waited for developments.
"All right," drawled the watch sergeant, with the air of one who is going to enjoy himself at someone else's expense. "What's in the bundle?"
Nutbolter looked up with a seraphic smile. "A dead Khylar sorcerer, of course," he said brightly.
The watch patrol were obviously completely taken aback by this. Mehmet went on to explain they'd found him where the mob had ditched him (the alley behind their lodgings), and were simply getting rid of the body. They alluded to the fact that one of the watchmen had been with the mob, making that man writhe with embarrassment as his fellows looked at him disapprovingly. The watch sergeant stepped over and ripped open the bundle, displaying the corpse's face, and beckoned the mob-member over to have a look. The man nodded briefly, and the sergeant made a decision.
"Let's have him over the side, gentlemen, and we can all forget about this and go home," he said. Two of his watchmen lifted the departed Khaeru and sped him on his way into the river and away. The patrol turned to go, and the sergeant eyed the pair. "I'll be watching you," he warned.
Back in their room, the pair looked through Percinious' book to see if it mentioned any of the items Khaeru had owned. Only the staff was there, under the name Koyagurfer. The entry described it as usable only by an adept, and the pair lost interest.
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The next day, a lad of about ten knocked on their door, bringing a muster call from Rurik Bloodwind. The pair looked at each other; so Najan had been right. With some relief, they resigned their jobs and reported in.
Gathered in the courtyard of Rurik's town-house, the members of Bloodwind's Company stood quiet as their commander addressed them. The long-feared war had finally come; Marmark had invaded - to the south, near Granmund. "We march tomorrow morning," finished the commander.
This was their last chance to follow up the leads Khaeru had given them. The palace just sounded too daunting, so they took a stroll down through Merchant to Varroth's house. It didn't look too bad; bars on the lower windows, of course, shutters on the shop, but no guards, no obvious magic, no external sign of traps. They slipped down the alley to the house's right, finding behind it a kind of court created by the confluence of several alleys. Perfect!
While Mehmet kept watch below, Percinious scaled the wall to a promising-looking window on the second floor. His climbing was quiet enough, but once he reached the window, his attempts to open the latch caused enough noise to wake someone inside. Hastily, he swung himself sideways along the wall, just in time, as a figure arrived inside the window and peered through for agonizing moments before retiring from view.
Percinious waited several more minutes before returning to the window, and this time opening it easily. Slipping inside, he explored, finding several doors and a staircase. Unable to hear anything at any of the doors bar one - which yielded snoring - he crept down the stairs.....
eof
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The Tome
Rurik Bloodwind