How to Survive Disintegration - Jaezred/Sorrel
Feb 6, 2022 15:39:37 GMT
Wixspartan, Delilah Daybreaker, and 2 more like this
Post by Jaezred Vandree on Feb 6, 2022 15:39:37 GMT
Co-written with stephena.
On the morning of the 2nd day of Alturiak, in wintry and pink Fort Ettin, Jaezred receives a visitor to his suite. A young acolyte from the Temple of Selûne who appears to be developing warrior-monk ambitions judging by the discrete weapon poorly concealed in her monk’s robe — a weapon he is sure he last saw in Sorrel Darkfire’s belt — arrives with a note. It is written in careful, formal, and grammatically flawed Drowic, as if the author had been taught the language in school but rarely written it since.
“My Lord Jaezred,
I crave advice of your giving in a matter of much importance of mine.
It is for the ears of one and not of the many.
If of the early morning hours time in two days from now freedom is yours, choose you the message to return yes.
If the one is road taking to Fort Ettin from the city Daring Heights, the hill of last visibility of the city — or of the first visibility of the city if on the journey to Daring Heights city from Fort Ettin - see the west tree once before had been struck by lightning.
Arriving there when dawn has gone two hours ago. The sun is shining. The birds are singing.
The runes of numbers mark the way. Colbauth at the beginning. Sreen rune — stopping!
I will help. But stopping, please stopping and waiting.
Yours most servant
Sorrel”
Jaezred chuckles and tucks the note into his coat pocket. “Tell her yes,” he says to the acolyte.
The shattered oak is marked with an elegant colbauth rune indicating a path barely visible between two large boughs.
Runes lead to runes across the uneven forest floor, following way markers through bushes that appear impenetrable until approached from the direction indicated, whereupon the path is clearly visible. The drow mage treks past the foliage, brushing stray leaves and bits of branches off his shoulders and casting prestidigitation to clean any stains left on his impeccable fur-lined overcoat from time to time.
Eventually, there is the sreen rune, the Drowic word for “danger” — although the path ahead seems wide and inviting. He stops, standing on the edge of the path, and looks around curiously.
Sorrel materialises next to him, in a move he recognises as classic misty step tactics. She bows low.
“Lord Jaezred Vandree,” she places her weapon hand over her heart as she bows and holds her left arm out to the side, empty palm facing him. “I am honoured you are here.” Her spoken Drowic is rusty but considerably better than her written style.
“Miss Darkfire, salutations,” he responds in the same tongue. “I must say, this is quite an unusual way of asking for some pointers on Elvish grammar.” He shoots a teasing grin at her and there is a twinkle of humour in his eyes behind the goggles of day.
“I have a place I train just…. Some way ahead,” she regards him carefully for a moment. “My tradition demands I blindfold you from here but frankly it makes guiding you a pain in the… extremely difficult and I can’t imagine you have any interest in letting anyone know where this place is. Traditions are there to be broken. But follow me carefully, even though the going will be slow.”
She steps off the path into the dense foliage which parts easily. There is a narrow route between rows of trees where Sorrel kneels and begins the slow, precise process of disarming an extensive collection of elaborate traps - releasing hair triggers, tracing false floors and detaching spring loaded blades. Her face is focussed and peaceful as she feels her way forward, taking time and care over each mechanism.
“I change them regularly,” she explains in a pause between a series of needles concealed behind a trunk and a noose hidden by dust and leaves. “There’s no need for most of them but I find the process soothing.”
“We all have our routines, some of which are more…paranoid than others,” he remarks. Sorrel gives a wry smile.
Eventually, the bushes part and a large clearing stretches ahead. The tall mallorn trees surrounding it have somehow knit their trunks and boughs together to form a solid barrier — Jaezred recognises nature magic at work — and the trees uppermost boughs reach over the top of the clearing so that a network of branches, leaves and twigs provide a canopy through which the sun sends beams that dapple the glade’s floor.
There is one long line of open sky that traces the route of the sun. It blazes down in the centre of the clearing, and Sorrel gives Jaezred a quick glance then starts to breathe and whisper, as if she is mimicking the wind on a spring morning. Slowly the branches move together, blocking out the sun completely and the leaves all align so that the clearing is almost in darkness.
“I like to train into the sun,” Sorrel explains. “Fighting blind is an art that requires constant practice, but I hope this lighting suits you better my Lord?”
He takes off his top hat and pulls the goggles off of his face. “Indeed it does.”
The clearing floor is covered with ropes and fallen logs and old blasted trunks which gradually reveal their purpose - a collection of criss crossed trunks, some thick, some thin, marking out a maze that all but an acrobat would stumble from; boulders of various sizes held in rope nets and tied loosely to trees, ready to swing back and forth with deadly force; targets and creature shapes chalked on the burnt stumps, peppered with tiny holes; obstacle courses; low nets; a sheer wall of mallorn trunks with barely a hold or branch to grip….
“Welcome to my training ground,” Sorrel is suddenly shy. She hopes Jaezred will… well, not approve, per se. This all seems too visceral for his delicate sensibilities to truly enjoy. But at least appreciate.
“This is certainly interesting,” he says, studying the surprising set-up before him. “So you have brought me here for training. But what role do I play, the instructor or the sparring partner? Or, gods forbid, the student?” He playfully feigns offence on the last word. “I must say, whatever Lady Oziah may have told you, my crossbow skills are nothing to sniff at…”
Sorrel looks at him uncertainly. She knows he can’t remember the Battle of the Temple, so decides not to remind him that she’s watched him send crossbow bolts into the fallen Delilah, finishing her off after his disintegration beam… And then she thinks, well, that’s why we’re here…
“Actually my Lord, I am well aware of your crossbow skills,” she says carefully. “You and I have seen each other in the grip of… well, details are vulgar. But I hope you will not be offended if I recall our, um, affray in the temple. Your crossbow bolts were on target despite the unusual state your body was in. And they followed your precisely targeted disintegration spell, which was excellently delivered. My compliments. We may have briefly been on uncertain sides but a skillful attack is always to be admired.”
She looks at him anxiously, hoping he takes her compliment as it was intended — at face value as one warrior to another.
The smile on his face fades away at the mention of the incident, and his expression morphs into something more solemn. “Ah… I see. I…thank you for your compliments? But well, Miss Darkfire, what are we here for exactly?”
“The disintegration spell,” she says simply. “I will speak frankly. It has taken my friend Faust, almost slain Deliliah and has been used to threaten Silvia, a woman I have under my protection. I have been in this game more years than I care to mention, and the training at the House was superb up to a point. In Faerun, I came across powerful mages once or twice but always in a well apportioned team. In Kantas, I have encountered them far more frequently. I have not always been surrounded by the collection of eldritch knights, high-level sorcerers and experienced clerics that I am used to. I fear that one day soon I may have to face one… if not alone, then comparatively unsupported. In short, my Lord, I want to learn how to defeat powerful magicians armed with a smattering of natural lore, some basic spiritual spells, these muscles and this cute little face.”
She looks away, her eyes searching her past. “I should say, my Lord, that even if what I ask is impossible, I will never run. Especially if my lovely Silvia’s life is on the line. I have lost people…” she stops, thinks, starts again. “I have lost someone… special… to a mage before I came here and I will not let it happen again.”
Jaezred takes a deep breath. “I understand. But, as you know, I have lost my magic and gained a new one. It is different now. Some of my combat capabilities have been replaced by other uses, so, for one, I can no longer cast the disintegrate spell. I apologise for disappointing you…or reassuring, perhaps? Regardless, what I can do is try to help you refine your battle strategies against powerful mages.”
Sorrel nods. “I am aware that your powers have changed although I am hazy on the details,” she eyes him awkwardly. “I like to make sure people who are important to me are alive and well so I ask around. I develop information networks. But I respect people’s privacy. Mostly. Yours I respect entirely. So I didn’t know the specifics. I am aware that not all magic is the same, just as not every weapon is the same. But there are principles that remain constant with weapons. Ranged weapons, you close stealthily and come up under their guard. Heavy weapons, stay nimble and tire them out. Light weapons, overpower them with a barrage of blows as their armour will be weak. Cavalry charges are easy to pick apart with rapid fire enfilade and decent flanking. And so on. Is it the same for powerful magic?”
“You are correct. There are weaknesses in spellcasting that a clever one could exploit, ways to make yourself an unviable target or to prevent a spell from being cast entirely. Most spells require either or both incantations and gestures to be cast, and thus, naturally, silencing a mage or occupying their hands somehow could effectively cripple them. You could also strip them of their arcane focus, that would make them unable to cast certain spells as well, though some mages, like me, have multiple foci on their persons. There is also the matter of sight, for many spells need the caster to be able to see their enemy in order to target them with said spell.”
Sorrel’s mind whirs so frantically she’s sure it must be echoing through the glade. A casual description of flanking a cavalry charge sounds easy as a sentence, but is fiendishly difficult in practice. Silencing, blinding and disarming mages sounds so simple, and is therefore bound to be an almost insurmountable challenge. Research, practice, timing… but at least Lord Jaezred didn’t dismiss her.
“My Lord, my first reason for meeting you here was secrecy,” she brings her mind back into the clearing. “Here, though, is the second part of my question and the second reason for bringing you here. Is there anything I can do for you that would be a fair exchange for some practical training in the methods you allude to? Not some relentless bootcamp, but when the moment arises… when the research is done and the natural magic learned… would you take on a pupil? And what would be a fair payment or service in return?”
“I’ve told you. For your assistance in the Underdark, you have my aid whenever you want or need it. Consider this a favour returned. Now, we can get started with a little bit of practice.” Jaezred walks further into the vast training grounds, looking around at the obstacle course. He takes off his fur-lined overcoat and drapes it over a low tree branch, then puts his hat and goggles on top of it. “Tell me. What would you like to try out first?”
Sorrel looks a little uneasy. “Silencing or occupying hands… Silence I can do. Hands… I wonder…” She looks around the clearing uncertainly. “How would you suggest we proceed, my Lord? Draw up a target?”
“You can try it on me. I can take a little punishment.” He takes up a position some 30 feet away from her and plants his cane on the leafy ground, smiling confidently at her. “Shall we begin?”
Sorrel paces slowly around Jaezred, eyeing up the distance between them and weighing up his defences. Silence would only work if he couldn’t move 20 feet or if he had no idea the spell had been cast. He was watching her. That was out. Indeed, he was anticipating her attack — a position she hated to be in.
“Now, silence is a good way of disabling verbal-based spellcasting, but how would you ensure that I stay in there without the help of a teammate?” he calls out to her, as if he has read her mind.
Sorrel nods carefully and reaches for her bow, drops it and kneels to retrieve it, doing her level best to look shamefaced. As she kneels, she begins the whispering that only the plants understood, urging them to reach out to Jaezred and restrain him as fast as is possible without him noticing. The vines, the shoots, the bushes she summons to hold Jaezred in place and prevent him pursuing her as she paces backwards a full 35 feet.
“I am uncertain, my Lord,” she fakes. “Perhaps you should go first.”
He laughs. “Not a bad idea. But you shouldn’t forget a little thing every mage takes the time to teach themselves…”
The drow speaks a command word, and suddenly a loud, thundering noise is heard, blasting away the plants restraining him with a sonic boom, as he disappears entirely.
Sorrel searches the clearing frantically.
“Teleportation, Sorrel Darkfire!” Jaezred’s voice sounds behind her. She turns around to see him standing on a tall rock on the edge of the obstacle course. “Let me tell you a not-so-secret: a lot of mages panic when a warrior gets within five feet of them, and that is why every semi-competent mage you will meet has some sort of teleportation spell in their arsenal — an escape route when they need it. Always anticipate something like this.”
Although she knows she is making a tactical error, Sorrel bristles a little at the lesson. She misty steps onto the rock just behind him, taps him on the shoulder and says quietly, “I have been taught a little by drow masters already.”
She has her rapier in her hand, but can’t bring herself to hit out so points the blade towards him then curses. “This is not the way I will win this. I need to think smarter than usual.”
He grins. “That’s right. So, you have me at swordpoint. What will you do now?”
She thinks hard, feeling like a kid being roiled at a dockside dice game. “This is a fine blade, but I expect you will be prepared for this. Let’s suppose, for now, I had time to strike a couple of blows, what would your next move be?”
“I’d be gone and out of your sight even before the second blow. Or, if I’m feeling a little daring, I might stay and do this…”
He starts muttering another incantation and tracing an arcane sigil in the air. Sorrel senses a cold presence growing behind her. Out from the shadows, a black panther leaps up, eyes glowing red and fangs bared with fury, and swipes at her. When its pitch claws dig into her side, phasing through her leather armour, a debilitating chill spreads through her entire body from within. It feels as if her internal organs have been frozen. She swiftly channels some small part of this assault into her own weapon, absorbing and loading it up for her own use.
“If I’m feeling cheeky, I could also magically charm you and tell you to take a walk for eight hours, but this is a bit more fun,” Jaezred remarks.
Sorrel nods, feeling the cold energy stored in her weapon, but also certain that she is limited in her options. When she looks back at him, he has moved away once more, having hopped off the rock and walked to lean against a dead log. The shadowy panther makes a soundless growl at her.
Sorrel hates being outnumbered. She feels the touch of fey blood coursing through her and cries out silently to the spirits of the beasts around her. Two dire wolves are there as they have always been there and they bare their teeth, standing between her and the panther.
“We could let our pets dispute this territory but it seems a little unfair to play on their good intentions. Shall we let them stand?”
“Not bad,” he says, rubbing his chin. “But may I offer a suggestion? Rather than wasting your dire wolves’ time on He’lylbreia there, you would do well to remember that all summoning spells require concentration. Break the caster’s concentration, and the summons disappear. What you could have done was summon those dire wolves on me instead.”
“Trust me, my Lord, the thought had crossed my mind, but I am a little uncomfortable with attacking you still. We have a complex relationship, you and I, at a fledgling stage, and for some reason watching my friends… or using my rapier…” she trails off. “It would be much easier if I didn’t like you. I would have pulled the old lightning arrow ambush ploy at the outset. Although that’s exactly what I always do, so what’s the point? Humbug.”
“Lightning arrow ambush ploy? Tell me more about that.”
“You gave me the first move, my Lord, and I specialise in moving particularly fast under such circumstances. Let me demonstrate on that stump…”
She moves like lightning, muttering a brief incantation as an arrow flies from her bow. The first crackles into life as a bolt of pure storm energy and strikes the stump sending forked shards of power through to the roots, followed rapidly by a poorly aimed second and a tightly targeted third. “It’s enough to take out a moderately experienced spellcaster, although magic defences might remove the sting… but it will never be enough for anyone with years of practice in the arts…”
She curses to herself. She had only let the arrows fly to hide her wounded pride and ended up looking foolish. It’s this kind of strategy that will get you killed, she thinks, then turns to Jaezred sheepishly. “Yes, I know…”
“I don’t think you should discount that opening move.” He slowly walks closer to her as he eyes up the destroyed, slightly smoking tree stump. “It’s a formidable amount of damage. However, I do notice that you’ve been relying on spells so far, using up magic that I know you would not have much in reserve. Every spell you have casted today, I could have counterspelled with ease. You should not think of your martial skills or physical prowess as ‘not enough’. You have that advantage over most mages, so use it well.”
Sorrel looks up at the sun, now reaching its zenith, and suggests they stop the sparring. “I have a lot to think about,” she muses. “I also have some unusually fragrant cheese, freshly baked bread and a delicate smoked sausage from the Dawn Market if you feel like a light lunch?”
Now he seems quite pleased. “Indeed I do,” he says, sitting down on a rock. He procures a pipe and a box of tobacco from his coat pocket and begins stuffing it as the shadow panther jumps down to lie at his feet, rubbing up against a leg. Sorrel gets the feeling that if it could purr, it would. He lights the pipe with a flame conjured on the tip of a finger, puffs on it, and soon a fragrant rosy smell fills the air around them.
“Smoke?” he asks, offering the pipe to her.
Sorrel shakes her head. “It was banned in… my training establishment. They had ways of making it nauseating to us. Even after all these years. But I find the scent of other people’s smoking very pleasant, so please waft your smoke towards me. The psychics at the House wanted us to move freely in smoky rooms but avoid the weed ourselves. An interesting few days in the Sky Born Rooms…”
“As you wish,” he says, and blows a lungful of rose-scented into the air, where a zephyr breezes gently it towards Sorrel.
She pulls an elaborately carved dagger from her belt — one of many — and carves up the simple meal, offering neatly cut slices of bread, cheese and meat to Jaezred whilst throwing chunks of sausage to the dire wolves and the panther. He’lylbreia does not eat, and merely sniffs and swats at the meat.
“It’s interesting,” she says conversationally. “You are the first person to train here with me and I wasn’t sure I’d be comfortable. But,” and she leans back against a fallen bough used for fencing training, “it’s surprisingly pleasant to take a break with someone else for a change. Who would have thought?”
Jaezred leans back and pops a cut of bread into his mouth. “When I marched in the War of the Silver Marches, our only joy was sitting down together for a break and eating rations with delicacies from home. Black truffles, moss snails, rothé cheese, cave fish caviar…” His voice trails off and there is a look of mild embarrassment on his face, as if slightly ashamed of being sentimental in her presence. “But I shan’t lull you to sleep with boring war stories. Anyway, how have you been? It must have been terribly disappointing for you to learn about Lady Oziah’s relationship status, but have you caught up with Miss Silvia again? I do believe she is still single.”
Sorrel smiles. “It is interesting to discover someone whose defensive strategy is equal to my own. In conversational terms, I mean. In battle, you are clearly superior. Although I am learning, Lord Jaezred, I am learning. But I propose a set of rules for the bout we are on the verge of starting - we take turns in questions just as we do in sparring. I answer, then you answer. And so we proceed.”
She takes her elaborately carved dagger from her belt again and lays on the ground between them, the blade pointing towards her. The name VARGA is carved into the handle.
“Ah, a game then,” he says, though he seems a bit hesitant.
“Lady Oziah was always a crush,” she begins. “I mean, have you seen her?” She shakes her head. “Those looks ought to come with a public health warning. But that temper, bless her heart, and that insouciant disregard for faith — sincerely meant, I have no doubt… There's only room for one sulky, mysterious predator in any relationship, so whilst it’s always disappointing when you realise that there are people in the world who don’t find you devastatingly attractive, anything between Lady Oziah and me would have been dangerously explosive and probably illegal. I’m not sure the continent would have been big enough to contain the collateral damage.”
Jaezred laughs. “Oh, how I love a messy affair.”
She pauses and smiles wistfully. “Although a weekend in a hotel room with Deliliah and Oziah would be a beautiful way to die… But Silvia…”
Her face twists awkwardly. “That’s a different sort of danger. It is so rare in life to meet someone you have an instant connection with. It’s a spark that I couldn’t control if I tried. But she is a child. I have fought with countless regiments of filthy scumbags, I have spent months learning strange arts of persuasion in the Dark Basement of the House and I have developed outrageous tastes. She has never known a lover. That’s a lot of responsibility. It may stagger you to discover I have struggled to master emotional commitment. I tend to run away.”
Jaezred’s eyebrows are high up on his forehead at this point. She looks around the clearing and gestures expansively. “I am here and not in Fort Ettin, for example. So… I don’t know what to do. I am lost. I have no answer there. I have a darkness that emerges at times and can make me dangerous, especially to those I share a bed with. When the dreams come, I am afraid of myself and would never want to risk hurting her. Now, Lord Jaezred…”
She takes the dagger and turns it so the blade is pointing towards him. “Tell me… I have trained with drow masters and I served in a drow battalion in the Chult jungle when I was… doing this thing… I have so many questions for you as your path is so different to those I have served under. I would ask how you found magic, how the, um, recent change in your circumstances has affected you and most of all I would ask how you met your true love. But I only have one question. You choose. And please choose Imryll….”
His jaw falls open slightly and he stares into her pleading eyes, uncertain, as he considers this request. But finally, after a long, awkward, and silent moment, he sighs. “Fine. Fine. If this is how I shall get more gossip out of you, then so be it.
“Lady Imryll and I first met on the first day of Nightal, 1497, during the grand opening of Fort Ettin. I was on duty, looking out for suspicious characters, and her ladyship was spying on us for Queen Nicnevin, attempting to find out who the special guest for the night was. She kidnapped an ambassador in order to question him, we tracked her down, and then engaged in battle. She tried to charm and banish us but I countered every single one of her spells.” A smug smile forms on his lips as he reminisces on this fondly. “Then Sergeant Grimes knocked her on her derrière and she was forced to retreat, teleported off somewhere.
“I didn’t meet her again until two months later, during a ball at the Pierre-Vielle mansion. She was there to spy too and wasn’t expecting anyone who recognised her to be there. I certainly did though, and we spent the entire evening exchanging insults, dancing, and sparring… And by the end of it, we only discovered that we really enjoy each other’s company. But it was another several months before I saw her again, and I was…deeply conflicted about it all. A drow and a surface elf — if my family had heard of it, I would have been finished.”
Sorrel raises an eyebrow, mainly to prevent her jaw dropping. This was about eight times more complicated and 15 times more interesting than she’d expected.
“Does that satisfy your curiosity, Miss Darkfire?”
Sorrel hesitates. “I don’t want to push my luck, my Lord, but as someone deeply conflicted about a slightly different imbalance between herself and a… possible… partner… the resolution of the conflict,” she paused. “What helped you decide?”
He runs a hand through his silken-white hair. He has never pondered this question in this way before, not even in his private thoughts. He’lylbreia glances up at him with a curious look.
“I…wanted to be happy, and I wanted to make her happy. In the end, when all is said and done, that mattered more than any ancient grudge, or any dogma my family imposed upon me.”
Sorrel falls silent. She knows how that feels. It was how she felt about Sana before she was killed. That she would have stood beside her… well, she realises, she was about to say through Hell and suddenly the journey to the Abyss falls into place. She looks over at this entirely unexpected drow, his finesse and arch manners falling away to reveal a lover prepared to gamble everything. She nods and smiles, places her left hand over her heart and bows her head in the warriors salute. “Thank you my Lord, truly. That is courage few possess. I am grateful for your advice. Do you want to spin the knife or is there something more I should know?”
Jaezred smiles at her, a rather shy but genuine smile that looks almost out of place on him. “I do believe it is my turn now,” he says, turning the knife around to point at her. “I’d love to ask about your long and troubled past, Miss Darkfire, but I fear you might expire from old age before we are done and besides, it is something better done over drinks anyway. There was something you mentioned earlier that caught my interest. You said someone threatened Miss Silvia with a disintegrate?”
Sorrel’s face freezes into professional detachment. She scans the clearing carefully with standard tradecraft techniques, then leans forward and starts picking casually at chunks of grass. It would take a practised eye to notice she is clearing away a patch of earth and that practised eye would need to be watching very carefully and flexibly as she shuffles her body into different positions continually, blocking different lines of sight and yet — through subtle gestures — manages to convey that these are perfectly natural movements. An itch, a posture problem, reaching for food. As she moves, she delivers a string of banalities.
“Well, what is disintegrate really, I suppose? Is it what it claims to be? What, after all, does ‘disintegrate’ mean? To tear something apart atom by atom? And yet does the spell itself actually do that or is an explosion or a wall of force or something equally blunt that simply causes an enormous bodily trauma? If so, can that truly be said to be a dis-integration?”
She peppers her speech with questions as she idly moves between positions and toys with blades of grass. Eventually, she has cleared some bare ground and her fingers trace a message in the soft earth. “Can I trust you? Is anyone watching us with magic?” she writes, as she continues her monologue.
“But I suppose there are only two questions that count,” she says conversationally. “And I need you to answer both of them. Did you spot them in what I was saying? Do you know what I need to know?”
As she speaks, she brushes her hands over the earth, smoothing away the questions. They have been there for seconds. She has to hope that Lord Jaezred has seen them and, more importantly, that no-one else has. And she has to hope, above all things, that the answer to the first question is yes. Because she has realised, in this morning’s heated sparring, that she cannot act without a spellcaster of his experience.
The problem is, he can’t truly answer that question without her revealing a name — and what if that name is more important to him than her need? She is standing on a cliff edge with a stranger holding her up by gossamer threads. Her prayer is that the bond between those who have truly loved has some power beyond her fevered dreams.
Those crimson eyes bore into her own, and his hands move in the air and his voice chants an incantation as he casts a spell familiar to Sorrel: detect magic. He looks around.
“For your first question — always a complicated one with us dark elves, isn’t it? But at this moment, yes. For your second question — we are alone.”
Sorrel nods. And yet, her training demands extreme caution. She breathes and whispers the gentle words of the wind and the leaves and blades across the glade begin to rustle while the boughs and branches creak and groan as if storm tossed by a gale, making it hard to hear their murmured conversation.
“I have, as I say, worked for drow officers and House Masters and I know from complicated,” she smiles affectionately as she briefly reminisces. “But for now that is enough for me. There is one last question that cannot be written before I speak of this, my Lord. As I said earlier, my networks have not pried into your private life out of respect for you and my debt of honour. So I don’t know the names of your closest friends and allies on this plane. To avoid placing you in an uncomfortable position, it would serve us both if you named those you know capable of such a spell who you consider at least a close acquaintance.”
She pauses, cocks her head to one side and an apologetic smile twitches the corners of her mouth. “I am unduly cautious, perhaps, but then as a great man once said — I always think everything is a trap and so I am still alive.”
Jaezred knits his brows together. “So you are saying that it was a Dawnlands adventurer who threatened Miss Silvia?”
“I am saying, my Lord, who do you consider at least an acquaintance who can cast disintegration?” Sorrel’s poker face is long practised when it comes to the business of death.
“A very small handful, but they are all in Menzoberranzan,” he replies slowly. “In the Dawnlands, I know of only one other person with certainty who uses that spell: Veridian Pentaghast. I consider him more of a colleague than an acquaintance, if that is what you are asking.”
“What’s your definition of colleague, out of interest?” Sorrel’s face remains resolutely neutral. She asks as if it’s a linguistic question. “I didn’t know mages worked together as a rule.”
“Someone I work with on occasions. Now if you would stop being pedantic…?”
Sorrel smiles with apparent ease. “Of course my Lord, I was just curious. No, the person I am speaking of is not a Dawnlands adventurer,” her heart is sinking as she speaks. It would be unfair and thus unsafe to burden Jaezred with Veridian’s name. If something went wrong she would have to kill him — which she was sworn not to do, and clearly couldn’t given the sound thrashing he’d dealt out this morning.
“As far as I know, they are only here periodically for business reasons and I think they may have some dealings with Kavel, a good comrade, and I believe they know Derthaad, a city watch sergeant. My information is second-hand from Silvia so probably unreliable. But as you only know one other person who can cast the spell, it’s a relief to know there would be no conflict of interest for you.”
She sits back and drinks deeply from her canteen, using the precious seconds the long draught buys her to figure out her next move. She must answer Jaezred’s question or he will become suspicious, and then she needs to slowly wind this session down to give her time to think.
“So, yes, Silvia has been cursed — or perhaps blessed — by an unwanted pact with an entity who has attracted this mage’s attention. The mage is keen to eliminate any trace of this creature's influence by destroying all they have touched. I am caught in a dilemma as to whether this creature or the mage is on the side of the angels but I have promised Silvia my protection and so… I must protect her.”
She smiles. “And yet as you saw this morning I can hardly protect myself. So I have a steep hill to climb. Tell me, if it isn’t revealing too much — what do you consider the strengths and weaknesses of the disintegrate spell? How would you protect yourself, assuming for the sake of argument that counterspell was not an option?”
Jaezred stares at her with a blank, neutral face as she speaks. There is a beat of silence after her question is left hanging.
“It’s Veridian Pentaghast, isn’t it?”
“My information is second-hand so probably unreliable, and I don’t have a name I can be certain of either way,” Sorrel shrugs, her face neutral, as if the name was of no interest. “Much as you were no doubt uncertain as to the identity of the person we sought in the Underdark. When — or if — the time comes, I will investigate the situation appropriately and satisfy myself as to the identity and the intentions of the mage. Until then I am interested in the damage caused by the spell more than anything else.”
“Your masters should have told you that you are a terrible liar. Truly awful. Now, I’ve always known the man has an anger problem but what could Miss Silvia have done to provoke this? Something to do with her patron, is it?” he muses out loud. “Well, if you won’t tell me the truth, she will. She shouldn’t take that threat too seriously anyhow. Pentaghast can barely hit anything.” He barks out a derisive laugh.
“You know more than me, it would appear, my Lord,” Sorrel’s smile is bland as she rises and collects the remains of the lunch. “The advantage of a superb education. My sorry upbringing has, alas, left me with terrible habits that I must get rid of — to think, I was so provincial that I didn’t question you in the Underdark when you chose to keep a secret that imperilled lives. You must find me terribly gauche. And please forgive my foolish question about trust. I can assure you, you are no more bound by your answer than you are by your honour, so feel free to speak to whoever you choose, including Silvia, about our conversation. I am aware that idle curiosity always trumps love, care and protection when a gentleman decides he has a casual interest.”
An amused grin spreads across his face, wide and mocking. “Oh come now, don’t be offended! You are not so stupid to think that I would take sides in this issue, much less Pentaghast’s?” He chuckles, seemingly at Veridian’s expense but Sorrel can feel the condescension aimed at her. “For all your sanctimonious harping about ‘love, care, and protection’, you haven’t even done basic research on the man. It’s plain to see that, aside from his name and reputation, you know absolutely nothing about him despite information about him being quite freely available. I certainly hope this does not reflect the quality of your professional work, Miss Darkfire. Well, I can tell you that if he was serious about killing Miss Silvia, then she would already be dead.”
He puts a dainty hand on his chest. “She’s not the only one he has ever threatened to disintegrate.”
Sorrel eyes him carefully. “I have found, my Lord, that when making enquiries about people it is wise to assume they will learn of your interests,” she remains neutral, with a professional smile but the shutters behind her eyes have lifted a little. “I was taught that the first step in any encounter is to ensure you will emerge victorious — or failing that, alive — before you set out. I served with the Herlinga Clan in one of the mountain wars and they would not take to the field unless they outnumbered the enemy five to one. I do not have that luxury. But I would be alarmed at the quality of my professional work, as you put it, if I started researching someone before I knew how to kill them.”
“All I hear are excuses for shoddy work. Is that your customer service line? You should really think of a better one if so.” Smirking, he rises to his feet whilst picking up the knife by the blade, and offers it to Sorrel with the handle pointing towards her. “Well, since you have refused to be honest to me, I believe our game is at an end.”
Sorrel is briefly frozen to the spot. To insult her work is to insult the core of her being. If her debt to Jaezred was not so profound, only one of them would leave this clearing. This has been a black day in a line of grim encounters. Again she is reminded of the House Master’s lesson — you can have no friends. Friendship is a weakness that will kill you. She steps forward, holding her smile in place and accepts the knife with a nod.
“I believe you are right, my Lord,” she straps her backpack shut as she talks. “And it has been an absolute pleasure to learn so much about the delicacies of sparring with the arcane today. I cannot express my gratitude enough. I know that I have taken up more than half of your day for no reward to yourself and for that I am both grateful and apologetic. It will be far safer for both of us if I check the traps as we leave just in case, but it shouldn’t take long. Please bear with me.”
She moves carefully through the trees at the edge of the clearing until she reaches the heavily disguised path and disappears into the foliage. The glade is shady and warm and insects buzz happily in the unseasonal heat. Apart from their delicate throb, everything is silent. Eventually she reappears and gestures for Jaezred to follow her.
Her breath, barely audible, sounds like a summer breeze and — as if in answer — bushes and grasses start to grow and flourish across the glade, covering the stumps and logs, as the mallorn trees unknit their branches and slowly inch back their canopy. Nature is reclaiming its own.
Sorrel places a finger on her lips to plead for silence and beckons him again to hurry as the sun begins to dapple the floor in the centre of the slowly vanishing training ground.
After a long stretch of silent walking, they arrive at the eaves of the forest, and Jaezred speaks up from behind her, “Come now, let us be friends again, Miss Darkfire. We’ve bared our hearts to each other, that has to count for something.”
He’lylbreia brushes up against her leg and looks up at her with wide feline eyes, their tendril-like tail swishing back and forth, expecting pets on the head.
“I remain forever in your debt Lord Jaezred, of course,” Sorrel stands aside to let him pass and reach the road. “I think we may expect different things from the word friendship, you and I. The clearing that you saw, that was part of the heart of me. You were the only person who saw it. That was not the place to describe my work as shoddy. It is who I am. There is only the work. The rest I am learning. I understand you have questions and points of view that I may not like to hear. But there are times, places and ways to explain that. For now, I am grateful to you for your time. Let’s at least have gratitude. That can go a long way.”
He lets out a sigh as he steps closer to her. “Look, I didn’t mean what I said. You insulted my honour and I could not have let you walk away unscathed. Will you forgive me?”
He extends a gloved hand out to her. An open offering of peace. She looks deep into his eyes. “You have many secrets, my Lord,” she says finally. “I said earlier, I respect your privacy. That is a mark of friendship for me. I wonder why you thought I had no right to mine? This has been an emotional day and I do not want to be hasty so I will forgive you but the surprise… that is something it will take time to forget. Let us start again. Another time. Another place. And let us see if we can become friends again.”
She takes his hand, her eyes still fixed on his, and cocks her head on one side, as if hearing voices from the past. Then she bows and steps back into the trees, vanishing into the gloom. Her whispering echoes briefly and the runes on the trees slowly melt into the bark as all sign of their presence disappears, swallowed by the bark and bough. And in less than a minute it is just a stretch of trees on the road to Daring Heights.
On the morning of the 2nd day of Alturiak, in wintry and pink Fort Ettin, Jaezred receives a visitor to his suite. A young acolyte from the Temple of Selûne who appears to be developing warrior-monk ambitions judging by the discrete weapon poorly concealed in her monk’s robe — a weapon he is sure he last saw in Sorrel Darkfire’s belt — arrives with a note. It is written in careful, formal, and grammatically flawed Drowic, as if the author had been taught the language in school but rarely written it since.
“My Lord Jaezred,
I crave advice of your giving in a matter of much importance of mine.
It is for the ears of one and not of the many.
If of the early morning hours time in two days from now freedom is yours, choose you the message to return yes.
If the one is road taking to Fort Ettin from the city Daring Heights, the hill of last visibility of the city — or of the first visibility of the city if on the journey to Daring Heights city from Fort Ettin - see the west tree once before had been struck by lightning.
Arriving there when dawn has gone two hours ago. The sun is shining. The birds are singing.
The runes of numbers mark the way. Colbauth at the beginning. Sreen rune — stopping!
I will help. But stopping, please stopping and waiting.
Yours most servant
Sorrel”
Jaezred chuckles and tucks the note into his coat pocket. “Tell her yes,” he says to the acolyte.
The shattered oak is marked with an elegant colbauth rune indicating a path barely visible between two large boughs.
Runes lead to runes across the uneven forest floor, following way markers through bushes that appear impenetrable until approached from the direction indicated, whereupon the path is clearly visible. The drow mage treks past the foliage, brushing stray leaves and bits of branches off his shoulders and casting prestidigitation to clean any stains left on his impeccable fur-lined overcoat from time to time.
Eventually, there is the sreen rune, the Drowic word for “danger” — although the path ahead seems wide and inviting. He stops, standing on the edge of the path, and looks around curiously.
Sorrel materialises next to him, in a move he recognises as classic misty step tactics. She bows low.
“Lord Jaezred Vandree,” she places her weapon hand over her heart as she bows and holds her left arm out to the side, empty palm facing him. “I am honoured you are here.” Her spoken Drowic is rusty but considerably better than her written style.
“Miss Darkfire, salutations,” he responds in the same tongue. “I must say, this is quite an unusual way of asking for some pointers on Elvish grammar.” He shoots a teasing grin at her and there is a twinkle of humour in his eyes behind the goggles of day.
“I have a place I train just…. Some way ahead,” she regards him carefully for a moment. “My tradition demands I blindfold you from here but frankly it makes guiding you a pain in the… extremely difficult and I can’t imagine you have any interest in letting anyone know where this place is. Traditions are there to be broken. But follow me carefully, even though the going will be slow.”
She steps off the path into the dense foliage which parts easily. There is a narrow route between rows of trees where Sorrel kneels and begins the slow, precise process of disarming an extensive collection of elaborate traps - releasing hair triggers, tracing false floors and detaching spring loaded blades. Her face is focussed and peaceful as she feels her way forward, taking time and care over each mechanism.
“I change them regularly,” she explains in a pause between a series of needles concealed behind a trunk and a noose hidden by dust and leaves. “There’s no need for most of them but I find the process soothing.”
“We all have our routines, some of which are more…paranoid than others,” he remarks. Sorrel gives a wry smile.
Eventually, the bushes part and a large clearing stretches ahead. The tall mallorn trees surrounding it have somehow knit their trunks and boughs together to form a solid barrier — Jaezred recognises nature magic at work — and the trees uppermost boughs reach over the top of the clearing so that a network of branches, leaves and twigs provide a canopy through which the sun sends beams that dapple the glade’s floor.
There is one long line of open sky that traces the route of the sun. It blazes down in the centre of the clearing, and Sorrel gives Jaezred a quick glance then starts to breathe and whisper, as if she is mimicking the wind on a spring morning. Slowly the branches move together, blocking out the sun completely and the leaves all align so that the clearing is almost in darkness.
“I like to train into the sun,” Sorrel explains. “Fighting blind is an art that requires constant practice, but I hope this lighting suits you better my Lord?”
He takes off his top hat and pulls the goggles off of his face. “Indeed it does.”
The clearing floor is covered with ropes and fallen logs and old blasted trunks which gradually reveal their purpose - a collection of criss crossed trunks, some thick, some thin, marking out a maze that all but an acrobat would stumble from; boulders of various sizes held in rope nets and tied loosely to trees, ready to swing back and forth with deadly force; targets and creature shapes chalked on the burnt stumps, peppered with tiny holes; obstacle courses; low nets; a sheer wall of mallorn trunks with barely a hold or branch to grip….
“Welcome to my training ground,” Sorrel is suddenly shy. She hopes Jaezred will… well, not approve, per se. This all seems too visceral for his delicate sensibilities to truly enjoy. But at least appreciate.
“This is certainly interesting,” he says, studying the surprising set-up before him. “So you have brought me here for training. But what role do I play, the instructor or the sparring partner? Or, gods forbid, the student?” He playfully feigns offence on the last word. “I must say, whatever Lady Oziah may have told you, my crossbow skills are nothing to sniff at…”
Sorrel looks at him uncertainly. She knows he can’t remember the Battle of the Temple, so decides not to remind him that she’s watched him send crossbow bolts into the fallen Delilah, finishing her off after his disintegration beam… And then she thinks, well, that’s why we’re here…
“Actually my Lord, I am well aware of your crossbow skills,” she says carefully. “You and I have seen each other in the grip of… well, details are vulgar. But I hope you will not be offended if I recall our, um, affray in the temple. Your crossbow bolts were on target despite the unusual state your body was in. And they followed your precisely targeted disintegration spell, which was excellently delivered. My compliments. We may have briefly been on uncertain sides but a skillful attack is always to be admired.”
She looks at him anxiously, hoping he takes her compliment as it was intended — at face value as one warrior to another.
The smile on his face fades away at the mention of the incident, and his expression morphs into something more solemn. “Ah… I see. I…thank you for your compliments? But well, Miss Darkfire, what are we here for exactly?”
“The disintegration spell,” she says simply. “I will speak frankly. It has taken my friend Faust, almost slain Deliliah and has been used to threaten Silvia, a woman I have under my protection. I have been in this game more years than I care to mention, and the training at the House was superb up to a point. In Faerun, I came across powerful mages once or twice but always in a well apportioned team. In Kantas, I have encountered them far more frequently. I have not always been surrounded by the collection of eldritch knights, high-level sorcerers and experienced clerics that I am used to. I fear that one day soon I may have to face one… if not alone, then comparatively unsupported. In short, my Lord, I want to learn how to defeat powerful magicians armed with a smattering of natural lore, some basic spiritual spells, these muscles and this cute little face.”
She looks away, her eyes searching her past. “I should say, my Lord, that even if what I ask is impossible, I will never run. Especially if my lovely Silvia’s life is on the line. I have lost people…” she stops, thinks, starts again. “I have lost someone… special… to a mage before I came here and I will not let it happen again.”
Jaezred takes a deep breath. “I understand. But, as you know, I have lost my magic and gained a new one. It is different now. Some of my combat capabilities have been replaced by other uses, so, for one, I can no longer cast the disintegrate spell. I apologise for disappointing you…or reassuring, perhaps? Regardless, what I can do is try to help you refine your battle strategies against powerful mages.”
Sorrel nods. “I am aware that your powers have changed although I am hazy on the details,” she eyes him awkwardly. “I like to make sure people who are important to me are alive and well so I ask around. I develop information networks. But I respect people’s privacy. Mostly. Yours I respect entirely. So I didn’t know the specifics. I am aware that not all magic is the same, just as not every weapon is the same. But there are principles that remain constant with weapons. Ranged weapons, you close stealthily and come up under their guard. Heavy weapons, stay nimble and tire them out. Light weapons, overpower them with a barrage of blows as their armour will be weak. Cavalry charges are easy to pick apart with rapid fire enfilade and decent flanking. And so on. Is it the same for powerful magic?”
“You are correct. There are weaknesses in spellcasting that a clever one could exploit, ways to make yourself an unviable target or to prevent a spell from being cast entirely. Most spells require either or both incantations and gestures to be cast, and thus, naturally, silencing a mage or occupying their hands somehow could effectively cripple them. You could also strip them of their arcane focus, that would make them unable to cast certain spells as well, though some mages, like me, have multiple foci on their persons. There is also the matter of sight, for many spells need the caster to be able to see their enemy in order to target them with said spell.”
Sorrel’s mind whirs so frantically she’s sure it must be echoing through the glade. A casual description of flanking a cavalry charge sounds easy as a sentence, but is fiendishly difficult in practice. Silencing, blinding and disarming mages sounds so simple, and is therefore bound to be an almost insurmountable challenge. Research, practice, timing… but at least Lord Jaezred didn’t dismiss her.
“My Lord, my first reason for meeting you here was secrecy,” she brings her mind back into the clearing. “Here, though, is the second part of my question and the second reason for bringing you here. Is there anything I can do for you that would be a fair exchange for some practical training in the methods you allude to? Not some relentless bootcamp, but when the moment arises… when the research is done and the natural magic learned… would you take on a pupil? And what would be a fair payment or service in return?”
“I’ve told you. For your assistance in the Underdark, you have my aid whenever you want or need it. Consider this a favour returned. Now, we can get started with a little bit of practice.” Jaezred walks further into the vast training grounds, looking around at the obstacle course. He takes off his fur-lined overcoat and drapes it over a low tree branch, then puts his hat and goggles on top of it. “Tell me. What would you like to try out first?”
Sorrel looks a little uneasy. “Silencing or occupying hands… Silence I can do. Hands… I wonder…” She looks around the clearing uncertainly. “How would you suggest we proceed, my Lord? Draw up a target?”
“You can try it on me. I can take a little punishment.” He takes up a position some 30 feet away from her and plants his cane on the leafy ground, smiling confidently at her. “Shall we begin?”
Sorrel paces slowly around Jaezred, eyeing up the distance between them and weighing up his defences. Silence would only work if he couldn’t move 20 feet or if he had no idea the spell had been cast. He was watching her. That was out. Indeed, he was anticipating her attack — a position she hated to be in.
“Now, silence is a good way of disabling verbal-based spellcasting, but how would you ensure that I stay in there without the help of a teammate?” he calls out to her, as if he has read her mind.
Sorrel nods carefully and reaches for her bow, drops it and kneels to retrieve it, doing her level best to look shamefaced. As she kneels, she begins the whispering that only the plants understood, urging them to reach out to Jaezred and restrain him as fast as is possible without him noticing. The vines, the shoots, the bushes she summons to hold Jaezred in place and prevent him pursuing her as she paces backwards a full 35 feet.
“I am uncertain, my Lord,” she fakes. “Perhaps you should go first.”
He laughs. “Not a bad idea. But you shouldn’t forget a little thing every mage takes the time to teach themselves…”
The drow speaks a command word, and suddenly a loud, thundering noise is heard, blasting away the plants restraining him with a sonic boom, as he disappears entirely.
Sorrel searches the clearing frantically.
“Teleportation, Sorrel Darkfire!” Jaezred’s voice sounds behind her. She turns around to see him standing on a tall rock on the edge of the obstacle course. “Let me tell you a not-so-secret: a lot of mages panic when a warrior gets within five feet of them, and that is why every semi-competent mage you will meet has some sort of teleportation spell in their arsenal — an escape route when they need it. Always anticipate something like this.”
Although she knows she is making a tactical error, Sorrel bristles a little at the lesson. She misty steps onto the rock just behind him, taps him on the shoulder and says quietly, “I have been taught a little by drow masters already.”
She has her rapier in her hand, but can’t bring herself to hit out so points the blade towards him then curses. “This is not the way I will win this. I need to think smarter than usual.”
He grins. “That’s right. So, you have me at swordpoint. What will you do now?”
She thinks hard, feeling like a kid being roiled at a dockside dice game. “This is a fine blade, but I expect you will be prepared for this. Let’s suppose, for now, I had time to strike a couple of blows, what would your next move be?”
“I’d be gone and out of your sight even before the second blow. Or, if I’m feeling a little daring, I might stay and do this…”
He starts muttering another incantation and tracing an arcane sigil in the air. Sorrel senses a cold presence growing behind her. Out from the shadows, a black panther leaps up, eyes glowing red and fangs bared with fury, and swipes at her. When its pitch claws dig into her side, phasing through her leather armour, a debilitating chill spreads through her entire body from within. It feels as if her internal organs have been frozen. She swiftly channels some small part of this assault into her own weapon, absorbing and loading it up for her own use.
“If I’m feeling cheeky, I could also magically charm you and tell you to take a walk for eight hours, but this is a bit more fun,” Jaezred remarks.
Sorrel nods, feeling the cold energy stored in her weapon, but also certain that she is limited in her options. When she looks back at him, he has moved away once more, having hopped off the rock and walked to lean against a dead log. The shadowy panther makes a soundless growl at her.
Sorrel hates being outnumbered. She feels the touch of fey blood coursing through her and cries out silently to the spirits of the beasts around her. Two dire wolves are there as they have always been there and they bare their teeth, standing between her and the panther.
“We could let our pets dispute this territory but it seems a little unfair to play on their good intentions. Shall we let them stand?”
“Not bad,” he says, rubbing his chin. “But may I offer a suggestion? Rather than wasting your dire wolves’ time on He’lylbreia there, you would do well to remember that all summoning spells require concentration. Break the caster’s concentration, and the summons disappear. What you could have done was summon those dire wolves on me instead.”
“Trust me, my Lord, the thought had crossed my mind, but I am a little uncomfortable with attacking you still. We have a complex relationship, you and I, at a fledgling stage, and for some reason watching my friends… or using my rapier…” she trails off. “It would be much easier if I didn’t like you. I would have pulled the old lightning arrow ambush ploy at the outset. Although that’s exactly what I always do, so what’s the point? Humbug.”
“Lightning arrow ambush ploy? Tell me more about that.”
“You gave me the first move, my Lord, and I specialise in moving particularly fast under such circumstances. Let me demonstrate on that stump…”
She moves like lightning, muttering a brief incantation as an arrow flies from her bow. The first crackles into life as a bolt of pure storm energy and strikes the stump sending forked shards of power through to the roots, followed rapidly by a poorly aimed second and a tightly targeted third. “It’s enough to take out a moderately experienced spellcaster, although magic defences might remove the sting… but it will never be enough for anyone with years of practice in the arts…”
She curses to herself. She had only let the arrows fly to hide her wounded pride and ended up looking foolish. It’s this kind of strategy that will get you killed, she thinks, then turns to Jaezred sheepishly. “Yes, I know…”
“I don’t think you should discount that opening move.” He slowly walks closer to her as he eyes up the destroyed, slightly smoking tree stump. “It’s a formidable amount of damage. However, I do notice that you’ve been relying on spells so far, using up magic that I know you would not have much in reserve. Every spell you have casted today, I could have counterspelled with ease. You should not think of your martial skills or physical prowess as ‘not enough’. You have that advantage over most mages, so use it well.”
Sorrel looks up at the sun, now reaching its zenith, and suggests they stop the sparring. “I have a lot to think about,” she muses. “I also have some unusually fragrant cheese, freshly baked bread and a delicate smoked sausage from the Dawn Market if you feel like a light lunch?”
Now he seems quite pleased. “Indeed I do,” he says, sitting down on a rock. He procures a pipe and a box of tobacco from his coat pocket and begins stuffing it as the shadow panther jumps down to lie at his feet, rubbing up against a leg. Sorrel gets the feeling that if it could purr, it would. He lights the pipe with a flame conjured on the tip of a finger, puffs on it, and soon a fragrant rosy smell fills the air around them.
“Smoke?” he asks, offering the pipe to her.
Sorrel shakes her head. “It was banned in… my training establishment. They had ways of making it nauseating to us. Even after all these years. But I find the scent of other people’s smoking very pleasant, so please waft your smoke towards me. The psychics at the House wanted us to move freely in smoky rooms but avoid the weed ourselves. An interesting few days in the Sky Born Rooms…”
“As you wish,” he says, and blows a lungful of rose-scented into the air, where a zephyr breezes gently it towards Sorrel.
She pulls an elaborately carved dagger from her belt — one of many — and carves up the simple meal, offering neatly cut slices of bread, cheese and meat to Jaezred whilst throwing chunks of sausage to the dire wolves and the panther. He’lylbreia does not eat, and merely sniffs and swats at the meat.
“It’s interesting,” she says conversationally. “You are the first person to train here with me and I wasn’t sure I’d be comfortable. But,” and she leans back against a fallen bough used for fencing training, “it’s surprisingly pleasant to take a break with someone else for a change. Who would have thought?”
Jaezred leans back and pops a cut of bread into his mouth. “When I marched in the War of the Silver Marches, our only joy was sitting down together for a break and eating rations with delicacies from home. Black truffles, moss snails, rothé cheese, cave fish caviar…” His voice trails off and there is a look of mild embarrassment on his face, as if slightly ashamed of being sentimental in her presence. “But I shan’t lull you to sleep with boring war stories. Anyway, how have you been? It must have been terribly disappointing for you to learn about Lady Oziah’s relationship status, but have you caught up with Miss Silvia again? I do believe she is still single.”
Sorrel smiles. “It is interesting to discover someone whose defensive strategy is equal to my own. In conversational terms, I mean. In battle, you are clearly superior. Although I am learning, Lord Jaezred, I am learning. But I propose a set of rules for the bout we are on the verge of starting - we take turns in questions just as we do in sparring. I answer, then you answer. And so we proceed.”
She takes her elaborately carved dagger from her belt again and lays on the ground between them, the blade pointing towards her. The name VARGA is carved into the handle.
“Ah, a game then,” he says, though he seems a bit hesitant.
“Lady Oziah was always a crush,” she begins. “I mean, have you seen her?” She shakes her head. “Those looks ought to come with a public health warning. But that temper, bless her heart, and that insouciant disregard for faith — sincerely meant, I have no doubt… There's only room for one sulky, mysterious predator in any relationship, so whilst it’s always disappointing when you realise that there are people in the world who don’t find you devastatingly attractive, anything between Lady Oziah and me would have been dangerously explosive and probably illegal. I’m not sure the continent would have been big enough to contain the collateral damage.”
Jaezred laughs. “Oh, how I love a messy affair.”
She pauses and smiles wistfully. “Although a weekend in a hotel room with Deliliah and Oziah would be a beautiful way to die… But Silvia…”
Her face twists awkwardly. “That’s a different sort of danger. It is so rare in life to meet someone you have an instant connection with. It’s a spark that I couldn’t control if I tried. But she is a child. I have fought with countless regiments of filthy scumbags, I have spent months learning strange arts of persuasion in the Dark Basement of the House and I have developed outrageous tastes. She has never known a lover. That’s a lot of responsibility. It may stagger you to discover I have struggled to master emotional commitment. I tend to run away.”
Jaezred’s eyebrows are high up on his forehead at this point. She looks around the clearing and gestures expansively. “I am here and not in Fort Ettin, for example. So… I don’t know what to do. I am lost. I have no answer there. I have a darkness that emerges at times and can make me dangerous, especially to those I share a bed with. When the dreams come, I am afraid of myself and would never want to risk hurting her. Now, Lord Jaezred…”
She takes the dagger and turns it so the blade is pointing towards him. “Tell me… I have trained with drow masters and I served in a drow battalion in the Chult jungle when I was… doing this thing… I have so many questions for you as your path is so different to those I have served under. I would ask how you found magic, how the, um, recent change in your circumstances has affected you and most of all I would ask how you met your true love. But I only have one question. You choose. And please choose Imryll….”
His jaw falls open slightly and he stares into her pleading eyes, uncertain, as he considers this request. But finally, after a long, awkward, and silent moment, he sighs. “Fine. Fine. If this is how I shall get more gossip out of you, then so be it.
“Lady Imryll and I first met on the first day of Nightal, 1497, during the grand opening of Fort Ettin. I was on duty, looking out for suspicious characters, and her ladyship was spying on us for Queen Nicnevin, attempting to find out who the special guest for the night was. She kidnapped an ambassador in order to question him, we tracked her down, and then engaged in battle. She tried to charm and banish us but I countered every single one of her spells.” A smug smile forms on his lips as he reminisces on this fondly. “Then Sergeant Grimes knocked her on her derrière and she was forced to retreat, teleported off somewhere.
“I didn’t meet her again until two months later, during a ball at the Pierre-Vielle mansion. She was there to spy too and wasn’t expecting anyone who recognised her to be there. I certainly did though, and we spent the entire evening exchanging insults, dancing, and sparring… And by the end of it, we only discovered that we really enjoy each other’s company. But it was another several months before I saw her again, and I was…deeply conflicted about it all. A drow and a surface elf — if my family had heard of it, I would have been finished.”
Sorrel raises an eyebrow, mainly to prevent her jaw dropping. This was about eight times more complicated and 15 times more interesting than she’d expected.
“Does that satisfy your curiosity, Miss Darkfire?”
Sorrel hesitates. “I don’t want to push my luck, my Lord, but as someone deeply conflicted about a slightly different imbalance between herself and a… possible… partner… the resolution of the conflict,” she paused. “What helped you decide?”
He runs a hand through his silken-white hair. He has never pondered this question in this way before, not even in his private thoughts. He’lylbreia glances up at him with a curious look.
“I…wanted to be happy, and I wanted to make her happy. In the end, when all is said and done, that mattered more than any ancient grudge, or any dogma my family imposed upon me.”
Sorrel falls silent. She knows how that feels. It was how she felt about Sana before she was killed. That she would have stood beside her… well, she realises, she was about to say through Hell and suddenly the journey to the Abyss falls into place. She looks over at this entirely unexpected drow, his finesse and arch manners falling away to reveal a lover prepared to gamble everything. She nods and smiles, places her left hand over her heart and bows her head in the warriors salute. “Thank you my Lord, truly. That is courage few possess. I am grateful for your advice. Do you want to spin the knife or is there something more I should know?”
Jaezred smiles at her, a rather shy but genuine smile that looks almost out of place on him. “I do believe it is my turn now,” he says, turning the knife around to point at her. “I’d love to ask about your long and troubled past, Miss Darkfire, but I fear you might expire from old age before we are done and besides, it is something better done over drinks anyway. There was something you mentioned earlier that caught my interest. You said someone threatened Miss Silvia with a disintegrate?”
Sorrel’s face freezes into professional detachment. She scans the clearing carefully with standard tradecraft techniques, then leans forward and starts picking casually at chunks of grass. It would take a practised eye to notice she is clearing away a patch of earth and that practised eye would need to be watching very carefully and flexibly as she shuffles her body into different positions continually, blocking different lines of sight and yet — through subtle gestures — manages to convey that these are perfectly natural movements. An itch, a posture problem, reaching for food. As she moves, she delivers a string of banalities.
“Well, what is disintegrate really, I suppose? Is it what it claims to be? What, after all, does ‘disintegrate’ mean? To tear something apart atom by atom? And yet does the spell itself actually do that or is an explosion or a wall of force or something equally blunt that simply causes an enormous bodily trauma? If so, can that truly be said to be a dis-integration?”
She peppers her speech with questions as she idly moves between positions and toys with blades of grass. Eventually, she has cleared some bare ground and her fingers trace a message in the soft earth. “Can I trust you? Is anyone watching us with magic?” she writes, as she continues her monologue.
“But I suppose there are only two questions that count,” she says conversationally. “And I need you to answer both of them. Did you spot them in what I was saying? Do you know what I need to know?”
As she speaks, she brushes her hands over the earth, smoothing away the questions. They have been there for seconds. She has to hope that Lord Jaezred has seen them and, more importantly, that no-one else has. And she has to hope, above all things, that the answer to the first question is yes. Because she has realised, in this morning’s heated sparring, that she cannot act without a spellcaster of his experience.
The problem is, he can’t truly answer that question without her revealing a name — and what if that name is more important to him than her need? She is standing on a cliff edge with a stranger holding her up by gossamer threads. Her prayer is that the bond between those who have truly loved has some power beyond her fevered dreams.
Those crimson eyes bore into her own, and his hands move in the air and his voice chants an incantation as he casts a spell familiar to Sorrel: detect magic. He looks around.
“For your first question — always a complicated one with us dark elves, isn’t it? But at this moment, yes. For your second question — we are alone.”
Sorrel nods. And yet, her training demands extreme caution. She breathes and whispers the gentle words of the wind and the leaves and blades across the glade begin to rustle while the boughs and branches creak and groan as if storm tossed by a gale, making it hard to hear their murmured conversation.
“I have, as I say, worked for drow officers and House Masters and I know from complicated,” she smiles affectionately as she briefly reminisces. “But for now that is enough for me. There is one last question that cannot be written before I speak of this, my Lord. As I said earlier, my networks have not pried into your private life out of respect for you and my debt of honour. So I don’t know the names of your closest friends and allies on this plane. To avoid placing you in an uncomfortable position, it would serve us both if you named those you know capable of such a spell who you consider at least a close acquaintance.”
She pauses, cocks her head to one side and an apologetic smile twitches the corners of her mouth. “I am unduly cautious, perhaps, but then as a great man once said — I always think everything is a trap and so I am still alive.”
Jaezred knits his brows together. “So you are saying that it was a Dawnlands adventurer who threatened Miss Silvia?”
“I am saying, my Lord, who do you consider at least an acquaintance who can cast disintegration?” Sorrel’s poker face is long practised when it comes to the business of death.
“A very small handful, but they are all in Menzoberranzan,” he replies slowly. “In the Dawnlands, I know of only one other person with certainty who uses that spell: Veridian Pentaghast. I consider him more of a colleague than an acquaintance, if that is what you are asking.”
“What’s your definition of colleague, out of interest?” Sorrel’s face remains resolutely neutral. She asks as if it’s a linguistic question. “I didn’t know mages worked together as a rule.”
“Someone I work with on occasions. Now if you would stop being pedantic…?”
Sorrel smiles with apparent ease. “Of course my Lord, I was just curious. No, the person I am speaking of is not a Dawnlands adventurer,” her heart is sinking as she speaks. It would be unfair and thus unsafe to burden Jaezred with Veridian’s name. If something went wrong she would have to kill him — which she was sworn not to do, and clearly couldn’t given the sound thrashing he’d dealt out this morning.
“As far as I know, they are only here periodically for business reasons and I think they may have some dealings with Kavel, a good comrade, and I believe they know Derthaad, a city watch sergeant. My information is second-hand from Silvia so probably unreliable. But as you only know one other person who can cast the spell, it’s a relief to know there would be no conflict of interest for you.”
She sits back and drinks deeply from her canteen, using the precious seconds the long draught buys her to figure out her next move. She must answer Jaezred’s question or he will become suspicious, and then she needs to slowly wind this session down to give her time to think.
“So, yes, Silvia has been cursed — or perhaps blessed — by an unwanted pact with an entity who has attracted this mage’s attention. The mage is keen to eliminate any trace of this creature's influence by destroying all they have touched. I am caught in a dilemma as to whether this creature or the mage is on the side of the angels but I have promised Silvia my protection and so… I must protect her.”
She smiles. “And yet as you saw this morning I can hardly protect myself. So I have a steep hill to climb. Tell me, if it isn’t revealing too much — what do you consider the strengths and weaknesses of the disintegrate spell? How would you protect yourself, assuming for the sake of argument that counterspell was not an option?”
Jaezred stares at her with a blank, neutral face as she speaks. There is a beat of silence after her question is left hanging.
“It’s Veridian Pentaghast, isn’t it?”
“My information is second-hand so probably unreliable, and I don’t have a name I can be certain of either way,” Sorrel shrugs, her face neutral, as if the name was of no interest. “Much as you were no doubt uncertain as to the identity of the person we sought in the Underdark. When — or if — the time comes, I will investigate the situation appropriately and satisfy myself as to the identity and the intentions of the mage. Until then I am interested in the damage caused by the spell more than anything else.”
“Your masters should have told you that you are a terrible liar. Truly awful. Now, I’ve always known the man has an anger problem but what could Miss Silvia have done to provoke this? Something to do with her patron, is it?” he muses out loud. “Well, if you won’t tell me the truth, she will. She shouldn’t take that threat too seriously anyhow. Pentaghast can barely hit anything.” He barks out a derisive laugh.
“You know more than me, it would appear, my Lord,” Sorrel’s smile is bland as she rises and collects the remains of the lunch. “The advantage of a superb education. My sorry upbringing has, alas, left me with terrible habits that I must get rid of — to think, I was so provincial that I didn’t question you in the Underdark when you chose to keep a secret that imperilled lives. You must find me terribly gauche. And please forgive my foolish question about trust. I can assure you, you are no more bound by your answer than you are by your honour, so feel free to speak to whoever you choose, including Silvia, about our conversation. I am aware that idle curiosity always trumps love, care and protection when a gentleman decides he has a casual interest.”
An amused grin spreads across his face, wide and mocking. “Oh come now, don’t be offended! You are not so stupid to think that I would take sides in this issue, much less Pentaghast’s?” He chuckles, seemingly at Veridian’s expense but Sorrel can feel the condescension aimed at her. “For all your sanctimonious harping about ‘love, care, and protection’, you haven’t even done basic research on the man. It’s plain to see that, aside from his name and reputation, you know absolutely nothing about him despite information about him being quite freely available. I certainly hope this does not reflect the quality of your professional work, Miss Darkfire. Well, I can tell you that if he was serious about killing Miss Silvia, then she would already be dead.”
He puts a dainty hand on his chest. “She’s not the only one he has ever threatened to disintegrate.”
Sorrel eyes him carefully. “I have found, my Lord, that when making enquiries about people it is wise to assume they will learn of your interests,” she remains neutral, with a professional smile but the shutters behind her eyes have lifted a little. “I was taught that the first step in any encounter is to ensure you will emerge victorious — or failing that, alive — before you set out. I served with the Herlinga Clan in one of the mountain wars and they would not take to the field unless they outnumbered the enemy five to one. I do not have that luxury. But I would be alarmed at the quality of my professional work, as you put it, if I started researching someone before I knew how to kill them.”
“All I hear are excuses for shoddy work. Is that your customer service line? You should really think of a better one if so.” Smirking, he rises to his feet whilst picking up the knife by the blade, and offers it to Sorrel with the handle pointing towards her. “Well, since you have refused to be honest to me, I believe our game is at an end.”
Sorrel is briefly frozen to the spot. To insult her work is to insult the core of her being. If her debt to Jaezred was not so profound, only one of them would leave this clearing. This has been a black day in a line of grim encounters. Again she is reminded of the House Master’s lesson — you can have no friends. Friendship is a weakness that will kill you. She steps forward, holding her smile in place and accepts the knife with a nod.
“I believe you are right, my Lord,” she straps her backpack shut as she talks. “And it has been an absolute pleasure to learn so much about the delicacies of sparring with the arcane today. I cannot express my gratitude enough. I know that I have taken up more than half of your day for no reward to yourself and for that I am both grateful and apologetic. It will be far safer for both of us if I check the traps as we leave just in case, but it shouldn’t take long. Please bear with me.”
She moves carefully through the trees at the edge of the clearing until she reaches the heavily disguised path and disappears into the foliage. The glade is shady and warm and insects buzz happily in the unseasonal heat. Apart from their delicate throb, everything is silent. Eventually she reappears and gestures for Jaezred to follow her.
Her breath, barely audible, sounds like a summer breeze and — as if in answer — bushes and grasses start to grow and flourish across the glade, covering the stumps and logs, as the mallorn trees unknit their branches and slowly inch back their canopy. Nature is reclaiming its own.
Sorrel places a finger on her lips to plead for silence and beckons him again to hurry as the sun begins to dapple the floor in the centre of the slowly vanishing training ground.
After a long stretch of silent walking, they arrive at the eaves of the forest, and Jaezred speaks up from behind her, “Come now, let us be friends again, Miss Darkfire. We’ve bared our hearts to each other, that has to count for something.”
He’lylbreia brushes up against her leg and looks up at her with wide feline eyes, their tendril-like tail swishing back and forth, expecting pets on the head.
“I remain forever in your debt Lord Jaezred, of course,” Sorrel stands aside to let him pass and reach the road. “I think we may expect different things from the word friendship, you and I. The clearing that you saw, that was part of the heart of me. You were the only person who saw it. That was not the place to describe my work as shoddy. It is who I am. There is only the work. The rest I am learning. I understand you have questions and points of view that I may not like to hear. But there are times, places and ways to explain that. For now, I am grateful to you for your time. Let’s at least have gratitude. That can go a long way.”
He lets out a sigh as he steps closer to her. “Look, I didn’t mean what I said. You insulted my honour and I could not have let you walk away unscathed. Will you forgive me?”
He extends a gloved hand out to her. An open offering of peace. She looks deep into his eyes. “You have many secrets, my Lord,” she says finally. “I said earlier, I respect your privacy. That is a mark of friendship for me. I wonder why you thought I had no right to mine? This has been an emotional day and I do not want to be hasty so I will forgive you but the surprise… that is something it will take time to forget. Let us start again. Another time. Another place. And let us see if we can become friends again.”
She takes his hand, her eyes still fixed on his, and cocks her head on one side, as if hearing voices from the past. Then she bows and steps back into the trees, vanishing into the gloom. Her whispering echoes briefly and the runes on the trees slowly melt into the bark as all sign of their presence disappears, swallowed by the bark and bough. And in less than a minute it is just a stretch of trees on the road to Daring Heights.