A splitting headache – Taffeta

1495 DR, 11 Kythorn

Taffeta is glad to be back in time to put the girls to bed. When she heads out to answer a call for help posted on the Ettin’s notice-board, she rarely knows exactly how long she’ll be away from home; today was a nice quick expedition, and a successful one.
‘Where did you go today, Ma?’ says Aila in the candle-lit bedroom she and her sister share.
‘She went to another plane,’ answers Idari from the other bed.
‘How do *you* know?’ both Taffeta and Aila ask, almost at the same time.
Idari shrugs. ‘I guess you just seem different when you do it. Excited or something.’
Taffeta isn’t quite sure she believes that explanation, but Aila is already back to the original topic: ‘So, Ma? Where’d you go?’
Well, Taffeta thinks, it isn’t too late, and it will make quite a fun story for them. So she sits down at the foot of Idari’s bed and begins.

‘You remember Nowhere, who used to run the library?’ Idari nods vigorously. Unlike her mother, she knows how to read, and unlike her sister, she actually enjoys it. ‘Well, today he needed some help from his friends. And you know what we do when our friends need help?’
‘We do our best to help them.’ chorus the girls.
‘Yes we do. Well, Ka’sam from the Djinn And Tonic owed Nowhere a favour, and Nowhere wanted a way to improve his magic. Sometimes a magic spell needs a lot of thought, so it’s hard to do anything else at the same time. Nowhere wanted to find a way of casting a spell like that but being able to do other things too. And Ka’sam arranged for him to visit a fellow who could help him – but the journey might be a bit risky, so that’s where the rest of us came in.’

‘Now, this fellow was what they call a lich. You know what a lich is?’
‘It’s like a dead wizard,’ ventures Aila.
‘An *un*dead wizard,’ Idari corrects.
‘You’re both right! And you’ve to be very careful with liches, Nowhere told us on the way, because normally you don’t get to be a lich unless you’re very powerful *and* you’re up to no good.’
‘Who were you with?’ asks Aila.
‘Ah yes, I forgot to tell you. Well, it was me and Nowhere, and Leocanto, Barden, Dûm Bah, Sara, and that fellow Ludo who used to live round here and then went off to Port Ffirst. So. Where was I?’
‘We’ve to be careful with liches,’ says Idari brightly.
‘Quite right. But Ka’sam promised that this particular one wouldn’t hurt us, and Ka’sam’s always been reliable. So off we went to the plane where this lich lives. Mind you, I don’t think it was really a whole plane, more of a… Nowhere called it a demi-plane, I think. Anyway, it seemed like a great big graveyard, very spooky. When we arrived, the lich made the dust swirl up into a face that told us we could find him in his study but we’d have to get past the defences. Not very hospitable, if you ask me! But that’s liches for you, I suppose.’

‘So off we trotted through this graveyard, and you know what? Some of the statues scattered around the place started to move!’ Taffeta does a deliberately comical imitation of a stone figure slowly and awkwardly grinding its joints into motion and lumbering forwards. ‘They didn’t seem too friendly, but they were much slower than we were, so we just kept walking and left them behind.’
‘But where did you go?’
‘We went to a big house on the top of a hill. The front door was open and the entrance hall was empty, but there were sounds coming from other rooms so we had a look around. Downstairs there was a kind of ballroom, full of– well, guess what it was full of!’
‘Balls?’ says Aila with a cheeky grin.
‘Badgers!’ says Idari. ‘No, bats!’
‘It was full of… party ghosts!’ Taffeta reveals.
Aila looks a bit non-plussed. ‘What’s a party ghost?’
‘It’s a ghost having a party! They were all dancing, and there was a band playing musical instruments – though to be honest they didn’t seem to be playing any tune that I could figure out. But maybe that’s what ghosts like. Anyway they didn’t pay us any mind until Barden started trying to take a big medallion that was hanging on a bit of sculpture. They didn’t like that at all!’
‘Why?’
‘Well, would you like it if someone came into our house and tried to take something of ours without asking? No, exactly. Now, girls, I know Barden is our friend but he sometimes gets a bit carried away and forgets how to behave, so just bear that in mind when you’re with him, okay?’ Idari nods.

‘Luckily Sara had a good idea and quickly asked the band to start playing again, so the ghosts all got back to their partying and we left the medallion alone. Next we tried the east wing of the house, where there was a broom sweeping the floor all on its own! At first I thought I’d like one of those for our house, but then I saw it was just sweeping one spot over and over again, so I guess it wouldn’t be as useful as all that. Ludo noticed some sounds coming from another room and Nowhere knocked on the door – now *he* doesn’t forget when he’s a guest in someone else’s home! Nobody answered, though, so he had a look inside and what did we find?’
‘More ghosts?’ suggests Idari. Taffeta suspects Aila has fallen asleep.
‘Nearly. It was zombies! Playing cards!’ She does an exaggerated impression of a barely sentient figure, its head lolling to one side, holding a hand of cards without really looking at them and then clumsily throwing one card down onto a table. Idari giggles. ‘Well this time there was no stopping Barden: he and his imp friend barged right in and grabbed a fancy-looking gem from another bit of sculpture. The zombies were pretty upset and we had to fight them, and some magic suits of armour as well! Luckily Nowhere, Leocanto, and Barden are pretty handy with their spells, so it wasn’t hard.’

‘Well, some of the others were all for ransacking the east wing some more – they even unlocked the magical lock on another room and started debating how to get into a huge locked chest they found there – but Nowhere showed his good sense again by heading off to find the lich, and I followed him. Upstairs we found the dining room, with about a score of skeletons having a dinner party! Not that they could eat or drink anything, mind you, or even talk to each other, but they were clattering their knives and forks and wagging their jaws as lively as you please! There was another of those sculptures of some fellow’s head and it had another bit of fancy jewellery hanging on it but we left that well enough alone. Nowhere was looking out of the window at a tall tower, and suddenly he turned into a puff of smoke and started drifting out of the window towards it. But he came back pretty quick, saying he could see the lich in there but he couldn’t get in that way. The others had caught up by then, so we all trooped downstairs again and went through the house to a sort of glass animal-house. The animals, though, poor things, they were all skeletons and ghosts and what have you, none of them alive.’

‘Then, all of a sudden, we heard a roar and this huge lizard thing came charging at us. At first I thought it was a dragon, but it had no wings and only a very short neck, and tiny useless arms. To be honest it looked a little like if you crossed a lizard with a newborn chick and then made it as big as a house. And a zombie, too, I think. Unless that’s what those creatures always look like, I don’t know. Anyhow, it was a big bruiser and it didn’t seem to like us, but we knocked it down pretty quick. It did Barden and Leocanto some mischief but they were both okay in the end. At one point Barden did something to make it scared of him and it started running away, with the two dwarves chasing after it to try to make it ram the door of the tower, and meanwhile Leocanto riding on its back in the form of a giant ape! It was hard not to laugh, honestly.’

Aila is snoring gently on the other side of the room. Taffeta smiles and continues. ‘Well, once we’d dealt with that thing, we had to deal with the tower door. It had a magical lock, and the clever folks in the group figured out that we had to slot some things into it. So Ludo conjured up some kind of invisible spirit that went off into the house and came back with the medallion from the ballroom, while Nowhere ran back to the dining room and grabbed the piece from there, and they put them together with the gem that Barden had swiped earlier. That unlocked the door sure enough.’

‘The tower was all lined with books inside, all the way up! And at the top was the lich, who was very polite actually, although if you ask me a good host would have come and met us at the door and not made us find our own way through some fairly unfriendly monsters. Anyway he did what Nowhere wanted, by enchanting some old skull so that now it floats around behind Nowhere and can cast a spell for him if he wants. While he was busy with that, some of the others did a bit more pilfering from the house – which I suppose is what you risk if you’re a bad host, though they still shouldn’t have done it, mind you. I know you’d never dream of behaving like that. Anyway, they did their thing and I found a portal room in the house that brought us back here. So Nowhere has what he wanted, and some of our other friends got whatever they got, and I got to help a friend and discover a new plane…’

Taffeta pauses thoughtfully. ‘Idari, love,’ she asks quietly, ‘Truly, how did you know I’d been to another plane?’

But Idari is asleep.