Prince of Ravens

CHAPTER NINE

The Beholder’s hoard was not as magnificent as the treasure Jack had once looted from the Guilder’s Vault, but it was certainly a substantial addition to the expedition’s returns. A dozen or more of the scrolls seemed magical, and many of the old tomes looked rare or valuable. In a back room of the Smoke Wyrm, the small company tended their injuries, divided out the coins and gemstones, made their arrangements to have the books and scrolls appraised and sold, and settled their nerves after the harrowing day with pints of the excellent Old Smoky. Perhaps inspired by the effects of the dark dwarven ale, Jack hit upon the idea of keeping the Sarkonagael safely out of sight for a few days while negotiating a higher price for its return. After all, anyone who would offer five thousand gold crowns for this book might very well offer six, or even seven; could it hurt to send word to Horthlaer House that the book was in the possession of an anonymous party who required a somewhat larger payment before parting with it? “It never hurts to ask,” he decided.

Pleased with himself for devising such a simple method for increasing his gain from danger already past, Jack returned to Maldridge. He waved off Edelmon’s daily correspondence and instead composed a letter containing his instructions for the counting house of Albrath, which would serve as a fine go-between with Horthlaer’s. “Discretion is required,” he told himself when he finished. “I will allow my agent to make inquiries at Horthlaer’s without revealing my name, just in case the person seeking the Sarkonagael might consider more stringent measures to obtain the book when he discovers that the price is under negotiation. Anonymity is assured.”

“What was that, sir?” Edelmon asked.

“A stroke of genius, my good man,” Jack replied. “Draw me a bath, if you please.”

With that important bit of business attended to, Jack indulged himself in an hour-long soak in a tub of piping hot water, after which he had Edelmon summon the physician to look after the various cuts, bruises, and sprains that he’d acquired in the dungeons of Sarbreen. By nine bells he was in his bed, from which he did not stir for the next fourteen hours. He only roused himself the next morning when Edelmon knocked on the bedchamber door and let himself in.

“Excuse me, Master Jack, but you have a guest. Lord Norwood is here to call on you.” The valet studied Jack’s groggy visage and added, “Shall I tell him you are indisposed?”

Jack sat up and ran his hand through his hair.

“Norwood here?” he muttered. “What does he want with me at this indecent hour?”

“Begging your pardon, sir, but it’s already struck eleven bells this morning.”

It seemed like it would be a bad idea to turn away his benefactor out of sheer indolence. Jack allowed himself one long yawn, and gave the old valet a nod. “In that case I’ll be right down,” he said. “And ask the cook to begin breakfast; I’m famished.” Edelmon bowed and withdrew; the rogue climbed out of his bed, dressed himself quickly from his fine new wardrobe, and took a moment to drag a comb through his hair. In a matter of minutes Jack trotted down the grand zalantar-wood staircase to the front hall.

Marden Norwood waited for him there, with an armsman in Norwood colors standing unobtrusively two steps behind the lord. “Ah, there you are, Jack,” Norwood said. He studied Jack’s face for a moment, and snorted softly to himself. “My apologies if I woke you early.”

“Think nothing of it,” Jack replied with a wave of his hand. “I intend to breakfast shortly; would you care to join me, Lord Marden?”

“No, thank you. I won’t be staying long.” The nobleman’s customary geniality was nowhere in sight; his silver brows brooded low over his eyes, and his mouth was set in an even frown. “You might say that this is not a social call.”

This does not look promising at all, Jack decided. He suddenly wished that he’d feigned illness and had Edelmon send away Seila’s father. Still, there was nothing for it but to play out the scene; he could hardly avoid it now. He clicked his heels and bowed. “I am at your disposal, my lord.”

“Let us adjourn to your study,” Norwood said. He held out a hand, indicating the adjoining room with its katana-holed door. Jack glumly led the way to the study, and waited by the door until Norwood entered. “Have a seat,” the lord said, motioning toward a chair by the hearth as if it were his study and not Jack’s they were entering. Jack took the offered seat; Norwood took the chair opposite. He studied Jack long and carefully, a look of keen thoughtfulness etched on his features. Jack didn’t like it at all.

Finally Jack couldn’t stand the waiting any longer. “You have something you wished to discuss with me?” he prompted.

“I do,” Norwood replied. “You may not be surprised to learn that I have recently conducted some inquiries into the estate, family, and titles of the landsgraves of Wildhame. Do you know what I found, Jack?”

“My home and family survived the Spellplague?” Jack asked with an artfully hopeful note in his voice.

Norwood smiled and shook his head. “Not exactly. I learned that Hlath was never ruled by a king. The ruler of the city in the years before the Spellplague was Lord Darvis Shennelm, High Councilor of the city’s Council of Lords, yet you claimed your family had a home quite near the king’s palace. Clearly, you never lived anywhere near Hlath or you would have known that. Moreover, I have determined to my satisfaction that there never existed any holdings or lords by the name of Wildhame in Hlath, the lands nearby, or any realm in the Vilhon Reach.” His expression darkened, and he leaned forward to point an accusing finger at Jack. “You, sir, are an imposter, a fraud, laying claim to a place and station not your own. Who are you, really? The time for deceptions is at an end.”

Jack mustered every ounce of wounded dignity and earnestness he could summon. “Your suspicions are ill-founded, sir,” he said sharply. “Clearly your research is incomplete, or quite possibly the records of my home and family simply have not survived to this day. Your library is admirable, but it is hardly the summation of all there is to know about vanished Chondath or its proud old families.”

“Oh, I did not rely on my library alone,” Norwood replied. “The day I received word of your arrival on my doorstep at Seila’s side, I engaged the services of three different sages in two cities. When they reported failure, I hired diviners to determine the truthfulness of your claims. It has been a very expensive undertaking, I might add; as generous as I was with your reward, I have spent even more to plumb the truthfulness of your claims. You are not Jaer Kell Wildhame, because no such person has ever existed. So, I repeat my question: Who are you?”

“I am afraid you spent your coin imprudently, Lord Norwood. Your sages and diviners have failed you. Is it so hard to believe that a small estate erased a hundred years ago might escape the notice of both mundane and magical researchers?” Jack straightened in his chair, and allowed a little temper to show in the set of his mouth and the timbre of his voice. “I am who I say I am.”

“I thought that you might say that,” Norwood remarked. He leaned back in his chair, fixing Jack with his stern gaze. “Very well, then; here is how I will proceed. Since the available evidence indicates that you are a liar and a scoundrel, I will treat you as the fraud that you are unless you somehow produce irrefutable evidence to support your claims. In other words, sir, the burden of proof is on you. Demonstrate the validity of your claims, or retract them at once.”

“Fine,” Jack answered. “Your resources may have failed you, but I am certain I will have better luck. I will find the proof you require, Lord Norwood … although I must say it will be a long time before I forget the distrust you have shown me. Perhaps it would be best if we concluded this conversation at once, before either of us says something regrettable.” He stood and motioned to the door.

“As you wish.” Norwood straightened slowly and tugged at his tunic, settling the fit to his satisfaction. The old lord walked to the study door, paused as he noted the sword-hole in the panel, then turned to speak again. “I am not quite finished, Jack. I care little what you call yourself or who you inveigle with your lies. I might be inclined to overlook the matter, if you had no dealings with me or mine. After all, you did render me an invaluable service by rescuing Seila from the drow, regardless of your motives for doing it. But you clearly presume to trade upon my name and toy with the affections of my only daughter, and that cannot stand. Keep the reward I offered for Seila’s return; I would have given it freely to any man for bringing her back to me. But I expect you to vacate Maldridge by the end of the tenday. And-let me be very clear about this-you are not to see Seila again, or communicate with her in any way. In fact, it might be better if you removed yourself from Raven’s Bluff altogether.”

“You can’t do that!” Jack spluttered in outrage.

Marden Norwood smiled, but his eyes remained as hard as flint. “I am a very influential man in this city, my young friend. Believe me, you would be amazed at the things I can do if I decide they must be done. If you defy me, I will arrange for a whole world of troubles to descend upon you; do not try my patience any further. Good day, sir.”

Jack considered any number of retorts, rebuttals, or rejoinders, and somehow found himself doubting that anything he said would help his case. He instead drew himself up, squared his shoulders, and simply said, “You misjudge me, my lord.”

Norwood did not bother to reply. He strode out the front door, with his guard a step behind him; Jack watched the old noble climb up into his waiting coach in the street outside before Edelmon closed the door behind him.

Jack muttered a vile oath under his breath and gave the study door a good kick. “This is a catastrophe,” he snarled.

Edelmon cleared his throat by the front door. “To what address shall I forward your things, sir?” he asked.

“Nowhere!” Jack shouted, waving his arms. “I have until the end of the tenday, and I’ll be damned if I vacate the premises an hour before I must.”

“I can make inquiries with various property owners and reliable brokers, if you like,” the valet said. “Or, if you prefer, I can obtain sailing schedules and book your passage. Travel broadens the mind, or so it is said.”

Enough was enough. “Is my breakfast ready yet?” Jack demanded.

“I believe the cook has just set it out in the dining room, sir.”

“Then that is all, Edelmon.” Jack stormed off to the dining room, where he found his customary breakfast awaiting him, and threw himself into his seat. Somehow he had lost his appetite, and he glared at the plate of eggs and ham in front of him for a long moment before taking a piece of toast and buttering it angrily. His prospects were not all that poor, really; he still had several thousand crowns of Norwood’s reward to his name, and of course turning in the Sarkonagael could easily double his fortune. Giving up Maldridge would not hurt too badly, although there was no denying that he had become rather fond of the place and enjoyed the lifestyle of a gentleman of leisure. A couple of thousand crowns would buy him a fine house in a good neighborhood, along with a servant or two, although of course it would not be so grand as the manor he now inhabited. No, the most galling development was clearly Norwood’s severance of any possible continuation of his association with Seila. Setting aside his deeper designs on the Norwood fortune, he liked Seila and wasn’t ready to give her up without a fight.

He gave a cursory glance to the correspondence waiting for his attention, wondering if he should even bother to accept any more invitations. How long would it take for the well-heeled folk of Raven’s Bluff to drop him once word got around that he was no longer welcome at Norwood Manor? Or would Marden Norwood simply denounce him as a fraud outright, in which case not only would the nobility have nothing to do with him but he might actually find himself the object of the civic authorities’ attention? Was that what Norwood meant by a world of troubles, or was the old lord willing to employ sterner measures to get his point across?

“I might have to take up a life abroad whether I want to or not,” Jack sighed.

He spent the next hour pushing his breakfast around on his plate and trying to distract himself with the morning’s handbills, to no avail. So it was that he found himself slumped in his chair, staring straight ahead with his head in his hand, when Edelmon knocked and entered the room.

“Oh, what now?” Jack said.

“A young lady is here to see you, Master Jack,” the valet replied.

Jack sat up sharply. “Is she armed?” Myrkyssa Jelan was almost certainly out of Sarbreen by now, and although he was reasonably sure that she would respect the unspoken truce by which he’d left her with the means to make her escape, there was always the chance that she entertained a different view of the business in the Temple of the Soulforger. He’d beat her to the prize fair and square, but perhaps she was a sore loser. An angry Myrkyssa Jelan was about the last thing he cared to see on his doorstep at the moment.

“Ah, no. I should have been more specific. Lady Seila Norwood is at the door.”

“I was wrong,” Jack muttered. “That is the last person I wanted to see now. She is doubtless here to tell me exactly what she thinks of me before storming off, never to be seen again.”

“Shall I tell her that you are-”

“No, damn it.” the rogue answered. Seila was a more generous soul than her father; she might see things differently than he did. And even if she didn’t, at the very least Jack wanted to make sure she heard his side of the story, too. “I might as well have done with this.”

He dropped his napkin on the table and marched out to the foyer to meet his fate, steeling himself for the worst. Seila waited for him there, pacing in a small circle exactly where her father had stood an hour before. She looked splendid in a burgundy dress; when he entered the room, she simply looked up and met his gaze for a long moment before saying softly, “Oh, Jack. What a mess you’ve made of things. Why in the world would you make up a noble title? In some lands you’d be executed for that sort of chicanery.”

Jack briefly considered bluffing his way through the conversation by insisting on the veracity of his claim, but reluctantly discarded the ploy. He might be able to keep Seila in doubt for a time, but sooner or later she would have to decide whether she believed him or her own father. Worse yet, if he tried to carry on the claim and failed to win her over with his a show of earnestness, she would be through with him. No, it was better to put the best face on the matter that he could, and hope that her affection for him was strong enough for her to set aside his misbehavior.

“I am sorry,” he said at last. “I never meant for the whole thing to go so far. It seemed like a harmless enough game when we were both prisoners of the drow, and when we reached the safety of your father’s manor, I suppose I just didn’t know how to set the story straight.”

Seila folded her arms and fixed a stern gaze on him. “All you had to do was tell the truth. Was it that difficult, Jack? And is that even your name?”

“Yes, Jack is my name; Jack Ravenwild.” He hung his head in a show of shame, thinking quickly as he assembled his play. “Seila, I have never met anyone like you,” he began with a note of uncertainty. “Men of my station do not associate with ladies of yours. I was afraid that once the truth was known, I would be shown the door, and I might never see you again.”

“Do you think I am so ungrateful that I would allow my father to treat you like a servant when I owe you my life? Is that really what you think of me, Jack?”

“It isn’t your gratitude that I doubted, Seila. Tell me truly: If I had admitted my common birth, would we have been allowed to spend so much time together in the last couple of tendays?” Seila did not answer immediately; Jack pressed his point. “You told me the day of the party that your father intends for you to marry well. How long would he have tolerated the presence of a … distraction … like me?”

Seila sighed and looked away. “Not for long,” she admitted. “But if my hand is my father’s to give away, then my heart is my own, and I am not quite finished with you, Jack Ravenwild.”

Jack’s heart gave a small skip, and he smiled. “I am pleased to hear you say so, but I’m afraid your father’s instructions to me were very clear on that point.”

“Well, he might not have the final say in the matter.” Seila turned to Jack, then took two brisk steps and kissed him very soundly. Jack found his arms circling her slender waist as he drank deeply of her perfect lips until she gently reached up and pushed him back to arm’s length. “For now, do as my father says,” she said. “I will see what I can do to bring him around. We can still correspond with care, and we may find occasion to see each other. In fact, I hope I can persuade you to join me at the opera tomorrow night.”

“The opera?” Jack asked.

“Tomorrow night, a new production opens at the Rundelstone Opera House; the Ravenaar Opera is playing The Fall of Myth Drannor,” Seila explained. “Everybody who is anybody will attend the opening, of course. My family has a box with a good vantage; you’ll see half the nobles of Raven’s Bluff in one sitting.”

“Ah, you hope that I will spot Fetterfist for you.”

“It’s the only thing I can think of that might win you some small credit with my father at the moment.”

Jack smiled. “And I thought you intended to defy your father simply for the pleasure of my company.”

“Well, I think that with some care my father won’t have any idea that I am defying him. He has other business tomorrow and won’t be in attendance, but he will not be surprised if I go in the company of a friend or two. The box is private enough that no one else should notice exactly who is with me.”

“I have ways of not being seen when it suits me,” Jack replied. “Perhaps I could go in the guise of one of your many suitors-say, that Skyhawk fellow?”

Seila laughed and shook her head. “For Leira’s sake, no! He is very likely to be there, and might notice himself sitting with me. Some other guise, if you please.”

“Very well, I should be delighted to attend the opera.” Perhaps they’d spot the slaver, and perhaps not, but it certainly wouldn’t hurt his cause to spend several hours at Seila Norwood’s side. “Given the circumstances, I suppose I should just meet you in your box at the Rundelstone?”

“That would seem to be for the best. The show begins at eight.”

“Excellent! I am looking forward to it already, and I am sure we will expose that dastardly felon before the end of the first act.” Jack took her hand and raised it to his lips. “Tomorrow night, then.”

“Tomorrow night,” Seila said. She leaned forward to kiss him again, lightly this time, and then slipped out the front door.

Deciding to heed Seila’s advice and demonstrate attention to Lord Norwood’s requirements, Jack spent most of the rainy afternoon looking into alternative lodgings. It was possible, after all, that given time Seila might succeed in moderating her father’s stern stance against him, although it was clear that the days of posing as the Landsgrave Jaer Kell Wildhame were at an end. Somehow Jack doubted that Norwood would ever countenance any relationship between him and Seila, but at least he was still in the game; after all, the old fellow might be struck down by a runaway carriage tomorrow, and then Jack’s failure to come clean under Norwood’s accusations might not reach anyone else’s ears.

Unfortunately, a long afternoon of eliminating one genteel neighborhood after another from his prospects as he compared asking prices for comfortable homes to the state of his accounts left him footsore and discouraged. Nothing in Tentowers or Swordspoint seemed likely to fit his budget; Sixstar and Mortonbrace held possibilities, but they could hardly be considered trendy districts. “If I were not a generous and forgiving soul I might at this very moment be engaged in arranging a coach accident,” Jack grumbled to himself as he roamed the streets. “Then I wouldn’t need to abandon Maldridge or make unpleasant adjustments to my lifestyle.”

The Sarkonagael he kept in a plain leather satchel under his left arm. He didn’t want to leave it out of his sight-Myrkyssa Jelan clearly knew where he lived and might be able to have Aderbleen divine its location again if he left it somewhere else. Several times throughout the afternoon he considered turning in the book immediately to get his hands on more coin sooner rather than later, but he checked the impulse: There was no hurry to part company with the prize until he’d seen whether he could drive up the price with some shrewd bargaining. No, the best thing to do was to secure good temporary quarters with the funds he already had in hand, simply to provide himself a place to keep his just-purchased wardrobe and personal belongings.

Jack turned his attention to the best inns and boarding-houses he could find, with little more success. Finally the thought occurred to him that he’d recently made a good impression on many new friends among the lower nobility; perhaps he could quietly let slip the news that Maldridge was soon to be renovated and that he was seeking a place to stay for a little while. Some kindly old matron among Lady Moonbrace’s friends or perhaps an acquaintance of the Flermeers would certainly step forward to extend hospitality to a person of his current celebrity. Jack decided that he liked that plan much better than parting with his own good gold … but that, of course, depended on Marden Norwood issuing no public denouncement of him. So far Seila’s father seemed disinclined to do so, perhaps because he’d offered Jack the chance to leave quietly with the coin he already had, but who could say what might happen when Norwood discovered Seila’s defiance?

Determined to put his new plan into action at once, Jack returned to Maldridge to write a few properly worded notes to some of his new friends among the well-to-do. He deflected Edelmon’s none-too-subtle inquiries about when exactly he would be vacating the premises and enjoyed another good dinner, even if it was unquestionably more ordinary fare than he’d enjoyed before Norwood’s unfortunate visit. “It appears the staff has determined there is no longer any particular reason to curry my good favor,” he muttered to himself.

He set straight to his correspondence after finishing his supper, and became so absorbed in the task that he lost track of the hour. It wasn’t until he absently noted the distant gongs echoing through the city streets as the various temples marked seven bells of the evening that sudden recollection struck him: He’d promised to meet Master Tarandor of the Wizards’ Guild in Bitterstone at this very hour.

“Selune’s silver teats!” he cried, sitting upright. Whatever business Tarandor had with him, no good could come of missing the appointment. He dashed for the door, slinging his satchel over his shoulder and throwing on a long cloak against the evening chill, and then hurried out. He took a moment to secure his cloak and consider the speediest route; as he did so he thought he saw a black-cloaked figure watching him from an alleyway across the street. Jack peered into the evening gloom, but the cloaked watcher was gone. Had he seen a hint of ruby-colored eyes and ebony skin? Or had he imagined something in the shadows of the alley?

“The thrice-damned dark elves have me starting at shadows,” he muttered. At least the afternoon’s rains had lifted, although a thick mist was gathering in the seaward districts; the night would be foggy indeed. Putting the uncertain sighting behind him, Jack crossed over to Moorland and hurried south all the way to Rhabie Promenade at a pace that was more than half a run, then followed the wide boulevard through Altarside and the Anvil into the harbor district of Bitterstone. Good luck to any skulking drow trying to dog his footsteps!

He managed the distance in a quarter-hour, but then once he was in the proper neighborhood the combination of thickening fog and poorly remembered directions delayed him further; he actually walked past the warehouse of Mumfort and Company twice before he realized that that was the place he was looking for. With some chagrin, he went up and knocked firmly at the door. “Master Tarandor?” he called.

He heard footsteps on a creaking wooden floor, then Tarandor Delhame opened the door. “Ah, good evening, Master Ravenwild,” the lean wizard said. Jack thought his smile seemed a little forced, but then again, he’d kept the fellow waiting almost half an hour. “I was beginning to fear that you’d forgotten our appointment.”

“In truth, I did not remember it until I heard seven bells struck. Please excuse my tardiness.”

“No matter,” the mage replied. “You are here now; we can proceed.” He stepped back and invited Jack inside with a slight bow; Jack nodded and entered the warehouse. Stacks of wooden crates and small wooden casks lined the walls; several lanterns hanging from posts cast a warm yellow illumination over the otherwise dim and dusty interior. Jack saw that a large space had been cleared in the center of the room. A work table littered with parchment, old tomes, and a couple of curious green glass bottles stood to one side of the room, while a large object of some sort stood covered by a shapeless sheet of canvas in the center of the open area. Several more wizards-a plump young man with a patchy beard, a fetching elven woman with greenish-gold hair, and a Calishite man who wore a fez turned and bowed to Jack as he made his entrance.

“Good evening,” Jack said to the others, enjoying the air of professional camaraderie. “So how might I be of assistance? I confess this is all very mysterious.”

“Perhaps it might be easiest to show you,” Tarandor answered. “Attend, sir.” He walked up to the covered object in the middle of the room, and glanced at the other wizards. Then he took hold of a cord or lanyard hidden under the canvas and gave it a firm yank. In the corner of his eye Jack noticed the other mages in the room averting their faces as Tarandor turned his back fully on the falling canvas shroud. Beneath the canvas there stood a battered old statue of no particular quality, the sort of thing one might have found gathering bird-nests in any poor nobleman’s garden-but the face had been carefully chiseled into a flat, mirror-smooth surface, and there glowed a complex mystic rune. Jack’s eyes fell on the symbol before he even realized that he was looking at it, and a great burst of greenish light sprang from the device. A sudden dizziness swept over him, as the warehouse seemed to whirl away into darkness and shadow and the most peculiar sensation of motion in all directions at once overcame him.

He fell to his hands and knees, and found cool sand underneath him instead of the dusty old floorboards of the warehouse. Jack scrambled back to his feet and whirled around, astounded by his new surroundings. He seemed to be in a small, spherical room made of dark greenish glass. The walls curved inward to meet the low ceiling, which then drew away into a dark passage or flue. Beneath his feet was coarse white sand, which served to level the floor. “What is the meaning of this?” he shouted, and struck at the wall with his fist. The glass was so thick he might as well have been punching at stone.

Jack realized that he could see through the dark glass wall; outside the small chamber that held him, he could still make out the yellow lanterns hanging from the posts in the warehouse, strangely dim and distant. A vast shadow suddenly seemed to move across the wall behind him, and the room shuddered under a dull impact. The whole structure, Jack of course included, seemed to rise straight into the air. He lost his balance and sprawled to the sand again, which now slithered past his hands and knees, shifting to one side as the strange chamber tilted. Jack floundered in the rough sand, cursing … then the face of Tarandor Dethame suddenly appeared against one wall, but vastly huge, easily twice Jack’s height from peppered goatee to gleaming bald brow.

“AH, THERE YOU ARE JACK,” the monstrous visage thundered. “HOW DO YOU LIKE YOUR ACCOMMODATIONS?”

“This is outrageous!” Jack shouted. “What have you done to me?”

“I HOPE YOU WILL FORGIVE ME, BUT I CAUSED YOU TO LOOK UPON A SYMBOL OF ENTRAPMENT,” Tarandor’s gigantic image answered.

Jack clapped his hands to his ears. “Cease your titanic demonstrations, Tarandor, and release me at once!”

“I REGRET THAT I CANNOT COMPLY,” Tarandor said. “AND I AM NOT TITANIC, JACK; YOU ARE SIMPLY MINUSCULE.”

Jack examined himself swiftly, looking at his hands and feet to see if they were the same distance from his eyes that they had always been. They certainly seemed to be, but of course if he had been minimalized in some way, why should he not shrink in perfect proportion? He looked back at the strange green room in which he was trapped … and suddenly he recognized the place. He was inside one of the odd green bottles that had been standing on the table beside Tarandor when he walked into the warehouse! The wizard’s spell had shrunk him to the size of a doll (and a small one at that), whisking him into the container Tarandor had prepared for him. Now the abjurer was holding him aloft by the bottle’s neck, peering at him through the glass.

“What is the meaning of this villainy?” Jack demanded. “What have I done to you, Tarandor?”

“OH, THIS IS NOTHING PERSONAL, MY LITTLE FRIEND. I AM MERELY FULFILLING THE OBLIGATION LAID UPON ME BY MY FORMER MASTER, WHO INHERITED IT FROM HIS OWN MASTER, MERITHEUS OF RAVEN’S BLUFF. IT SEEMS THAT MERITHEUS LEFT STANDING INSTRUCTIONS THAT HE OR HIS APPOINTED REPRESENTATIVE WAS TO BE SUMMONED AT ONCE IF YOU ESCAPED YOUR INTERNMENT IN THE WILD MYTHAL. I WILL SIMPLY RETURN YOU TO YOUR CONFINEMENT, AND BE DONE WITH THIS WHOLE TEDIOUS BUSINESS.”

“Return me to my confinement?” Jack stared at the gigantic face studying him, and his heart sank. “Do you mean to say that it was the Wizards’ Guild that imprisoned me a hundred years ago? But why would they have done that? And why in the world do you believe you must imprison me again?”

“AS BEST I CAN DETERMINE THEY IMPRISONED YOU TO SUPPRESS THE MAGIC CALLED WILDFIRE, JACK-SPONTANEOUS MAGIC, APT TO SURFACE IN THE UNTRAINED, THE UNDISCIPLINED, THE UNGUIDED. MY PREDECESSOR FORESAW A GREAT CATASTROPHE DRAWING NEAR, AND REALIZED THAT TO SAFEGUARD THE CITY THE PHENOMENON OF WILDFIRE HAD TO BE CONTAINED. YOUR CONNECTION TO THE WILD MYTHAL MEANT THAT YOU WERE INSTRUMENTAL TO THE PROCESS OF CONTROLLING WILD SORCERY.”

Great catastrophe? Jack wondered. That was why he had been encysted in the mythal? Jack thought back again to that last night of his former life, remembering a stroll through the damp and misty streets of the city on whatever errand he had in mind … and now his memory supplied him with one last recollection, of robed figures appearing from the shadows with wands leveled at him, a crescendo of magic words and stunning spells. “Well, that would have been helpful to recall before now,” he muttered. He certainly would have been more careful about returning to the High House of Magic if he’d remembered that wizards waylaid him before his imprisonment.

He looked back up at the gigantic visage of the wizard and tried a different tack. “Tarandor, be reasonable! Whatever disaster your predecessors foresaw for me clearly was anticipated to occur in my natural lifetime. We are at least forty or fifty years past that span; justified or not, their concerns have been mitigated. There is no point in confining me now!”

“YOU ARE PROBABLY CORRECT. HOWEVER, MY INSTRUCTIONS PERMIT ME NO DISCRETION. DOUBTLESS IT IS FOR THE BEST.”

“For the best?” Jack snarled in anger and pummeled the unyielding green glass of the bottle. “You intend to confine me until the Night Serpent devours the world, and you tell me it is for the best? The obstinacy! The stupidity!”

“I, TOO, FIND THIS INCONVENIENT,” Tarandor offered. “I HAVE IMPORTANT AFFAIRS IN IRIAEBOR THAT I HAD TO DROP ALL AT ONCE TO DEAL WITH THIS RIDICULOUS OLD DIRECTIVE. I CERTAINLY HAD NO WISH TO WAIT DAYS AND DAYS IN RAVEN’S BLUFF FOR AN APPOINTMENT WITH YOU.”

“I wish to appeal to the Guild Council!” Jack shouted.

“I SHALL NOTE YOUR OBJECTIONS IN MY REPORT,” Tarandor replied. “I AM SURE THE GUILD WILL EXAMINE THE FACTS AND TAKE THE APPROPRIATE ACTION.” He lifted the bottle again and set it carefully into a waiting box or case.

“Wait!” Jack cried. “The drow will never allow you near their mythal now! There is no point in proceeding!”

“NEGOTIATIONS ARE ONGOING,” Tarandor admitted. “I WILL LIKELY HAVE TO PAY THE CHUMAVHS A KING’S RANSOM TO BE DONE WITH THIS THANKLESS TASK-THE SOONER, THE BETTER. FAREWELL FOR NOW, JACK.” The immense shadow of his hand moved over the bottle again, and the lid of whatever box he’d placed Jack closed over the bottle. Instantly the bottle interior was plunged into pitch blackness, but Jack felt the case holding his bottle picked up and carried off with an unpleasant swaying sensation. He tumbled to the sandy floor one more time, and scrambled desperately against the higher wall to keep from being buried in the stuff. Clearly, being reduced in size to an inch or two in height magnified all the ordinary motions of people retaining their natural dimensions.

“Stop! Wait!” he spluttered through a mouthful of sand. Of course, no one heard him, or would be terribly likely to listen even if they did. Throwing his arms wide against the cold glass walls of his prison, he held on as best he could as he was carried off to meet his fate.

The broad swaying of the bottle and case continued for some time; Jack imagined that he was being carried through the streets of Raven’s Bluff, likely by the most junior of the wizards attending Tarandor. It was hard to judge the passage of time in the darkness, and of course there was no way to know how far he’d been carried, but eventually the bottle and its case came to a rest with a bone-jarring thump that knocked Jack down from his perch. The sense of motion and the constant sliding of the sand back and forth ceased abruptly; Jack decided that the bottle and its carrying case had been set down. He didn’t think he’d been carried more than a half-hour or so; in all probability he was still somewhere in the city of Raven’s Bluff. Was Tarandor staying in the High House of Magic, or had he taken lodging in one of the city’s better inns? he wondered.

“This situation is impossible,” Jack said into the blackness around him. “Either Tarandor will have his way, in which case I shall be entombed again, or Dresimil Chumavh and her brothers will betray him, in which case I shall be in their power once more.” Neither prospect was appealing; escape was clearly imperative.

Jack built a mental picture of the trunk in which his bottle rested and imagined its immediate surroundings. Before the thrice-cursed Spellplague he’d had a knack for minor teleportations. So far he hadn’t managed to master any such spell in this new age, but this seemed like the perfect occasion to renew his efforts. Murmuring the words he’d formerly used for his spell of blinking, he reached out to seize the intangible stands of magic surrounding him … only to feel nothing at all. He tried again, and again, to no avail. For a moment he feared that he’d lost whatever talent for spellcasting he had managed to recover, but then he realized that his current confinement might be magical as well as physical. “Well, naturally the bottle would be proof against magic,” he muttered sourly. “How else could they hope to keep a sorcerer of my stature contained?”

Perhaps he might be able to unplug the stopper or otherwise make a physical exit from the bottle. For that he would need some light, so he called up a minor light spell to illuminate the area. But that, too, failed. Jack swore viciously in the dark, reminding himself that the bottle was made to wall him off from magic altogether.

“When magic fails, muscle and wit must serve,” he resolved. He was, after all, carrying everything he’d been carrying when he gazed upon the symbol of entrapment; his favorite rapier was scabbarded at his side, even if it was no bigger than a pin at the moment, and he might have other useful items on his person. One by one he emptied his pockets and pouches, hoping against hope that he had anything that might serve to strike a light. Then he went through his satchel as well. He recognized the cool leather of the Sarkonagael under his fingers, and set aside the book to rummage through the bag. He found paper, ink, coinage, but nothing that might serve to strike a spark other than his dagger and his rapier. “I shall henceforward always carry a small piece of flint,” he promised himself.

He considered his plight at length, and decided that the only step left for him to pursue was to worm his way up the neck of the bottle and pry it away with his dagger, light or no light. But before he could put his plan in operation, he noticed a faint silvery glow in the darkness. At first he thought that perhaps his eyes were playing tricks on him, but the longer he looked, the clearer he saw it: The silver runes on the cover of the Sarkonagael were glowing.

“Now that is interesting,” Jack murmured. Seating himself on the sand floor, he picked up the book and held it in his lap as he examined it more closely. With care he opened the book to see if the cryptic scribbling inside was also glowing … and was astonished to discover that the book’s pages were full of perfectly legible silver lettering, bright enough to illuminate his hands and breeches. He had of course attempted to read the Secrets of the Shadewrights on previous occasions, but he had never been able to make heads or tails of the jumbled glyphs and diagrams that filled its pages. Now, however, the text was plain to see.

Despite his desperate circumstances, Jack laughed aloud. “Ingenious!” he declared. The enchantments of the tome obscured its message in anything but absolute lightlessness. Who would ever attempt to read a book in complete darkness? The wizard who had scribed this tome long ago had hidden its message with a puzzle both simple and diabolically clever.

And that was something noteworthy, too-Jack was absolutely walled off from access to magic by the bottle imprisoning him, but the Sarkonagael’s magic seemed unimpeded. He’d heard stories of shadow magic, spells that weren’t magic of the ordinary sort; it was reasonable that a book describing itself as the Secrets of the Shadewrights might make use of such powers. He could see by the Sarkonagael’s dim light that the bottle’s neck would be impossible for him to squeeze through, but perhaps there was a spell in the book that could help him to escape.

“It will take Tarandor some time to negotiate access to the mythal stone from the dark elves,” the rogue mused. Hours, at the very least, and more likely a day or two. With nothing else to occupy his time, Jack made himself comfortable and began to read.

When beginning the study of an arcane tome, it was always wisest to begin at the very first page and take careful note of the frontispiece, foreword, table of contents, introduction, and so forth, and proceed very systematically from one chapter to the next in order. Jack, of course, immediately discarded any such plan. If he had a tenday to examine the book at his leisure he might have done exactly that, but his liberty or life might now be measured in hours; this was no time for caution. He quickly flipped through the book’s front matter, found a table of contents, and puzzled over such obscure topics as “Of Nethermancy and Umbral Magicks,” “Adumbrations and Dismissals,” and “The Seven Darks of Murghmo,” which struck Jack as vaguely ludicrous. But “Abjurations, Enchantments, and Conjurations” seemed more promising, so he flipped to the indicated chapter and found dozens of spells of varying complexity. Jack pored over the material and soon isolated a promising subject: a spell named “The Most Excellent Incantation of Shadow-Walking,” which at least implied going somewhere else.

Jack drew a breath, and began to examine the spell at greater length. This was in fact the sort of work a wizard excelled at; sorcerers were more spontaneous in their magic, and rarely studied spells in any sort of written form. Still, knowing that a spell existed was an important first step in perfecting it for his personal use, so he set himself to the task of unraveling each of the instructions, building up a mental construct that linked each word, gesture, or syllogism to the desired effect. Time passed, and he began to feel thirst, but he pressed on. After what seemed to be hours, he felt that he was as ready as he would ever be to attempt the spell. With a sigh of relief he straightened up and closed the Sarkonagael.

“Now, where could I expect to find a suitable shadow?” he asked himself. Well, his closet at Maldridge ought to be in darkness. He gathered up his things, and then fixing the image of the closet interior in his mind, he commenced to recite the spell. The darkness around him seemed to take on a brooding, watchful atmosphere; the strands of shadow magic did not show themselves to his mystic senses as he expected, but instead seemed to press in close around him, unbidden and hungry. Jack shuddered at the icy touch of the darkness but pressed on, speaking evenly through the rest of the spell. With the last words, the darkness seemed to rush in upon him, and his stomach rose almost as if he’d fallen into some great dark pit … but he felt himself lurching into existence again almost instantly. He was in a vast, dimly lit space the size of a cathedral, with a great blinding bar of yellow light on his right side. He raised his hand to shelter his eyes, wondering where he’d managed to transport himself until, suddenly, the distant walls and ceiling began to rush in on him from all sides.

Jack yelped in surprise and scrambled back, only to find that wall closing in on him, too, even as the floor suddenly shot away. He flailed for balance, and felt his hands catching on tunics and coats and cloaks that filled the shrinking room, until at last he toppled over completely and crashed through the door. He found himself lying on the bedroom floor of his room in Maldridge amid a heap of his own fine new clothes.

“Of course,” Jack mumbled to the ceiling. He’d been magically shrunk when he was trapped in the bottle; when he shadow-jumped into his closet, he resumed his normal height all at once. “I should have expected it, really.” He slowly picked himself up, still feeling a little shaky on his feet.

The bedroom door flew open, and more light spilled into the room. Edelmon stood at the threshold in his nightclothes, a lamp in his end. “Who’s there?” the old servant demanded. “Show yourself!”

“There is no need to fear, Edelmon. It is only I,” Jack said wearily.

“Master Jack, I beg your pardon, sir. I thought you were out for the evening, and did not hear your return.” Edelmon glanced at the open closet door and the piles of clothing around Jack, but said nothing more.

“What is the hour?” Jack asked.

“A little after three bells in the morning, I think, sir.”

“Very well. As long as you are up, please be so kind as to find a bottle of something strong and a glass. I am very much in need of a drink to steady my nerves.”

“Of course, sir. Right away.” Edelmon lit the lamp by the door, then hurried off to fetch whatever cordial or brandy he had handy.

Jack dropped his satchel to the floor, and sat down in a chair by the closet to pull off his boots. Fine white sand poured out of each one as he pulled them off. “How long before Tarandor notices my absence?” he wondered. There was a chance that the wizard didn’t intend to remove him from the carrying case until he stood before the mythal stone and was prepared to magic Jack back into his encystment, which might be days yet. Or he might check on Jack in the morning to gloat a little longer. Now that he thought about it, the rogue almost wished he could be there to see the expression on the abjurer’s face when he discovered that his carefully prepared entrapment had failed to hold Jack for even a single day … but that of course was hard to reconcile with the desire to avoid recapture.

“I must give some careful thought to exactly how I will inform Tarandor of my freedom; compensation is due,” Jack reflected aloud. But that could wait a few hours; he was suddenly exhausted, no doubt from the exertion of decreasing and increasing his size a hundredfold in the course of a single day, and he could hear Edelmon returning. A strong nightcap, and then to bed, he decided. Wizards, shadowy tomes, suspicious fathers … tomorrow would be soon enough to untangle them all.