20th of Blessing
A guy named Hadrien Runihan is helping my friends find Spyncer Coil (forger of the magical Swords of Ptolus) and Hadrien seems interested when Tharn brings up Calista’s name. But how could he know her? Calista keeps to herself more than any of us do. But Tharn doesn’t trust him. They decide to part ways with him, and in parting Hadrien offers to help us get in touch with the Pale Dogs, a local gang of street toughs who are supposed to be harboring Spyncer Coil.
Calista and I have spent the last two days working to find someone to teach us the Hu-Charad language: the language of my people. Sadly, no one in town seems to know how to speak it. No one has any books written in Hu-Charad. The only ones who even knew what we were talking about told us to seek the elves. Sounds like we’ll have to visit that Moonsilver Forest village north of the city that Celdore told us about after all.
We reunite again back at the store around noon, where Diethan fills in Calista and me on their adventures of the last day. When Diethan shows us the letter he got from his sister asking him to find Spyncer, Calista takes note of some musical notes imbedded into it. Diethan explains that his sister is a musician sponsored by House Kath. He adds that this letter seems a little stiff — he’s not sure it’s really from her. Did she write it under duress? He says the notes form a tune called “Trouble Is My Birthright,” and Calista reports that the style of a variation in the song is called “second child.” Hmm, Alivia IS the second child in Diethan’s family. Barbatos thinks the stilted tone means that she was writing the letter at someone else’s command — someone who wants us to find Spyncer for them.
Before we can go any further, Diethan takes off with the letter and some previous letters from her and visits a forger. This dwarf, who runs a print shop as his legitimate business, confirms that they were written by the same hand, but that the newer letter was written more slowly with pauses in between words. Next stop for Diethan is House Kath. There, he speaks to a lady of the house, Miss Leeyalla Wort. She confirms that she saw Alivia at breakfast that morning and that she’s fine, but that now she’s off at her studies at the Conservatory. He thanks her and leaves for the Imperial Academy of Music, where he asks to see his sister. When the gatekeeper gives him trouble, he grabs the guy and throws him into our magical carriage, instructing the driver, “Myraeth’s Oddities, on the double!” With the protesting man out of the way, Diethan is free to look around. He finds his sister and she appears fine, so he leaves and returns to the shop (where we have by this point managed to calm down the quite irate gentleman from the school).
That night, Hadrien arrives at the shop. He’s a tall, slight man in a charcoal grey coat and wide-brimmed hat. When Calista sees him, she goes pale. It seems that while she was held prisoner in the Dark Reliquary years back (she’s had quite the interesting life!), he came to see her with the marilith Drusii. He asks to be invited into the store—twice. He has not aged a day since Calista last saw him years ago. He says that at the time he visited her, he was looking for “an apprentice,” but he won’t give us a straight answer about what he wanted with Calista.
Barbatos asks whether his interest in the blades of Spyncer Coil and Kalbert Nom has anything to do with the Covenant of Blood vampires. “I’m afraid I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said with a slight smile. He checks his pocketwatch—the demon-possessed one from our experience with that little undead girl, Linele!—and departs, saying how sorry he was we couldn’t do business.
Do the vampires want the three Swords of Ptolus? Did Hadrien want to make Calista a vampire? Thank goodness no one invited him into the store! And how did he get that demon-possessed watch from Linele anyway? Is she dead now for real?
We decide we don’t need Hadrien to help us find the Pale Dogs and we set off first for the intersection noted on that piece of paper we found under Spyncer’s bed. This is a residential area in Midtown. One of the houses here has a plaque that says “Orth, Second Floor.” Hm, Methir Orth was the name of a guy who came to the store a while back seeking aethel stones! Sure enough, the name is on the note as well. After some debate over whether we should be prepared to beat up this fellow or just ask him why Spyncer Coil had his name and address, we head up to his door.
Methir Orth is tall and gaunt with a thin face; he’s wearing a lot of clothing. When Barbatos tells him we know where he can find a lot of aethel stones, he invites us into his junky place. After a bit of intimidation from my litorian friends (and me, I guess), he admits that he has been working to acquire the Swords of Ptolus for a group of evil skulks. He confirms that he knows where Spyncer is and will trade the info for the location of the cache of aethel stones the members of the Order of the Legacy told us about some time ago.
21st of Blessing
Spyncer Coil has created three magical swords tied somehow to the city—Insight, Power, and Deceit—and everybody wants them. Apparently he thought the Pale Dogs could hide him from all who were looking for him (even the Balacazars). But we’re onto him now. It’s late at night as Tarkus leads us through the Warrens. We come upon the place, but the guards see us coming and attack! While Tarkus sneaks away, we engage a bunch of Pale Dog thugs and their mangy hound. Diethan hears that they’re about to take Spyncer out the back, so Barbatos sneaks back there and arcane locks the door. The ramshackle building catches fire thanks to a burning hands spell by the Pale Dogs’ resident wizardess.
A man escapes out along the cliffside, but I use my Shuul potion injector and ring of potion sharing to grant myself and Tharn the ability to levitate, and we go after him and bring him back. When we return, the others have found Spyncer Coil: an old man lying on a bed, drooling and insensible. After Calista has healed him a bit, he sees Diethan and says, “But no, you’re not the important one. Where’s your sister?” Calista moves him out as flames from the house fire begin to lick at his bed. Meanwhile, I question the guy we pulled off the ledge of the cliffs. He says his name is Lizalle, and that he just took a sword from the overdosed-on-shivvel Spyncer. Where are the other two swords? He won’t answer, but Diethan thinks they might be in the hands of Pale Dog leaders.
Spyncer was holding a poem when we found him, a sort of prophecy about three daughters (natives but not born here) for whom the swords were made. Sounds as though Diethan’s sister is supposed to wield one! We recall that while Spyncer was mad, he supposedly had some sort of religious vision. The sword we recover from Lizalle is named Insight. It’s not steel but some other dull grey material we can’t identify. When Tharn holds it, he feels as though everything around him—even us—is being pulled into the sword. He quickly wraps it up again.
By the time we return to the shop, it’s four in the morning. We offer a pill to Spyncer to keep him alive and we tie the wizardess to a chair. Then I keep watch out the shop window for the rest of the early morning, and Seanus keeps his eye on the old man. The rest of the predawn hours are uneventful—until Spyncer awakes. He sees Diethan and starts screaming. “Lord Asche, is that you? What’s going on?” He seems to have gone mad again. Diethan pretends to be the god of the city. “Who are the native daughters?”
“Alivia?” he asks, then realizes it’s her brother. “No, NO, not you! Oh Lord Asche, please tell me what to do next! Once again I have the clarity of mind to hear your words!” This must be the gist of the religious experience he had back when he was in the asylum.
The wizardess awakes and tells us that Spyncer hid Deceit and that a band of malevolent skulks have Power. “They haven’t activated it and won’t be able to do anything with it unless they have a whole bunch of aethel stones.” (Oh, no! We promised to give their agent info about a cache of stones!) She says the swords are made of marlite, a naturally occurring material that appears near aethel stones; they absorb all the magic from it and make it totally unable to be affected by magic. She adds that Spyncer was totally insane and begged for shivvel while in her care. “I don’t know what happened to him, but it really messed up his mind.” In his moments of lucidity he would talk to her of the swords.
She says she knows the Balacazars are after the swords, as well as the Ironworkers’ Guild and a couple different orders of knights (including the Knights of the Golden Cross). She doesn’t know how many people know of Spyncer’s poem’s prophecy. She says he believed Asche told him that poem and taught him how to make swords out of marlite. Spyncer didn’t trust the skulks, because they turned on him and stole Power. They wanted something—the Legacy of something or other. You needed a magical sword to get at the Legacy (the sword’s name started with a Z or X, the wizardess thought), but they hoped to use one of the Swords of Ptolus instead.
Power is the only sword that is not activated now, the wizardess explains; the other two have their abilities engaged. They magically draw on the essence of the city. The longer they’re in your possession, the more they allow you to do. And in certain people’s hands they are more powerful still. Insight is supposed to give you great wisdom, she said. As she is leaving, she said Spyncer also told her the evil skulks have been putting some sort of pressure upon a girl at the Conservatory to do something—she doesn’t know what. Ah, like maybe to get her brother to find the swords!
Meanwhile, Barbatos goes to visit the Temple of Asche and speaks with our friend Mand Scheben. He said the poem is written in typical meter of the hymns of Asche, but it is not one he knows. He wonders whether Spyncer has indeed had a revelatory experience and agrees to come to the shop with Barbatos and take a look at him.
At the same time, Diethan goes to the Conservatory to wait for his sister. She doesn’t want to see Spyncer (bad memories, or so I’m told). She’s creeped out that Spyncer is only lucid when he thinks about her. “But I have to know where he is,” she says. “Some people want… oh, just take me there.” When Diethan demands the full story about the note, Alivia explains that a couple of her instructors told her she had to find Spyncer Coil or she’d fail in her classes—and that means House Kath would throw her out. She adds that she’s lucky she wasn’t expelled over that whole incident with the Conservatory’s doorman in our runaway carriage.
When Diethan and Alivia arrive, Mand and Barbatos are already at the shop. When Spyncer sees Alivia, he touches her face and says, “It’s you again, finally, after all these years, I knew it was you. You’re one of the three, a second-born daughter. The swords, they’re for you. The daughters, they’re all here! Asche, my work here is done! I’ve done it!!” and he begins raving again. Barbatos gives me the sword to hold and I feel a sort of clarity of thought, along with what Tharn described earlier.
Then Barbatos recalls something that had been nagging at him ever since the wizardess spoke of the Legacy and the sword that started with an X or Z. Zelambrast was the name of the sword that guarded the Legacy, he remembers. It was placed in the lintel of the doorway in the fortress of Cordaris, the location of our first adventures together. Oread, a celestial, was supposed to protect Zelambrast—was Oread the angel in blue from the Book of the Legacy? This is getting really confusing.
(Later, Calista’s friends at the Pale Tower tell her of ancient legends about the birth of the world that deal with a power even beyond that of the Creator, a power that had to visit the world and judge whether it was a worthy creation. The legends say that when the Gilded Angel came to the world, one of the Vested of the Galchutt, Mrathrach, attempted to slay her, so the creation would be judged unworthy and be destroyed, but some ancient heroes saved her. This being, called the Gilded Angel, might very well be the same creature as the Angel in Blue, as the stories say she wore long flowing blue garments. According to the Book of the Legacy, the Angel in Blue is said to have judged the world and, in a place now called Mrathrach’s Pit, given someone named Timonius Creed a secret and a power. Later a woman named Cordaris discovered the secret and went on to form the Order of the Legacy and build a tower to protect it. As for the sword, one of the Malkuth recognize the name Zelambrast as being the name of a holy sword and Oread as the name of a powerful solar who is gone now but was here—not one of the Lords of the Seven Chains, but almost that powerful.)
Wait a minute… Spyncer said that all three daughters were here now. The only women in the room are Alivia, Calista, and me! The prophecy (if that’s what it is) seems frighteningly appropriate to my friend and me. It goes like this:
Three native daughters
But none from here
Second born of their fathers
But none held dear.
This city, this year,
The City by the Spire.
A weapon for each
But none desired.
No lust for blood, nor skilled reach
But none required.
The city conspired.
The City by the Spire.
We try to catch Mand up on what’s been going on. When we get to the part about promising to give the skulk agent directions to the aethel stones, he seems to recognize him, because he asks, “Did he read your mind?” What?! Oh, how were we supposed to know that he could read minds? He’s probably already been to the candleshop and found the way to the cache by now!
And how did Spyncer manage to create a magical sword out of marlite anyway? Diethan holds the sword and feels a flash of insight: Although the prophecy is not about him, it almost is.
We decide to take Spyncer to Castle Shard with Mand, as Alivia is compelled to tell her unethical instructors the old man’s location and that’s the safest place for him when his foes come calling. When we arrive at Castle Shard, Kadmus helps Spyncer Coil be a little more at peace. (I think that butler has powers we don’t begin to understand!) Zavere agrees to shelter the ceaselessly screaming Spyncer for the time being. He also warns us to avoid any further encounters with Hadrien Runihan, the vampire—and if we can’t avoid them, to get Linech’s demon-watch away from him. (That watch, along with all its other powers, taught humans how to refine shivvel.)
