Pathfinder Tales: Lord of Runes (2 page)

On impulse, I uttered a brief cantrip. The spell indicated powerful magic on the woman’s cameo, rings, pouch, and wands, but none on the woman herself.

“Count Varian Jeggare.” Her eyes registered surprise as she drew near. “Why, you look entirely rejuvenated, if a bit underfed. You must come to my father’s house and let us give you supper.”

Unable to recall her name, I bowed and fell back on a banal courtesy: “You are as lovely as ever, my lady.”

Her lips quirked—with pleasure or amusement, I could not tell. My inability to read her expression irked me.

My gaze slipped from the woman’s deep purple eyes to the cameo at her throat. Carved into the stone was an exquisite death’s head moth, its wings dappled in tawny shades fading to ivory.

“Did I see you cast a spell as I approached?” she said.

It was bad form to cast a spell on a fellow noble. “A minor divination, lady, nothing to violate your person. Forgive me. I must strive to shed my wartime habits.”

“No apology necessary. We are all grateful to those who held back the Worldwound demons. Besides, no one can cross the campus without being subjected to a few divinations, if not a transmutation when the upperclassmen feel prankish. I just didn’t think you could do that.”

“Do what?”

“Cast a spell.”

“Ah.” My disability was not a well-kept secret, but few were bold enough to mention it to my face.

With a gesture for me to follow, the woman led me through the gates. As we strolled along the gravel path, Arnisant snuffled at her shadow and growled.

“Arnisant, heel!” The hound returned to my side, his gaze locked on the lady’s feet. “I beg your pardon. He is usually better behaved. Perhaps he too must shake off the rude habits of war.”

The woman lifted her skirt a few inches and examined the soles of her boots. They were of a fashion popular decades earlier, one that I found uncommonly fetching. “Perhaps I stepped in something as I passed the conjurers.” She appraised Arnisant, who remained calm. “May I pet him?”

She showed no fear, so I nodded.

The hound remained still as a statue as she stroked the curly gray fur on his head. “What a handsome fellow. And what a fine name for him.”

Since I was in Ustalav when I found Arnisant, I named him for the famous general who martyred himself to defeat the Whispering Tyrant. “My grandfather always said, ‘Give a dog a good name.’”

“Because others will think you a brute if you call him ‘Fang’?”

“For that reason too, but also as a practical blessing. When you give a dog a brutal name, your tone grooms him to become a brutal animal each time you call to him. But a dog hears respect as well as scorn. Call him by a hero’s name, and he may become a hero himself.”

“In that case, Arnisant must be ready to give his life for you.”

That notion troubled me more than it ought, for I had grown fonder of Arnisant than of any other dog I had raised.

We continued our walk across campus. Plots of ornamental foliage provided a Chelish order to the grassy swards between the academic buildings. The spring flowers perfumed the grounds. A bell from the Hall of Summoning tolled the hour. Moments later, students spilled out to enjoy a few minutes outside before their next classes began.

“They look so young, don’t they?” said the woman beside me. Her smile should have seemed familiar, yet it did not. Still I could not place a name with her face.

In my memory library, the mental construct I have nurtured for nearly a century, I perused the gallery of every Korvosan aristocrat I had ever met. The woman’s black hair and purple eyes suggested she shared my mother’s Azlanti heritage, the rarest of bloodlines. She bore none of the other Jeggare features, which my father’s elven blood muted in me.

I nodded agreement and smiled before looking away, pretending to take in the scenery while wracking my memory for her identity. As we passed the statue of Acadamae founder Volshyenek Ornelos, I found a clue in his countenance.

I last met unfamiliar members of House Ornelos at the funeral of Fedele Ornelos, one of the finest men I ever had the privilege to call friend. After the memorials, I remained in Korvosa to attend to business. In the evenings I renewed old acquaintances and established new ones. Among the new were young scions of the noble families, including House Ornelos. Children seldom leave an impression on me, but I record their names and ages in my memory library nevertheless.

My escort was surely one of Fedele’s nieces, making her the grandniece of Toff Ornelos and thus accounting for the deference the hellspawn guards showed her. No doubt the headmaster had sent his grandniece to keep me and my hundred questions out of his office.

Arnisant woofed as a raven swooped near. Once more I drew the Shadowless Sword from its scabbard, but not to strike. In addition to its swiftness, the blade revealed the truth beneath any illusion. It revealed the raven’s true form as that of another imp.

“Don’t let them frighten you,” said the woman. “The familiars are worse bullies than the guards. Professor Ygresta had the right idea. Each term he would destroy one as an example to the others. They never harried him as they do some of the timid professors.”

The Shadowless Sword revealed no illusion on the woman. I put away my blade. “Was he not concerned he would kill a colleague’s familiar?”

“Oh, no,” she said. “He always summoned the imp himself.”

Her anecdote brought a nostalgic smile to my lips.

“So it’s true he learned that custom from you?” she said.

“Not the idea of a warning demonstration, but I might have provided the inspiration.” Even before the rise of House Thrune, summoning a devil was a mandatory exercise at the Acadamae. There was no requirement to keep the fiend as a familiar, however, nor to let it free to torment the citizens of Korvosa, as so many reckless students do. Though the convulsions I suffered while casting the spell were agonizing, I gladly suffered them again to destroy the fiend after the proctors recorded my success. One less devil in Korvosa. One less inch of the world surrendered to Asmodeus.

As we passed the Hall of Whispers, a stench of boiling urine from the necromantic laboratories wet my eyes. I plucked a scented handkerchief from my sleeve and offered it to the lady.

She waved it away. “After four years among the cauldrons, I became quite immune to the stench.”

“Ah.” The significance of the moth on her cameo struck me. “You specialized in necromancy.”

“Your favorite subject.” Her tone indicated that she knew of my disdain for her specialty.

“Ah.”

“Ah.” She softened her mimicry with a smile. “Uncle Toff warned me that you despise necromancers, but I know that can’t be universally true. After all, Professor Ygresta was your friend.”

Despite our social disparity, Benigno Ygresta had been a friend of a sort. In fact, he had been perhaps my oldest living friend, although I had seldom seen him in the seven decades since we left the Acadamae. I decided not to mention that we first met when I hired the lowborn Ygresta as my bottle-washer, a menial job he gladly accepted to supplement his paltry income.

“You studied with Ygresta?” I asked.

“He was the one who persuaded me to join the Hall of Whispers. I’d always thought only ghouls and grave robbers would study the art, but he caught my attention by demonstrating the best spell I had ever seen. Eventually, his lectures on the ethical applications of necromancy won me over. His life-matter theory alone should have earned him distinction, if only he could have won over the masters.”

I nodded sadly, remembering one of Benigno Ygresta’s many shortcomings: he had little talent for the subtle politics of wizards, especially the more conservative masters of the Acadamae. “Ygresta always struggled to express his fancies as proofs the traditional necromancers could embrace.”

“I’m more than half certain they were more than fancies,” she said. “But you’re right: He could never satisfy the masters that they were more than eccentric ideas. Everyone always thought it was another part of his hopeless quest to improve the Acadamae’s reputation.”

I was familiar with Ygresta’s arguments that necromancy was not inherently evil. His points were cogent enough, sometimes even compelling. Yet even if I could overcome my disdain for the ghouls and grave robbers, as my enigmatic companion described her colleagues, I would never break a promise to my mother.

“The professor once told me that you could have been one of the best necromancers at the Acadamae, if only you’d chosen to pursue our specialty.”

“Arcane theory was my best subject.” It was in practice that I had failed, not in principle. Even through the long decades when I barely dared to cast a meager cantrip, my knowledge of the arcane served me well.

“Let me guess: you studied evocation.”

“Did the headmaster tell you that?”

“No one told me anything.”

“Why do you guess evocation?”

“Am I wrong?”

“No,” I admitted. Not only had I failed to read her expressions, but she seemed singularly capable of reading me. “But I still want to know why you guessed it.”

“You strike me as the fire-and-lightning type.”

Much as I despise being categorized, I held my tongue. One does not wish to seem defensive.

She continued leading the way to Ygresta’s rooms. I continued to worry at the knot of her identity.

Realizing she was Toff Ornelos’s grandniece narrowed the possibilities. When I had met them, the girls had ranged from ages six to fifteen. This woman was surely not Nicoletta, who married an ambassador to Sargava and likely resided there still. I did not think she was Letizia, whose constant yawning was her singular attribute. Of the others I remembered only names and relative ages. The youngest was Ambra, and her sisters were Filomena, whom Shelyn had blessed with exceptional beauty, and Illyria, whom the goddess had overlooked.

With that thought, I knew the answer.

By virtue of my half-elven longevity, I had seen generations of human children grow to adulthood. Lady Illyria was not the first ugly duckling to become a swan, but hers was the most pronounced transformation I had witnessed. The nose that seemed thin in childhood had grown regal, the fey cheekbones elegant. As a girl, she had barely spoken to me, yet I could now envision her watching the adults in silence while her sisters chattered among themselves.

Past the Hall of Whispers, we came to a row of faculty cottages. At the farthest, she climbed three steps up onto the landing and unlocked the door. Turning with a flourish, she offered me the key.

Also with a flourish, I held the door for her. “After you, Lady Illyria.”

“Ah!” she said, still mimicking me. She straightened a pin holding her hair in a display of purple-frosted roses. “I knew my name would come to you eventually.”

I recalled that Illyria’s mother lived in Westcrown while her father—Fedele’s sickly brother, nephew to Headmaster Toff Ornelos—kept a home in Korvosa. “How is your father’s health?”

“I am making sure he eats properly before I sail to Riddleport next month.”

“To Riddleport?” The city was more popular with pirates than with gentlewomen.

“Some friends are throwing an eclipse party beneath the Cyphergate.”

I resisted the impulse to correct her use of the term. The phenomenon is more accurately an occultation of the sun, not an eclipse. Yet one does not wish to seem pedantic.

Inside, the cottage appeared largely undisturbed since Ygresta’s death. Someone had stripped the sheets from the sagging mattress in the bedroom. We shooed flies from unwashed dishes in the kitchen but were relieved to discover the pantry had been cleared. A film of dust had accumulated on the furniture.

The sitting room featured a pair of overstuffed chairs beside the hearth. A deep depression in one seat indicated Ygresta’s favorite. On the wall behind it hung a portrait of the man. His tall figure was much as I remembered, if withered. It had been decades since we last met, so I had never seen Ygresta’s thinning gray hair, his round spectacles, or his sunken cheeks. Recognizing the portrait as the work of a painter who had died twenty years ago, I wondered how much more time had ravaged Ygresta before death. Considering he was the same age as I, and wholly human, he had enjoyed an exceptional life span.

“They say he slipped away in his sleep,” Lady Illyria said. Sorrow tinged her voice.

“Then the Tender of Dreams kissed his face.” I sketched the wings of Desna over my heart.

Illyria drew the spiral of Pharasma over hers. How strange, I thought, for a necromancer to invoke the Lady of Graves, whose priests abhor the undead. No stranger to the paradoxes of character, I found this anomaly deepened my curiosity about the woman.

After a moment, we broke our separate reveries.

“The library?” I asked.

“Between the dungeon and the torture chamber,” she said, her voice sinister yet whimsical.

We descended a spiraling iron staircase. Magical flames sprang up in glass fixtures, casting our shadows behind the bars of the railings. Arnisant followed us down to the wooden floor and sniffed the corners of the room. Again he growled.

“Arnisant!” He came to heel.

Lady Illyria sniffed. “I can’t blame him. This place is full of weird stinks.”

That was so. The library smelled more like an alchemist’s laboratory. Shelves lined the walls, except where they parted for a fireplace and two doors. One door stood open, revealing a cluttered storeroom. Judging from the odor, the closed door concealed a privy.

Librams, chapbooks, scrolls, folios, and loose manuscripts crammed the shelves. The collection was smaller than expected. At a glance, I estimated I could complete the inventory within a day. The sooner the cottage became available for another tenant, the better pleased the headmaster would be. Pleased enough to answer my inquiries, I hoped.

Knickknacks interrupted the ranks of books. Apart from a devil’s skull and a brass candelabrum resembling a hand of glory, I spied few tokens of necromancy. Between the shelves stood a pair of tables. One lay empty, one stacked with crates overflowing with packing straw. A ledger, brush, and paste-pot lay beside a stack of blank labels, as the custodians had promised.