by Clark Bolton
“To the roof now, and call me when it descends!” Tenric commanded as he himself began descending the stairs.
Everyone else watched out the windows for a while as the two servants climbed a ladder that led to a precarious perch on the tower’s very peak where they would watch for the eagle to descend. Unable to see the eagle any longer from the windows all the apprentices left the tower.
It was more than an hour and perilously close to dark when the signal bells gave a single ring to indicate the eagle had returned. On this flight no one had seen the eagle descend since it had been out of sight for most of the time. However, it did return without the pouch.
“Should we send the guards out to search, master?” Sterncast asked after they had all assembled again in the tower. Tenric was just beginning the use of his scrying bowl again, holding his hand aloft to signal for silence. This time he appeared to be searching visually for any victims of the dye.
Haspeth and Castor kept their usual places near the door, apart from the others. Both looked apprehensive to Autbek that was until Haspeth began rolling his eyes when he noticed Autbek looking at him. Haspeth still had no patience Autbek noted when left to his own devices and if someone did not give him a task he quickly became bored.
Tenric made an announcement after several tense minutes. “He has not found a target today and not surprising since the streets are quiet and few are about.” With that he stepped away from the bowl and with one last look at the man-bird he left them to clean up.
Autbek and Lusric worked to clean the scrying bowl and the table while Sterncast stood watching with his arms behind his back. “A good thing for you, Autbek, as perhaps you have enough students for now.”
The words seemed jovial to Autbek but as Sterncast began descending the stairs both Castor and Haspeth gave the man a few nasty facial expressions. Lusric as usual seemed not to notice anything as he busied himself tidying up.
Lying in bed that night with all the candles out Autbek remarked aloud to himself, “I think we should see tomorrow where that dye landed.”
“Really!” Castor exclaimed from his bed. “Can we go out do you think?”
He thought for a moment then replied, “I think so, I’ll ask the master tomorrow morning if he will let us go to the chemist shop. I’m sure he needs something.” He then rolled out of bed and lighted the candelabra on his small writing desk.
“Gods, Autbek!” Haspeth groaned as he pulled a pillow over his head.
“Fear not, Haspeth, it will only take a short time to prepare the scrolls we might need for tomorrow.” He began paging through the stack that he had to see what he had available though he was not quite sure what he was looking for.
“That’s what you say every night!” Castor commented as he rested his chin in his hands. The boy always liked to watch the young lord work.
“Yea and then come the dawn I got to get up without a wink of sleep.” Haspeth complained as he stared at the wall nearest his bed.
“Now…now, my young mages do have faith.” He said softly as he realized he was going to have to ask Haspeth to do some memorizing. Perhaps it could wait until morning he thought.
They walked happily through the north gate of the palace the next morning after getting a node from their master. Since Haspeth was a poor rider and Castor could not ride at all, Autbek decided they would walk, though the two shrugged when he told them like they never considered riding as an option anyway.
Both of them knew the city, which Autbek knew not at all. Castor actually had the greatest grasp and would point out things as they walked through streets and alleyways. He seemed to know the best shortcuts, which amazed Autbek as he had no grasp of how the streets of a city these large could be memorized. Every other road looked the same and few were marked.
Asking Castor to find a quiet spot the boy lead them to one and so Autbek setup the locator apparatus and cast the spell empowering it to point the location of the dye. The needle pointed off away from the palace and so he was convinced it was not pointing to the cache of pouches they had stockpiled back in the mages wing.
“What’s the point now?” Haspeth asked again. “We know it did not hit anyone unless you think our master is daft?”
“Nope, just curious is all.” He replied as he noted the direction and packed away the locator. It took them nearly an hour and about eight attempts before they saw much change in the direction the needle was pointing. This resulted in them traversing nearly the whole city from the west to the east.
They found the site finally which got an enthusiastic response from Haspeth. “Woo who. Now let’s celebrate by finding somewhere to eat.”
“Not so fast.” Autbek told him as they watched a couple of men with a ladder working above a brick doorway. The men were trying to remove the dye with brushes and buckets of water. The pouch had hit right above the entranceway to a building that was slightly recessed back from its neighbors.
“You should help them!” Haspeth said sarcastically. “No, really, maybe they would pay use ‘cause it don’t look like what they are doing is working.”
Ignoring him Autbek pondered out loud, “Maybe we should go in?” The large door to the place was open and he guessed by the looks it was not a residence. “What is this place?”
Castor shrugged and answered, “I don’t know.”
“I thought the little bastard knew everyplace in the city.” Haspeth replied softly as the three walked around the workmen and boldly through the door.
“Nope, just where bastards like you live.” Castor answered nonchalantly as he decided to ascend a staircase leading up out of the entrance way. There were doors here but none were opened and it appeared like the stairs got the most traffic.
Autbek took up the rear as he found their boldness rather disconcerting as people were likely to find it rude of them, if not alarming. Nonetheless he followed them up to a landing and then onward to the second floor. There they found a well-lighted room with several doors, one of which was propped open with an expensive looking vase containing an attractive flowering plant.
Castor peered through the door and then waved politely at someone. Not surprised when someone came to the doorway to check Castor out, as the boy was dressed again in his old street clothes, Autbek stepped up.
An older lady who was well dressed lost a little of the concern on her face when she saw him. “Yes sir, can I help you?” She attempted to usher Castor out into the room but he was having none of that and soon managed to slip into what appeared to be a shop of some kind.
“Um … we are just looking about-” Autbek began before Haspeth jumped in.
“Your place was recommended once to us, and we thought we might take a look.” Haspeth said with a smile. With that he walked into the shop followed by Autbek.
Glad the attention was off him Autbek did his best to figure out what the place was selling. At first he thought maybe odd things like fancy serving sets or something of the sort for the well to do but decided that was not it. Behind a large counter there was several fancy racks composed mainly of small drawers as well as places to hang pendants and hairpins.
“Something I can show you gentlemen?” she asked as she took up position behind the counter.
Without much pause Haspeth began asking for something that would look well around a gentleman's neck. “Not a necklace I think but something not too big either.”
Impressed with his friends gift for small talk and taking advantage of the moment Autbek quickly cast a cantrip that would cause anything magical to glow slightly. Only he would be able to see the glow. He had no idea what he was looking for but for some reason the Dieknotkow had marked this place so why not search as best as one could he figured.
Since leaving Runeholden he had never encountered anything outside of the mages wing that he thought was in anyway magical. His family had taught him that few such things existed anymore in the world. Outside of the few things the family “crafted,” such as satchels and strong-boxes,
none in the Earldom of Astrum had the skill to enchant the Runeholdens believed.
Autbek assumed there might be residual items from times past that were magical. There were certainly many stories of such things and many shops claimed to sell magical charms and potions but he was lead to believe these were almost certainly fakes.
He let escape a “Hmm,” as he eyed the glow from a small drawer in one of the racks behind the counter. Amazed at finding something he did his best to signal Haspeth with his eyes and with his finger that he saw something there in the rack.
Haspeth looked at him for a second and then asked, “May we see what you have there madam?” Pointing to a drawer behind the lady.
She replied, “Oh those are special items for some of my customers.” She glanced at the drawer but did not open it.
“Oh … interesting” Haspeth exclaimed with enthusiasm. “My lord, do we have the means to open those drawers!” He asked mockingly.
Autbek stared at him for second in confusion until Haspeth began rubbing his fingers together. “Oh … um yeah!” He was fortunate to have been given back a few more gold marks by Berdtom. He laid two of them on the counter.
The lady smiled and nodded and then pulled out a thin long drawer from the rack and laid it gently on the counter. Inside were woven bracelets, some with large silver coins attached to them.
Autbek signaled the exact draw he wanted. Though the spell he cast had ended he was sure he knew which drawer he wanted to look in. Haspeth calmly looked through the one drawer then asked for another and then another as he worked his way toward the one Autbek kept pointing at whenever he thought the lady was not looking.
When he was sure Haspeth knew which draw to search he decided to cast again to check the rest of the racks. He found another draw and secretly let Haspeth know he wanted to look in it also.
It took a few minutes but Haspeth finally had narrowed down his interests, as far as the lady knew, to two of the draws which he had her leave on the counter. When the lady turned to chat with Autbek for a moment he cast the same magic detecting cantrip as Autbek had. It was one of a few he had managed to master and he had been pressed into memorizing it early this morning.
“We’ll take these two madam if you give us a fair price!” Haspeth stated as he laid out the two items he found that showed signs of magic. One was a delicate copper chain with a slightly ugly figurine of a frog on it that looked to be made of pewter. The other was a bronze coin on a silver chain.
Impatiently Autbek let Haspeth haggle with the lady for a few minutes. He himself would have just accepted the three mark price but Haspeth would not. Eventually they had the items all wrapped up in fine cloth in their hands as they exited the shop.
“Where is Castor?” Haspeth asked looking about for the boy.
“I have not seen him in a while.” Autbek mentioned as he peeked back in the shop for the boy.
It was several minutes later that Castor came strolling back up the stairs to ask what they had bought. When they told him as they walked out of the building what they had paid he remarked. “Oh that’s probably why Berdtom is following us. He don’t want you to spend all his gold.”
Autbek looked back the direction Castor had indicated but saw no sign of the man. He asked and was told again that indeed it was Berdtom. Not sure now what to believe Autbek decided they should head back to the palace. He did his best not to look back over his shoulder too much.
They agreed not to mention the two amulets they had acquired to anyone for now, at least not until they could figure out their purpose. Autbek set at finding this out as soon as he got back to the mages wing.
His first task he figured was to find out what kind of magic was contained within each one. Narrowing it down to one of five or six archetypes would maybe give him some clue how to proceed. He knew his master was an expert at this, as it fell under the category of divination, and so would have all the necessary tools he would need, most of which he had some training on already.
If all else failed he could risk an identification spell but he was leery to do that. The spell caused a kind of mind-link with the object. The thought of that scared the hell out of him as he had been taught at Runeholden that such a spell risked driving the caster mad, particularly if the creator of the object had sabotaged the item.
With Haspeth and Castor’s help he began a series of tests. The first involved immersing the items in a bowl of vinegar laced with pem-salts, a mixture of salts said to come from an ancient dried up sea that was believed to have contained more than just water.
“Why are they fizzing?” Castor asked as the three watched the items sink to the bottom of the bowl.
Autbek had retrieved a tome on reagents from the library and so began looking for answers within. “Says here a positive reaction indicates lack of malice.”
“Malice? You mean it’s not cursed?” Haspeth asked.
“Cursed! What if it is?” Castor exclaimed taking a step back.
“Well...” Autbek began then decided he did not know how to answer that. If it was cursed they could be in a lot of trouble, something he had not considered before.
“But it’s not! Right?” Castor demanded to know.
“Don’t think so.” Autbek muttered as he poured over the tome again.
After a half hour or so they removed the amulets from the bowl and dried them off. Both seemed to be cleaner than before and so they found the many runes on them easier to read. He had Haspeth start tracing out the runes on the coin amulet while he started on the frog one. Once they had a copy of those he could hide the amulets away while they researched the runes.
“Going to take a long time I think.” He told his friends as he duplicated the runes on a piece of parchment. The runes were arcane-script and so he was familiar with all of them, but their order and precise placement was what really defined the power and type of enchantment.
“Great!” Haspeth chimed in as he squinted at the coin to make out the next rune.
Later Autbek sat at his desk pondering the little information they had on the amulets so far. It was clear they were largely at a standstill. The frog was definitely an evocation device so Autbek had the sense from it that it gave the wearer some kind of enhancement. His best guess was it had to do with the mind.
The coin amulet was abjuration magic and was likely for protecting its wearer from something. He had no idea if it was from physical harm or from spells, or from something else. Haspeth had suggested Castor put it on and let them throw stones at him to see if they would hurt him. Castor declined and suggested Haspeth try jumping off the tower with it.
Frustrated and working on a hunch, Autbek decided to ask the librarians for assistance. Only they, besides Tenric, had any real idea what was in the thousands of scrolls in the library. So he devised a plan.
They would show the runes to the two librarians and ask if they could identify them all and what they might be for. He would tell them they had been copied off of something by someone else and he was pressed to find out if they were magical and thus what their worth was.
At first the librarians were not enthusiastic but Autbek insisted that he would start searching through the scrolls himself if they would not, so they relented and began a thorough search. They knew the place well he was sure, and so if there was something to be found they would find it he figured.
Meanwhile he studied all the identification spells his master owned, at least those considered to be at his level of mastery. It would be a last resort he told himself.
Several days later the librarian called him in and asked their first pertinent question about the runes. “What type of figure, or impression was associated with the runes,” they wanted to know.
Thinking about lying and saying he did not know for a moment, he changed his mind figuring there was not much point in it. “A frog I think it was.”
“Hmm, how about a goat?” One of them asked as he opened a tome that he had booked marked.
Autbek was s
hown an illustration that resembled the frog closely but was in fact a goat. The author indicated it was an amulet of Ispeth, or simply translated an amulet made to bring favor from the goddess of ideas. Ispeth was a deity worshiped still in Astrum when one sought inspiration and clear thought.
“Interesting.” He commented, trying not to show his enthusiasm for what they had found. “How about that other set of runes?”
The two retrieved several scrolls and tomes this time in an attempt to convince him that it was a protective ward or device used to keep spirits at bay, including perhaps demons and the living dead. He found their research most convincing.
The first thing his two friends wanted to know was how much were they worth and who they could sell them to. Autbek informed them that selling them was not an option and that they were in fact priceless.
“Priceless!” Castor exclaimed, “Wow, I’ll bet the Earl would pay a bag of gold marks for them then.”
“Yeah, and then what do we tell our master … hey how about we offer him fifty-fifty.” Haspeth added sarcastically.
“No.” Autbek announced, “We are giving this one to the Dieknotkow and the other we are keeping for ourselves.” With that said he headed for the tower despite pleas from his friends.
He stood in front of the man-bird after having Castor watch the stairs so as to be warned should someone approach. Holding up the amulet of Ispeth he showed it to the Dieknotkow, careful to hold it steady before one of its eyes than the other. Handing it then to Haspeth he cast a spell of comprehend languages upon himself as he had once before, hoping it would help him again communicate with the creature.
This time he did the spell from memory as he had studied it recently in preparation for this moment. “Will the amulet help you?” He asked it as Haspeth handed the amulet back to him.
