“I have no use for your sympathy,” Jelan snarled. She glared at the parlor for a good ten heartbeats … but then, with a single angry motion, she slammed her katana back into its sheath. “Yet even a fool may err and speak wisely. If you are telling the truth-which is hard to believe in and of itself-then perhaps fate has indeed balanced the debt in the matter of my imprisonment. It is not for me to defy the wheel of fate, no matter how much I dislike its turnings. I was the Warlord of the Vast; kingdoms trembled at my footsteps. Now that glory lives only in my memory, and yours.”
Jack lowered his rapier cautiously. His shoulder burned where Jelan’s steel had touched him. As strange as he might find his circumstances, at least he hadn’t lost a throne at the same time he’d lost a century. What might that do to a person, even someone as rational and redoubtable as Myrkyssa Jelan? He allowed his invisibility spell to fade away-he couldn’t hold it much longer in any event, given his limited magical strength at the moment-and slowly returned to view. He studied her fierce features for a moment, and asked simply, “What will you do now?”
Jelan snorted. “The same as I have always done. I mean to win the highest place my ambitions and opportunities allow me.” She strode past Jack toward the door, pausing just long enough to poke one mailed finger into his breastbone. “Enjoy your good fortune while it lasts, Jack. Tomorrow may tell a different tale.”
She pushed past him and stormed out into the night. Jack stood staring after her, absently rubbing the sore spot in the middle of his chest where she’d poked him. After a long moment, he recovered enough presence of mind to shut the front door and bolt it securely. “Two things are clear,” he muttered aloud. “One, Edelmon is either hard of hearing or exceptionally discrete. Two, I shall have to issue another standing directive to the staff: Swordplay in the house is always to be investigated immediately.”
With a sigh, he went to go rouse Edelmon to have someone stitch his cut.
After the physician left, Jack spent a very restless night tossing and turning, kept awake by the fresh stitches in his shoulder and the possibility that Myrkyssa Jelan might change her mind and return to murder him. He had no idea what opportunities or ambitions she entertained, but he remembered all too well what she’d once made of herself-conqueror, revolutionary, subversive, enemy to all of Raven’s Bluff. Would she abandon her old designs and start over again somewhere else? Or did she still nurse dreams of making Raven’s Bluff the seat of a kingdom won through her own indomitable will? And if so, how would she proceed? Her formidable network of spies, secret supporters, and devoted henchmen had been shorn away by the passage of the years, but somehow Jack doubted that would daunt the Warlord for long. In fact, if Tharzon was correct in his suspicions about the Moon Daggers-whoever they were-she might already be at work building a new base of power.
Jack was very comfortable in his current situation, with bright prospects indeed. The last thing he needed was for Myrkyssa Jelan to begin stirring up trouble again. Jack had no wish to cross her, but any way he considered the question, he could only conclude that she hadn’t given up on her schemes. If Jelan had escaped the Underdark a few days after Dresimil Chumavh had ordered Jack to recount what he knew of the Warlord, then she’d had at least three or four tendays to settle in to Raven’s Bluff. What had she been doing during that time?
“She’s established enough to catch wind of Seila Norwood’s return and the part I played in it,” he grumbled at the gilt ceiling over his huge bed. “And it seems likely she has something to do with the Sarkonagael and the offered reward.” It was simply too great of a coincidence that the Sarkonagael should be publicly remarked upon in the very month when both Jack and Myrkyssa regained their freedom. Who else would have recognized its importance? Had she stolen it from the poster of the reward? Was she herself the poster? Or was there some other, less obvious connection between them? If Jelan didn’t have the Sarkonagael, she’d be looking for it. And if she did have it, then that was something that would be very good for him to know.
Jack finally drifted off into a fitful slumber. When he woke, he hurried through his breakfast and the morning correspondence-taking note of the engagements that were already beginning to dot his social calendar-then dressed quickly. Sometime during the night he’d come up with an idea that might determine the Sarkonagael’s whereabouts with comparative ease, and he was anxious to test it. He set out from Maldridge before nine bells had struck on a gray and rainy morning. A six-block stroll north on MacIntyre Path brought him to a weather-beaten building of sandstone and brick, covered in peeling gray plaster. A tarnished nameplate over the single street-facing door read Seekers’ Guildhall.
“It seems that the years haven’t been kind to the Diviners’ Guild,” Jack reflected aloud. Still, he might as well see what he could learn.
He tried the door and found that it opened with a wretched creaking of its hinges. A hallway paneled in dark wood led deeper into the building. “Good morning,” Jack called. “Is anybody here?”
He was answered by a disembodied voice that echoed through the hall. “Enter, seeker,” it intoned. “Your coming was foretold.”
“If that is the case, one might have expected to be greeted by name at the door,” Jack remarked.
“Your skepticism was foretold as well. Advance to the end of the hall. All your questions have their answers here.”
Jack did as he was instructed. As he neared the end of the hall, a concealed panel slid aside, revealing a small room lavishly decorated with purple drapes, hanging censers from which ribbons of aromatic smoke rose, and a table on which rested a sparkling crystal ball bigger than Jack’s head. At the head of the table sat a white-bearded old gnome who wore a shapeless baglike hat of purple felt decorated with silver moons and stars. “Please, seeker, be seated,” the gnome said.
Jack nodded and took the seat opposite the gnome. He folded his hands in his lap and waited in silence until the gnome frowned and peered more closely at him.
“Well?” the small wizard said. “What is it that you seek?”
“Oh, I didn’t realize that I needed to tell you,” Jack answered. “My coming was foretold, so I thought my business would be equally apparent.”
The gnome glowered. “It is not wise to test the powers unseen, young one! Know that I am Aderbleen Krestner, Master Diviner. To pay proper respect to the unseen powers, speak your name and business, if you please.”
“I am the Landsgrave Jaer Kell Wildhame, and I am in need of a divination,” said Jack. “I seek a book called the Sarkonagael.”
The gnome laughed at Jack. In fact, he laughed so long that his guffaws became dry whistling gasps and tears ran down his wrinkled cheeks. Jack glanced around, wondering if there might be some other object of humor in the cluttered chamber, and he finally crossed his arms and tapped his toe. “I fail to see what provokes this unseemly display,” he snapped.
“First,” the gnome wheezed, “You are the fifth treasure-seeker, troubleshooter, or bored dilettante to ask for my assistance about this matter, as if I couldn’t read the handbills and spot a reward notice for myself. Second, why in the world do you believe the tome’s location can be divined? If the book could be found by divination, someone would have done so already, and no reward for you.”
“Ah, but I possess an advantage that other seekers likely lack,” Jack said.
“Advantage? What advantage?” Aderbleen asked, frowning suspiciously at Jack.
“I have seen the book they are looking for,” Jack replied. “In fact, I have handled it at length, although that was a long time ago. If I recall correctly, it is much easier to divine the location of something that has been handled and studied than something that is simply known about. None of your professional colleagues have even the slightest clue what it looks like.”