“You can’t do this!”
“You don’t know what I can do,” she said. “Screw with me and you’ll find out.”
“What-what do you want from me?”
“I want you to take me to the dance, sweetcake.” She set him down and stripped off her porter’s coveralls, revealing a very credible-if I do say so myself-surplice-and-cloak outfit such as those worn by the Anointed Fellows of the Arcane Council of the Order of the Seekers of Carmot. “I know you can’t see it without a mirror, but that fancy glowy hunk of etherium you’re using for a heart? Now it’s a little extra glowy. What that means is that any time I start to worry you might be trying to get smooth with me, every part of your body that isn’t etherium will burn to the kind of ash that blows away in a soft breeze. With me so far? Good.”
She got rid of the coveralls, then paused a moment to raise her arms, admiring what was-again, if I say so myself-a spectacularly detailed illusion that they were both constructed of etherium.
“The other thing you should absorb here,” she went on, “is that you’re not on fire right now because I’m stopping the little extra glowy business from igniting, get me? You savvy what’ll happen to you if anything happens to me? Here’s a clue: it’s the same as what’ll happen if you so much as sneak up a hint of a shield to interfere with my control. Or if a sudden move breaks my concentration. Fwhoosh. Soft breeze. Got me? No? Give me a sign here, Renn. Wave a flag. Send up a flare.”
“You can’t-” Renn swallowed and started again. “It’s impossible-no such spell exists!”
She smiled. “He told me you’d say that.”
“He? There are others? How many?”
“Depends on how you count,” she said through a predatory grin. “There’s at least one of them who’s gonna give you a pretty nasty shock.”
I found myself with a bit of a predatory smile of my own as I pushed the scrying dish aside. “If only I could have been there to do it myself,” I murmured.
Through the device in Baltrice’s ear I could pick up their voices as Renn made introductions. “Arcane Fellow Silas Renn, and-”
“Baltrice,” she said. “Just Baltrice. It’s a, y’ know, an honor and all that.”
“You are called by a single name, then?” The voice of a sphinx is different from that of other creatures, for their vast hollow bones can function also as organ pipes, and so every phrase from a sphinx is a motif, and a speech can be a symphony. “That is uncommon for a human, is it not?”
“Yeah, well,” she said through a crooked grin, “a last name’s just for people who want you to be impressed by their parents.”
I made a mental note to give her a bonus.
There followed a bit of hastily stammered conversation, as Renn haltingly attempted to explain why the rest of the Arcane Fellowship was not on hand to greet her. He couldn’t exactly admit the truth, which was that every Arcane Fellow and even many of the lesser masters were out desperately scavenging etherium. Etherium, as the basis of most weapons and an adjunct to every combat mage’s power, was central to Esper’s war effort… and the Seekers of Carmot, who had been pretending for many years to know how to make the stuff, now were faced with either providing for the whole land’s needs, or publicly confessing their decades-long conspiracy to defraud the public.
Sangrite had been discovered in the mountains of Jund (with whom, inconveniently, we were currently at war), but carmot, the last essential ingredient-in an irony that warmed me every time I thought about it-remained so elusive that the masters couldn’t even agree on what it was, much less where to find any. This meant that for the first time in the entire history of the Order, the Seekers of Carmot were out in the world, and-not to grind too fine an edge on it-they were actually, well…
Seeking carmot.
I doubt I’ll ever stop finding that funny.
While it probably would have been even more amusing to leave Renn twisting in the wind of his own lies with his underclothes hanging out, Baltrice moved the plan in its intended direction with her customary bluntness. “I believe Master Fellow Renn might be unaware that the Exalted Hieresiarch of the Order has unexpectedly returned, and awaits the Grand Hegemon in the Vault of the Codex.”
Renn was unquestionably unaware of this, as it was a bald-faced lie-but as I had anticipated, he was too concerned with protecting his own anatomy to do anything other than play along.
“He awaits me?” Sharuum fluted somberly. “Then go we shall. There might we slake our thirst for knowledge at the original spring.”
They proceeded on through the Academy’s innards without delay-due to protocols that were rigidly enforced at the Academy’s construction, all public areas were easily accessible to sphinxes, most well-mannered dragons, and all but the very largest gargoyles-while Renn kept trying to summon some plausible excuse for preventing the Grand Hegemon from entering the Vault and discovering that the legendary mystical Codex Etherium to be wholly legendary and not mystical at all.
Sharuum shed members of her retinue at every juncture. By the time they reached the Tower of the Vault, only the two young male sphinxes remained, and she set them to guard the doors behind her.
Sharuum, Baltrice, and Renn wound their way up the great spiral stair to the spire-top Vault of the Codex. At the last, Renn was reduced to simple pleading. “Please, Your Wisdom-the Vault is not intended for any but the Fellowship!”
“I suppose that when one is made of glass,” Sharuum replied solemnly, “everything looks like a stone.”
At the door, he gave it one last shot. “But-but-but-”
“That’s already two more than most folks have any use for,” Baltrice put in, bless her snide little heart. “How full of crap do you have to be to need three butts?”
“Your Wisdom-Your Wisdom, please!” he stammered, pretending he hadn’t heard. “In the entire history of the Order of the Seekers of Carmot, no being who is not a Fellow of the Arcane Council has ever been inside the Vault!”
This moment was, because I share with Nicol Bolas a regrettable fondness for the dramatic, when I reached out with my mind from where I stood-on the far side of the Vault, leaning on the lectern that held the Codex Etherium-and opened the door.
Carefully framed so that the swirling dust motes in the single shaft of sunlight from the roof portal above shimmered around me in a golden halo, making me shine in the gloom-shrouded chamber like a fugitive angel, I spread my hands with an apologetic shrug.
“I’ve never been a fellow of anything,” I said, “and I’ve been here twice.”
There was very little commotion. Sharuum was even more inscrutable than is common for her opaque kind; Baltrice, of course, had known I would be there; and Renn was gob-smacked beyond speech.
“Your Wisdom.” I stood up straight, of course, in the presence of my queen. “Please come in, and make yourself as comfortable as may be possible. Baltrice, if you could please see to Master Renn. He may need assistance in finding a seat.”
Renn finally found his voice. “You…”
“Surprise.”
“It’s not possible…” He seemed to be having difficulty getting his breath. “I saw you die!”
“You share that honor with a surprising variety of others.”
Sharuum lingered beyond the Vault door, eyeing me with wholly understandable caution. “If this is your Hieresiarch,” she piped to Renn, “please convey my compliments to his doctor.”
“Is she hitting on you?” Doc whispered in my left ear. “I think she’s hitting on you. Wow, that makes her like a, whaddayasay, zoophiliac, right?”
I made as much of a shh-ing noise as I could manage without making Sharuum wonder if I might be impersonating a teapot.
“The Hieresiarch-? Him? He-he-” Renn sputtered. “He’s the man who murdered the Hieresiarch!”
“The latest previous, Your Wisdom, a decade ago,” I explained. “Nor was it murder.”