For a long moment the two females locked stares. Kiva broke away first, dipping into a deep and mocking bow. "If you say so, mistress, then it must be true." She turned and left the room, moving through the tangle of foliage with the sure, silent step of a jungle creature.
Keturah watched her go, her face troubled and thoughtful. Now she had one more culprit with whom to deal, and her anger returned in full measure as she rounded on the white-faced youth.
"If you wish to continue in this tower another day, Dhamari, you will give me your pledge, by wizard-word, never again to work such a spell!"
It was a harsh condition, but Keturah did not think it unjust. Such oaths were never asked or given lightly. There was no provision for regret or disavowal. No wizard could ever be foresworn, even if he dearly wished to be-not even if doing so would save his own life.
None of this seemed to concern the fledgling wizard. His boots still smoked from stamping out the imp's fires. His face was particolored like a painted harlequin's: pale on one side and on the other red from the bursts of scaling steam. His dark eyes were unfocused by pain and limpid with terror. As the implication of Keturah's words seeped through his distress, relief swept over his face like a healing tide. He took one of Keturah's hands in both of his and dropped to one knee.
"Mystra is merciful, but no more so than you!" he said fervently. "The Lady's blessing upon you! I was certain you would discharge me from the tower as you did Kiva."
"So I shall, if you do not swear. Kindly rein in your joy," she said tartly as she tugged her hand free. "What I ask of you is no small thing!"
"As you say, mistress," he agreed, but so great was his relief that he did not seem particularly abashed by the scolding. He rose to his feet and took a golden medallion from around his neck. On it was his sigil, a magical rune that was his signature and far more. This he gave her-a symbolic act showing he was quite literally in her hands. He pushed back his sleeves, closed his eyes, and held his hands aloft in an attitude of spell casting.
"By word and wind, sun and star, by the sacred flames of Lady Mystra and the magic She grants me, I swear that never in this life or any to come will I summon a creature I do not understand and cannot control." His eyes popped open, and he turned an earnest gaze upon Keturah. "This oath I swear gladly and freely, as I will any other you require of me!"
Sincerity shone in his eyes and rang in his tones. "It is enough," she said, relenting. She sent him to summon the gardener to clear away the vines and flowers. He left her presence swiftly, as if lingering might change her mind.
Left alone, Keturah started to sort through the mess. She returned two spellbooks to an empty shelf and began to kick through the vines in search of the rest. Her lips set in a grim line as she noted a burned and crumbled page entangled in the foliage. She freed the scrap of parchment and smoothed it out, hoping it was not from one of her precious books.
A glance told her it was not. Most of the page had been burned away, and what remained was brown and crisp at the edges, but she could make out a few oddly shaped characters. The markings were entirely unfamiliar to her: sharp, angular, elegant-yet somehow full of menace.
Keturah blew away some of the soot and ash and gave the scrap a closer study. She didn't recognize the spell or even the language, but she thought the markings looked vaguely Elvish. Full of foreboding, she left the laboratory for her private library, a small room housing the treasures inherited from her last master. From a hidden wall safe she took a large, slim volume.
The book was an artifact, the most valuable thing Keturah owned. There were only two pages in it, electrum sheets hammered thin and perfectly smooth. On the left page was etched a blank scroll, and the right-hand page depicted an oval mirror and a smaller scroll. Each page was bordered by a complex design that upon careful inspection appeared to be fashioned of thousands upon thousands of runes, markings too numerous and tiny to be identified separately. According to Keturah's master, nearly every known spell was included in the tangle. The book could reveal the origin of any spell, and sometimes the identity of the wizard who had created it. Keturah had never tested the claim, for the price of such magic was high.
She set to work with a diamond-tipped stylus, painstakingly etching the strange runes onto the electrum scroll. When satisfied she had reproduced the spell fragment faithfully, she stood the open book upright on the table, angled so page faced page. She took a small candle made with costly spices and placed it between the pages, lit it, and began the words and gestures of the complicated spell. The silver-white sheen of the electrum "mirror" faded, to be replaced by clouded glass and a shadowy, featureless face. The scroll beneath began to fill with small, precise Halruaan runes.
She leaned close and began to read aloud.
"The spell is incomplete, and one of the runes is reversed and turned widdershins a quarter circle. The spell is likely Ilythiiri in origin. No wizard's visage comes to the mirror's call, but this much I, The Book, can say with certainty: the spell fragment is ancient beyond reckoning. Do you wish The Book to attempt a translation?"
Keturah leaned back and blew out a long breath.
Ilythiiri. The very word held terror, though it named a people gone from Halruaa since time out of mind. Ilythiiri was the name sages gave to the southland's dark elves, the ancestors of the evil drow.
Ilythiirian magic-by wind and word, what was Kiva thinking!
Keturah hurried to her treasure room to fetch gold and gems needed for the next level of inquiry. She closed the book to erase both scrolls, then opened it and recopied the spell fragment and the spell for translation. The treasure she placed in a small cauldron, along with a chunk of beeswax and an assortment of magical powders. She placed the cauldron on the banked coals of her hearth. When the wax melted, she poured the whole of it into a candle mold and waited impatiently for the spell candle to set. She set it alight and watched as the treasure melted away with the candle, lending power to the spell. New runes etched themselves onto the electrum page. As she read, Keturah could feel the blood drain from her face drop by drop.
The spell fragment spoke of the Unseelie Folk: dark fairies that haunted the mountains of Halruaa, mysterious creatures of such unfathomable evil even the drow were said to fear them. The rune that had been reversed and twisted was a charm of warding against these deadly fey folk.
"A warding reversed," she said slowly. "So the spell Kiva cast was not a warding but a summoning!"
Sweet Mystra! This explained why Dhamari had hesitated when she'd asked if they'd summoned the imp deliberately. The summoning was deliberate, but the imp's appearance had been a mistake, and a lucky one. Keturah was not certain she could have handled the dark creatures her students had intended to evoke!
The Lady be praised, neither Dhamari nor Kiva was skilled enough to breach the boundaries between the world they knew and the hidden realm of the Unseelie Court. Keturah was not certain she herself could do so, and she had no desire to seek an answer. Dhamari would not try again: she had his wizard-word bond on it. But Kiva...
Keturah leaped up from the table and looked around frantically for the scrap of parchment-important evidence if Kiva's ambitious were to be curtailed. The elf woman was a fledgling magehound. Keturah was not so young and idealistic to believe the Azuthans would rule against one of their own on her word alone. The clerics of Azuth, Lord of Wizards, were a minority in a land devoted to Mystra and were jealous guardians of their god's prestige and position. Most Azuthan priests were good men and women, but when faced with wizardly interference they became as defensive as cornered wolves.