“Ilvani, look at me.”
When she looked up, she wore a vacant expression. Ashok wondered if she saw him at all. Bloody fingerprints covered her face, and there was dirt on her cheek from her fall. I should take her to Makthar, Ashok thought. Her wounds weren’t life-threatening, but if left alone, they would soon be infected and cause her more pain. Of course, if they did, she would hardly notice. Ilvani’s entire world was one degree of suffering or another.
“Ilvani,” Ashok said. “You know what’s happening, don’t you-why the shadow beasts are going mad when you come near them? Does it have to do with those symbols on your arms?”
The witch blinked and focused on him. She watched his hand rhythmically stroking the nightmare’s flank, so close to the low blue flame. “The telthors are angry,” she said, “restless. Their hands are all over me. They leave black marks, grabbing, pulling, wanting. The mountain wants, the river wants, the trees want. I can’t listen to them if they’re everywhere.”
Ashok sighed. He should have known better than to expect coherency from her. “Let’s get back to the city,” he said. “We need to find Neimal.”
The witch might know what the symbols on Ilvani’s arms meant. If they could solve that puzzle, it might lead to an explanation for the rampant madness.
“You stay here,” he said to the nightmare, “unless you’d like to go back in your cage?”
The nightmare snorted and shied away, but he didn’t go far. The message was clear: I’ll be waiting for you.
The guards sent word ahead to Neimal, and the witch waited for them on the other side of the portal. When she saw Ilvani’s arms, she said to Ashok, “You must tell Uwan what’s happened. He’ll want to know that Ilvani is hurt.”
Ilvani was an important symbol in Ikemmu, a mystical link between the shadar-kai and Tempus. She had become even more precious since they’d lost Natan and his visions from the warrior god. Unfortunately, it also meant the city saw her less as a person and more as a prophet. Having been in a similar position, Ashok knew that wasn’t the kind of regard Ilvani needed right now.
“I have to talk to you, but I don’t want to involve Uwan in this yet,” Ashok said.
Neimal’s eyes widened. “That’s not for us to decide. You must-”
“Do you see these symbols?” Ashok showed her Ilvani’s unbandaged arm. “Do you know what they are?”
Neimal gently traced the symbols with the pad of her thumb. Ilvani’s gaze drifted back and forth between the two of them. Silent tears continued to drip down her cheeks, leaving watery tracks in the blood and dirt. The witch’s gaze darkened. Seeing her expression, Ashok couldn’t tell whether Ilvani’s wounds or her tears disturbed Neimal more.
“You’ve never seen her this bad before, have you?” he said.
Neimal looked at him. “Never.” She let go of Ilvani’s arm. “She came to me earlier, raving about spirits of the forest, mountains, and water. She hadn’t cut herself. Ilvani never cuts herself.”
It confirmed what Ashok suspected; that Ilvani had never before been tempted to hurt herself for stimulation. She’d never needed to-her mind was forever active, strange, and deep. Peace and apathy were unknown concepts to her.
“What about the symbols?” he asked.
“I don’t recognize them,” Neimal said. “They’re in no language I know, and they’re nothing arcane. For all we know, she made them up in her head.”
“I don’t believe that,” Ashok said. “You said yourself Ilvani never puts the knife to her flesh.” Many shadar-kai of the Shadowfell used self-inflicted pain to keep themselves from fading, but in Ikemmu, such an act was defilement and strictly forbidden. “If she wanted a canvas, she could have drawn on the walls of her chamber. Yet I was just up there and found nothing like this. These symbols mean something.”
“Then their origin must be another plane or the mirror world, Faerun,” Neimal said. “They’re outside my knowledge.”
“Faerun,” Ashok said. The mirror world was outside his knowledge as well, but he knew at least one person who was familiar with it and with sending and receiving messages. Perhaps she would be able to decipher whatever message Ilvani was trying to send them.
CHAPTER FOUR
Ashok led Ilvani past the stone dwellings of the trade market while the Trimmer bell sounded at the top of Tower Makthar. She trailed a little behind him and stopped every now and then to examine one of the outdoor stalls. Her tears had ceased, but she still walked like a person asleep. Ashok wondered what was in her thoughts.
He was surprised she’d agreed to go with him at all. Ilvani avoided loud places and crowds, any situation where she might have to put her back to another person. Ashok recognized the tense set of her shoulders, the readiness of a body expecting to be hit. It had been the same for him, in his former enclave.
They turned a corner, and Ashok stopped short. Tethered to one of the merchant wagons was a large hound. Its owner probably kept the animal as a guard for his wares. Ashok tried to turn Ilvani aside, but she avoided his reach and walked right up to the wagon. She didn’t see the dog.
Ashok cursed and sprang forward, intending to grab the dog’s tether before it went mad and attacked the witch. The dog cocked its head and growled at him when he reached for its rope, but Ashok saw no sign of madness in the animal’s eyes. Ilvani passed by the wagon and kept walking. The dog paid no attention to her.
Bewildered, he hurried to catch up to Ilvani and kept a close watch as they walked through the market. They passed a pair of horses led by a dwarf. Ashok watched for a reaction from the animals, waited for them to buck and rear as the nightmare had done, but they didn’t so much as flinch at the witch’s presence.
Whatever its source, the madness Ilvani inflicted on the shadow beasts didn’t extend to common work animals. Ashok wondered at this distinction, but he didn’t have time to consider the reason for it. They were almost at their destination.
Ilvani slowed as they approached the halfling Darnae’s shop. Her gaze went immediately to the carvings around the arched brick doorway. She traced one with her fingernail and then turned her hand to look at it, as if she expected the symbol to rub off on her.
“This is one of the old houses, built before the shadar-kai came here,” Ashok said when she looked at him questioningly. Darnae had told him so when he’d visited before. “Will you come inside with me?”
She didn’t move. Ashok stepped over the threshold and turned to show her that nothing bad had happened to him. He held out his hand.
In response, she glared at him.
She was back to her old self enough that she didn’t want to be touched. He dropped his hand. He didn’t know whether to be grateful or not.
She came over the threshold. Her eyes took in the room in one swift glance: parchment, quills and ink arranged on cloth-covered tables, the room lit with soft candlelight. The surroundings brought peace to Ashok’s mind.
Why was it that he always felt so comfortable here, in a place as far from the world he knew as the mirror world was from Ikemmu?
Maybe it was simply the presence of the woman who stepped out now from the back room of the shop. Darnae had bright, prominently blue eyes and an angular face that lit with pleasure when she saw Ashok.
“I thought I might see you today, Ashok,” she said. “I opened a bottle of wine that Tatigan brought me. He had you in mind when he got it.…”
Her voice faded as she stepped around the counter and saw Ilvani. The witch crouched at eye level with a rack of quills, so that when she turned to look at the halfling, the two of them were eye to eye.
“The birds lost all their feathers,” Ilvani said. “No more owls.”