Defenders of Daybreak, The Early Years.
- Thread starter Sialia
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Sialia
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oh, all right.
Cadrienne rubbed her tired eyes, gave the footpedal another few pumps, and then dipped her quill into a bottle of ink and continued writing. So much grain for the men's hall, so much for the women's, and parcels for the independent householders. It wasn't going to last the season if the weather kept up and no more caravans got through.
She sighed and tried the calculations again.
There had to be a way to get it to work. She wondered whether the patron of the University, the Duke of Beryl, would consider making another donation this season, and shook her head. That resource was about all tapped out for the time being.
She tapped her fingers on the desktop, and gave the footpedal a few more desultory pumps. The clockwork mechanism around her made its usual whirring noises, and the colored globes began to rotate around her desk one more time. She rested her forehead in her hands.
"Cadrienne?" a voice said.
"Come," she replied without looking up.
"Hey, did I come at a bad time?"
Cadrienne looked up at Dylrath and for a moment her face positively glowed with joy, before she got control of her features and gave him a very ordinary, pleasant, welcoming smile. "Dylrath. What a pleasant surprise. I've been so hoping you'd stop by for a visit. But try to keep your voice low, alright?" she said, gesturing to the seven bassinets full of sleeping infants.
"No problem," Dylrath said quietly, wrapping his arms across his chest and rubbing his hands across them. "Ah, Daybreak. Miserable and damp, just like I remembered it. What's with the clockwork nursery? This has got to be the most bizarre experiment I've ever walked in on, and I've been by Arcade's place dozens of times at inopportune moments."
"It's not an experiment Dylrath. More like a dreadful mistake. The celestial navigation and astrology students tried to build an orrery--a clockwork mechanism of the heavens--and the calculations were off and the whole thing went hideously awry. The most useless orrery ever built -- mind the sun coming up on the back of your head there -- and it turned out, quite by mistake, to have one useful function. For some reason, it puts colicky babies to sleep. I think it's the harmonics of the room vibrations, but maybe it's just the pretty colored balls. Perhaps the subject of celestial mechanics is just soporific of itself. Anyway, the chief nanny is down with the flu and I volunteered to sit in for her tonight."
"Well, that would explain it. Pity, I was hoping to catch you in the act of something sinister for a change. Hey, how's goes the bookkeeping?"
"Not so good I'm afraid. It's been wet for too long, and we haven't a caravan through for weeks. We're low on everything but mud."
"Aw, I should have checked in earlier. The weather in Oursk's been great for so long I forgot how crappy it gets out here," he said, ducking a large red ball that whirred slowly past his head. "Say the word, what do you need me to broker?"
"I need grain," she said. "And lumber."
He nodded. "What've you got to trade?"
"Anybody you know need mud?"
Dylrath shook his head doubtfully. A series of small blue spheres zipped along in front of his nose.
"I can't spare any more of the granite. We've got the new hall nearly finished, and if we're going to get the roof on before the snow, I've got to hold on to what we've already quarried."
"Livestock?"
"Only if you can get us a deal. We were counting on the proceeds from the wool for next winter. It's been hard enough to keep folks from eating the sheep outright. I don't know how I'd explain to them about having sold them for grain."
Dylrath sighed. "Do you need a loan?"
Cadrienne shook her head. "Donations, yes. Loans, no. I can't pay it back, and interest is out of the question."
"Mmm. Sorry there, I don't think I scrape together that much cash of my own. Too many of my funds are currently tied up elsewhere." He shook his head sadly.
"So," he said, looking up at the complicated machinery whirring around the room. "You've got mud."
"And peat. And grass. Lots of wet grass. And wind, but you can't export that."
"What were you planning on trading the caravans for their goods if they came through?"
"Lodging and safe escort. The route is treacherous at the best of times."
Dylrath smiled at the incongruity of Cadrienne -- sweathearted, vegetarian, lover of all life forms -- running a protection racket. He could see why she was unprepared to deal with him. He needed neither lodging nor safe escort. Transportation was usually as simple and instantaneous for Dylrath as grinning.
"What about the fur?"
Cadrienne looked pained. It was no secret that the bogs and plains surrounding Daybreak in every direction for miles were full of fur bearing animals, some with ivory tusks. Dylrath had tried to talk her into harvesting those commodities before, but the thought of supporting the construction of her University with blood money horrified her. "I hope it doesn't come to that. Give me a few hours, I'll think of something. What's the going rate for impudent apprentices? I have scores of those."
Dylrath grinned at the jibe. "Apprentices, as usual, are practically worthless."
"Have you eaten?"
Dylrath nodded. It was a remarkable accomplishment that Cadrienne managed to keep a town and a university full of people fed out here, but the cuisine of Daybreak was not on his top ten list. Or anywhere near it. "I had dinner already, but I'll hang for a bit. Oh, hey," he said, "There was something I wanted to ask you."
Cadrienne's eyes narrowed and her fingers strayed from her quills to one of the books on her desk.
"Oh, don't do that," Dylrath said, "It makes you look just like Claris. I hate it when she looks at me like that."
Cadrienne smiled pleasantly, flopping her holy book open across her lap. "I was just considering praying for a greater depth of understanding, so that I might help you better."
"Ah, no. No no no no no. No. That trick about sweet talking somebody into voluntarily accepting a hostile spell effect, I learned that one from you," Dylrath said, ducking a comet and moving to place a bassinet between them. "I'm not falling for it. No."
"I never have done any such thing," said Cadrienne, looking hurt.
"Oh come on. You talked Peggus out of his mind on the beach. There was no way he chose to let us go out of the goodness of his heart. A man who buries you up to the neck in sand while the tide is coming in AND poisons you to boot, he means business. Besides, I saw you praying at him."
"Keep your voice down. I didn't pray at him. I prayed for him. There's a difference."
"Yadda yadda yadda. Same thing," Dylrath said, waving his hand. And then he came closer to her and said confidentially, "What did you cast on him anyway? I never did find out."
Cadrienne sighed and rolled her eyes. "Ordinarily, that would be betraying parishioner confidentiality. But since he's told practically everyone between Oursk and Daybreak about it, I suppose it wouldn't be a problem for me to repeat the public version of the tale."
"Do tell," Dylrath said, leaning across the desk with his chin in his hand.
"Well, as you recall, the Defenders extricated themselves from the sand and the henchman while Peggus and I were discussing the death of his sister and all that had happened since then. By then you had realized that you were all poisoned and going to die, and so you came over to kill Peggus. "
"Peggus had the antidote to the poison, but felt so ensnared by the troubled path the Mindflayer had led him down, that he felt he had nothing to live for and was willling to die rather than give it to you. Remember, he had shamed his entire noble family by getting mixed up in this plot in the first place."
"So, Peggus and I discussed the possibility that exacting his revenge for the death of his sister by killing the lot of you, even if justified, was not in his own best interest. But he was too worried about his own affairs to care about whether you lived or died at that point, and so full of despair that he just wanted everyone to die so that his pain would stop. I reminded him that Hell is not an especially good place to plan on escaping pain. And then I asked him to try to visualize whether there was any way out of the deadlock, what his best case scenario from this point was, instead of dwelling on his worst option. And I prayed for him to gain insight about his alternatives while he was thinking."
"But what did you cast on him?"
Cadrienne rolled her eyes and gave an exasperated sigh. "A Word of Holy Power: Hope."
Dylrath blinked. "'Hope?' You commanded him to ‘hope’? That’s it? That is totally lame. I’m disappointed."
"Nothing more was needed. Peggus did all the rest by himself."
Dylrath scratched his head. "So how is the old birk these days anyway? Still courting you? You actually gonna marry him?"
Cadrienne blushed. "It's a very complicated matter, Dylrath. I like him a great deal, but I don't think I can marry him. There are rules about these things."
"What kind of rules?"
"It is a very bad idea for a priestess to . . . become involved with someone she is counseling."
"Why?"
"It destroys my objectivity. I become too close to the person and become part of their complex of issues, and therefore unable to help without seeking to derive personal gain. It is a violation of the position of trust. Also, it keeps me from getting too impressed with my own advice."
Dylrath scratched his head. "Ok," he said, clearly not getting it at all, but willing to accept that rules were rules. "I suppose. But, uh, technically, didn't you derive personal benefit from the position of trust back when you used the trick to get the antidote?"
"Side effect," she said with a very slight smile. "I never focused on that while I was helping him. To help him, I had to let go completely of what I wanted to get out of the situation and focus on what was best for him."
"And that just happened to work out for everyone's benefit?"
"Yes. It usually does."
"But what if he'd really been evil?" Dylrath persisted.
"He is a human being, Dylrath, not a monster. Human beings always have free will to choose between good and evil. It is very difficult to change one's course, but it is always possible. Peggus only needed to be reminded that he still had the power to make his own choices."
"What if he'd chosen evil, then?" Dylrath said, frustrated at Cadrienne's semantics.
"That was one of his options. But we all knew the Defenders were not sitting quietly waiting to die. So when Peggus contemplated where he would spend his eternity, there was a certain, ah, immediacy to the consideration."
"I get it. You had him over a barrel before you began, so you already knew his best interest was in giving you what you wanted."
Cadrienne rolled her eyes and looked hurt again.
"Alright. Nevermind. Sorry I brought it up."
Dylrath paused and fiddled with one of the planets that had stopped near his shoulder as the orrery wound down.
"Now," she said, "remove the offensive illusory illustration from my holy book, and tell me what you wanted to ask me about."
"Not if you're going to pray at me. All I did was say I wanted to ask you about something. I don't see how that calls for spellcasting."
"Because, Dylrath, your mind spends so much time mired in evasions and deceits that I can't follow your questions half the time, and you can't understand my answers. It was a bit much for me to think Morphat had sent you to me in my time of need. You've come for your own purposes, which is fine. I am always available to help those in need. If I am to help you I do have to at least require honesty, which I think sometimes is difficult for you.
"I never lie. If I can help it."
"You never lie unless there is no convenient half truth around for you to distort for your own purposes."
"I don't see the problem with that."
"Alix..." she began to address him, sounding aggrieved and apparently unaware of her slip, "A proficiency in lying is not like a sword proficiency. It's . . . more like Tao's bolos: likely to wind up wrapped around the warrior or an innocent bystander at any given moment.
"Cadrienne, ya gotta trust my intentions by now. You know I'm not up to anything malicious. Just private. And hazardous. And it's better if nobody knows the details."
"Your confidentiality is guaranteed. But I require disclosure." Cadrienne leaned forward and smiled and put a hand on Dylrath's shoulder. "Really, it will be all right. Telling the whole truth just once will not kill you. Or spoil your reputation.
"Um." Dylrath said, staring diligently at the painted model of Spira, and sounding distracted, as if he couldn't quite remember what it was he had wanted to ask her about after all the digressions. He turned the model a few times back and forth, examining the mounting mechanism. "I need . . . somewhere to, uh, store my diary. I thought you might have a room in your library it could fit into."
"You need me to store a book?"
"Well, it's a couple of books at this point. 147 volumes to be clear and accurate."
Cadrienne's lips made the shape of "147 volumes," but no sound came out.
"And, uh, it's private. I mean, you could let your students into it posthumously, if it came to that, but as long as I'm alive, it's private. There's nobody here but Peggus that would care about the doings in Oursk, anyway, right?"
Cadrienne considered her words carefully, and then put a hand to her temples and shook her head. "147 volumes of pornography would not be an asset to my library, Master Birdhouse."
"It's not pornography. Voyeurism, yes, but very little of it is pornographic. Volume 148 is a little portable thing anyhow and I'm keeping that one with me." He smiled. "All the rest of it is just records about things and people, stuff I've observed. Very dull."
Cadrienne waited patiently.
"It's uh, my research project for the Academy Sorcere. I'm working on developing a new field of Divination magics. I need a lot of notes about who and where people are to test whether my experiments are working."
"I see," she said. "Sounds interesting. You must have observed quite a number of people to have so much to write about."
"Nearly a quarter of the city," he said proudly. "The goal is the whole thing, of course. I want to have met everybody in Oursk at least once. But it's a big place, and the traders and adventurers and sailors come and go, so it's hard. I'm starting on the long term residents and politcal figures adn steady foreigners like ambassadors, and that sort of thing, but I'm working may way steadily towards the periphery."
"Why everyone rather than a representative sample?"
"I figure, knowing about the future isn't a whole lot of use, but knowing about the present, now that's worth a whole lot. Recent past, too. The longer I'm at this project, the more uses I find for the archive of recent events. But it's getting so big there won't be room to store it in the mirror room much longer, and I'm anxious about leaving it in the library at the Academy Sorcere because . . . well, there's a lot of stuff in there that might be incriminating to someone, and I doubt my professors realize how much time I've spent observing them and I'm afraid they'll cancel the whole project if they see some of it."
"So you want to store it here?"
"No one here is likely to pry, right, if you tell them it's off limits, and they're so far removed from what's going on in Oursk, it's not likely to be of much use to them. And no one is Oursk will think of looking for it here, and it's easy for me to come see it whenever I need to look something up, and that'd be good for you, because if I'm around a lot, I can run errands for you if you need 'em. And if the Academy of Flame decides to invade the mirror room from one of the portals, the books won't go up in the conflagration, which is something I've been worrying about for years."
Cadrienne looked as though something was still puzzling her about the idea, but she decided to let it go for now. "All right Dylrath, I'll find a space for your collection. Was there anything else?"
Dylrath looked out at the steadily falling rain. "How do you keep this place from sinking into the swamp?"
Cadrienne blinked at the sudden change of topic.
"The University and its Halls are all built on high ground with bedrock beneath. Only the independent householders have serious problems with flooding. I've been working on a project to build a series of dikes and wind driven pumps to drain the area, and the pilot project seems successful so far, but it's not yet complete."
Dylrath tipped his head to the side and gave her an incredulous smile. "You weren't kidding when you listed the wind as one of your assets, were you? You think of a way to make use of everything."
"I do my best to make creative use of what I have to work with."
"Me too. We've got that in common, at least." Dylrath drummed his fingers on the windowsill. "Ok, no promises, but I think there might be a buyer in 'Sink for a --what do you call it?"
"Wind driven pumping system?"
"We'll work on that. You wanna sell it in Eversink, it needs a catchy name, and some color."
"I suppose we could paint the canvas sails. Perhaps I could set some of the Fine Art students on the project. I could put the Architecture department up to redesigning the tower to be more decorative. So far, it's only been the Engineering students and they haven't given much thought to the aesthetics of the things. They work, and that's about it. Is there steady wind in Eversink?"
"I'll look into it. There's a river. Moving water's about the same as moving air, isn't it? Think your students can make one of the gizmos work under water?"
"Use the river to pump itself? Seems a bit like a snake eating its own tail, but yes, it could probably be done."
"A snake eating its own tail. Hmm, there's an angle. Work that into the design on the sails or whatever. 'Sink's probably got plenty of ways to pump water already, but they get bored so easy, I'll bet I could sell them something newfangled just because it was novel. And the perpetual motion thing has always got a fascination to it." He gave the little model of Spira a couple of spins. "Gimme a week. I'll research it and get back to you. 'Sink's got plenty of food, plenty of swamp, and I have business there anyway. I'll see what I can do."
"You have the soul of a tinkerer, Dylrath. You know we could use someone. . "
"No."
"You're sure?"
"Absolutely. I hate the rain, loathe the cold, and no offense, I'm not crazy about the food out here either. The only thing about Daybreak with any charm is the rats. Present company and her library excepted, of course."
Cadrienne smiled "Thank you for your assitance with the trading matters, then, Dylrath. We'll look forward to your next visit."
"The pleasure's all mine," Dylrath said gallantly, bowing. "Till then."
He exited as suddenly as he had come.
A restless infant stirred, and Cadrienne reached for the footpedal, wondering what it was she had just missed.
Cadrienne rubbed her tired eyes, gave the footpedal another few pumps, and then dipped her quill into a bottle of ink and continued writing. So much grain for the men's hall, so much for the women's, and parcels for the independent householders. It wasn't going to last the season if the weather kept up and no more caravans got through.
She sighed and tried the calculations again.
There had to be a way to get it to work. She wondered whether the patron of the University, the Duke of Beryl, would consider making another donation this season, and shook her head. That resource was about all tapped out for the time being.
She tapped her fingers on the desktop, and gave the footpedal a few more desultory pumps. The clockwork mechanism around her made its usual whirring noises, and the colored globes began to rotate around her desk one more time. She rested her forehead in her hands.
"Cadrienne?" a voice said.
"Come," she replied without looking up.
"Hey, did I come at a bad time?"
Cadrienne looked up at Dylrath and for a moment her face positively glowed with joy, before she got control of her features and gave him a very ordinary, pleasant, welcoming smile. "Dylrath. What a pleasant surprise. I've been so hoping you'd stop by for a visit. But try to keep your voice low, alright?" she said, gesturing to the seven bassinets full of sleeping infants.
"No problem," Dylrath said quietly, wrapping his arms across his chest and rubbing his hands across them. "Ah, Daybreak. Miserable and damp, just like I remembered it. What's with the clockwork nursery? This has got to be the most bizarre experiment I've ever walked in on, and I've been by Arcade's place dozens of times at inopportune moments."
"It's not an experiment Dylrath. More like a dreadful mistake. The celestial navigation and astrology students tried to build an orrery--a clockwork mechanism of the heavens--and the calculations were off and the whole thing went hideously awry. The most useless orrery ever built -- mind the sun coming up on the back of your head there -- and it turned out, quite by mistake, to have one useful function. For some reason, it puts colicky babies to sleep. I think it's the harmonics of the room vibrations, but maybe it's just the pretty colored balls. Perhaps the subject of celestial mechanics is just soporific of itself. Anyway, the chief nanny is down with the flu and I volunteered to sit in for her tonight."
"Well, that would explain it. Pity, I was hoping to catch you in the act of something sinister for a change. Hey, how's goes the bookkeeping?"
"Not so good I'm afraid. It's been wet for too long, and we haven't a caravan through for weeks. We're low on everything but mud."
"Aw, I should have checked in earlier. The weather in Oursk's been great for so long I forgot how crappy it gets out here," he said, ducking a large red ball that whirred slowly past his head. "Say the word, what do you need me to broker?"
"I need grain," she said. "And lumber."
He nodded. "What've you got to trade?"
"Anybody you know need mud?"
Dylrath shook his head doubtfully. A series of small blue spheres zipped along in front of his nose.
"I can't spare any more of the granite. We've got the new hall nearly finished, and if we're going to get the roof on before the snow, I've got to hold on to what we've already quarried."
"Livestock?"
"Only if you can get us a deal. We were counting on the proceeds from the wool for next winter. It's been hard enough to keep folks from eating the sheep outright. I don't know how I'd explain to them about having sold them for grain."
Dylrath sighed. "Do you need a loan?"
Cadrienne shook her head. "Donations, yes. Loans, no. I can't pay it back, and interest is out of the question."
"Mmm. Sorry there, I don't think I scrape together that much cash of my own. Too many of my funds are currently tied up elsewhere." He shook his head sadly.
"So," he said, looking up at the complicated machinery whirring around the room. "You've got mud."
"And peat. And grass. Lots of wet grass. And wind, but you can't export that."
"What were you planning on trading the caravans for their goods if they came through?"
"Lodging and safe escort. The route is treacherous at the best of times."
Dylrath smiled at the incongruity of Cadrienne -- sweathearted, vegetarian, lover of all life forms -- running a protection racket. He could see why she was unprepared to deal with him. He needed neither lodging nor safe escort. Transportation was usually as simple and instantaneous for Dylrath as grinning.
"What about the fur?"
Cadrienne looked pained. It was no secret that the bogs and plains surrounding Daybreak in every direction for miles were full of fur bearing animals, some with ivory tusks. Dylrath had tried to talk her into harvesting those commodities before, but the thought of supporting the construction of her University with blood money horrified her. "I hope it doesn't come to that. Give me a few hours, I'll think of something. What's the going rate for impudent apprentices? I have scores of those."
Dylrath grinned at the jibe. "Apprentices, as usual, are practically worthless."
"Have you eaten?"
Dylrath nodded. It was a remarkable accomplishment that Cadrienne managed to keep a town and a university full of people fed out here, but the cuisine of Daybreak was not on his top ten list. Or anywhere near it. "I had dinner already, but I'll hang for a bit. Oh, hey," he said, "There was something I wanted to ask you."
Cadrienne's eyes narrowed and her fingers strayed from her quills to one of the books on her desk.
"Oh, don't do that," Dylrath said, "It makes you look just like Claris. I hate it when she looks at me like that."
Cadrienne smiled pleasantly, flopping her holy book open across her lap. "I was just considering praying for a greater depth of understanding, so that I might help you better."
"Ah, no. No no no no no. No. That trick about sweet talking somebody into voluntarily accepting a hostile spell effect, I learned that one from you," Dylrath said, ducking a comet and moving to place a bassinet between them. "I'm not falling for it. No."
"I never have done any such thing," said Cadrienne, looking hurt.
"Oh come on. You talked Peggus out of his mind on the beach. There was no way he chose to let us go out of the goodness of his heart. A man who buries you up to the neck in sand while the tide is coming in AND poisons you to boot, he means business. Besides, I saw you praying at him."
"Keep your voice down. I didn't pray at him. I prayed for him. There's a difference."
"Yadda yadda yadda. Same thing," Dylrath said, waving his hand. And then he came closer to her and said confidentially, "What did you cast on him anyway? I never did find out."
Cadrienne sighed and rolled her eyes. "Ordinarily, that would be betraying parishioner confidentiality. But since he's told practically everyone between Oursk and Daybreak about it, I suppose it wouldn't be a problem for me to repeat the public version of the tale."
"Do tell," Dylrath said, leaning across the desk with his chin in his hand.
"Well, as you recall, the Defenders extricated themselves from the sand and the henchman while Peggus and I were discussing the death of his sister and all that had happened since then. By then you had realized that you were all poisoned and going to die, and so you came over to kill Peggus. "
"Peggus had the antidote to the poison, but felt so ensnared by the troubled path the Mindflayer had led him down, that he felt he had nothing to live for and was willling to die rather than give it to you. Remember, he had shamed his entire noble family by getting mixed up in this plot in the first place."
"So, Peggus and I discussed the possibility that exacting his revenge for the death of his sister by killing the lot of you, even if justified, was not in his own best interest. But he was too worried about his own affairs to care about whether you lived or died at that point, and so full of despair that he just wanted everyone to die so that his pain would stop. I reminded him that Hell is not an especially good place to plan on escaping pain. And then I asked him to try to visualize whether there was any way out of the deadlock, what his best case scenario from this point was, instead of dwelling on his worst option. And I prayed for him to gain insight about his alternatives while he was thinking."
"But what did you cast on him?"
Cadrienne rolled her eyes and gave an exasperated sigh. "A Word of Holy Power: Hope."
Dylrath blinked. "'Hope?' You commanded him to ‘hope’? That’s it? That is totally lame. I’m disappointed."
"Nothing more was needed. Peggus did all the rest by himself."
Dylrath scratched his head. "So how is the old birk these days anyway? Still courting you? You actually gonna marry him?"
Cadrienne blushed. "It's a very complicated matter, Dylrath. I like him a great deal, but I don't think I can marry him. There are rules about these things."
"What kind of rules?"
"It is a very bad idea for a priestess to . . . become involved with someone she is counseling."
"Why?"
"It destroys my objectivity. I become too close to the person and become part of their complex of issues, and therefore unable to help without seeking to derive personal gain. It is a violation of the position of trust. Also, it keeps me from getting too impressed with my own advice."
Dylrath scratched his head. "Ok," he said, clearly not getting it at all, but willing to accept that rules were rules. "I suppose. But, uh, technically, didn't you derive personal benefit from the position of trust back when you used the trick to get the antidote?"
"Side effect," she said with a very slight smile. "I never focused on that while I was helping him. To help him, I had to let go completely of what I wanted to get out of the situation and focus on what was best for him."
"And that just happened to work out for everyone's benefit?"
"Yes. It usually does."
"But what if he'd really been evil?" Dylrath persisted.
"He is a human being, Dylrath, not a monster. Human beings always have free will to choose between good and evil. It is very difficult to change one's course, but it is always possible. Peggus only needed to be reminded that he still had the power to make his own choices."
"What if he'd chosen evil, then?" Dylrath said, frustrated at Cadrienne's semantics.
"That was one of his options. But we all knew the Defenders were not sitting quietly waiting to die. So when Peggus contemplated where he would spend his eternity, there was a certain, ah, immediacy to the consideration."
"I get it. You had him over a barrel before you began, so you already knew his best interest was in giving you what you wanted."
Cadrienne rolled her eyes and looked hurt again.
"Alright. Nevermind. Sorry I brought it up."
Dylrath paused and fiddled with one of the planets that had stopped near his shoulder as the orrery wound down.
"Now," she said, "remove the offensive illusory illustration from my holy book, and tell me what you wanted to ask me about."
"Not if you're going to pray at me. All I did was say I wanted to ask you about something. I don't see how that calls for spellcasting."
"Because, Dylrath, your mind spends so much time mired in evasions and deceits that I can't follow your questions half the time, and you can't understand my answers. It was a bit much for me to think Morphat had sent you to me in my time of need. You've come for your own purposes, which is fine. I am always available to help those in need. If I am to help you I do have to at least require honesty, which I think sometimes is difficult for you.
"I never lie. If I can help it."
"You never lie unless there is no convenient half truth around for you to distort for your own purposes."
"I don't see the problem with that."
"Alix..." she began to address him, sounding aggrieved and apparently unaware of her slip, "A proficiency in lying is not like a sword proficiency. It's . . . more like Tao's bolos: likely to wind up wrapped around the warrior or an innocent bystander at any given moment.
"Cadrienne, ya gotta trust my intentions by now. You know I'm not up to anything malicious. Just private. And hazardous. And it's better if nobody knows the details."
"Your confidentiality is guaranteed. But I require disclosure." Cadrienne leaned forward and smiled and put a hand on Dylrath's shoulder. "Really, it will be all right. Telling the whole truth just once will not kill you. Or spoil your reputation.
"Um." Dylrath said, staring diligently at the painted model of Spira, and sounding distracted, as if he couldn't quite remember what it was he had wanted to ask her about after all the digressions. He turned the model a few times back and forth, examining the mounting mechanism. "I need . . . somewhere to, uh, store my diary. I thought you might have a room in your library it could fit into."
"You need me to store a book?"
"Well, it's a couple of books at this point. 147 volumes to be clear and accurate."
Cadrienne's lips made the shape of "147 volumes," but no sound came out.
"And, uh, it's private. I mean, you could let your students into it posthumously, if it came to that, but as long as I'm alive, it's private. There's nobody here but Peggus that would care about the doings in Oursk, anyway, right?"
Cadrienne considered her words carefully, and then put a hand to her temples and shook her head. "147 volumes of pornography would not be an asset to my library, Master Birdhouse."
"It's not pornography. Voyeurism, yes, but very little of it is pornographic. Volume 148 is a little portable thing anyhow and I'm keeping that one with me." He smiled. "All the rest of it is just records about things and people, stuff I've observed. Very dull."
Cadrienne waited patiently.
"It's uh, my research project for the Academy Sorcere. I'm working on developing a new field of Divination magics. I need a lot of notes about who and where people are to test whether my experiments are working."
"I see," she said. "Sounds interesting. You must have observed quite a number of people to have so much to write about."
"Nearly a quarter of the city," he said proudly. "The goal is the whole thing, of course. I want to have met everybody in Oursk at least once. But it's a big place, and the traders and adventurers and sailors come and go, so it's hard. I'm starting on the long term residents and politcal figures adn steady foreigners like ambassadors, and that sort of thing, but I'm working may way steadily towards the periphery."
"Why everyone rather than a representative sample?"
"I figure, knowing about the future isn't a whole lot of use, but knowing about the present, now that's worth a whole lot. Recent past, too. The longer I'm at this project, the more uses I find for the archive of recent events. But it's getting so big there won't be room to store it in the mirror room much longer, and I'm anxious about leaving it in the library at the Academy Sorcere because . . . well, there's a lot of stuff in there that might be incriminating to someone, and I doubt my professors realize how much time I've spent observing them and I'm afraid they'll cancel the whole project if they see some of it."
"So you want to store it here?"
"No one here is likely to pry, right, if you tell them it's off limits, and they're so far removed from what's going on in Oursk, it's not likely to be of much use to them. And no one is Oursk will think of looking for it here, and it's easy for me to come see it whenever I need to look something up, and that'd be good for you, because if I'm around a lot, I can run errands for you if you need 'em. And if the Academy of Flame decides to invade the mirror room from one of the portals, the books won't go up in the conflagration, which is something I've been worrying about for years."
Cadrienne looked as though something was still puzzling her about the idea, but she decided to let it go for now. "All right Dylrath, I'll find a space for your collection. Was there anything else?"
Dylrath looked out at the steadily falling rain. "How do you keep this place from sinking into the swamp?"
Cadrienne blinked at the sudden change of topic.
"The University and its Halls are all built on high ground with bedrock beneath. Only the independent householders have serious problems with flooding. I've been working on a project to build a series of dikes and wind driven pumps to drain the area, and the pilot project seems successful so far, but it's not yet complete."
Dylrath tipped his head to the side and gave her an incredulous smile. "You weren't kidding when you listed the wind as one of your assets, were you? You think of a way to make use of everything."
"I do my best to make creative use of what I have to work with."
"Me too. We've got that in common, at least." Dylrath drummed his fingers on the windowsill. "Ok, no promises, but I think there might be a buyer in 'Sink for a --what do you call it?"
"Wind driven pumping system?"
"We'll work on that. You wanna sell it in Eversink, it needs a catchy name, and some color."
"I suppose we could paint the canvas sails. Perhaps I could set some of the Fine Art students on the project. I could put the Architecture department up to redesigning the tower to be more decorative. So far, it's only been the Engineering students and they haven't given much thought to the aesthetics of the things. They work, and that's about it. Is there steady wind in Eversink?"
"I'll look into it. There's a river. Moving water's about the same as moving air, isn't it? Think your students can make one of the gizmos work under water?"
"Use the river to pump itself? Seems a bit like a snake eating its own tail, but yes, it could probably be done."
"A snake eating its own tail. Hmm, there's an angle. Work that into the design on the sails or whatever. 'Sink's probably got plenty of ways to pump water already, but they get bored so easy, I'll bet I could sell them something newfangled just because it was novel. And the perpetual motion thing has always got a fascination to it." He gave the little model of Spira a couple of spins. "Gimme a week. I'll research it and get back to you. 'Sink's got plenty of food, plenty of swamp, and I have business there anyway. I'll see what I can do."
"You have the soul of a tinkerer, Dylrath. You know we could use someone. . "
"No."
"You're sure?"
"Absolutely. I hate the rain, loathe the cold, and no offense, I'm not crazy about the food out here either. The only thing about Daybreak with any charm is the rats. Present company and her library excepted, of course."
Cadrienne smiled "Thank you for your assitance with the trading matters, then, Dylrath. We'll look forward to your next visit."
"The pleasure's all mine," Dylrath said gallantly, bowing. "Till then."
He exited as suddenly as he had come.
A restless infant stirred, and Cadrienne reached for the footpedal, wondering what it was she had just missed.
Sialia
First Post
"Well, that was perfect," Dylrath said, stepping into the mirror room, whistling. "Perfectly useless. 'Hope.' Like that's gonna help me. "
He tossed the little blue, green and gold colored ball in his hand up behind his back and caught it without looking.
"If you had two more Spiras ya could juggle 'em," Htarlyd quipped. "We could go back for the sun and the moon, if ya like--she's bound to nod off eventually."
But the ball landed oddly in Dylrath's palm. He expected the bit of rough edge where he'd uncrewed the little model of the world from the orrery while he was working out the Eversink pump deal, but there was something sticking out of it.
He looked into the hole and there it was--a small bit of parchment sticking out--a thin scrap with a few words on it.
"When a man seeks to create a god in his own image," it read in a neat script, "he ought to be careful about what he worships."
"Diviners," he mumbled, crumpling the thing. "I can't stand 'em."
He tossed the little blue, green and gold colored ball in his hand up behind his back and caught it without looking.
"If you had two more Spiras ya could juggle 'em," Htarlyd quipped. "We could go back for the sun and the moon, if ya like--she's bound to nod off eventually."
But the ball landed oddly in Dylrath's palm. He expected the bit of rough edge where he'd uncrewed the little model of the world from the orrery while he was working out the Eversink pump deal, but there was something sticking out of it.
He looked into the hole and there it was--a small bit of parchment sticking out--a thin scrap with a few words on it.
"When a man seeks to create a god in his own image," it read in a neat script, "he ought to be careful about what he worships."
"Diviners," he mumbled, crumpling the thing. "I can't stand 'em."
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Sialia
First Post
bonus: I updated http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=4167&postid=804313
also, since I realized there was a small chunk missing. Cheers!
also, since I realized there was a small chunk missing. Cheers!
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Malin Genie
First Post
lightful said:
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe
-Lewis Carroll, Jabberwocky
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Negative Zero
First Post
wow. simply, wow.
Sialia, i love the way your mind works!
that was just marvelous!
~NegZ
Sialia, i love the way your mind works!
that was just marvelous!
~NegZ
Greybar
No Trouble at All
I love the interaction. Dylrath totally blind to the simple power of hope, and assuming that Cadrienne had to have used some sort of magical power to convince Peggus. Beautifully written.
I wonder if he'll try to research Power Word Hope one of these days.
Thanks for the update!
John
Sialia
First Post
Yes, I borrowed Carrol's word. I just liked the scansion of "And the Dylrath outgrabe . . ."
For somebody who spends most of his life literally Through the Looking Glass, it seemed appropriate.
And just for the record, Cadrienne DID cast a spell. Only, as she says, she thinks of it as "praying for Peggus" rather than "casting a spell on him."
She used "Command."
I just love that spell.
For somebody who spends most of his life literally Through the Looking Glass, it seemed appropriate.
And just for the record, Cadrienne DID cast a spell. Only, as she says, she thinks of it as "praying for Peggus" rather than "casting a spell on him."
She used "Command."
I just love that spell.
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