Session Twenty-Six, Part Three: Tears in the Night
"Please, come in," the elf repeated. "Gaberk has set off to Highgate with another message for you...you must have all but passed him on the road." The elf stepped aside, gesturing them into the shabby hallway. "I am Ivanior Liadon, the late Baron's personal musician."
Not with a stance like that, Dru thought, noting how the elf moved, how he watched their every movement with the peculiar tension of one who lived by the blade.
The late Baron's bodyguard, maybe...or assassin.
"Di'Fier," the young mage said again. "My friends Dru Naïlo and Shesara Nareshnae." He turned to look ddown the hallway. Bare and a bit dusty, the wooden floorboards were uneven under his feet. Squares of a fainter shade on the wall showed where paintings and other things once hung.
"I will have Tomas ready the Baron's room then," Ivanior said with a slight bow. "And the ladies may stay in mine."
Di'Fier loked at Dru, and she cleared her throat. "I have a..." Words failed her for a moment. "A retinue," she decided, "coming on foot. They should be here in a couple of days. A dozen."
Ivanior's face fell into a pained expression. "
Malcis, but we have no rooms for so many..."
"Oh, they don't need much. We can probably put them in the barn." Dru ignored the curious looks from the elf, looking instead down the hall to where a door was opening.
"What
is all of this?" demanded the young man who emerged. Di'Fier's age, perhaps, but nowhere near his height, and possessed of a natural swarthiness rather than the mage's sun-baked skin. A furious black moustache bristled on his upper lip, and he carried himself like a bantam rooster.
"Ah," said Liadon. "The other gentlemen who has arrived to avail himself of the late Baron's hospitality. Di'Fier Anton, it is my pleasure to introduce you to Sir Manuel di Garan."
"Anton?
Anton?"
Di Garan's expression demanded an explanation, and Liadon was more than happy to provide it. "The late Baron's nephew through his sister, Eleanor."
"Hmph." di Garan looked Di'Fier up and down, then vanished back into his room, the door slamming behind him.
"Pleasant fellow," Di'Fier observed.
"If it is not too forward, we all hope that he will be greatly disappointed upon the reading of the will."
"We all?"
"Ah, yes, the other members of the household. Gaberk, the majordomo, will have to wait until he returns from the city, but Tomas and Gina are here in the kitchens..."
"...this, the late Baroness' room." Liadon laid a hand gently on the door. "
Loman langena, Elena.
Ilekaimuva," he murmured.
Dru's brow furrowed.
Was that some strange continental elven way of saying 'rest in peace'? It sounded more like a request of her than of the gods... She glanced to Shesara, who shared the same puzzled look, but Ivanior was already moving on.
"It was sealed at the Baron's order just after her death, five years ago. And this, my own room." His head tilted to one side, listening. "The dinner bell. Whatever you may think of the Baron's hospitality, it will surely be kinder after you have tasted Gina's cooking."
The three of them clustered in Liadon's room - a room carefully devoid of personality. No decorations hung on the walls, no personal effects: just table, chair, a pair of chests, and a bed made with almost military precision.
Shesara sat down on the latter. "He was hired for his skill with a blade, not with a violin," she stated.
"Really? I thought he was rather good," Di'Fier said. "Especially that part where he made it sound like it was crying."
"It was not normally part of that song."
Di'Fier shrugged, looking around the room. "I wonder if things began to walk off on their own, after my uncle fell sick. Still, it looks like the library is intact. I think I'll go look it over before I go to sleep."
He left, and Dru closed her eyes, slipping into the reverie of her people, wandering the corridors of memory until a voice pulled her forth.
"Dru," Shesara hissed insistently. "Dru!"
Dru's eyes opened, then narrowed again. Where her head rested by the wall, she could hear faint muffled sobs from the other side. "Come on," she said, rising to her feet and flinging the door open.
They found Di'Fier in the library. "We've got a situation," Dru said without preamble. "The bedroom we're in is next to the locked room. We heard a woman crying in there."
Di'Fier closed the book he was reading. "Haunted?"
"What if it's
not?"
A scream echoed from downstairs.
Keep it up!
