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Message: <blockquote data-quote="StalkingBlue" data-source="post: 1378020" data-attributes="member: 645">As soon as plausible the group retires to its guest quarters in the South Tower to discuss tactics.   A night attack is settled upon as the most likely course.  Cailin hears shoes creaking outside the door and motions a warning;  instants later Constable Hrethel knocks and bids them come into the courtyard for the trial.  Which, for a trial, does not take long at all.  A man wearing the silver mask of a priest of Ksarul, God of Hidden Knowledge, is already waiting as the group (Fjorent once more concealed in Xiang’s pocket) takes their seats.  Margrave Arngrim and Constable Hrethel arrive.  A moment, then a beautiful blonde woman, hands tied, is brought along the battlements and down the stairs from the North Tower and sat in a chair in front of the audience.  Eloise confirms her name and denies the murder (to which the silver-masked priest first nods, then shakes his head).  A serving girl is brought and amid much sobbing claims that she saw Eloise pour poison into her husband’s ear so he died.  Arngrim himself pronounces the sentence on his hated stepmother:  death by beheading at dawn.  Eloise is marched away after a rather desperate look in Captain Xiang’s direction.  Another meeting between Captains Xiang and Jethis brings better results than the first, after Jethis manages to get rid of the guard escorting Xiang for a few minutes.  Jethis declares he believes Eloise innocent;  pales visibly at being told the real reason why Xiang (currently all old campaigner and comrade officer) is here;  but lets himself be talked into promising that he will keep the crossbowmen from shooting at the party if fighting breaks out.  Almost, nothing happens.  Back in the group’s quarters, Raven now asserts that for him the Ksarul priest’s presence at the trial has changed everything.  He will not cooperate in a deed of assassination.  He and the other paladin lapse into a shouted dispute about law and righteousness, with Cailin, who knows what bonehead their old dwarven friend can be, looking on in despair.  Soon Xiang and Fjorent, tired of arguing in circles, withdraw to the corner farthest from the door to plot.  Xiang’s plan is for Fjorent to sneak into Arngrim’s chamber and kill him, preferably in his sleep, then leave through a window and fly back to Gaxmoor.  Xiang will try to get to Constable Hrethel and kill him – if he can get at his Spear that is.  He’s hoping that Fjorent can cause some sort of distraction with magic that will allow the group to retrieve their weapons from the locked room.  ***So, as Xiang steps outside and starts a discussion with the guards to let him check on the group’s weapons and is soon joined by Raven, Fjorent snakes out and around them and slithers away along the battlement towards the West Tower unseen.  The two guards outside Arngrim’s door talk in low voices, oblivious of the string of muscle and scales and death that which passes through the shadows right between their boots and disappears underneath the door;  as oblivious in their way as Arngrim and his Constable Hrethel in theirs, slumped at the Margrave’s desk and busy drinking to get drunker.  Fjorent glides around the corners of the room and into the half-glassy forest of dust under the bed, which makes the world turn misty grey;  rather like a crossing from the Pale into the True actually – Later, that, she promises herself.  A good trip into the True when this is done.  After.  She draws up into a tight coil to permit her upper body to sway and undulate in the intricate movements of the summoning.  The men at the desk are too webbed in drink to notice anything until the summoned creature of earth and rock bursts through the floor slabs of the room – then both shriek, a chair scatters, a sword screeches in protest as it is wrenched from its scabbard in drunken haste.  Already the viper-witch is deep into her second spell, a bristling wall of thorns that springs up to cover one wall, blocking both exits.  Not a moment too early:  already guards are trying to open one of the doors from the outside.  The two trapped men are shouting (and judging by the movement of Hrethel’s heavily-armoured feet are now slashing at the earth elemental, which stands uncommanded and dumb).  Answering calls can be heard outside as the alarm is passed.  Fjorent hisses a curse and turns back into her own shape to yell a rock-grinding command to kill the two men.  The elemental turns to obey, but now the witch is betrayed.  Hrethel’s feet turn and point towards the bed, and instants later his blade scrapes down her collarbone, drawing blood.  Fjorent’s next spell is choked and fizzles in an accidentally inhaled floating ball of dust – Curse those sloppy servants!  Captain Xiang and Raven the paladin can now be heard in the tumult outside, declaring that the Margrave appears to be under attack, demanding their weapons so they can help.  Axes are eating into the blocked door from the outside.  Fjorent’s earth elemental slams into Arngrim twice, there is the wet crunch of skull smashed against wall, and the creature turns to Hrethel just as a second one appears.  Hrethel now falls to his knees begging to be spared, and is also swiftly dropped by the elemental.  Fjorent slits his throat with her sickle to make sure, glances across to Arngrim who sprawls in his corner without his brains, and opens a shutter.  The wood of the door splinters and gives just as Fjorent is turning into a bat.  Dismayed cries of “Witchcraft!” sound as the guards find sight and passage barred by the wall of thorns beyond the door, then the wind catches her leathery wings and whirls her out of the alcoholic stench of the room, away into the night.  *** Witchcraft … A female prisoner … I saw her pour poison into his ear … Her enemy murdered by spells … Witchcraft … It is not for nothing that Fjorent has made it a point to learn about men’s superstitions – yet she is halfway across the fields from the castle to the road to Dulleaberg and Gaxmoor before the realisation strikes her.  Unless Xiang and the others can stop prevent them, the castle men are going to kill Eloise for this.  Annoyed, the witch goes into a backward loop and speeds back towards the looming silhouette of Arkand Castle against the night sky.  *** As the bat-witch hurries around and past the West Tower, Xiang’s shouts carry through the open window from Arngrim’s room.  It sounds as if he is fighting the earth elementals now.  A few wing-beats later, Fjorent reaches the arrow slits in the North Tower.  This is where the prison is.  Only just like the window slits leading to Arngrim’s room, these are tightly shuttered from the inside.  Curse that sloppy thinking.  Through the door? Cautiously the witch rises on the night air to peer over the battlements.  There’s no way she can fit underneath the door in bat shape, and she has no more forms left until the new dawn.  Also, men are milling on the battlements.  Not a chance between Sky and Earth to pass through there unseen.  There is a heated discussion going on about action to take, about the prisoner and witchcraft.  Indeed.  Fjorent’s friends are among the soldiers.  To her relief, they have their weapons back.  Just then Captain Kerek starts forward towards the prison door announcing that he will see ‘the witch’ executed right away.  “Try that and I shall strike you down where you stand, man!”  Captain Xiang thunders, emerging unscratched from Arngrim’s room through the wall of thorns, Spear in hand.  There is a hush.  The real witch, fluttering just above the battlements, takes a moment to block access to the prison door with a second wall of thorns, then dives for the window slit praying to Earth and Sky and the Three Sisters that she will have time … … For a wood shape, first.  The shutter sags and swings inward on a single hinge.  Inside, a guard has brought Eloise, her hands still tied, out of her cell and is pressing his sword to her throat.  Very fortunately, he is too busy staring nervously at the door to have noticed the window shutter dangling loose.  Next time, just make a hole, stupid witch.  … And a baleful polymorph, second.  “Guard!  Execute the witch!”  Captain Kerek calls above the din outside, just as Eloise stumbles free and the guard-rabbit hops away into a corner.  Outside, Raven’s voice rises as he works to dispel the wall of thorns.  “Who are you?”  Eloise asks, looking straight at the bat, who is impressed.  *** There is little more to tell.  Margravine Eloise is freed from prison.  Cailin proudly unearths a letter in Arngrim’s desk that states that “This man will be suitable for the job, to discover what it is desirable to discover.”  The letter is unsigned but bears the seal of a noble house allied to Imarr.  The silver mask is taken off its wearer, who turns out to be a young freckled lad of few words, and possibly fewer thoughts in his head.  Captain Kerek finally sees his error and is pardoned, but dismissed, together with those of the castle guards Eloise no longer trusts.  The group stays on for several days to ensure that the transition in power is smooth and then makes its way back to Gaxmoor.</blockquote>

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