But not this day, Cassian told himself as he drifted lazily in the waters of the bath. I'll review them in the morning. Tonight, I think I shall visit a lunatic rather than .1 widow or an architect. It will be good if the people of Vi vane get the impression that I move swiftly. That should have a somewhat intimidating effect, and at this stage of my investigations that would be useful.
After dressing himself and taking a light meal, he made his way to the sanatorium, where he was led I hrough the long, cool corridors to the cell where the mad wizard Aralesh now spent his days. As was commonplace, followers of Garlen looked after the chronically sick and unhealable. Despite their faith the sanatorium had the inevitable oppressive air of miseries delayed from the release of death by their well-intentioned efforts. Cassian always felt especially uncomfortable in such places, and had braced himself for the sight of a deranged, drooling idiot. Instead he encountered a stone-faced old man, kept more clean and well-groomed than he'd anticipated, sitting silently and rocking a little to and fro. Aralesh stared straight ahead, giving not the least sign acknowledging his visitor's presence. He spoke no word, nor did his gentle rhythm of rocking change or falter, and not even a single darted glance registered the presence of the elf. Cassian was intrigued, startled.
"There is no question of possession?" he asked the physicians. They looked at him with some irritation.
"Do you think we have not already considered that?"
"I am most sorry for my presumptuousness. Of course you would have done so. It is just that this is so unusual, is it not?"
"It happens sometimes."
"But not without warning? I am told that one day he was able to call down a hundred curses on the heads of some children playing noisily outside his window, and the next morning he was like this, though he was briefly disoriented and raving when first found."
The robed attendants looked somewhat discomfited, almost as if Cassian should not have so much information on one of their charges. The elf noted this carefully, remembering that it paid to be deferential to those who regarded their profession as too esoteric for the common man, accessible only to members of an elite cult.
"Not, of course, that I have knowledge as extensive as yours of such cases. Given the state he is in, I am wholly dependent on your skill and observations."
The flattery produced some tangible unbending of the physicians, who began to discuss the wizard's case almost among themselves, using the jargon and idiom of their trade. Cassian knew more of it than they realized, and he learned that Aralesh was important enough that some fairly powerful rituals had been attempted on his behalf. But even with the benefit of a pattern item to hand, the magic had been unable to touch the shell of a man, which was all that was left.
"And he lived alone?"
"No wife or children, and he was not greatly liked within his family, apparently," one of the physicians intimated.
Cassian drew a long, silvered pin from his robe and approached the silent figure. First holding it before Aralesh's face, he then pushed the pin into the flesh of the upper arm, driving it slowly in almost to the hilt. Not even the dulled brown eyes showed any reaction. The physicians were about to protest, until they registered that the elf knew more of their business than they'd realized, and they stared at him resentfully.
"This is not some cheap trick of a troubadour with the gift of suggestions," one of them said, not hiding his irritation.
"I didn't think so for a moment," Cassian replied sharply. "But his reflexes are obviously not normal. It isn't simply a case of a body with no soul or mind remaining within it. Most interesting."
He had left then, leaving the doctors to wonder about him and how much he knew. It was certainly magic, Cassian reflected; and it must be powerful. But he didn't think it could have been done without access to something of Aralesh's own spirit, nor did he rule out the possibility of blood magic. At this stage, the means did not concern him overly. The question was, why would someone have wanted to drive the wizard mad?
He had wandered back to his villa then, to change for the concert scheduled for late that evening. His guests of the previous night had impressed on him that the troubadour was a rarity, one with unusual gifts, and he should not miss the entertainment.
He knew it would again be an opportunity to observe those same people with their guard down, if their self-indulgence of the night before were anything to judge by.
Within minutes, he had called for his carriage. Waiting in the drive before the villa doors, Cassian glimpsed a small, shadowy figure scurrying down the road in the dusk. It had a swiftness of movement combined with a slight hesitancy of intent that seemed familiar, but then the horses were snorting and his coachman was ready for him. Drawing his robe around him, Cassian climbed into the carriage and feared once again he might literally drown in the piles of deep silken cushions.
The time Jerenn had spent with the dwarfs had turned up some unexpectedly useful surprises. Coming to the great slabs of stone and mounds of brickwork towering above the framed foundations of future buildings not far from the northern wall of the Quarter, he lowered himself into a sunken drainage shaft with his covered lantern, using as little light as possible to negotiate his way into the old passageways. They would take him under the walls, into the shabbier streets and then the ruins beyond, to the seething mass of life outside the well-ordered ways of the Theran Quarter of Vivane. He had a little silver in his pocket from the gift of his master, and some fresh and good food in a bundle under his arm, and there was someone he longed to see; to hear her words, one of the old tales perhaps or maybe the wonder and delight of a new one, stories of a world that had chased and pursued him with a knife to his throat made somehow safer in her happy endings.
The recital was a surprise to Cassian, even from the beginning. A lone elven troubadour was uncommon. Elven music was usually composed for small groups of musicians, the interplay and harmonics of varied instruments being integral to its essence, but the slight figure on the stage was framed only by a pair of incense burners giving off wisps of lazy smoke into the auditorium. She used only the stringed lystand, a long-necked, lyre-like instrument, and at first her pieces were fairly short and predictably structured, simple tales of venturing or heroism. But, at the end of the first half of her performance, after applause that was polite but no more, she unleashed a longer song that only hinted at what was to come. Her hands flew across the strings and the one instrument sounded like many as her voice began to surge with power still restrained, though incongruous with her slightness of build. She sang of the air, of skies filled with the might of airships, of the intangible and exquisite lightness of the skies joined to the power and earthiness of the vessels, an alchymical fusion of opposites in harmony, and ended with the tale of rains of fire from the might of Thera, a third element brought into the equation as her voice concluded the piece with power and grace. Roars of applause greeted her from all sides as she slipped into the shadows behind her simple wooden chair.
"I told you she was good," Ilfaralek beamed while taking a careful sip of the fruited drink, judging its strength.
"Indeed, Vivane can claim a minstrel to rival the best in any Theran land if that last song is any measure," Cassian agreed, watching the reactions of the Vivanian nobles scattered around him. They seemed pleased.
"I do not see Ziraldesh in attendance this evening," the elf noted, as if remarking upon the absence of some minor element of decor.
Ilfaralek hesitated at the mention of the wizard. "I expect he has stayed in attendance upon his wife."
"Quite so," Cassian said casually, knowing that was hugely unlikely, and knowing that Ilfaralek knew it too.
"Oh, but there's Patracheus," Ilfaralek said, looking relieved. "Over there, in the violet and green. With his lovely wife."
The man was dressed opulently, too opulently, Cassian thought, for someone whose main official task in life was to dispense Theran moneys in various directions. The woman accompanying him looked li
ke one of the fabulous jazirinthi birds Cassian had seen in the zootorium of the Great City; emerald and turquoise, jacinth, and a dozen shades of gleaming blue. A tiny detail on the small leather bag she held almost impudently at her side caught his eye; the embroidered sigil of House Medari. Before Cassian had time to observe much about the group with whom Patracheus was chatting, except to notice Admiral Tularch hovering nearby in her finest regalia, a gong called them back to their seats.
Even for Cassian, who had taken neither wine nor worse to heighten or confound the senses, the short paeans of the troubadour's recommencing performance were disturbing. The melancholy was a little too restive, the sense of desire thwarted and incapable of satisfaction too clearly rendered. But he gripped the arms of his chair at the first of the longer songs, sensing her use of enan-tiodromia in its structure—an ending that recapitulated the beginning, returning to itself in a deeper, richer, darker set of chords and tones. She used old myths and legends skillfully in her lyrics, eschewing the obvious ones employed in the earlier songs, turning instead to more obscure and uncertain figures such as Astralen the Fisher and the Deceiver-King. Tension grew and developed within the song, and those that followed it, incapable of dissolution because of their very essence, until at last she announced, almost hesitantly, her final melody, The Pale Blooded Lilies. He was almost shocked by its beginning; a love song to a corpse, a repellent description of decay and befoulment, working through minor keys until she shifted to a major key in an instant of near-benediction. Decay and growth, death and life, are but mirrors of each other, the words said to all listening. Death, and everything feared about it, is the root of all life.
I know this damnable song in other forms, Cassian thought. Is this wretched woman one of the Raggok-fold, that she sings of such? Her song did not touch him, and the message was alien to his experience, but there was no denying its spellbinding effect on those around him. And though his heart denied her meanings, his head told him she was a consummate musician, a craftswoman of rare talent. Then her voice split, and like everyone else listening he felt as if ice had been poured down his spine.
The high voice sang in an octave of impossible purity, a descant of truly unearthly beauty, with a deep resonant baritone underpinning the melody. He was halfstunned, sitting limply in his chair, mouth half-open, his astonished senses taking in the final notes, the climax of the song, and the decaying harmonics of a melody too perfect for a mortal world. As sound decayed in a shroud of absolute silence, the tiny figure on the stage dragged herself from her chair like one drained by illness or exhaustion, and vanished.
There was no applause. Everyone was too stunned to move their hands together to clap. As one, the audience breathed out, a great sigh of astonishment and epiphany. Cassian forced himself to his feet and made swiftly for the exit.
He was disturbed by what he'd heard. The wrongness of the elf-woman's song did not come from any lament for the Elven Court, on which she had probably turned her back as wholly as he and almost all other Theran elves had done. No, it was far deeper and more fundamental than that. He had a troubling sense of some foreshadowing, an unfocused precognition. He needed to be alone, to let his intuitive sense become still and quiet while he regained his composure. He strode into the arboretum around the recitatorium and found a seat beside the small pool there. All around him, gleaming in the moonlight, were the last of summer lilies beginning to decay.
"He's away for the evening at a recital," the youth explained. "I won't be missed."
"Be sure you ain't," the old ork grumbled. "You want to look after yourself, Jerenn. Because there's no one else will, not in this world."
It hurt his feelings when she talked like that. It reminded him too plainly of the truth of his own situation, and it hurt his feeling of caring for her, as if it were a rejection of his tenderness. He had never thought of her as a mother-figure, lacking the sophistication to think in such terms, but that was part of what she was to him.
"That's not true," he protested. "Look at you. You've got me, and Taravail's always running around for you."
"I know," she said more kindly, her one good eye fixed on him. "I count my blessings for the pair of you. It's more than an old woman deserves."
She took a swig of the hard corn-liquor from the goatskin bag, and the reek of strong alcohol mixed with the damp, sweated air of the confined lair. Jerenn unwrapped the heavily fruited cake he had bought from a street peddler who had come by the Rose Villa while Cassian was away at the sanatorium, and broke off a small piece for himself while handing her the bulk of it. Hungry, gnarled hands ripped a great chunk off and stuffed it between toothless gums, softening it with more greedy gulps of strong drink. At length, she rubbed her stomach and patted him on the shoulder.
"Oh, that was good. Like the fig and breadfruit cakes of the Pale Ones, that was, almost. Did I ever tell you of how Kagrath and I sat and ate with them, and sailed on the rafts they make from the guts of some great underground snake-monster? They had war masks as big as your body, boy, and they were as pale as the grave when they sat in the moonlight all around us. Ah, but that was an adventure!"
She had not told him before. The hairs on the nape of his neck tingled with delight; this would be a new story, and it would end with her being safe and still alive since she was, after all, here to speak of it; and that made him imagine and wonder about a great wide world beyond the walls where he might, one day, wander and adventure as a grown man with a thousand places to see and a million people to meet. His eyes grew wider at her words as she began the tale.
Far above them, unseen by their dark-adapted eyes, a great yellow moon edged closer to its zenith above the city and a slight, cloaked figure slipped into the night, a flask of venom in one hand and a list of demands in the other. They would seek quarry in vain tonight, but the accounting would not be long delayed.
7
It was hardly a dawn raid and Cassian did not expect to find much; the main purpose of arriving so early was simply to catch anyone at the house of Aralesh off guard. He wanted to investigate the wizard's papers, knowing that by Imperial law someone as mad as Aralesh was deemed deceased. Jerenn was still asleep when the elf called for his clothes and boots, and he felt almost guilty at waking the bleary-eyed youth. It was, after all, a wholly unreasonable hour at which to rise.
The morning air was clear and promised the coolness of the coming autumn as he navigated his way through the tightly winding, narrow streets of what was clearly one of the Theran Quarter's more prosperous areas. It took several minutes of determined rapping at the black wooden door to rouse a servitor, who was clearly not pleased to see him.
“All of Aralesh's affairs are being handled by his cousin. If he owed you any money, go to the Treasury when they open."
"Open the door," Cassian ordered in his sternest tone, displaying his Imperial badge. "Unless you want me to bring charges against you for obstructing one of the First Governor's pmetori in his duties."
The bald head had ducked back inside the window very swiftly and within moments a red-faced man appeared at the opening doorway, buckling the belt at his waist.
"I'm awfully sorry, er, your Imperial Majesty," he mumbled. Cassian hid a smile at the absurd title. "I've only been told to keep the place clean, and to keep it all locked up. I wasn't told to expect anyone."
Cassian nodded briskly. "I understand perfectly. However, I am here on Imperial business and I shall need to investigate the premises. Your helpfulness and promptness will not be forgotten when I write my report." When a slave was suitably cowed, Cassian knew a little generosity of spirit went a long way. The man's demeanor changed abruptly. He handed over a bunch of silvered keys.
"Well, sir, here's keys to everything in the household. I can make you some kokala if you care to take some. It's as fresh as you can get, sir, with the master being a wizard and all."
The Aztlanian stimulant drink was not something Cassian favored, but with his stomach protesting a little at the lack
of breakfast and a slight lethargy still in his limbs, it seemed a good idea. He thanked the man for his courtesy and unlocked the door to what turned out to be the wizard's study. It was apparent to Cassian by the time the mug of steaming dark liquid arrived that much had already been removed from among Aralesh's library and papers. He tried to gain some more information from the slave.
"You say I should seek Aralesh's cousin at the Treasury?"
"Oh, no, sir. That's where you should go if the master owed you money. He was a little careless in giving me money for all the bills, sir. No, his cousin is Master Ziraldesh, sir."
"Indeed? And has he been here to remove papers and other possessions?"
"Well, sir, seeing as how the master was without wife and had no heir, perhaps it's his duty to study such matters. I don't know anything about that sort of thing, sir; besides, I cannot read nor write neither."
Well, of course, Cassian thought; the property of any noble who died without an heir, not even a wife, or became incurably and hopelessly insane, might well revert to the Imperium rather than being retained within his family and House. Ziraldesh would need everything he could lay his hands on. But Cassian had noticed some very obvious gaps among the shelves that suggested someone might have taken more than documents related merely to issues of inheritance.
"Of course, um—I'm sorry, I did not ask your name."
"Salan, sir."
"Forgive my impoliteness." The man looked surprised, as if he were unused to Therans caring much whether he existed, let alone what his name was. Cassian had never understood such attitudes to slaves and never would. He had only glimpsed a fragment of the occult doctrine of his people regarding slavery, but it was enough for him to reject such carelessness forever. It would, after all, come back to haunt him in years unforeseeable if he did not.
Shadowrun - [Earthdawn 05] - Shroud of Madness Page 5