by Alex Irvine
“They never expected us to succeed. And if I tell the truth, my story will make me look like a liar,” Biri-Daar said.
Lucan, Paelias, and Keverel were just coming over to rejoin the group from a brief trip through the last dying corners of the day’s market. “Liar?” Lucan said. “Has Remy been telling stories of Sigil again?”
“Much is at stake here,” Biri-Daar said. “If the Mage Trust is not on our side, we are going to have to fight all the way to the Seal, and fight to inscribe it anew. How much time do we have before the Road-builder returns?” She looked to Keverel with this last question.
He was shaking his head. “There is no way to know. Lich magic is unpredictable. He may not return for days; or he may return before I finish speaking. But we must destroy the quill as soon as we can.”
“Then let us get on with the conversation,” Biri-Daar said, and led them into the Palace of the Mage Trust.
The civilization that founded the city that became Karga Kul was known only by its obsessive repetition of the numbers six and seven, always together. In the Palace, that repetition took several forms. There were six floors and seven rooms on each. The stairs between each floor numbered thirteen. The Palace itself was hexagonal in shape, with seven windows on each side of the hexagon, and so on. Guards conveyed them down a hall paved with hexagonal stones. As they walked, Remy counted, and sure enough, the hall was seven stones wide.
He wasn’t sure what to think about Obek’s revelations. It was certain that the tiefling’s presence would be a problem for the trust-unless he had been truthful in his assertion that the trustee had deserved death, and the surviving trustees agreed with his perspective. Remy found this unlikely. Was it possible that Obek had already informed Biri-Daar of this? Remy couldn’t decide. It was the kind of secret that, once revealed, might endanger the success of their quest, and for that, Remy knew, Biri-Daar would not hesitate to kill. On the other hand, the Mage Trust of Karga Kul was notoriously capricious; it was possible that a little fear might make them a little more tractable.
Not for the first time, Remy was glad that he did not share the responsibilities of leadership. He was free to act but no other lives depended on his choices.
Obek, walking in front of him, looked over his shoulder at Remy. It was strange to see a tiefling wink in a conspiratorial way, as if in getting to know Obek, Remy had somehow become tinged with the infernal himself. It made him nervous-but Obek had fought bravely since forcing his way into the group in the sewers of the Inverted Keep. Remy found that he trusted the tiefling, and could find no reason not to.
He winked back and they went on through the jumble of sixes and sevens until they came to the double hexagonal doors of the Council Chamber of the Mage Trust.
The council chamber was built in the shape of a six-pointed star, each arm of which was a small gallery of long-dead members of the trust. Around a seven-sided table in the center of the chamber were six chairs, and in those six chairs were the members of the trust. A seventh chair sat empty. The guards conducted the adventurers into the chamber and remained near the door.
Remy looked from member to member of the trust, seeing age and wisdom and fear… except on one face, a woman no older than his mother. Either she was a prodigy, or something had recently changed in the trust. It was impossible to think that someone so young had grown powerful enough in magical ability to warrant election to such a position. “This is Shikiloa,” another trustee said, introducing her and then the rest of the trustees in turn, herself last. Her name was Uliana. Remy didn’t remember the other names and the other trustees took no notice of him. All eyes were on Biri-Daar primarily, with leery glances reserved for Obek, who hung behind the group near the door. Remy wasn’t sure whether the trustees were nervous about Obek himself or about tieflings in general, but whichever was the case, they surely did look discomfited by his presence. He faded back away from the table to stand next to Obek. “Don’t worry,” he whispered, moving his lips as little as possible. “I will speak for you even if no one else will.”
“Biri-Daar of the Order of the Knights of Kul,” Uliana said. She was one of the oldest of the Mage Trust and the longest-serving. “This trust sent you forth on a grave errand. Have you returned bearing good tidings or bad?”
“Both,” Biri-Daar said.
“Which outweighs the other?”
“That yet depends on our actions,” Biri-Daar said. “And on yours. We have recovered Moidan’s Quill that inscribed the original Seal of Karga Kul.”
“The quill your fellow knight stole,” one of the trustees whose name Remy had forgotten said. He was a fat and red-bearded man with quick intelligence in his eyes and a goblet of wine in one hand.
“True, and disturbing,” Shikiloa said. “You will pardon the directness of my speech; I fear that the desperation of the situation calls for a simplification of this body’s normal rules about age and order of speech.”
“You would feel that way, of course,” Uliana said. “Arguments of protocol are a waste of time with the seal so thin.”
“There is another problem,” Biri-Daar said.
“Which is…?” the red-beared drunkard prompted.
“Philomen, the vizier of Avankil, is in league with the Demon Prince Orcus,” Biri-Daar stated.
There was a long moment of shocked silence. “How can this be?” Shikiloa said. “Avankil has been our staunchest ally, even when Toradan and Saak-Opole turned against us.”
Biri-Daar pointed at Remy. “This is Remy, also of Avankil,” she said. Then she looked at Remy and he knew he was expected to speak.
He took a few steps forward, to stand next to the empty seventh chair. He and Biri-Daar flanked it, with Lucan, Paelias, Keverel, and Obek in a gently curved rank behind them. “Since I was a boy,” he began, “I have been a courier for Philomen. I do not know how it started. But he had always been good to me. A few…”
Remy faltered, realizing he had no clear idea of how long it had been since he left Avankil. “The last thing he asked of me was that I take something to Toradan for him,” he went on. “And I could not know what it was. I was attacked on the road to Toradan by stormclaw scorpions. They killed my horse. I would have died too, in the wastes there, if Biri-Daar had not stopped and Keverel had not healed me. I have been traveling and fighting with them ever since.”
“So you have betrayed your errand for Philomen?” Shikiloa asked.
“His errand betrayed me,” Remy said. “He sent me with this, and knew that it would draw the kind of attention that gets messengers killed.”
Holding the chisel’s box carefully in both hands, Remy angled it so each member of the trust in turn could see the sigils carved into its lid and along the front near the latch. They recognized the enchantments, he could see; their eyes widened, and even the red-bearded trustee set his goblet down and made a sign. “What is in it?” Uliana asked. “We have no time for roundabout stories, and less for theatrics.”
“A chisel,” Remy said, and opened the lid.
“Designed by someone closely tied to Orcus,” Keverel added. “Designed, I fear, to destroy the seal.”
“Ridiculous,” Shikiloa said. “Philomen is a scholar of languages, a peddler of petty court schemes, a bestower of favors upon women of little virtue. He has traveled thrice to Karga Kul in the last ten years. All of us have met him, and none has ever sensed anything ill about his demeanor. Yet you have this that you call proof?”
“There is more,” Biri-Daar said. “Much more. Yet as Uliana says, we have no time. For our news is not yet fully given. Moidan’s Quill,” she went on, producing it from inside her armor, “is more than what it seems. Uliana. Note the symbols, carved so delicately into the barrel near the point. Do you recognize them?”
The trustee paled, her skin fading to nearly the off-white color of her hair. “A phylactery,” she said. “It has been made into a phylactery.”
“It was always a phylactery,” Keverel corrected. “Was not the sea
l laid down at about the time the Road-builder disappeared and the Inverted Keep tore free into the sky?”
The Mage Trust was silent.
“We killed the Road-builder,” Biri-Daar said. “But as long as the quill is intact, he will return. We must act immediately.”
“Immediately? We must act decisively, yes, but not rashly,” Shikiloa said.
“Begging your pardon, Excellency, but if the Road-builder returns you will find a brief hesitation to have been extremely rash,” Lucan said as he stepped forward.
Redbeard raised his goblet. “So we have a quill containing a lich king, a chisel imbued with demonic powers, a secret enemy in control of Avankil, and an Abyssal horde about to break through the seal. There. The situation is described. Now let us address it.”
Suddenly Remy liked him.
“Quite,” Uliana said. “The seal is weakened almost to transparency. I fear it is too thin to reinscribe.”
Redbeard set down his goblet. “Then-”
“Then we must inscribe a new one and destroy the old as we lay the new one in its place.” Uliana looked at everyone in the room, each in turn. “Then we must destroy quill and chisel both, and before the return of the Road-builder. Guard!” she called.
The senior guard inside the door stepped forward.
“Close the gates to the city,” Uliana commanded. “Both at the road and at Cliff Quay. No one shall enter or leave Karga Kul until the seal is replenished and our citizens and traders may safely go about their business again.” The guard left and Uliana turned to Biri-Daar. “You have an unexpected comrade in your group,” she said. “And I do not mean the boy from Avankil.”
“I’m not a boy,” Remy said.
“Ah, but you are,” Redbeard said, “because you do not know when to keep your mouth shut.” He gave Remy a salute with the now-empty goblet.
Shikiloa rose and paced. “As the successor to Vurinil, Mage Trustee of Karga Kul-”
“Daughter, I believe, is the word,” Obek said.
She glared at him, a flush rising across the planes of her face. Remy had seen that look on faces before killing. “-Vurinil, who was killed by the tiefling Obek, may I speak?” she asked Uliana-a little too sweetly, it seemed to Remy.
“Certainly,” Uliana said.
“Obek will certainly say that my predecessor was a usurper, and a betrayer of the trust between this city and the trustees. He may be right about this. It is also true, however,” Shikiloa said, “that since his murder of Vurinil-my father Vurinil, a noble servant of the trust and of Karga Kul-the seal has rapidly deteriorated, there have been sightings of demons in the streets and in the lower portions of the underground keeps. Now Obek comes back, in the company of Biri-Daar, herself a member of the same guild that stole the quill! And with them comes yet another stranger, this Remy, bearing a demonic instrument for the destruction of the seal! Fellow trustees, it seems that we have not helped ourselves by entrusting our lives and the life of Karga Kul to these… adventurers.”
“Yet what strange deceivers they be,” Redbeard observed dryly. “Coming right to the front door and presenting themselves to us.”
With a shock, Remy realized that the other three members of the trust, the ones who had not yet spoken in the debate, were asleep. Could this be the feared Mage Trust of Karga Kul, he thought-the trust that strikes such fear into its citizens that they pick up orange peels from the street?
“You are drunk,” Shikiloa said. “As is your custom. Well, it is my custom to suspect the motives of those who preach unseen danger, when they might well simply be aggrandizing themselves. You, tiefling. Murderer. You risked your life entering this room, did you not?”
Obek nodded. “I did.”
“If we kill you now, will your risk have been worth it?”
“Erathis is the god of this city, and I am an adopted citizen of Karga Kul,” Obek said, standing erect and fearless, not looking over his shoulder at the guards who awaited Shikiloa’s command to strike him down. “I returned to fight for this city, and as far as I pledge myself to any god, it is to Erathis.”
“And I’m sure he is glad of your devotion. It’s Erathis we need, and Bahamut too, and perhaps the Lady of Pain thrown into the bargain, if the Knights of Kul are to do us any good,” said Shikiloa. “I expect neither the gods nor the dragonborn to offer us any assistance we might wish to accept.”
A pained expression crossed Biri-Daar’s face at this mention of the Knights. “When the Knights of Kul are needed, they will rise to that need,” she said.
“That is my hope as well.” Uliana turned to the window.
Shikiloa smiled. “Will you go and ask them yourself? Perhaps you could bring them news of Moula and the quill as well.”
“If that is your wish, I am willing,” Biri-Daar said, in a tone of voice that indicated she was willing only, and just barely at that.
“Do not,” Uliana said. “Not yet. Instead let us see what the minions of Orcus are planning. I do not believe the Road-builder’s return is imminent. I would feel it. So we have a moment to gather knowledge, and perhaps even to use it wisely.” The last was directed at Shikiloa, in whose eyes burned something more than anger but just slightly less than hate.
She is afraid, Remy thought. He caught Biri-Daar’s eye, and Keverel’s, and saw that both of them thought the same thing. But of what?
The Black Mirror of the Trust was a circular pane of obsidian, polished and laid into a frame of burnished copper so that it could stand vertical or be laid flat. Each position lent itself to different methods of scrying. Uliana laid it flat. The rest of the Mage Trust spread around her and the mirror. Remy and the rest of Biri-Daar’s group mingled with them, Biri-Daar closest to Uliana and Obek on the opposite side. A visibly skeptical Shikiloa and an obviously drunk Redbeard were closest to Obek, where they could watch Uliana. From a chain around her neck she took a tiny crystal vial. Three drops of clear fluid fell from the unstoppered vial onto the polished obsidian. Whispering an incantation under her breath, Uliana moved her hand in a smoothing motion, a few inches over the obsidian. The drops spread into an invisible layer-and as they spread, an image emerged.
First came color: black warming through red to a fiery molten orange flecked with brilliant white. Then motion, the shapes of figures…
Remy saw Obek turn his head, ever so slightly. He followed the tiefling’s gaze and saw that Shikiloa was doing something with her hands. Looking back to the mirror, Remy watched the figures resolve. They were all shapes, all sizes, the nameless hordes of the Abyss under the control of their ruler Orcus. Orcus, the Demon Prince of the Undeath, sworn enemy of all things living. Goat-legged, dragon-tailed, with the horns of a ram and the fiery eyes of the greater undead. Bearer of the Wand of Orcus, with its skull of a dead god, Despot of Thanatos-his presence loomed over everything they saw.
“It is as I feared,” Uliana said. She spoke with her eyes closed, since to channel the vision into the mirror she could not see it herself-at least not with her eyes. “They are gathering. They know that the seal weakens. They know…”
Motion drew Remy’s attention away from the mirror and back to Shikiloa. He saw her hands move. She brought a hand to her face, kissed something she held between finger and thumb.
When she drew it away again, blood glistened on her lower lip.
Shikiloa extended her hand over the mirror. “Father,” she said, her voice low but clear in the nearly silent room. “As you bid me.”
As she opened her hand, Obek was reaching to catch the bright bloody sliver that fell from it. Redbeard, his eyes bulging from their sockets as he saw what she had done, flung out an arm and shoved her back away from the mirror, the action instinctive but futile as the sliver fell through Obek’s hand as if it was not there.
Obek clutched at his pierced palm, roaring with pain. Blood spurted from it as if it had been pierced by a spear rather than a sliver no thicker than a needle. Drops of that blood fell with the sliver onto the mirror’
s surface. The color of the blood spread like a glaze across the scene of Orcus’s dominion. When it had covered the entire surface of the mirror, the entire surface flipped up to the vertical. Behind the bloody glaze, figures loomed closer. Something crashed into the finish.
“Traitor!” Obek roared, his bloody hand thrust out at Shikiloa. “Like your father.”
Another crash against the glaze left a crack exactly the size of the sliver that had fallen from Shikiloa’s hand. She met his gaze, cold and distant. “You are a traitor to all humanity. And your kin, the demons, are coming to claim you.”
“Fool,” growled Biri-Daar. Another crack appeared in the surface of the mirror. The Mage Trust, save Uliana, fell back toward the shadowed galleries in the points of the star-shaped room. “Who turned you against the trust?”
A chip of the mirror came loose and plinked on the hexagonal stones of the floor. Sound came from it: a profusion of roaring and screeching, the scraping of what sounded like claws on the other side of the mirror.
“No one turned me,” Shikiloa sneered. “I am my own creature. My choices are my own. The tiefling dies if the city has to die with him.”
“How did you know he would be here?” Remy asked.
From the look on her face, he knew the answer.
“Philomen,” he said.
She did not deny it. She raised a short staff, its head transforming before their eyes from a crescent moon to an iridescent green skull.
“No,” Uliana groaned. Her eyelids fluttered as she tried to open her eyes and get free of the vision. “No,” she said again-and then she reached out her left hand, pointed unerringly at Shikiloa, and incinerated the youngest trustee before Shikiloa could defend herself.
At that moment the mirror exploded in a hail of obsidian shards. They stung and sliced across the exposed skin of Remy’s face and hands, tearing also at the leather of his tunic and boots. He ducked away, hearing the fragments ricochet around the room. Already there were screams; the unprotected and unprepared trustees were badly cut and slashed.
The demons that came through the opened portal were about the size of dwarves, but a burnt red in color with cruel wide mouths and four-fingered hands ending in ragged black claws. They tumbled over one another coming through the mirror frame. Behind them, the fiery hellscape of Thanatos belched its miasma into the council chamber.