"Observe, Orlin." Norret scooped a vial of purple cabbage water from the leaves I was blanching for the afternoon's meal. "Note how the introduction of even a weak acid transmutes the deepest amethyst to brilliant fuchsia...." He added a drop of vinegar and swirled it.
Thieves Vinegar
by Kevin Andrew Murphy
Chapter One: The Old Quay
"Observe, Orlin." Norret scooped a vial of purple cabbage water from the leaves I was blanching for the afternoon's meal. "Note how the introduction of even a weak acid transmutes the deepest amethyst to brilliant fuchsia...." He added a drop of vinegar and swirled it.
The dark purple did indeed change to bright pink, but I'd already seen this reaction when he'd ruined half my store of violet syrup, oblivious to the facts that sugar was dear in Isarn and violets troublesome to pick.
High on the kitchen wall, one of the servant's bells jangled—the one with the wire running to the Primrose Suite, occupied by Dr. Orontius, a kindly old wizard and one of our best boarders.
A whiff of ectoplasm manifested—an example of ethereal, the seventh scent, as Norret had taught me—mixed with the faint odor of roses.
Some people, when they returned from Pharasma's Boneyard, could see its denizens. Others heard ghostly voices. Me? I was raised in Dabril, famous for its perfumes and gloves, so I only smelled the dead and sometimes felt their touch.
The violet syrup levitated. It emptied itself into a jug of water, dying it the same color, then changed this to pink as a cut lemon squeezed itself over it.
"You see?" Norret beamed. "Even Rhodel can work a litmus test!"
My ghostly spirit guide also knew how to make pink lemonade. "Go stall." I handed him the jug. "I'll bring lunch up as soon as I can."
As Norret left, words appeared on the kitchen slate, written in a woman's hand: Careful what you wish for.
"I know." I had hoped that, after our last adventure, my brother would stop treating me like a child. I had not expected that he, a grown man, absolved of this responsibility, would start acting like a child himself. But it was the case.
Dr. Orontius is nice enough—but a wizard is always plotting something.
It was also the case that the Revolutionary Council, rulers of Galt, had appointed Norret and me proprietors of the Eglantine House, home to some of the nation's finest scholars and magical researchers. They paid rent but expected meals. The kitchen garden provided fruits and vegetables, a few hens provided eggs, and an enchanted horn spoon provided bland unicorn bone porridge. I had become good at hiding it in other dishes. This afternoon's luncheon was cabbage rolls stuffed with "horsemeat."
What would have really helped were salt and spices.
Fortunately, Dr. Orontius had his own, or at least he could wave his fingers in the air, mumble some ancient syllables, and make a sprinkling of salt materialize over his food, followed by pepper. This he did as soon as I arrived with the tray, then sampled a bite from a silver fork. "Ah, yes, now it is perfect."
Norret adjusted the complicated series of jeweler's loupes and lead crystal lenses attached to the monocle he'd taken to wearing in place of his old eyepatch. For reasons only my brother could understand—sympathy, antipathy, planetary resonance—lead both helped divination and blocked it. This included the sense I'd picked up from some unicorn horn and a drop of philosopher's mercury, which let me detect poisons. Norret, after an alarming and thankfully temporary experiment with eyedrops that let him look through walls, had switched his optical inquiries to lens grinding and tinted glass. He'd been trying to peep through the veil into Pharasma's realm so we could see Rhodel. He still hadn't discovered the right combination of lenses to see the spirit world, but had managed the arcane spectrum.
"Is that phenomenon accomplished by means of conjuration or spontaneous generation?" he asked Orontius.
"An astute metaphysical question," said Dr. Orontius, "but a true wizard never reveals his secrets." His old blue eyes twinkled, the same color as his robes and pointed hat. "At least not without receiving another secret in trade. Perhaps that formula for 'thieves vinegar' you mentioned?"
"Not in exchange for such a trifle," said Norret. "An alchemist has his secrets as well."
"Just so," Dr. Orontius agreed, turning to me. "Your brother claims to have a formula for a fabulous antiplague, a sovereign preventative for all manner of ills. As Desna would have it, a plague currently ravages Korvosa. Zharmides, an old classmate from my Acadamae days, has recently perished therein. I desire a keepsake to remember him by, a little ivory snuffbox of which he was fond."
"Can you describe it?" Norret asked him.
"Why describe when one can simply show?" Dr. Orontius muttered arcane phrases and made mystical passes with both hands, opening one to reveal a tiny ivory chest resting on his palm. "This is merely a memory, so look but do not touch." The wizard's memory sharpened, scrimshawed lions and lilies appearing on the sides, little clasps and fittings in matching gold. It floated in the air, tumbling like a bubble, revealing a gilded sigil engraved on the bottom, looking like a stylized Z.
My brother took out his formulary and a silver pencil. The talent Norret lacks for cooking he makes up for with drawing and scientific illustration. Soon he had a passable silverpoint architectural diagram of the snuffbox.
"I expect it should be among the effects to be interred with his body." The wizard gestured with his fork and the vision of the snuffbox vanished, quickly followed by his last bite of cabbage roll. "Whether that will be in Korvosa or with his family in Alkenstar, I cannot say. But I'm certain there should be time for formal viewing at the Acadamae itself." He produced another snuffbox, this one of paueliel burl, the sacred "first trees" of the elves. Norret had taught me how to identify paueliel along with a dozen other woods with interesting alchemical properties. A matching traveler's trunk sat against one wall, swirled with whorls like owl eyes, and I swear, I had once seen it blink at me.
Muco, an actual owl and Dr. Orontius's familiar, perched atop a bust of Nethys at one end of the mantel. He swiveled his head around backward and blinked at me for real.
Dr. Orontius merely opened the smaller box, a whorl on the lid forming yet another eye with the iris wide as an O, and took a pinch of snuff in each nostril. The snuffbox disappeared back up his sleeve, replaced with a handkerchief. "I shall give you a letter for Zharmides." He blew his nose decisively. "While he of course will not be able to read it, being dead, it should at least gain you admittance to the funeral."
Where my brother would pick a dead wizard's pocket. Unless Dr. Orontius's "friend" were already interred, in which case Norret would think nothing of burgling the dead.
After all, he'd already dug up my grave. Not that I was complaining.
"He's not going alone," I stated plainly.
"Oh, surely—" said Dr. Orontius.
I cut him off. "Surely something can go wrong."
Norret only smiled with his eyes, but the one without the monocle was almost dancing with amusement. "Orlin is growing up."
"Quite," sniffed Dr. Orontius. "But if this 'thieves vinegar' is as efficacious as purported, there should be no risk to yourselves."
I had already died once of a fever, and while I had been brought back to life, I had no desire to repeat the experience. That said, it was not my brother's alchemy I was worried about.
"As Desna would also have it, tomorrow is an execution day." Dr. Orontius stood, straightening his robes and his beard. "Your boarders will be procuring viands elsewhere, and since you two have no other duties, shall we away now?"
I paused. "Wait. Isn't Korvosa rather far away? Outside of Galt?"
"In Varisia," Dr. Orontius supplied helpfully, "but really, it's no further away than that picture." He gestured to a wall crowded with old paintings. He'd shown me his collection many times, telling tales of his travels in the days before the Revolution: The Grand Opera House of Egorian, capital of devil-haunted Cheliax; or The Warlock's Walk in Nex, parade ground for its arcane arclords.
His finger indicated a smoke-yellowed painting up in one corner. A small brass plaque attached to the frame identified it as The Old Quay In Korvosa. "Are you familiar with a metaphysical process known as 'teleportation'?"
∗∗∗
I was not familiar with teleportation before Dr. Orontius cast his spell. Afterwards? I never wished to experience it again. Unfortunately, if we ever wanted to see our beloved Galt, we would rejoin him on the morrow at this spot when he would transport us back to Isarn.
I was also wondering if we'd traveled in time as well as space, for the sun hung lower in the east than it had in Isarn, but before I could ask, Dr. Orontius pronounced some ritual phrase and vanished with an inrush of air and an audible pop.
Norret and I were left on the quay, a very old dock, even older than the one in Dr. Orontius's antique painting. As I looked down at it, I realized we were standing at the same spot where the painting had been made.
"An excellent illustration of sympathetic magic," Norret remarked.
He wasn't smiling, but the corners of his eyes crinkled. He knew the pun he'd made, but wasn't going to admit it.
"But which branch? Homeopathic or contagious?"
"Homeopathic," I decided. "The Law of Similarity governs a wizard using a painting to go where it shows."
"But wouldn't it also be contagious?" My brother waved a gloved hand. "Surely it was painted from this exact vista."
The boards of the quay were spotted with pigment. A short distance away were two easels with artists behind them. No pun intended, we'd teleported to the most picturesque spot in Korvosa.
"Both then. It falls under the Law of Contact too."
The Law of Contact, or Contagion, stated that things that had once been in contact remained in contact. That meant that anything that touched evil could become evil, so if you put on a ring that had been to the Worldwound, for example, you could be possessed by a demon. If you touched something that had been touched by a plague victim? You could catch the plague.
It was alarming to think about. Before, I had thought that sickness was carried by tiny pixies so small as to be invisible, who flew over the river from Kyonin on mosquitoes and shot people with poison darts. At least that's what the doctor told my mother. While I'm sure she put out a bowl of milk and honey to make them take my fever away, that obviously didn't work.
Norret's solution, rather than milk and honey to bribe capricious fey, was vinegar to drive them off. Thieves vinegar was perfumed with a bouquet of magical herbs–sage, mint, tansy, thyme, rosemary, lavender, wormwood, and rue–but it took an alchemist to know how to decoct them so what you got was an antiplague instead of salad dressing. Besides driving away evil pixies, thieves vinegar was said to ward off fever spirits, purge foul humours, and repel the flies that were the eyes of Urgathoa, at least if you believed the nursery rhyme:
I met a pale lady in a tattered spattered gown.
Her hair was black. Her face was white. Her dress was red and brown.
She said the flies were all her eyes and she saw near and far.
I drove her off with salad and a splash of vinegar!
That was a lot to expect from salad dressing.
That said, I had faith in my brother. He had faith in Citizen Cedrine who'd taught him the formula. She in turn had had faith in the graverobbers who'd used the perfumed vinegar to safely plunder plague pits and battlefields before they were sent to the guillotine for their crimes.
We'd washed with it, gargled with it, and for good measure carried hollowed-out pomander oranges studded with cloves, wreathed in frilly ribbons, and filled with sponges soaked with thieves vinegar. "Carried" is probably not the right word. They were floating, and not just because Rhodel was playing with them or because I'd forgot and reached for something with my soul's hand instead of my regular hand like I sometimes did. They were floating because Norret's only sponge came from a deceased will-o'-wisp, which he'd prepared specially so that it would retain its ability to float. It glowed, too, or at least would come nightfall.
So there we were, standing on the oldest quay in Korvosa with pomander oranges circling our heads.
Strange as it may sound, we were not the strangest people there. Two men walked down the quay wearing perfectly ordinary tricorne hats, but below them they had the faces of storks. Occasionally they stopped at a shop, looked in, and marked an X on the door with chalk. At first I was thinking they had stork men in Korvosa like I'd heard lived in Osirion, but then I realized that they were wearing masks.
"Plague doctors," Norret explained. "Those are doctors' masks."
"Wouldn't storks make more sense for midwives?"
"If they wore them for fashion, yes," explained Norret, "but the beaks hold herbs that work like our pomanders. Powdermaster Davin once helped us rig up similar masks for the battlefield. But he'd been to Korvosa before the Revolution and said it's illegal to wear a doctor's mask if you're not a doctor. Besides, we don't want to see patients. We just need to find Zharmides the Godless—or his body. He is, or at least was, a professor at the Acadamae."
"Where's the Acadamae?"
It was a reasonable question, and I was completely skipping the fact that I'd missed the honorific and "Zharmides the Godless" didn't sound like anyone you wanted to deal with, even if he was dead.
Especially if he was dead. I didn't know what the gods did with atheists, but it couldn't be pleasant. And I'm saying this as someone who met a couple of them.
Gods, I mean. Not atheists. Or, if I hadn't met them, at least I dreamed about Shelyn and Pharasma talking about me when I was dying, so it sort of counts.
"I think it's on the top of a hill." Norret glanced around. Two hills were visible in the city, one nearer, one farther. "Let me ask."
He went over to one of the artists while I stood there feeling somewhere between stupid and nervous. Apart from that time when I died, I'd never been outside of Galt, and while Korvosa wasn't as grand as Isarn, it was still far grander than Dabril. And there was a plague, so I assumed many folk were staying in.
"Reefclaw pasty! Hot 'n tasty!"
Even plague couldn't stop barkers. A young woman wearing a patchwork scarf waved to me. Her booth's sign read Meatclaw's Feast! It showed some horrible monster with the front half of a lobster and the back half of an eel, a giant wooden claw grasping a doll in the shape of a terrified fisherman.
Behind the young woman was an older one tending a cauldron of boiling oil. She used a wire mesh scoop to fish out balls of fried meat that looked like the salmon croquettes. One of them floated in the air, took a second to dip itself in what looked like cameline sauce, and popped itself in my open mouth.
I didn't know whether to thank Rhodel or be annoyed at her, so I just ate it. The sauce did taste like cameline, with cinnamon and nutmeg, but with mint in place of the usual ginger. The pasties tasted like crayfish-and-lamprey tarts.
"For eight silver shields, I'll owe you three more pasties and another spoon of thileu bark sauce." I glanced at the menu slate. It seemed spice was as dear in Korvosa as it was in Isarn, but meat was cheaper, even if it was monster meat.
I took out a gold minted by one of Galt's previous Revolutionary Councils and tossed it to her. The young woman scrutinized it and shrugged. She handed me a paper cone with three more pasties, a waxed paper cup of dipping sauce, and a couple of the local silvers which did indeed have shields on them.
I went back over to Norret, who was talking with one of the artists. "And they still make Newby Violet? Excellent!" He noted the reefclaw pasties and the dipping sauce. He took one, sampling both. "Thileu bark? Some interesting alchemical properties there. And... reefclaw?" He glanced over at the sign. "That could come in useful."
He took a second pasty and munched it. Then he confiscated the last pasty and the dipping sauce, placing the pasty in a pouch and the sauce in a stoppered vial. "Intriguing stuff, thileu bark. Only the Varisians know the trick of harvesting it." He chewed, considering. "Said to be one of the few spices potent enough to be tasted by the dead."
"Did you find the Acadamae?"
"Oh, yes, it's on that hill over there." He pointed to the farther one. "But I also found out where we could buy a map."
My brother had that dreamy look he sometimes gets. He led us up a couple streets and around a corner. There he stopped and stared with an expression like he'd seen Shelyn combing out her rainbow-streaked hair.
I saw a sagging old shop with a quilt of little diamond-paned windows displaying pots and jars, easels and brushes, and a signboard that looked like an artist's palette sized for a giant. The multicolored splotches spelled out Hessim, Newby, & Sage Paint Manufactory.
"Powdermaster Davin told me about this place."
I followed my brother inside. The shop reeked of turpentine and linseed oil. And poison. My unicorn senses were almost overwhelmed: arsenic in the familiar Isarn green, quicksilver in the Tian red, and white lead in the flake white. That was everywhere, in gallon jars and penny pots and covering all the pre-painted canvases.
They also, indeed, had maps, whimsical illustrated ones with points of interest drawn to a larger scale. But the pigments and poisons were everything an alchemist could dream of, which explained my brother's glazed expression. "I want your deluxe set. The one with everything—including the special pigments..."
Three old men stood behind the counter. When I say "old," I mean you could picture them patting liches on the head and calling them "sonny." When I say "men," I'm meaning men shorter than me, like tall no-nonsense gnomes. On the wall behind the counter hung three masterful portraits labeled with helpful brass plaques: Hessim, Newby, and Sage.
Sage spoke first: "You couldn't afford it."
Hessim spoke second: "Who told you to ask?"
Newby simply took off his thick spectacles, polished them with a velvet pocket square, and named a figure that would have made Abadar check his vault.
Norret did not drop his monocle. He reached into his pack and pulled out a beautiful cut crystal flask that had formerly belonged to Dabril's duchess and had until recently held honeysuckle absolute. Now it was glowing with an eerie light. "Perhaps we could work out a trade."
Coming Next Week: Adventures at the Acadamae with Norret and Orlin in Chapter Two of "Thieves Vinegar."
Kevin Andrew Murphy is the author of numerous stories, poems, and novels, as well as a writer for Wild Cards, George R. R. Martin's shared-world anthology line. His previous Pathfinder Tales stories include "The Secret of the Rose and Glove" and "The Perfumer's Apprentice" (also starring Norret and Orlin), and "The Fifth River Freedom," the fourth chapter of Prodigal Sons in the Kingmaker Pathfinder's Journal. For more information, visit his website.
Newby analyzed the contents of Norret's flask, pronouncing it ninety-nine point nine percent pure will-o'-wisp essence, with the impurities mostly consisting of honeysuckle and grape. Norret nodded, and the three old men fell to talking amongst themselves.
Thieves Vinegar
by Kevin Andrew Murphy
Chapter Two: The Hall of Lies
Newby analyzed the contents of Norret's flask, pronouncing it ninety-nine point nine percent pure will-o'-wisp essence, with the impurities mostly consisting of honeysuckle and grape. Norret nodded, and the three old men fell to talking amongst themselves.
"Wizards would buy it for ink," Sage pointed out.
"Wizards don't need this degree of purity," Newby countered.
"Would be useful for underpainting secret messages," said Hessim. "Signatures and such."
Newby snorted. "Think of the holy glow of Iomedae's sword or Sarenrae's rays."
"Bit heretical, considering the origin," said Sage.
"Then the ghastly pallor of Urgathoa."
"Or the flames in Asmodeus's eyes," Hessim enthused.
"Point," admitted Sage. "Wonderful for unholy icons. We are agreed then, gentlemen?"
"Aye," said his fellow shopkeepers.
The old men were nothing if not scrupulous. They kitted Norret out with an elaborate case of oil paints and brushes, including a traveling easel, a sketch pad, and a small canvas, while I was given a similar set of watercolors. They also gave us a map of Korvosa and advice on the best bridge to take to cross the narrows en route to the mainland and the Acadamae atop Citadel Crest.
It was grand. It was imposing. It was also open only to students, faculty, and tradesmen. Frightening hellspawn guards menaced those who didn't belong.
That said, Norret and I were Galtan, and we were used to avoiding the Gray Gardeners. Hellspawn gate guards, no matter how ridiculously twisted their horns, simply did not rate. We walked past.
A plague also raged, and we'd noted any number of Korvosans who'd masked themselves like hastily deputized Gray Gardeners, neckerchiefs pulled up over their faces to keep disease-bearing spirits from flying down their throats. Ours were Vudrani silks which had belonged to Rhodel.
Perhaps the most shocking thing were the imps that perched blatanly on the shoulders of students and professors, or lounged on the lintel of the main gate. These stuck out their tongues and made evil gestures at the tiny dragons who rode on the shoulders of better-minded students and faculty. One older and elegant wizard had a cloud of multicolored gemstones orbiting her head, serving as the hoard for the rust red drakeling perched atop the jeweled comb holding up her long red hair.
We had floating pomander oranges.
The Acadamae's discipline of its familiars leaves something to be desired.
We followed her into the Acadamae's grounds. Before us lay the grandest and newest building I'd ever seen in my life.
Suddenly an imp swooped down. "Trespassers!" it shrieked. "You've no legitimate business! You're our lawful prey!"
Norret displayed Dr. Orontius's letter, including the seal at the bottom, a calligraphic O that resembled an owl's eye. "On the contrary, we're here to deliver a missive to one of your instructors, Zharmides the Godless."
The little fiend snatched the letter, fluttering higher into the air, then turned a backflip as it giggled with infernal mirth. "Didn't you know?" the creature cried. "He's dead! Not even of the plague! Choked on a fishbone!" The imp laughed as if this were the most hilarious joke in the world. "But without this letter, you've no legitimate purpose—or even with it! Ignorance of the law is no excuse!"
"Except you've no lawful right to that letter either."
"Possession is nine-tenths of the law!" the imp countered. "Care to try for the last tenth?"
It hovered above Norret, just out of arm's reach. While my brother is tall, he's not that tall. Norret jumped for it while the imp pulled it out of the way, still chortling.
Then I saw my brother get angry.
Norret angry looks a lot like Norret happy, except instead of the corners of his eyes going crinkly, his lips go white. He took off his glove, the fringed one with the ruby on the back, then reached into his pouch and took out the reefclaw pasty. He seasoned it with thieves vinegar and chewed it slowly, his teeth becoming longer and sharper, pointed like an eel's.
Then his arm shot up and his hand—well, I've seen my brother sprout claws like a wolf or a bear, and once even talons like an owl, but that was nothing compared to this. His hand changed, growing and shifting, becoming a giant crawfish pincer with the top half as big and sharp as one of the Final Blades of Galt.
The claw snapped like a guillotine. The imp's head flew one way, the body another. The letter drifted down.
Norret caught it, his hand once again its normal shape. He tucked the letter inside his jacket, put on his unicorn-skin glove, and picked up the imp's body by the tail. He stuck the stinger through the stopper of a corked vial and watched as unholy venom leaked down the sides.
"Guards! Guards!" shrieked the imps on gate.
Norret tossed the imp's body on the ground. It smoked, the little fiend dissolving into ectoplasm and ash as Norret turned to face the hellspawn guards.
"Is there a problem?" asked a lilting voice. The wizard with the rusty house drake on her comb stepped forward. "These gentlemen are with me." Hers was a beautiful smile, sweet as an icon of Shelyn. "They agreed to paint my picture before the Hall of Charms. Isn't that so, gentlemen?"
"Yes," I lied. Norret nodded.
The guard with the improbable horns snorted. "Visitors are supposed to sign in at the front gate."
"You are forgetting that the guest book was found to be a source of contagion." The wizard still smiled her sugary smile. "Please just put down that Arlunia Ehrmande, Lecturer in Charms, has two guests for the afternoon, and try to see that those in my retinue are not molested by stray imps." The house drake on her comb flicked its forked tongue for good measure.
"Of course." The horned hellspawn bowed.
Our rescuer gestured for us to follow.
We accompanied her past a rhododendron hedge and around to where a wide lawn opened onto smaller buildings. She gestured to the left to a graceful structure partially obscured by a copse of trees. All I could see above them was a marble frieze of frolicking satyrs and enticing nymphs. "The Hall of Charms is always lovely in any light, but..." she mused, tapping one finger to her painted lips, "perhaps, today, another might be more apropos...." She indicated the building directly behind her. "You're the artists. What do you think?"
What I thought was that I'd seen the building before—the House of Joy, the Calistrian temple from Isarn. The building's shape was slightly different, but otherwise it seemed a perfect copy. Then I realized that the banners of the former palace displayed the old king's crest, and instead of the usual bevy of Calistrian beauties, the balconies were thronged with pre-revolutionary coquettes, frivolous young noblewomen with impossibly high hairdos, fantastically jeweled gowns, and flirtatious glances strikingly like the sacred harlots.
I blushed and looked away.
"Behold," said the enchantress, "the Hall of Lies...."
All at once she changed, like a chalk painting dissolving in rain. The woman's rich flowing gown became mouse-gray robes, her long red tresses became mouse-brown hair, the cloud of jewels vanished, and her comb became a bunch of pencils stuck in a bun. Even the haughty little house drake became a crumple-eared orange tabby cat.
It had been an illusion, I realized. The Hall of Lies had to be one too, since I didn't think it likely that the Acadamae would just happen to have a building I recognized so well.
The woman gave a lop-sided grin. "I'm not Professor Ehrmande," she admitted, "but I couldn't leave a couple Galtan boys to deal with the hellspawn. My grandfather's from Galt, and you sound just like him." She appeared decades younger than the serene enchantress. "Besides, I saw that spell with the claw. It's wicked good, and I want it."
"It wasn't a spell," Norret admitted.
"Alchemy?" she guessed. "All I'll say is I'm from Daggermark, and it's not a spell yet. Give me the page from your formulary and I'll figure out what's missing." She grinned and put her hand out. "Nella. Nella Cailean. Not the one from the puppet show and no relation to the really famous one either. And not Nellaforia or Nellali, and for Cayden's sake not Nellatirencia. Just plain Nella or Nel, Journeyman Fibber. And this," she said indicating the snub-nosed cat still perched atop her head, its eyes round and bright as two coppers, "is Lady Marcatella, or Marcat for short. You two?"
"Norret Gantier," Norret said, "and this is my brother, Orlin."
"And you have a fabulous estate back in Galt that you'll inherit once the Revolution's over?" She paused, looking at our expressions. "Wait, you're really from Galt? Not just the kids of refugees we've got crawling all over the River Kingdoms?"
I didn't know what to say. Here she was admitting that she not only knew escaped nobles but that she might even be descended from one and had even given her cat a noble title. Then I remembered that I was in Korvosa, not Galt, and the Red Revolution was half a world away.
"We're from Dabril," Norret explained.
Nella paused, glancing at Norret's glove and the ruby on the back. She chuckled. "You read Pintgarthe's Lost Jewels too, eh? Points for making it look believable. You can't imagine the sort of gaudy crap impers try to pass off when they take 'Frauds & Forgeries.' The Hero's Tankard made of solid gold chased with pearls? As if!" She gave us each a hard look. "But what's your scam? Don't try to fib a fibber."
Norret reached into his jacket. "We're just here to deliver a letter."
She looked at the letter and laughed. "You're after Zharmides' lost books too?"
"Lost books?" I was confused. I'd thought we were after a snuffbox.
"What, you really don't know? The imp told you straight: Zharmides is dead. Choked on a fishbone down at the Posh and Turtle. The professors have been accusing each other of stealing his books 'cause everyone wanted his spells. Speaking of which, you owe me one." She put out her hand.
Norret sighed and got out his formulary, his alchemical workbook. He pulled a blank page out of the back, took out his silver pencil, and began copying notes and scraps. It took a while, but at last he folded it and held it up out of Nella's reach. "A question first: Where's Zharmides' body now?"
Nella shrugged. "No great secret. The government's ordered all the dead taken to the plague pits in the Gray District and burned. The Acadamae's torched its dead in the Cube."
"And the ashes?"
She paused. "Sent to the Hall of Whispers for its columbarium."
"Columbarium?" I said.
She nodded, slightly so as to not dislodge her cat, which I realized had no tail. "Dome filled with cinerary urns: books for students, busts for instructors, full-on bronzes for headmasters, and a necromantic circle in middle so you can talk to their spirits, though it works a bit better if the urn has actual ashes in it."
I could already summon spirits–or at least one–without ashes, so I was less impressed than I might be. I heard a giggle, a bit too high-pitched and far too nasty to be Rhodel.
Nella raised her hand, adjusting her bun or her pencils or the cat who was sitting on them, but her pinkie was out at an odd angle and her cat was looking the same direction. I looked where both pointed. Norret did too, adjusting the lenses of his monocle.
Dr. Orontius once told me that three or more imps are called "an impudence." The impudence that was fluttering nearby scattered, spooked.
Norret looked back to Nella. "But Zharmides died outside the Acadamae."
"Right," she said, "and no one's wanting to search the plague carts to see if they've burned his body yet. The conjurers are pissed 'cause, if he'd had an imp, they could summon it and ask for his soul, but Zharmides, just to be contrary, had a homunculus."
"Homunculus?" I repeated, confused.
"Homunculus?" Norret said the same word delightedly.
He and she exchanged looks, and she explained, "It's an artificial imp."
"It's made out of a mandrake root," Norret continued, "and that's not quite accurate."
"It's a foot-high manikin with fangs and bat wings." Nella waved flippantly. "About the only visible difference is that an imp has a poisoned tail, while your classic homunculus has poison teeth."
"So what did Zharmides look like?"
"The spell first?"
Norret handed her the folded paper.
She opened it and almost absentmindedly stepped over to the Hall of Lies and tapped one of the statues flanking the door—that of a cavorting nymphette with precariously tall hair.
The statue's illusion flickered, feminine trading for masculine, youth for age, and hard marble for living flesh, now appearing as a stooped, thin-faced old wizard leaning on a gold-topped cane. The brocade of his waistcoat was woven over and over with stylized Zs, and the same sigil was engraved on the wax seal hanging as fob from his watch chain. I didn't see a snuffbox, but I noted a telltale bulge beneath his pocket square.
Norret took a vial from his bandolier and sipped it, flipped to a blank page in his formulary, took his silver pencil in hand, and began to sketch.
Coming Next Week: Bringing out the dead in Chapter Three of "Thieves Vinegar."
Kevin Andrew Murphy is the author of numerous stories, poems, and novels, as well as a writer for Wild Cards, George R. R. Martin's shared-world anthology line. His previous Pathfinder Tales stories include "The Secret of the Rose and Glove" and "The Perfumer's Apprentice" (also starring Norret and Orlin), and "The Fifth River Freedom," the fourth chapter of Prodigal Sons in the Kingmaker Pathfinder's Journal. For more information, visit his website.
We were in the Gray District, the necropolis in the southeastern corner of Korvosa. More specifically, we were in Potter's Ward, the southeastern corner of that, used for the graves of the poor. The air was filled with greasy smoke. It smelled like someone was cooking rotting pork and it had caught fire. Except that in this case it was long pork. The only thing that smelled worse than the burning corpses were the ones that weren't yet burnt.
Thieves Vinegar
by Kevin Andrew Murphy
Chapter Three: Still Life with Snuffbox
I have never been so grateful for vinegar in my life.
Norret had taught me, as part of the science of perfumery, that there were seven basic scents. One of them, putrescence, was necessary in any truly fine perfume, but only the faintest note.
Putrescence was found in stinkhorn fungi and the carrion flowers of the Mwangi Expanse, but most commonly in putrescine and cadaverine, alchemical substances that came from corpses.
We were in the Gray District, the necropolis in the southeastern corner of Korvosa. More specifically, we were in Potter's Ward, the southeastern corner of that, used for the graves of the poor. The air was filled with greasy smoke. It smelled like someone was cooking rotting pork and it had caught fire. Except that in this case it was long pork. The only thing that smelled worse than the burning corpses were the ones that weren't yet burnt.
Some of those even stumbled around. I think they were zombies–I hope they were zombies–because the other alternative was that gravediggers and priestesses of Pharasma were beating still-living plague victims with shovels and setting them on fire.
I clutched my pomander orange and inhaled the floral notes of tansy and thyme, the camphoraceous notes of rosemary and lavender, the minty note of mint, and the sweet pungency of apple cider vinegar.
"Wizards are utterly mad, Rhodel," I told my spirit guide, or possibly the empty air. "Even crazier than alchemists." I held the pomander against the stench. "A 'keepsake,' Dr. Orontius said. A memento to remember his beloved school chum.…" I snorted and was immediately sorry because I'd snorted vinegar. Then I was less sorry because, once my eyes stopped watering, I realized I couldn't smell anything.
I glanced at another corpse and checked Norret's picture of Zharmides the Godless.
Nella had told us more about Zharmides, a convert to the Rahadoum heresies who spiced his divination lectures with tart comments on the gods, calling Blackfingers a two-bit snake-oil salesman and Pharasma a schoolmarm with an attendance fetish.
Nella wouldn't repeat what he said about Asmodeus other than mentioning that one particular string of blasphemies had reportedly made an imp faint.
I was sorry that he was dead, and even more sorry I wasn't finding his body. That was my job while Norret ran interference, helping the priests and priestesses of Pharasma blow up the zombies that seemed to be rising with some regularity. Our story was that we'd been sent to help by the temple of Shelyn, not that anyone seemed inclined to check.
When I wasn't looking at corpses, I amused myself—if that's the right word—by examining the potsherds the Potter's Ward was named for. Norret's art tourists' map noted that some believed the bits of broken crockery littering the soil went back to the time of the Shoanti.
I assumed this was a more relaxing pastime when there weren't zombies lurching around. Someone else with wild hair and glassy eyes lurched toward me, except this man had a wheelbarrow filled with fresh bodies. I was about to examine them when I took note of the gravedigger's brocade waistcoat. Not only was it too fine a garment for gravedigging, but it was covered with stylized Zs. Unfortunately, the pockets were all flat. Even the pocket square was gone.
"Where'd you get your waistcoat?" I asked.
The gravedigger beamed. "The master gave it to me."
"Who's your master?"
He paused, then said swiftly, "I have no master."
"Then whom do you work for?"
"I work for the Church of Pharasma. I am a simple fellow. I dig graves." His voice was as flat as a zombie's, assuming zombies could speak. He attempted to push past me with the barrow full of plague-raddled corpses. "Please move. I must bury these bodies."
To say that he was acting strange was an understatement. "Did you by any chance find a snuffbox? A little ivory one with gold fittings, same monogram on the bottom as you've got on your vest?"
"Oh yes. The— He was very pleased to get it. Said every nobleman should have one."
"So where's your master?"
"I have no master."
"Could you take me to your master?"
The gravedigger looked puzzled, then tortured. At last he whispered, "Only if you're one of the faithful?" His eyebrows rose hopefully.
"If I said that I was?"
"Then I would ask you for the password."
"What's the password?"
Rhodel certainly makes an attractive ghost.
"I'm not allowed to say." He looked frightened. "I am a simple fellow. I dig graves. Please move. I must bury these bodies."
I stepped aside. My skin prickled as if a whole gaggle of geese were walking over my grave, and I've been dead so I know what that feels like. I went to Norret and told him about my conversation.
"Drugged or enchanted," he concluded. "Duke Devore's formulary has a recipe for hypnotic perfume, but..." My brother flipped one of his monocles down and peered at the gravedigger. "Definitely enchanted. Mind-controlled—I've seen it on the battlefield. Give someone too many contradictory orders and the mind starts to break."
I didn't know if he was talking military orders or magical ones, or if there was much of a difference. "How do we find his 'master'?"
"We keep an eye on him and an ear out for this 'password.'"
When my brother said "keep an ear out," he meant this literally. He swigged some tincture of wolfsbane and grew ears as long and pointed as a wolf's. A bit of eavesdropping and spying on the addled gravedigger later, he said, "I am famished."
"You're hungry?" I gasped, still holding my pomander against the stench.
"No, 'I am famished.' That's the password."
It certainly wasn't one that easily sprang to mind, especially with how I'd lost any trace of my appetite, given the reeking corpses. But with that last clue, everything about the strange man fell into place. "I guess that tells us what he meant by a 'one of the faithful,' then?"
Norret nodded. "It would seem that the grave digger—or whoever's controlling him—is a worshiper of Urgathoa, goddess of gluttony and undeath."
I shuddered, but it made sense. Who else would be hungry in a graveyard?
Once the sun had set, our pomander oranges began to glow with will-o'-wisp light like little moons. We dodged one last patrol of Pharasmins as the priests swept the necropolis before locking the gates for the night–plague or no plague, even priests of the goddess of death needed sleep, especially after the day they'd had. Norret and I, on the other hand, would get no sleep, not just because of where we were but because Norret had prepared a pot of coffee Woodsedge-style—half coffee, half roasted chicory root.
We picked our way across the Potter's Ward, trailing the gravedigger and a cortege of figures we presumed were cultists. We hopped a low fence into Everyman's Ward, and finally slipped past a loose bar in the spike-tipped iron fence that led to the Gold Ward where the nobility were interred. Being a Galtan, it soothed my soul somewhat to know that the Urgathoans were desecrating the tombs of the nobility rather prying into graves of the common man, not that I think they were making that distinction.
Most of the mausoleums in the Gold Ward were grand affairs, with polished brass knobs, cypress wreaths, and even freshly cut flowers placed in urns outside. One mausoleum looked decidedly seedy and unkempt, neglected for many years, the doors falling off their hinges and the only flowers being weeds and lichen growing through cracks in the marble façade. The name Galdur was carved above the doors, and the last cultist was disappearing down the steps.
We followed and were greeted at the bottom by a lady in a tattered spattered gown like from the nursery rhyme. Her black hair was an obvious wig, though her ghoulish teeth were real enough, having been filed to points. The cultist smiled, letting us get an even better look.
"I am famished," I said, and Norret did as well.
"Then you are welcome in Urgathoa's Hall!" She smiled as if welcoming us to a holiday party. "You must call me Deaconess Gentle. How should I know you?"
"I'm Orlin, and this is my brother, Norret."
"Oh, an artist!" She took delighted note of Norret's folding easel and the multicolored alchemical stains on his clothes. "You must paint a portrait to immortalize this celebration."
Norret nodded in hasty agreement.
"So, what have you brought for Urgathoa's feast?"
"Brought?" I repeated.
"An offering to share! An unholy delicacy for us to consume for the delight of the Pallid Princess!"
I thought, then remembered my little horn spoon. "How about unicorn bone porridge?"
"Delightful!" exclaimed the cultist. "Did the beast scream as it was butchered?"
"I don't know. It died a long time ago."
"Well aged, then." She turned to Norret.
"I brought coffee."
She rolled her eyes but merely said, "Mistress Kissim brought funeral biscuits. I'm certain they will go well together." She gestured to one corner of the crypt. "I think you might set your easel up there. It will have the best view of the festivities. Do we need more candles?"
"No, the shadows are just right," Norret said.
"Well," the deaconess allowed, "none of them are hungry, but I'm certain that can be remedied later. I'm just so pleased we have an artist. Please, come in."
Norret nodded and did.
I might have expected many things of the cult of Urgathoa, but one thing I did not expect was a demented potluck. Cultists were milling about, placing food on the old sarcophagi like they were artists arranging still lifes—should the skull go beside the cheese tray or on top of it?—and everyone was chatting as if they'd gathered in some Isarn salon for a Crystalhue feast rather than in an abandoned Korvosan crypt for the blasphemous rites of the Pallid Princess.
Deaconess Gentle peered up the stairs. "Is there anyone else?"
"One more." The scent of roses and ectoplasm replaced the musty odor of the crypt.
Beside us appeared a vision of loveliness, a girl of no more than sixteen summers garbed in a green and ivory festival gown, a garland of pink noisette roses plaited into her golden hair. I'd only seen my spirit guide in this world once, when I was poisoned, but necromancers had told Norret and me that spirits had an easier time appearing to the doomed or the dying, or in certain places where the veil between worlds wore thin.
I hoped it was the third possibility, or at least that "doom" was more a warning than a certainty.
"How lovely you are!" The priestess clasped my spirit guide's hands, but not quite. "How may I know you?"
"Call me Rhodel."
"It is an honor to be graced by one of the incorporeal. Lord Galdur had feared that he would be the only one here to celebrate an ashenmorn."
"Ah nae." Rhodel laughed. "Orlin slipped his grave too."
"Indeed?" said Deaconess Gentle, blinking at me. "I took you for a living child. Forgive me."
"No need," I said truthfully.
"You shall have the place of honor." The priestess showed me to a chair at the upper left corner of the central sarcophagus, seating Rhodel just to the right of me before taking her place at the head of the "table." It was covered with a funeral pall. Seated opposite me was a rakishly handsome young man with dark hair, pale skin, and mismatched finery. Being from Galt, I was familiar with the look. It was what happened when you raided the wardrobes of dead nobles and had no eye for taste.
"Now, Master?" asked the gravedigger groveling at his side.
"Now, Alfoun."
The gravedigger whisked away the pall like a waiter uncovering a tray. I tried not to look at what was on the slab–who was on the slab–not wanting to see another plague-ravaged corpse. But then I did and I realized that, apart from liver spots, there were no marks on the old man's naked body. The mouth was open in a death rictus. Even so, I recognized it. I had been looking at it all day. It was the face of Zharmides the Godless.
"Oh, one without the plague!" Deaconess Gentle exclaimed delightedly. "Wherever did you find it, Lord Galdur?"
The young nobleman smiled, revealing pronounced eyeteeth, and petted the gravedigger like a faithful dog. "Good Alfoun brought it to me."
"Urgathoa has truly blessed us! Much as I enjoy the fruits of the season, it's nice to have a little variety."
"Shall I have the kiss of undeath now, master?" the gravedigger begged.
"No!" cried the pretty young woman seated to his left. "You swore your next bride would be me!"
"Patience, dear ones. Go eat some rats."
He said this last just forcefully enough. They both scurried off to one of the lower tables where one of the other cultists had indeed brought rats, roasted on a stick.
"There is a chair free now, my lovely." Lord Galdur gestured.
Rhodel vanished from her chair and reappeared in the one at his side.
Deaconess Gentle made brief introductions, then told Rhodel, "I'm so embarrassed. We didn't expect any of the incorporeal. How might we feed your pain?"
"Mayhaps a li'l pinch a snuff?" Rhodel asked. "Loved it in life 'n I kin still smell it in death."
Deaconess Gentle looked perturbed, but Lord Galdur reached into his pocket and gallantly produced a snuffbox. The snuffbox. Ivory, carved with lions and lilies. Even the stylized Z on the bottom. "A nobleman never goes anywhere without it."
"Ah, how pretty!" Rhodel exclaimed. "Lemme guess yer name. Is it Zander? Zaries?"
"It's Tyrnan," he said smoothly, "the fourth of that name. But I inherited this from my great uncle, Zellin Galdur."
I realized then that the vampire was a fraud—and likely about more than just the snuffbox. I suspected that if he had any noble blood in him at all, it was only because he'd drunk it.
"I've been ta the other side. I've met Tyrnan Galdur. All four." Rhodel took the snuffbox from him—actually, physically took it—and smiled. "Yer not him."
The vampire hissed like a cat, fangs bared, but this wasn't very frightening to a ghost. "And you, milady? Who are you, appearing like a Shelynite doxy at Urgathoa's feast!?"
"Ah," said Rhodel, "ye found me out. 'Tis true. I loved the Rose mosta' all. But I lived a long life, an' I prayed ta the Pallid Princess there at the end." As she said this, she grew older and older, the lines of age and care appearing on her face, then the sores of hag pox, the harlot's curse. "Kith me, handsome!" she slurred, her odor of roses turning to alcohol, anise, and the stench of sulfur as she grabbed him in a clench. Then she caught fire and exploded in a flash of fireworks and ectoplasm.
The vampire shouted and stood, his chair clattering behind him.
I felt something appear in my hands. It was the snuffbox, sticky with ectoplasm. I quickly put it in my pocket.
Deaconess Gentle retrieved her wig from where it had been blown off in the explosion. Beneath it, her hair was stringy and white. "The incorporeal—always so dramatic!" she exclaimed to the assembled cultists.
"Where is she?" hissed the vampire. "Where's my snuffbox?"
The priestess tugged the edge of his coat. "Lord Galdur, please. The ritual."
The vampire sat, glaring at me.
Deaconess Gentle placed one hand on my shoulder, then addressed her congregation, "My famished ones, this is Orlin. He's brought us a special delicacy. What was it again, dear?"
"Um, unicorn bone porridge."
Appreciative sounds issued from the cultists. The pretty woman who wanted to be a vampire brought me a bowl. I tried to ignore the fact that it was made from the top of a human skull and placed the little horn spoon inside.
Thick pasty gruel welled up. Norret had tried to make it look and taste like blancmange, but it only did insomuch as blanched almond pudding looked similar to stewed unicorn bones.
I offered the bowl to the priestess. She took a delicate bite. "It... has a lovely texture," she said politely. "Like rotten brains."
I was less disturbed than I should have been. "It's a little bland," I admitted.
She smiled. "I believe Lord Galdur may have a solution." She turned to him. "Might Orlin borrow your talisman?"
The vampire set down the glass of blood he had been draining from Zharmides' arm and addressed his priestess. "Does he have any skill as a chef?"
"A little," I admitted.
"Marvelous." He greeted me with a predatory smile. "Behold this talisman, sacred to the Pallid Princess." He reached up to his neck and touched his lavalier. "It makes the blood of the dead taste as sweet as that of the living." The pendant was amethyst, dark as Hymbrian grapes, a six-sided natural crystal capped with silver filigree in the shape of flies. "In the hands of a true chef, it can also produce sugar, salt, and spice. Yet that is not its only virtue. When touched by the undead, the Princess's crystal becomes the pure purple of royalty." He unclasped the chain, and held it out, then dropped it to pool on Zharmides' dead chest. "When touched by those bereft of Her blessing, it turns pale." The crystal clouded and color leached from it, transmuting from amethyst to milky quartz, white as leprosy. "But when touched by the living, it turns as pink as a baby's cheek."
The vampire bared his fangs in a feral grin. "Although you appear alive, Orlin, you smell of vinegar, like my cousins from the east." He stared at my neck. "Tell me, does your head come off?"
So far as I knew, everybody's head came off when you applied a Final Blade. "Yes, but I'd prefer if it stayed where it is."
"Just so," said the vampire. "I've heard it's troublesome to put your head back. But as youthful as I appear, I am older than I look."
"Same here."
"Indeed," agreed the vampire, "but from what I know, my eastern cousins are all women, not men. And never children. Touch the talisman and reveal Urgathoa's truth!"
He was trying to command me like his rat-chewing lackeys. But it was a litmus test. As awful as Urgathoa was, she still followed rules. The milky quartz of the pallid crystal would turn to amethyst for the dead and rose quartz for the living.
Of course, if you contaminated your sample, a litmus test could yield a false positive or negative. "Fine." I stood up and reached for the crystal while under my breath I said, "Rhodel...."
My spirit guide knew how to take a cue. I felt the cold touch as her hand overlaid mine.
I sat back down. While my fingers were closed around the crystal, they weren't touching it. Rhodel's were. Slowly I saw it clear and change from lavender to violet to deepest amethyst.
"Blessed child of Urgathoa!" cried the priestess.
The vampire sulked, even more so when I asked, "So what do I do now? Twist it like a pepper mill?"
As I said the word "pepper," a sprinkle floated down over the bowl of unicorn bone porridge, just like it had for Dr. Orontius. "Does it do thileu bark?" As I said it, it answered my question.
"If you add some fear's breath and hatefinger, I'll take that bowl, please," said Deaconess Gentle.
I'd never heard of these herbs, but Urgathoa's lavalier had, adding a sprinkle of each.
"Just nightfog and bloodroot for my wine," "Lord Galdur" grumbled sourly, holding out his glass of wizard blood.
Orders came in. It was almost like I was back in Isarn dishing up breakfast for our boarders. I fixed myself a bowl of porridge, seasoned it with sugar, cinnamon, and ginger, and tried to pretend I wasn't eating out of the top of someone's skull. It did taste like mother's blancmange now.
The festivities proceeded. Deaconess Gentle opened some moldering tome titled Serving Your Hunger, which I'd initially taken for a cookbook, and led the congregation in a ghastly chant made more horrid by the fact that most of the cultists were off key. Then she had me sprinkle Zharmides the Godless with thileu bark, after which she proceeded to pour Korvosan tawny port over the wizard's corpse and began to dish up slices of meat.
I didn't know whether this was the fate the gods had designed for those who mocked them or whether Zharmides had foreseen it and this explained his choice in religion.
As the cultists continued their ritual, I began noticing little oddities. For all that she looked the part of a priestess, Deacon Gentle seemed to fumble her way through the divine readings, sometimes stopping and having to repeat passages. Though the other cultists ate with gusto, all bore normal human features, and one or two even seemed a little queasy over the things they were shoving into their mouths. Only the vampire was actually undead, and despite the way the humans simpered and fawned over him, he too seemed to be trying hard to play a part—that of the world-weary undead lord.
They're new at this. The realization struck me suddenly, and for a moment I felt a little sorry for them. I wondered if their conversion was the result of the plague, or if they merely hoped to be rewarded by the vampire. Either way, it was a pathetic scene.
Then one of them began gnawing at a loop of intestine, and my sympathy evaporated.
I realized that Deaconess Gentle was looking expectantly at me. She was holding an empty plate, waiting for me to request a cut.
"Um, that's not how I... serve my hunger," I said as politely as I could, hoping I was saying the right thing.
"Indeed? And what would your kind prefer?"
Alarmed, I looked for Norret. The woman followed my glance. "Oh, the artist! Of course—he'll eat first, then you'll drink from his veins. Splendid."
My brother came over and saw what he was expected to do. Fortunately there was a line of cultists, and some were going back for seconds.
I got his attention when the priestess went to pour more port over Zharmides' body. I surreptitiously slipped my brother the damned snuffbox. He put it in a pocket and handed me a vial, jerking his head towards the bottle of port.
I unstoppered the vial and gripped it tight with my spirit's hand. It glittered like a diamond as I raised it in the air, but the cultists were distracted and drunk and didn't notice the drops dripping down as I added to Zharmides' seasoning. For good measure, I made sure a few drops got into the vampire's glass as well.
Then I pulled my spirit's hand back to my physical hand and stole a glance at the empty vial, pondering the label, written in Norret's neat handwriting: Syrup of Ip.
Coming Next Week: Things get truly gross in the final chapter of "Thieves Vinegar" by Kevin Andrew Murphy!
Kevin Andrew Murphy is the author of numerous stories, poems, and novels, as well as a writer for Wild Cards, George R. R. Martin's shared-world anthology line. His previous Pathfinder Tales stories include "The Secret of the Rose and Glove" and "The Perfumer's Apprentice" (also starring Norret and Orlin), and "The Fifth River Freedom," the fourth chapter of Prodigal Sons in the Kingmaker Pathfinder's Journal. For more information, visit his website.
Thieves Vinegarby Kevin Andrew Murphy ... Chapter Four: The Hall of Whispers You might think that watching cultists devour a corpse would be the most horrible sight one could witness. ... You'd be wrong. ... The most horrible sight is watching those cultists throwing the corpse back up while a vampire vomits. This latter is particularly bad when you remember who the priestess seated me opposite. If I ever hear a bard say the words bathed in blood again, I swear I'll kick him. ... I wanted to...
Thieves Vinegar
by Kevin Andrew Murphy
Chapter Four: The Hall of Whispers
You might think that watching cultists devour a corpse would be the most horrible sight one could witness.
You'd be wrong.
The most horrible sight is watching those cultists throwing the corpse back up while a vampire vomits. This latter is particularly bad when you remember who the priestess seated me opposite. If I ever hear a bard say the words "bathed in blood" again, I swear I'll kick him.
I wanted to kick my brother, but he'd saved us. While the cultists dealt with their unexpected illness, he'd located a secret side door and unlocked it with a mithral chime, then bustled us through. When the door was safely latched behind us again, he began to explain about harmonics and sympathetic vibrations, but I really didn't care. I was covered with the blood of Zharmides the Godless while Norret didn't have a speck on him. He'd been standing safely out of range, painting the portrait.
Norret was actually quite pleased with how it had turned out, and I had to admit that it was well done, assuming one likes portraits of cultists slicing up dead naked wizards. I was in the back, holding the unicorn horn spoon in one hand and the vampire's lavalier in the other. Rhodel was there as well, holding Zharmides' damned snuffbox with the lions and lilies, like a treasure chest for a pixie pirate queen.
Norret was happy that he'd found such a good use for the canvas, while I was upset because Urgathoa's pepper mill was still amethyst even though Rhodel wasn't touching it.
"Hmm, interesting." Norret took it, holding it by the chain as it went white. He touched it with his bare fingers, watching it change to rose quartz.
He handed it back. While it was pink for a moment, it swiftly purpled. "But I'm not undead!"
"Probably another false positive," Norret speculated. "It may test for some other property. Perhaps Urgathoa's approval."
I was about to protest that I didn't know why Urgathoa, goddess of sickness and escaping your grave, might approve of me, but I bit my tongue. Plus I'd just had a vampire get sick all over me. "What was in that vial?"
"Syrup of ipecac," Norret replied, "a powerful emetic. It's made from the root of the ipecacuanha plant. Didn't I tell you?"
He hadn't, nor had he told me we'd be traveling through Korvosa's sewers.
He was still holding the map he'd purchased before, tracing imaginary lines on it as we made turn after turn through the stinking—but admittedly rather spacious—tunnels beneath the streets. I didn't like to think about why folks would need to build them so large.
Norret was mumbling to himself, counting his paces. Each time I started to breach the silence, he waved my questions away, lest I interrupt his rapidly expanding total. At last he said, "If we went left there, then we should be under it right about..."
We turned a corner, and found a wall with an unmarked iron door set into it.
"Perfect!" Norret said. He opened his box labeled Hessim, Newby, & Sage Paint Manufactory's Complete Pigment Panoply. He selected the smallest pot of paint—already half empty—took a nip of some elixir, and set to painting an intricate key on a page of his formulary. He blew on it to dry, then held up the book and shook it.
A complicated iron key fell into his hand.
Norret corked the tiny sample pot, cleaned the brush, and put away the set.
The key fit the lock like it was made for it.
Nella is a tricky one, that's for sure.
An iron staircase wound upward. Occasionally passageways branched off. Terrible screams and moans echoed from those halls. We passed a silver mirror, and in it I glimpsed Rhodel talking with two men dressed as guards. No one stood on the stairs.
At last we came to another door with a keyhole. Norret inserted the iron key. It turned.
It opened out into a library—an unusually round one—with the door a hidden panel disguised as a shelf of books. A moment later I realized that all the books were false. They were made out of bronze, the same as the busts of the dead wizards and the statues of the past headmasters of the Acadamae. The floor was black marble inlaid with silver circles and arcane diagrams, and the dome above was painted midnight blue and spangled with stars. In the middle hung a great glass lantern painted to look like the moon, but from this angle, it looked more like a skull.
"It's the columbarium," I breathed. "The Hall of Whispers...."
As I said the words, they were repeated, ghostly echoes whispering around the room.
"Oh!" exclaimed Norret. "A whispering gallery! I've read about these! Some interesting acoustical properties here...."
His words echoed around the room as well, hissing and whispering as they passed the bronze books and the effigies of wizards past. Then they were followed by other words, repeated whispers not spoken by my brother: "Ya thievin' packrats! Give back what ya stole!"
There, before an alcove with his bust, stood Zharmides the Godless–completely transparent. But this time, thankfully, with his clothes.
Something was wrong, subtly wrong, but I couldn't quite say what.
"Give it back!" he wailed. "Give back my iv'ry chest or I'll curse ya ta–"
Suddenly the scent of ectoplasm and roses manifested as another ghost appeared—one I knew—and I realized what was wrong. Zharmides looked like a ghost, but didn't smell like one. Ever since I'd died and come back, I'd had the ability to sense ghosts by smell. And this one didn't smell at all.
Rhodel stared eye to eye with her fellow ghost. "Boo!" she said as she reached up and flicked his hat.
Zharmides' bowler raised in the air, hissing, while lines of blood appeared, trickling down his face. His hat flew atop his bronze bust and turned into a pug-nosed orange tabby. "Marcat! No!" the dead wizard cried in a feminine voice.
Rhodel disappeared, smirking.
The ghost of Zharmides the Godless turned toward us.
"My mistake." Nella Cailean's illusion melted. "Never pick drama over believability. I should have just impersonated Headmaster Ornelos." She shrugged. "Anyway, I still want the little ivory chest." She held out her hand.
"Why?" I almost screamed. "Are all wizards mad? What's so important about a snuffbox?"
"Sivanah only knows!" she laughed. "But all the older instructors have them, so I intend to find out."
"And how'd you know we'd be here?"
"My main field of study is illusion, but I dabble in divination as well. I spy with my little scry..." She produced a sheet of paper and grinned at Norret. "I still haven't figured out your claw spell, but a page from an alchemist's formulary and a handwriting sample? Can't ask for better sympathy than that."
"I thought I felt someone was watching me," said Norret.
"And a whole lot more will be if you don't give me Zharmides' snuffbox." She paused. "And the vault key. I only reserved the columbarium for an hour, and you must have alerted half the spectral spies."
A knock sounded at a door on the other side of the chamber.
"Reserved!" Nella cried. "Summoning!"
"Acadamae security!"
Nella looked at Norret. "Give me the goods, and I'll get you out. Refuse, and you deal with the guards."
"So will you."
"I'm a student. I'm used to it. You?" She cocked her head. "Did you hear the screams in the halls below?"
"Fine," he agreed. "Just be quick." He placed the key and the snuffbox in her hand.
They disappeared up her sleeve. "Understood." Nella wove her hands in the air, muttering arcane syllables. My brother's appearance melted, reforming into the image of Arlunia Ehrmande, Lecturer in Charms.
The door opened and three hellspawn entered the chamber.
"You fools!" Nella screamed. "I summoned a drekavac, and now it's out of its circle!" She pointed at me.
"What's a drekavac?" the first hellspawn asked.
The second stared at me in horror. "You summoned a plague spirit?" He turned to Nella. "Are you insane?"
The third remarked, "Don't drekavacs have animal heads?"
"It's a greater drekavac!" Nella improvised. "A bloody drekavac! A child who died of the plague!"
So far as I knew, I'd only died of a fever, but Nella's lies were uncomfortably close to the truth. I was also acutely aware that I was still drenched in the blood of Zharmides the Godless.
"Professor Ehrmande, do you think you can hold it?" Nella asked breathily.
"I think so," said Norret in his normal, masculine voice.
The hellspawn stared at him. "Does she have the plague?"
Norret coughed.
"Save yourselves!" cried Nella.
The hellspawn ran out the door.
Nella produced a wand. "Hold hands and run for the Acadamae gates. This won't last long." She touched me with the wand and said a single word: "Fernseed." Then she touched Norret. "Fernseed," she pronounced again and he vanished.
We were invisible. We ran for the open door and out into the Hall of Whispers. We found the main entrance by following the cries of "Drekavac! Drekavac! Run!"
We were out on the lawn, out the front gates, and halfway down a side street before the spell wore off. The illusion of Arlunia Ehrmande lasted a little longer, but was gone by the time we found a bridge to cross the Narrows of Saint Alika.
By the time we got to the Old Quay, I was staggering. Norret covered me with his cloak, and I finally slept.
∗∗∗
Teleportation is an awful way to wake up, but it was followed by the realization that we were back in Galt, in the Primrose Suite.
Sweet Galt. How I'd missed her.
"Blue Liberty!" Dr. Orontius swore. "What happened, Orlin? You look like you were in the front row at a particularly spectacular beheading!"
I wanted to say, "No, a vampire got sick on me," then found that I already had. Before I hardly knew what I was doing, the whole story came out. Norret even had pictures, including his painting of the cult's feast just before they all threw up.
Dr. Orontius worked a small spell, making all the blood that covered me vanish, then Norret told the rest of the tale, including how he'd lost the snuffbox.
"'Nella Cailean,' you say?" asked Dr. Orontius. "Saucy little minx. Well, two can play at the scrying game...."
"Unless there's lead in the way."
"Well, yes," admitted Dr. Orontius, "but it's not that common."
"White lead is also the primary ingredient in flake white, which I used to gesso my canvas." Norret opened his case of pigments, revealing a full jar of white paint. "I used to be a soldier, so I'm familiar with the feeling of being scried on." Norret reached into the jar and removed a tiny chest. "I assumed you could clean this off."
"Splendid!" cried Dr. Orontius. "You painted the snuffbox in the portrait twice, once with mundane pigments, once with the marvelous ones?"
"Yes," said Norret.
Dr. Orontius chuckled heartily. "Knowing what I do, Nella should be heartily surprised when she discovers that her prize is a fake!" He repeated the blood-removing charm, but this time it stripped paint, leaving a pretty little ivory snuffbox, complete with gilded scrimshaw lions and lilies.
He opened the tiny chest, bringing it to his nose and sniffing. "Ah yes, dear Zharmides always favored Peshpetal Blend." He snapped it shut and held it to his heart. "I will cherish this memento and think of him always."
"You could cherish that and think of him too." I pointed to the portrait of the cultists devouring Zharmides' corpse.
Dr. Orontius looked uncomfortable. "Yes, well, perhaps I might use that to retrieve some fragment of his body."
"So what's the snuffbox for?"
"Clever boy." He pinched my cheek. "Perhaps one day, if you are clever enough, you might attend the Acadamae and learn that secret." He patted me on the head for good measure. "But presently, you must work. Breakfast won't fix itself!"
There is something wrong with a world where ghouls and vampires are more polite and grateful than a houseful of scholars. I went out to the garden, let out the chickens that had been cooped up all day, and took in a double helping of eggs.
The post-execution day omelets were late the next morning, but they were seasoned with thileu bark. I declared them "Omelets Korvosa." If I didn't need to tell the boarders about unicorn bone porridge, I didn't need to tell them about Urgathoa's pepper mill either.
I was beginning to fix lunch when the bell for the Primrose Suite began jangling. Dr. Orontius had some nerve. But when the wire pulled the spring out of the wall and slammed the bell into the ceiling, I realized something was seriously wrong.
"Rhodel, get Norret!" I raced for the Primrose Suite.
Norret was already there, staring at the door, his monocle pushed up on his forehead. A horrible banging and cursing came from the suite, mixed with the screeching of an owl. Norret was half-shaven, holding a mug and shaving brush.
He pushed the monocle back in place, spat in his shaving mug, and painted the doorframe with the resulting lather.
Norret pushed me down on the floor. The lather sizzled and exploded, the entire door and doorframe falling out into the hall. Plaster dust swirled through the air like smoke.
Through the new arch into the Primrose Suite, I saw Dr. Orontius being beaten over the head with a gold-topped cane by Zharmides the Godless. Meanwhile, a green winged monkey-gremlin-thing attempted to garrote our boarder with the bell pull while an owl clawed at it.
Norret still had his pomander orbiting his head. He hurled it at the gremlin, angling the opening just so. The thing screeched, blinded by thieves vinegar. It looked like a beribboned, clove-studded orange-peel hat had been pulled down over its eyes.
"Get the homunculus," Norret said. "I'll get the wizard."
I wasn't certain how I was supposed capture a flying manikin, but then I spotted a bell jar on the mantel. It was covering a clock the same size as the homunculus.
I used my spirit's hand to tweak its nose. The homunculus flew up as I caught it in the jar, clapping the open end down to the surface of Dr. Orontius's traveler's trunk. The thing raged against the glass, but it was too heavy for it to lift.
With a terrific thundering that rattled the windows and knocked all the pictures askew, Zharmides the Godless blew up—fortunately into flecks of shaving cream and shadows rather than blood and gore like the last time he'd been ripped apart. A torn scrap of parchment fluttered down, and Dr. Orontius's owl familiar caught it. He dropped it in my hands before taking his customary perch atop the bust of Nethys and looking at me expectantly.
I examined the parchment. It was half of a magical figure—half a circle, half a square, and the upper half of Zharmides the Godless, holding his cane in one hand, his arms shown in two positions, like an architectural diagram for a jumping jack. More sympathetic magic.
I turned. The lower half of the symbol was pasted inside the open lid of another large chest, an ivory one. But it was still possible to see that this one was scrimshawed with lions and lilies and filled with books.
"Thank you," Dr. Orontius wheezed, loosening the bell pull from his throat. "Your assistance is appreciated but was not strictly–"
"It's Zharmides' trunk," I said. "The real one. The little snuffbox is just a focus, isn't it?"
Dr. Orontius harrumphed, but he couldn't hide the guilty expression. "How was I to know—"
I cut him off. "You use the paintings when you teleport somewhere. By the same principles, you use your snuffbox to teleport your traveler's trunk to you later when you want it. Why go back to your library when you can have your library brought to you? Zharmides knew the same trick, but to get his books, you needed his snuffbox. Which would have all worked out fine, except he left his homunculus inside the larger chest along with a trap."
"A symbol," Dr. Orontius said, feeling the lumps on his head. "I'm not certain which one...."
I handed Dr. Orontius the upper half of the torn piece of paper.
Norret beamed like a proud parent. But he was actually just my brother, and someone had to have a head for business. "I don't know what deal you had with Norret," I said, "but I'll be making up a bill."
I stepped out over the rubble, adding, "There will be no further room service."
Coming Next Week: A sample chapter from Richard Lee Byers' new Pathfinder Tales novel Called to Darkness, starring the Kellid warrior Kagur and her quest for vengeance against the frost giant that killed her family!
Kevin Andrew Murphy is the author of numerous stories, poems, and novels, as well as a writer for Wild Cards, George R. R. Martin's shared-world anthology line. His previous Pathfinder Tales stories include "The Secret of the Rose and Glove" and "The Perfumer's Apprentice" (also starring Norret and Orlin), and "The Fifth River Freedom," the fourth chapter of Prodigal Sons in the Kingmaker Pathfinder's Journal. For more information, visit his website.
