From: hutch@ibeam.intel.com (Steve Hutchison)
Subject: [P8] Pieces of Eight 4: Mage
Organization: Intel Corp., Hillsboro, Oregon
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 18:18:46 GMT

[Admin]  Darned automatic local distribution.  This was supposed to go out
TO THE WORLD before part 5.  Sorry for out-of-order, it doesn't hurt YET.
------------

Archimage Ilya was conjuring again.

The Tower, as decrepit as its master, shook under the force of the winds,
slates clattering off the roof to smash on the ground below.  Somehow,
though, there were always more where those came from.

The storm had been building for four days now.  The servant moved quietly,
closing the shutters, securing the door, then closing the cover on the well
and closing up the barn.  It returned to the Tower and began to prepare a
meal.  All that Archimage Ilya was willing to eat any more was a thin gruel.
The servant grumbled to itself, certain that the old fart was going to burn
out before he abandoned this useless search.

Ilya checked his pentacle a fifth time, then the constraint circle, then
the wards, the binding oath, the torment wheel, the brazier, and his own
special invention, the crastuary.  All in order.  The preparations were in
place.  He sipped at the cup of thin gruel, scowled, summoned some flavor
and sprinkled it over the liquid.  It began to emit a gentle steam, and
he sipped again.  Better.  He slumped back in his great chair.  The cost
of this work was high, very high.  He was growing old too fast, and would
only get worse.  But he refused to use the sloppy and dangerous methods
that SHE always used.  Wild magic, set free to seek its own path, it was
always worse, over time.  SHE had escaped the hazards, so far, but it would
catch up with her, as it had caught up with him.

There was a hammering at the door to the Tower.  It persisted - after a
few minutes, the servant went to see what was happening.  There was someone
outside, a young man, wind-lashed and soaked by the storm.  The servant
returned to Archimage Ilya with this information.

"Well, let him in, don't just hover over me like a maiden auntie."

The servant departed in a huff.  His duty was done: Ilya had been warned.
The stranger was dangerous, but if the old man was too pigheaded to heed
the danger, it was on HIS head...

The servant closed the door behind the intruder, and took his cloak and
boots.  A fire was set in the kitchen fireplace, and it pushed a chair
up to the fire, directing the stranger to warm himself, to eat what he
wanted, and under no circumstances to go past the kitchen door.  It
returned to the archimage - he always needed someone to hand him the
powders in the right sequence when he was conjuring.

This demon was uglier than the others.  It must have come from a deeper hole
in the lower hells.  After Ilya spent four hours calling, burning strange
incenses, and macerating the attractants in the crastuary, it opened its
portal, peering through a rip in the air into the pentacle.  It whiffled,
with its three mismatched hairy nostrils, at the scent of the attractants
and the soothing aroma of the incense, and pulled itself into the pentacle,
one tendril safely extended back through the rip, keeping it open for a fast
retreat.  It moved forward, but couldn't reach the crastuary.  Ilya continued
the subdued chant, and it tried, and tried, and eventually, decided to come
completely into the pentacle, in order to engulf the attractant.  A shrill
squeak sounded as it pounced on, and consumed, the unlucky mouseling.  It
whirled, seeing its rip-in-air closed behind it.  A new one would not form.
It tried three times, then gave up, huddling and glaring.

The trap sprung, Ilya begain the rituals of constraint and injuncture.
The creature howled and gibbered and bounced repeatedly off of the
constraint circle, eventually tiring itself and retreating to the pentacle.
Finally, it began nodding and chanting in time with the wizard.  Three times
through the binding oath.  Ilya smiled, disturbing on his wizened face.

"Now.  You will tell me what you know.  Don't shake your pointed little
head at me, you know very well what I mean.  My conjure was very specific,
it would not have brought you here if you didn't know.  Answer the question."

The thing in the pentacle cringed and whimpered.

"My wrath will be much worse than his, unless you answer me truthfully."

The thing glared.  Ilya reached for the torment wheel.  He began the
slow, careful, painstaking revolution of the actuator crank against
the agonistator, discharging into the containment circle.

One turn - the thing jumped, snapping at its feet as they grew fingers.
Two turns - it started barking and yowling as its skin grew tight.
Three turns - it began to shrink.

"Tell me, or I do the next series."

The thing considered for a moment, then capitulated.  Its voice, like
the sound of chalk made from human teeth scraping on a blackboard,
formed words in a language that made the ears feel dirty.

"Othreik has it.  He uses it as a power core for his navigation lantern.
He has taken his spelljammer to the Gnomic Reaches.  I will tell you
how to find ...  how to .. how .... AIEAHgggh!"  It began to smoke,
bits of it falling to the ground and evaporating with a noise like
glass breaking.  In a moment there was nothing left.

A voice, from behind him, spoke grimly.

"Othreik, eh?  It'll be just like old home week."

Ilya whirled, bringing the lightnings to his fingers.  His servant should
have warned him.  A stranger stood there, a young man, his features hidden
by a black cloak, but Ilya remembered him.

"What do you want?"

"I want you, old man."

------

Leah watched, impassive, moving the reflection of her scry through
the tower, the grounds.  There was no trace of the old man.  The
mule was gone.  The fact that she had been able to see into the tower
at all meant that his power had been removed.  She stood, shaking
the summer-sun mass of her hip-length hair, the black stripe down the
left side rippling independant of the hair's motion.  Her voluptuous
figure was a combination of well-toned muscle and lush amplitude in
a configuration such as to make anyone stare in awe.  She wore a
long, full purple-black velvet dress cut in medieval style, dagged
sleeves brushing the ground beside her hem, belted at the waist with
a golden chain, from which her ceremonial dagger depended.  A fair
of at least twenty, maybe more, miniature dragonets, in all colors of
the rainbow, kept company with her.  They were no larger than a kitten,
but showed the same fierce possessiveness of their mistress that their
larger cousins could show towards treasure.

"You see what I mean, now?"

A'ree nodded, looking into the puddle of spilt wine on the table.
The enchantress was right.  Someone was hunting them down.

Leah touched the wine, dispelling the image.  One of her minidragons,
the cerise one, flew over and began lapping up the wine, and the vestiges
of magic which remained there.  He looked up adoringly at his mistress,
whirling his crystal-flame eyes entreatingly.  She absently tossed him
a salt-laden cracker, which he pounced upon.  Four of the others flew
down to help him eat it.

(At the bar, a brawny warrior-bard admired the two women.  Two women
alone were clearly waiting for the right man to come along and save
them from their dreary spinster lives.  He got up and started over.)

"Allies, then," the enchantress said, and casually drew a glyph in the
air to ward off unwanted attention and conversation.  The warrior-bard
suddenly looked around, wondering who he was and what he was doing in
a bar he'd never seen before.

A'ree shifted her armored form back, leaning against the wall.  The
enchantress removed a minidragon, the azure one, from her flame-red
hair, and chided it gently.  A graceful finger stroked along its
snout, and it sneered at the white hawk sitting on the warrior woman's
shoulder.  The hawk blinked its blue eyes scornfully.

The enchantress spoke.

"So tell me, warrior, what are YOUR ideas?  What is the source of this
threat?  How to we protect ourselves?"  The two women began to talk,
quietly, between themselves.
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