Brennan's preparations are simple:
First, grab something that will serve as a personal token or identifier from the Maghee. Not that he has much choice, but it will be in his best interest to cooperate with that and volunteer a ring or some other personal keepsake lest Walker in his haste just decide to take a finger or a hand. Brennan is just paranoid enough that whatever the Maghee gives him, he's scan astrally once out of sight to make sure he's not carrying a trap.
The Maghee's prayerbook is personal and well-known to his crew, and will show that he is present in the castle.
It's not a trap, but it is old. Each page is a waterproof sheet. Lir is extensively mentioned. It's written in Thari, which is the language of Avalon.
Well, that's going to be a keeper. Brennan flips through it to see if it's a bound and complete book in the sense of a Bible or a Koran, or if it also serves as a journal or diary. Either way, he's going to be reading this in detail, later.
The Maghee is happy to let you have it. If you have any questions about Lir, he'd be happy to witness to you. Lir is the guiding principle of his life.
The book seems to be a compendium of anecdotes from the lives of saints and Gods. Lir seems both ancient and immediate in the stories Brennan sees while browsing through it
Second, he needs to look the part, and so although it might possibly have slipped in the chaos and confusion of the last day, Brennan continues to let the Shadows lie for him. He's been at home in the guise of the weatherbeaten wanderer for long enough that the Shadows don't have much work to do. He does specifically wear a cap or a helm that will take attention away from his red hair.
Brennan is outfitted with a flag of truce, a fresh mount, and whatever (non-royal) escort he wants to take with him. The sally port is opened and the deceptively calm field stands between him and the sea raiders turned besiegers.
Walker selects as his escort a squad of about five men. Walker and the flag-bearer have battleaxes, although they're fixed to the horses, not dawn. Walker doesn't expect these sorts of folk to be too terribly squeamish or to go unarmed even at truce talks. The others have pike and will trail Walker and the flag-bearer by a substantial amount. They will not be part of the negotiations unless Walker ends up negotiating with the Worm.
Assuming that the Corsair forces don't simply attack, Walker will make a reasonable pace toward the dig site, which is where he expects the negotiations to take place. Assuming a similar party meets him, his first words are, "You in charge, now?"
The corsairs send a party of men to intercept Walker's party before they get to the dig site. There is a circle of men who are probably sailors. The officers, or at least the well-dressed men who don't look like they work for a living, are at the front.
The man, a large, barrel-chested fellow with extremely long arms, nods. "I am Captain Jellicoe of The Gazellicorn. I have always been in charge of the ship and the crew. What, Sir, is your name?"
Walker plants himself firmly, standing as though his mass holds the ground down rather than the other way around. Captain Walker," he says, although obviously a captain of a different sort.
"Seems you misplaced something," he takes the prayer book out of his coat pocket and holds it up for Jellicoe to see, but not to take. "Like that Maghee boy we got sittin' up in our prison." He affects to look about the field for a moment, squinting through the grand mess he's made of everything. When he doesn't find what he's supposedly looking for, he gives a perfectly humorless smile that never touches his eyes. "Like those snouty beasts he rustled up, turned to raven-feed at the bottom of that cliff. Reckon those are gonna be hard to replace."
Even the false smile vanishes, leaving only cold eyes and an angry scowl that could break hulls.
"How much more you willing to lose?"
Walker studies the man's face and stance carefully, and if he gets the impression that Walker may wish to be able to pick him out on the field of battle, if it comes to that, then Jellicoe is a man of at least average perception and sensitivity.
"My brothers and I sail under the Corsair flag. We risk our lives when we choose, but not when there is no hope of profit. What ransom do you want for the boy?"
"Too early for that. Let's talk about the plans for the pit and the pot over there," he says. "Let's do it over there," meaning, by the dig site itself. Walker's expression hasn't changed in the slightest, and he neither gestures to it nor glances at it. His icepick eyes are fixed on Jellicoe's, looking for the recognition that, no, the Corsairs aren't going to draw the inside straight here, and delay long enough to bring the walls down.
Captain Jellicoe grunts. "Let's talk right here, where no one can do anything anyone regrets with that pot. But if you really want it, we might be willing to trade it for the Maghee. Unless he's dead. Then you can start dickering on buying us off."
"It ain't the pot we want, just that you ain't got it to hold over us when we're done here. Build a big bonfire and cook the whole thing down for a day suits us." Walker considers, then says, "Way I see it, you got a busted flush: Prince is still in command, your snouts are gone, your pointy-hat's singing like a swallow. All you got's a thing in a pot. Damage the walls if you want, you ain't got the snouts to rampage through it after and you ain't gonna have us wait around to let you do it-- we'll take our chances on killing every last one of you today."
Walker makes no obvious movement, but the sound of his knuckles popping is audible even from inside his gauntlets. Or maybe it's his vertebrae making that noise when he shrugs and stretches his neck.
"There ain't no profit in that for no one. Or we watch you cook that thing down for a day, and then watch you walk away and go bother someone else. You can keep the pot." What they might expect to do in it is left to the crude imaginations of sea bandits.
Walker waits for the counter-offer.
[OOC: That's Brennan's high fire opening offer, to generously let everyone live to fight another day and they can keep their pot to p!ss in if they want it. To aid in not dragging this out with line-by-line dialogue, Walker will obviously listen to their counter-offer if they feel slighted. If their counter-offer is reasonable enough, he'll strongly consider taking it back to Trippel for consideration or even conjuring it on the sly if they can be talked into something portable like gemstones. He'll even offer them the ivory from the elephants if they really want it. He does not tell them that SkiazNout is likely to eat them for their troubles. Note that Brennan is not above conjuring additional resources into Mont Parnasse's vaults-- within reason-- under the pretext that Maibock may not have disclosed all the assets even to his children.
[He'll also consider giving them the nameless Maghee if they can work out a way to ensure that they won't be back tomorrow trying the same stunt. If Balen has some way to guarantee that-- a draught that will keep him asleep for a fortnight, a binding geas (even if temporary) that Balen can verify, magically gluing his mouth and eyes shut, anything along those lines that Balen thinks will work-- Brennan will consider that viable.
[He will probably *not* consent to both of those, though, because he doesn't think Trippel will go for it, and Balen definitely won't.
[Finally, a key part of this is verifying the thing in the pot and dragging that out for a day so he can have some quality time with his new best friend up there in the tower. That's just common sense for the battlefield situation and for Brennan's private agenda, so that's a hard, non-negotiable point. That means Balen can't glue his mouth shut until then, either.]
Jellicoe looks at him for a long moment, considering. "Wondered if the Prince would get back. We still have the most ancient of siege methods to us, in that we have an armed force that can starve you out of your mountain castle. But that takes time, and we can get back to sea faster if we strike a deal.
"Fifty Thousand Gold Protectors would convince us withdraw from this conflict."
Walker oh-so-politely turns his head before he spits on the ground, while Brennan works probabilities in the background.
"You had any faith in your ancient methods, you wouldn't've brung the Maghee boy and you wouldn't've asked me what I'd take for ransom. Your best end game here is you tied up all season before you get anything. Worst case is we kill you all first." Walker gives a significant look around him indicating that he thinks this is quite plausible given their performance thus far.
"Take your pointy hat and you can go run your racket three, four times somewhere else. 'Cept we got your wizard boy upstairs, don't we? Thirty five large for your mage-- and certain gaurantees-- leaves you room to profit from the boy."
It becomes likely that, during the course of the negotiations, the ravens whirling over the fresh elephant meat at the bottom of the cliff move to wheel over the Corsair encampment, and that a few of them will set on the Corsair banners and start pecking at and eating them. Only the Corsair banners.
Brennan is not subtle in his omens.
"You need to sell him to his people. We don't really want him that bad." The man spits, probably from thinking too long about Maghees.
And Walker is not a euphemism for Travelling Salesman, so that's not going to happen either.
They'll loan the mage the money for his ransom, but they won't pay it. They sort of like that idea, actually. And they don't want you to set it too low. They'd take a deal where you paid them 10,000, and the mage's ransom was 10,000, so the net result was just that they got 10K from the Mage. They'll sell you the worm, or they'll take it away with them.
Walker's grin is an evil grin, befitting the ruthless mercenary that he is-- having the Maghee pay his own ransom is a cruel twist on the basic idea that this whole boondoggle has been a colossal draw. After some amount of dickering over how much to punish the Maghee, Walker considers the deal done.
He explains that it may take some time to sell this to the Royal Family, who are of course eager to kill them all, although thinking of this as the sale of a weapon may make that medicine go down easier. And of course, some additional time to ensure that the Maghee will not return to trouble them again. But, all things considered, Walker intends to have the Maghee back in time for them to break camp and depart that day.
Walker heads back to the keep with an agenda that runs like this:
First, break the news to Trippel who is more likely to accept it at face value than Balen. Especially when "give us 50,000 in gold," got haggled down to "give us small change and take our weapon." If Trippel has a particular distaste for any of his neighbors, he will be happy to pass that along to Jellicoe, suitably phrased.
Second, break the news to Balen as a fait accompli and get her working on a short term insurance policy.
Third, take charge of the interrogation under the pretext that Trippel and Balen probably have better things to do. He insists the interrogation be done in private, just Walker and the Maghee, and he'll cash in one of several favors they owe him to make that happen if necessary.
But there are two things Walker needs to do before that starts.
Thus, fourth, he wants to read that religious text that he took from the Maghee. As quickly as Brennan reads, though, he hasn't got the time to do a truly in depth reading before going to interrogate the Maghee. He will content himself, for the moment, with a surface reading, paying some attention to the following things:
- "This Lir fellow," as Walker would put it. Who is it, what is it,
where did it come from?
- Traces of Rebma influence, overt or covert-- not just references to
Rebma, but to green-haired people, things that sound like Tritons,
magic mirrors, etc
- The origins of the Maghee, and any connections to any
Rebman-inspired elements above.
The book is divided into two sections, divided by the fall of the Silver Towers. Lir is a promethean figure, teaching the warrior's arts to many. He came from beyond everything to raise the Silver Towers. He left with an army to help his godly kin in their war with giant fish demons. The Maghee were his sucessors, prior the coming of the witch-king. They descend from his castellan. This section is full of parables and war advice. Lir was very good
The diaspora section tells of the Maghee clan from the fall of the towers to the era of the Protector. The book has many authors, some of whose style is more opaque than others.
Apparently no one likes them.
And suddenly, the outlines of the puzzle resolve themselves, and take on firm, straight borders. The relations of the rest of the pieces to each other aren't yet clear-- or it wouldn't be a puzzle-- but the major figures are now known: Lir, Corwin, Benedict, the Silver Towers, a Pattern, thinly disguised Tritons. Moire's role is still, to be fair, in some doubt and the Fair Folk remain troublingly enigmatic, but now Brennan feels as though he's found ground to stand on.
Lir must have been an uncle lost to the mists of time, or perhaps a cousin, from the time of Osric, Finndo and Cneve who joined the party in Rebma when the Tritons attacked. Could it have been a shadow or an echo? Of course. But it probably wasn't-- past a certain point, coincidences gather their own momentum and continue under their own power. And it doesn't matter. What matters is that there is a pre-existing mythological structure whereby an army was led away to what was obviously Rebma, there presumably to find glory under Lir's command... and an already existing group of disaffected, even more landless than usual warriors, supposedly descended of him, hardened in Benedict's personal crucible... and a high priestess from a sunken city calling out their chieftain.
All of which is more than simply suggestive, but not yet enough to be actionable.
And so Brennan makes sure the door to his quarters are still barred before attending the fifth piece of his agenda-- shuffling out his deck of Trumps, drawing out a relatively new one, and concentrating on it. If Folly answers with the traditional question, he answers, "It's your favorite cousin," in a very low murmur. Hopefully it will carry through to Folly who is more versed in Trump operations than he is, and hopefully it will signify that he is at risk of being overheard.
Folly pauses in her breakfast preparations to glance out the kitchen window at her husband and daughter, playing in the surf. Lark, it seemed, had finally got the hang of scrambling up onto her little surfboard by herself and riding the last gentle 30 or 40 feet of tide onto the shore. Martin, meanwhile, stood hip-deep in the water like a sentry, probably to keep Lark from venturing farther out to try her luck in the big waves... or possibly to deter any threats to his child -- be they human, jellyfish, great white shark, or triton -- with a swift punch to the face.
Folly smiles and moves to set the table. There hadn't really been much call for punching anyone in the face since they'd come to Lauderville. Equal parts surfers and scholars, with a vibrant and diverse music scene, abundant opportunities for intellectual pursuits, and beautiful warm beachy weather, it had been the perfect place to settle down for a while and figure out how to be a family. In this environment, Martin was even starting to seem... relaxed, almost. Folly had made progress on Trumps, and on harmonic metaphysics. And Lark, their little water-baby, really seemed to be thriving.
A delighted shriek draws Folly's attention back to the window: Out in the water, Martin is apparently satisfying Lark's need for bigger thrills by tossing her over and over again up into the air -- not as high as he could, nor nearly as high as she probably wants to go, but there are other people around and the adorable toddler proto-surfer has already drawn more than enough attention without launching her to impossible heights.
Folly is suddenly struck by how much Lark resembles each of her grandparents. From Brij, she has that perfect awareness of her own body in space, combined with Random's love of heights and speed -- or anything that feels like flying. Her deep and instinctual love of being in the water could only have come from Martin's maternal line. And from Huon.... Well. There Folly can only speculate, but at times Lark certainly elevated Getting Her Own Way to an art form.
Folly busies herself moving waffles and bacon and eggs from the stove to the table, and dirty dishes from the counter to the sink. As the last pan goes in to soak, she hears footfalls on the wide wooden porch. "Who's ready for breakfast?" she asks through the screen door without turning to look.
"Two very hungry swimmers. None of whom are caterpillars, regardless of how many pears, plums, and strawberries they claim to have eaten," Martin announces, to a giggle from Lark. He pushes the screen door open; somehow it doesn't squeak when he does it, despite the fact that it seems to for anyone else. They've already dried off most of the way and removed most of the sand, minimizing the dripping and the tracking of dirt inside the house. Martin's shorts are stll wet, though, and so is Lark's suit.
He brings her over for a kiss from Folly and then steals one for himself. "Something smells good. You want me to clean her up or shall we eat on the porch?" Lark is wiggling and squirming and ready to be put down so she can run around some more, but Martin has an iron grip and isn't exactly a novice at dealing with antsy toddlers. To Folly's maternal eyes, Lark looks like she'll run around some more and fall asleep about halfway through breakfast if they leave her be. (Assuming she doesn't get completely cranky and refuse to sleep, in which case tears will be the order of the day.)
"Oh, let's go ahead and eat now, while the food's still warm." After that, Folly thinks, if it's not naptime it will be bathtime -- which at least will help cheer Lark up if she does get cranky.
She cuts a waffle into quarters and hands Lark a piece to eat with her fingers while she and Martin are loading up their own plates to carry outside. "How's the water this morning? The beach seems a little quieter than usual -- or maybe it just seems that way because I've spent the last hour in the house where there are no little noisemakers running around...." She grins at her daughter, then at Martin. "I got some good painting done."
"I'm not entirely averse to enforcing quiet when I need to. But I didn't have to today." Martin jerks a thumb at their waffle-consuming child, who is mostly engaged in inhaling down the food Folly just provided. She's her father's daughter in the food-consuming arena: she eats everything put in front of her, which is a lot for a growing child.
Lark's father is engaged in heaping a plate of his own as high as it will go. "Really? Which one?" His tone his curious, but not hostile. Martin is generally interested in metaphysics in a more practical matter, leaving theory to Folly, but of course his experience with Trumps is such that he considers them a practical threat. He's never been enthusiastic about having Lark in a house with a trump studio, but after long enough for Lark to start eating solid food, he's relaxed a little about Folly's artwork.
"I played for a while with an experimental piece" -- which Martin knows almost certainly involved the contraption, like a cross between a seismograph and a small harpsichord, that Folly has rigged up in the back corner of her studio to visualize harmonic interactions -- "and then I worked on the one of Xanadu." Folly's tone is mild and conversational, intentionally so, but Martin can probably detect a faint note of yearning behind that last word.
Because she is who she is, and because she's extraordinarily sensitive to Martin's moods, Folly can read the exhalation of breath as the thing that would have been a sigh from a more expressive man. Instead of rehearsing his concerns on the matter, which Folly is well aware of (Martin would be just as happy not to expose their child to their family until he's had a chance to teach her at least three martial arts as well as swords and projectile weapons), he nods, once. "How's that one coming? And did you come up with anything useful on the experiment?"
"It's close -- very close, I think," Folly says in answer to the first question. "I have to keep reminding myself to concentrate on the feel, and on the fundamentals that won't change, since who knows what all the surface details look like now? They could have that tram up and running by now, for all we know...."
She picks up her laden plate and a stack of cups, leaving Martin to manage his own plate and the beverage pitchers, and heads for the porch. As they get things situated on the table, and once Lark is occupied with a second piece of waffle, she continues, "The experiment was... interesting. Really interesting," which Martin hears as 'exciting, but you might not like it'. "I'm definitely making... some kind of progress, anyway. Once she goes down for her nap, I'll show you."
Martin doesn't say that Folly has just guaranteed that Lark will be awake all day, but his longsuffering expression suggests he's thinking it. By the time he has things set to bring outside, he’s already decided to pass over experimental matters to his preference: the practical. "Dad needs to have a proper courtyard set up for reception, the way they did in Amber. That would solve the problem of depiction as well as safety." There's an inherent conundrum in making a trump of a place they're not present in; it's harder to make a portrait when the subject isn't available, even if they're as intimately connected as Folly is to Xanadu.
A photograph would have helped, but Folly isn't sure most of the cameras she's ever seen would work in Xanadu. Certainly nothing as advanced as the one in the mobile phone she has here in Lauderville. (Martin refuses to carry one. They're trackable in-shadow and not particularly useful outside, and if he needs one, he'll just find one to borrow. Nobody but Folly needs to call him, and she has a better method.)
Folly nods at Martin's comments. "He told me the spot he wanted to use, before we left. From the vantage I'm using, you're looking toward the high part of the mountain, so you can see the---" She lifts her fork and traces the shape of the peak, and the way it blends into the castle, there in the air between them. "That, and the color of the sky, I think are pretty solid. But when I'm a little closer to finishing it off it might be worth calling whoever's-still-in-Xanadu and asking them to go stand there for a few minutes while I update my sketches." She takes a bite of waffle, chews, swallows, and then muses, "Maybe Ossian, if he's there. It would be interesting to hear his perspective on what he sees."
After another bite, she asks a question she has not bothered to ask for quite some time -- probably not since they settled in Lauderville. "What's our timeline, do you think?"
"Don't have one yet." Martin's ideal timeline is a lot longer than Folly could bear, but his associations are different. Between neat bites of his own dinner, he asks, "Do we really need to set one yet? I mean for the long-term, not for long enough to get a view for a Trump."
Lark has grown suddenly quiet and attentive, as if she can tell her parents are talking about something important. Or maybe she just doesn't want her breakfast, or she's finally run out of energy. (Unlikely; she is her father's daughter.)
Folly can't quite stifle a smile at her daughter, who may only manage to speak a handful of consistently recognizable words, but clearly understands much more. "I'm torn," she says after a moment. "On the one hand, I think we've got a great thing here and I'm loath to give that up until we absolutely have to. On the other...."
She casts another fond glance at Lark. "We promised your father no more than six months, and I sorta-kinda promised my mother something similar. I know it probably hasn't been that long there, even if it's been rather longer for us, but I see how much our baby has grown up and it makes me think maybe it's time to start thinking about it."
Between bites of waffle and bacon, Martin shrugs. "Might be time to think about a visit. It's too soon to go back and stay, though. She needs to be older before we do that." He casts a sideways glance at Lark, whose pause in inhaling her own breakfast is noticeable to him, too. "Eat your waffles, kiddo, or somebody will eat them for you. And it's not the hungry children in New Hong Vegas, either."
Back to Folly: "Probably when she's ready for school. That's the point when we'd need to consider it anyway. For medical reasons."
Folly cocks her head; she can think of several things he might mean by that last. What she says is, "Medical reasons besides 'because otherwise your father and my mother would kill us', you mean?"
"I was thinking more about mandatory medical care that's required for school. We can fix some of that, but after the trouble we had at the hospital that one time, I think it'd be easier to move on. It wouldn't have to be Dad's--" he carefully avoids using the name, even if Folly doesn't "--but it would need to be somewhere that either accepted homeschooling or didn't have vaccination requirements for things she'll never catch anyway."
Folly nods. "It's an interesting balance, isn't it? I wouldn't want to homeschool exclusively because I think she could use the socialization -- and not just with college-aged surfers, either. But then we're looking for someplace that's neither so advanced that it wants to test her at the molecular level before she enrolls in school, nor so backward that it has funny ideas about what she ought to be learning to be ready for the real world. But," she adds as she reaches for more bacon, "we do have a while yet before we have to figure it out. I agree we should think about a visit to the grandparents, though. Or invite them here, if I didn't think the metaphysical stress might tempt other visitor out of the woodwork and onto our doorstep."
If Martin had glasses, he'd be peering over them. "Visits home are one thing. The grandparents, on either side, are not invited here. The point of a secret bolthole is that it's secret. I might be willing to tell one person--not our parents--where we are so we could get help in if we needed it and couldn't Trump for it ourselves. But I'm not interested in running Martin and Folly's Surfing B&B and, by the way, let's look at the Royal Rugrat." He pokes a fork with a piece of waffle on the end at Lark. "That's you, kiddo." He turns back to Folly. "And we will be if anyone knows where we are. The metaphysical risks of the three of us are enough for me."
"Good points," Folly agrees, then adds, not quite as a non sequitur, "When's the last time you heard from Merlin? We were going to invite him out once we got settled." She leaves it to Martin to answer the unspoken question of how he feels about Merlin being the person who knows where they are in case of emergencies.
Martin has to stop and think about that. "I've talked to him a couple of times, mostly in the general-keeping-tabs sense. I think he's still up to his eyeballs in whatever he's supposed to be doing, so I don't know if he can take a break and come out here." He takes another bite of waffly goodness while doing some waffling of his own. "I don't mind having him here, but I'm not convinced he'd know what to do with a small person, if you know what I mean." Another pause. "He was an only child."
"Who Merlin?" Lark asks. She's been quiet and probably hoping that her parents would keep having this fascinating conversation while continuing to ignore her presence, but apparently the name of Merlin is enough to get her to break her silence.
Folly hesitates, trying to form a reasonable answer in a context Lark will understand. After a moment, she says, "Merlin is your cousin," which is both true enough and has the right connotations: though she has no personal experience with such things, Lark does have a storybook or two that involves strange relatives from faraway places coming for a visit. "Your daddy has known him since he was just a little baby, but he's not little anymore." She hesitates again before adding the most important bit: "I don't think he knows how to surf."
"I can't say I ever taught him to surf," Martin confirms.
"I teach him," Lark announces proudly.
Martin gives Folly the look that says _your child_. "Anyway," he tells Lark, "Merlin is busy with his own things to do, just like your dad does sound for the band and plays bass and your mom sings and plays and paints pictures. And he may too busy to come visit because he has things to do."
Lark eyes her father shrewdly. "Does that mean we go visit gamma and gampa?"
"Do you think that sounds like a good idea?" Folly asks her daughter; her tone is mild, but Martin might catch the glint of suppressed amusement in her eyes. She wants to hear Lark's reasons, whichever way she answers, and not merely agreement or disagreement -- otherwise she would simply have asked "Do you want to?"
Martin has his poker face on, but Folly doesn't need to read him to know that he really dislikes this line of discussion. Still, he doesn't interfere, just concentrates on polishing off his breakfast.
Lark looks shrewdly at her parents, each in turn. "Daphne says her grandpa gave her woofie when he came."
Over Lark's head, Martin mouths "woofie?"
One of Folly's brows twitches almost imperceptibly upward: 'woofie' is a new one to her, too. But she hazards a guess: "A dog?"
"No, mama, woofie. Like stuffie." The amount of adolescent put-uponness the words carry bodes ill for the next fifteen or twenty or thirty years.
"A stuffed dog, then. Well, you'll be lucky if your grandfather gives you a stuffie. All he got me was a card." Martin grins, a bit less than pleasantly, and throws things back to Folly. "Maybe we should consider a meeting on neutral ground. And if Merlin's busy, I'd trust Jerod to be our backup."
"Certainly -- if you could get him to take the call," Folly says; in her experience, Jerod has seemed almost as paranoid about Trumps as Martin himself, and she's certain he lacks the sensitivity to work out who's calling without answering first.
"What did you have in mind for 'neutral ground'?" she asks.
"One of the big trade shadows. Like Heerat. But not Heerat, for obvious reasons. But somewhere with low to middling tech, ideally Amber or Xanadu--or Paris, I guess--reachable by direct shadowpaths. And somewhere not too difficult to get to." Martin's face falls into a pondering sort of half-scowl. "Have you got a Trump of this place ready? If you don't have one, how long would it take you to make one? In case you need a holdout--not that I think you will, but better to have all our options covered."
He glances at Lark again, as much to see how much of the conversation he's trying to keep unspoken and over her head she's following as to indicate the reason for the holdout.
"I do have a local Trump," Folly says. "And one of Xanadu." And Martin should have one of Amber; she doesn't say that out loud, but he can still follow that she's thinking of all the places on his list they could reach most quickly. She chews at her lower lip, and then adds, "We did rather promise them a naming ceremony."
Lark is still watching with intense curiosity. Martin's expression doesn't flicker, but it wouldn't.
"It's a little late for that, considering that there's a name. Two, at least." Whatever else Martin has to say on that front is either not in front of Lark, or not with his outside voice. "I'm not willing to have milestones on other people's schedules for reasons of politics. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. I say we do a meeting and see how that goes, and consider what we want to do after that."
Folly nods, once (it's easy to guess where she picked up that particular habit). To Lark, she says, "If you're done with your breakfast, it's time for your bath." The conversation isn't over, but perhaps parts of it are best put on hold until there's no longer a curious toddler listening in.
Martin says, "Which means it's naptime for little Larks who have finished their breakfasts."
Lark pouts. Apparently she thought her fascination with the conversation, which had persisted past when she'd finished the waffles she was eating, had gone unnoticed. Martin rises and swings her up onto his shoulders. "Come on with you and let's have a non-salty bath."
If Folly is meant to say anything in response, she may be too distracted by the sense of an incoming trump call.
"Yes, and I'll just take this call, shall I?" Folly says, not quite in reply. She pulls her phone out of her pocket and presses it to her ear though it did not obviously ring and she didn't press any buttons on it. The fingers of her other hand close around the steak knife she was using to cut up Lark's waffles, a precautionary measure she may not even be conscious of taking.
"Hullo...." she says, and squints as though she is peering into a dark room that is only slowly coming into light and focus. "...Brennan?" She blinks, and on the other end of the trump Brennan feels something like the psychich equivalent of someone throwing a door open in greeting after peeking out the barest crack to see who was there. Noting the low murmur of his voice, she asks, "Are you safe?"
"Yep," he says, still speaking very softly. "Got news. And maybe a project."
Then he evidently realizes that Folly is holding an electronic device in the hand that isn't holding a knife, so she's probably not in Avalon any more. "Been two or three days, I reckon. Castle got seiged, siege got busted," he doesn't bother to say by who, "Corsairs gonna go mug someone else. That ain't news. Caught myself a wizard working for them, a Maghee. That's news. Curious folk, the Maghee. Landless. Hated. Worship a fella named Lir they say raised the Silver Towers before leaving to fight a bunch of fish-demons with the rest of his Family. Says his high priestess called out a clan chief, giving instructions."
Brennan holds up the prayer book for Folly to take, if she wants it. If she takes it, as a professional, he's curious if she puts down the phone or the knife.
"We got him for a few more hours, figured on asking him some questions."
Want to help?
Martin is getting Lark ready to go since Folly seems to have accepted the call, but he's paying attention, definitely. So is Lark.
Folly blinks as she takes that all in. "Well," she says after a moment. "It's been rather longer than two or three days for us." She stands and begins stacking some of the empty plates together, ostensibly to get them ready to carry back to the kitchen -- but in doing so she shifts her position just so, so that Brennan can catch a glimpse over her shoulder of Martin holding a sandy, sun-streaked toddler, and she can accept the book out of Lark's direct line of sight. (She relinquishes the knife, rather than the phone, to do so.)
"Martin," she asks, casually, "when you were growing up was there such a thing as a 'high priestess of Lir' in Rebma?"
Brennan's only display of surprise is to incline his head slightly-- he knows more than well enough not to comment with any names, so he chooses not to comment at all. But it's obvious to Folly that he's re-assessing the situation as she'd intended.
Martin looks up from where he's been taking away the last of the waffles--waffles she was playing with rather than eating, to the detriment of clean hands, face, and hair--from Lark. "We didn't have any of those, properly, when I was growing up. Religion was more of a triton thing than something the royal house was involved in," he tells Folly.
"Innnnteresting," Folly says, and repeats for Brennan's benefit, "Sounds like religion was mostly a Triton thing in Rebma. I'd bet what you've got there is a sect whose origins predate Lir-worship by the Tritons. I don't recognize the reference to the 'Silver Towers', though -- do you?"
Brennan seems genuinely surprised that Folly hasn't heard of the Silver Towers, so he recites, softly:
"'Beyond the River of the Blessed, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Avalon. Our swords were shattered in our hands and we hung our shields on the oak tree. The silver towers were fallen, into a sea of blood. How many miles to Avalon? None, I say, and all. The silver towers are fallen.' That happened around the time of the end of the Witch-King," he says, waiting to see if she recognizes that reference. He has absolutely no intention of saying Corwin's name aloud, so instead he'll fish out an old Corwin-head coin from a pocket and pass that through.
"Agreed, though, this probably ain't that. Cult just begging to be commandeered, though. Gets better, too-- this priestess came out of a sunken city." He lets that register, then adds, "Not the one you're thinking of, not by name. Place called Maghdeburg. But that's too much to be chance. Who do we know from a sunken city could use a ready made band of warriors marching off to a promised land? But it ain't actionable. Not yet."
"That," says Martin, who is only under the constraints of the little pitcher with big ears who's listening, says, "is a Corwin reference. I remember that from Merle."
Folly nods at Martin's comment. "Yeah, Brennan just quoted me a folk song I learned as a girl, except the towers were 'mighty' instead of 'silver' and the name of the city wasn't Avalon -- but it makes some other things make sense."
To Brennan, she says, "So, this high priestess wasn't this Maghee fellow's regular high priestess at his local temple, or whatever -- she just came rising out of this sunken city of Maghdeburg to call out a local clan chief to... what? Make war against the Protector's lands and people?" She hesitates, piecing together memories that for her are quite a bit older than for Brennan. "And didn't you say that wossname, the aura-reading chick that called you out, also swore by Lir? Did she turn out to be working with the Maghee guy?"
"Good memory," Brennan murmurs. "No, they're clean, far as I can reckon-- her and her brother. I asked about that-- different cult, I'm thinking," although he clearly has a pin in that memory as well. "And if this whole deal's just to make war against the Protector, then I'm wasting my time and yours. If that priestess is who I think, though, then she knows where the Road is, and where it goes. That'd change things," he understates.
"I'm about to go my own round of twenty questions with the Maghee. Having you over my shoulder helps two ways: I can draw on yours and his knowledge, first, and second, if this is what I reckon then I got no fast way to get it back to The Man. But you do, and it won't be hearsay."
Brennan is still too cagey to mention names. Trumps may be secure, but he's a little too distracted to make sure no one is listening at the door.
Martin is paying a lot of attention to this discussion. So is Lark, and she's aware her parents are ignoring her. Folly can see out of the corner of her eye that Lark is winding up for a huge tantrum. Martin finshes detaching her from the chair and makes to carry her in for her bath, with a questioning eyebrow sent Folly's way in case he's needed.
"I'm in," Folly says, and makes a gesture toward Martin that he reads as, 'Take her on in, I'll catch up in a minute.' "Logistically, it will probably make the most sense for me to call you back, unless you're looking to tip your magical one-card hand to the Maghee, if you know what I mean. I won't be able to hear his answers unless you pull him into the call, of course, but I suspect I'll be able to intuit a lot of it from your follow-up comments and questions."
Brennan looks skeptical until Folly points out that Brennan probably doesn't want to head into the questioning holding a card. "Good point," he says. "I'll wait for the call. I only have him for a few hours more, though. Pass the book back if you can."
Folly does so, and says, "It shouldn't be more than a few minutes on my end, and possibly even fewer on yours. Talk to you soon."
Brennan considers heading into the Maghee's prison and waiting for the call from Folly, but decides against it-- he doesn't want to show up and wait, he doesn't want to start without her, and he doesn't want to receive the Trump call while he's actually in the Maghee's presence. And the only preparations he can think of are simple: Bring paper and a pen for the ostensible purpose of keeping notes but the real purpose of writing down salient responses if Folly is having trouble reading lips.
Having a brief amount of time to kill, Brennan kills it with the prayer book.
He is after two things: What exactly do the Maghee think happened when the Silver Towers fell? And do the Maghee have a tradition of priestess-avatars of Lir coming forth from this sunken Maghdeburg of theirs? He'll be content if he gets the first-- it should be easy enough to flip to that section and just read. The second is dicey since hints might be anywhere in the book, but you never know, maybe such a thing played a role in the fall of the Silver Towers.
There are three different versions of the fall of the Silver Towers. They contradict each other in important details. One chapter seems to be allegorical and names the towers for the virtues of civilization that have fallen as people have turned away from the true path of Lir.
Other than that, the two narratives suggest that the towers were captured by the Sorcerer King who enslaved the people and caused them to weep and rend their clothes under his cruel yoke and a second coming of Lir, who drove out the Sorcerer King and pulled down the towers. The scripture contains prophecies that the Silver Towers will be rebuilt and rise again to protect the Children of Lir and lead them into a new age of prosperity.
It doesn't mention priestesses at all. In fact, Brennan can't find a single reference to a woman in the book anywhere.
Last modified: 28 June 2014