TQG 62

62. Auroras

“Rain knew, of course,” Auroras said.  We sat in the small room in the back of the temple where, when this place had been populated, it would have had clergy requiring a place to eat their meals.  He had poured a goblet of wine for both of us, but [Detect Poison] had lit up when I cast it, so of course I hadn’t touched mine.  “He was the first person I told when the mantle came to me.  This was just before he had ascended to the throne himself, of course, and I was a little worried that our father would have me executed.  I had never been a devote follower of Thedum, but neither had I been an adherent of Death, which is of course why coming into my power was such a great surprise to me at the time.”

“That’s poison,” I said to him as he was about to drink his wine.

“Yes of course it’s poison you fool, everything I touch becomes poisoned,” he muttered.  “Don’t worry.  It won’t kill you.  Probably.  And you really ought to start leveling your poison resistance, child.  If you don’t, you’ll be vulnerable to all sorts of lingering afflictions and maladies that your enemies could use to weaken you at critical moments.  You may have the ability to return from the dead like a Traveler, Hail, but that does not mean that you cannot be weakened, defeated, and imprisoned.  Teaching you that lesson was half the point of this little exercise.”

“So does Lady Gwen work for you?  Is that how you arranged my abduction?” I inquired.

He laughed.  “Hail, virtually every spy in the kingdom works for me in some capacity.  I was your grandfather’s spymaster, boy!  The great spider in the center of the web that nobody even knew was there!  But no, I used my own power to twist the portal which brought you here.  She intended to send you to her own estate for safety, and your abduction was performed without her knowledge or active participation.  It was a very simple matter to alter your destination.  At least, it is when you have the power of a god at your fingertips, and decades of experience in using it.”

“So you say, but how can I trust her?  If she does belong to you, then of course you would say that to protect her,” I pointed out.

“Ah yes, very clever.  And quite correct,” Auroras agreed.  “She and Lord Tom are their own agents, however, behoven to their own sense of loyalty towards Yuikon and nothing else.  But then you cannot trust a word I say.  As the Avatar of Thedum and the Avatar of Death, we are not natural enemies, but neither are we allies.  I would most certainly lie to you to further my own ends, although in this instance it is your education which serves my interests.  There are so many gaping holes in it.  It’s Rain’s fault, of course.  He thought he would give you time and space and allow you to make your own decisions and direct your own life, fool sentimentalist that he was.  And he also thought that he would have another ten years to fill in the gaps in your education, but the Kingslayer had other ideas, didn’t he?”

“My education?” I asked, growing angry.  “You’ve abducted me, had me chased by hounds, poisoned, and forced me to help you cover up your murders, and you say that it is for my education?”

“Yes,” Auroras said, drinking his poisoned wine.  “Hail, you are presently one of the greatest destabilizing forces alive in this world.  You have the potential to do more damage to our society than the adversary, the kingslayer, or any of the Travelers who have gone over to the enemy.  I understand your impulses to simply throw your weight around and issue quests to the Travelers who are following you to try to force this world into the image of what you think it should be, but everything you have done so far since returning from the space between worlds has run counter to what I believe to be your goals.”

“What would you know about it?” I demanded.

“Well, let us start with when you [Polymorphed] the bishop of the faith, rather than revealing yourself to be the avatar of his god, thus humiliating him and driving a wedge between the two of you in your future relationship,” my great-uncle said.

“Wait, he was a bishop?” I asked.

“And then there is the matter of the Traveler who attempted to make amends, only to be driven off.  Hail, do you want the Travelers to work for the adversary?  Because it is largely your resentment which is preventing the priests of Thedum from issuing them quests to complete their repentance.  If you do not soften your heart towards those who wish to return to the light, then they will begin to lose hope.  Or they will embrace the opportunities which the darkness is providing for them, and before long they shall be too far gone to ever return.”

“What?” I asked.  “What do I have to do with any of that?”

“Thedum is withholding his forgiveness because you are withholding yours,” Auroras explained.  “Those who have been marked by you will find it exceedingly difficult to remove their [Brand of Sin] while you carry your resentment towards them.  And for every one of them who gives up hope of returning to the light, the darkness will grow that much stronger.”

I frowned, biting my lip in consideration.  If that was true, then …

“And then there are the letters!  What on Lagrea were you thinking sending out those damnable letters!” Auroras exclaimed.  “Were you trying to alienate every single noble in Zhesa city?  Thank the stars I was able to get the guards to intercept most of them!”

“So that was you!” I exclaimed.  “My correspondence is of no business of yours, Uncle!”

“I was doing you a favor, boy,” Auroras growled.

“I was delivering my Grandfather’s final messages to his friends,” I objected.  “He had no chance to say goodbye, and so when we spoke in the space between worlds his--”

Auroras began to laugh.  “His friends?  Hail, Rain hatedthose people.  He was using you to get in one final barb at them from beyond the veil.  Here, let me give you an example.”

He pulled from his inventory a letter I recognized.  One that I had written.  He began to read.

“Dear Baron Selmy,

“I would like to congratulate you on your fine son, Keithan.  My grandfather has often spoken of how the Selmy line has been much improved since his birth.  He has shown himself to be in possession of a fine mind and possesses a marvelous aptitude for military affairs, allowing him to rise high in the military.  In fact, Grandfather confided to me that it is precisely because Keithan bears the Selmy name that he was promoted to the rank of Captain, despite lacking the experience which would normally be required for the position.

“While I have not personally met Keithan, everything I have heard of him tells me that he is a fine young man and I look forward to improving the nation of Yuikon together with him.  While I would not wish to insult you by saying that I look forward to the day he becomes Baron in your place, I do believe that you can rest easy knowing that you have such a fine young heir to take your place upon your retirement.

“Sincerely, Earl Hail Jeoran.”

Auroras concluded reading the letter and looked at me sternly.  “Honestly, Hail, what were you thinking?”

“I complimented him on his son, what is so wrong about that?” I asked.

“Well, there is the fact that Baron Selmy is a cuckhold,” Auroras said.  “Keithan is not his son, and just about everyone at court knows it.”

“He – What?” I asked.

“Everyone aside from you, I suppose.  I suppose I must thank the good Baron for his outrage over the insults you have given him, for if not for his reaction to reading this letter I would not have learned of your actions in time to save you from even worse blunders.”

I began to blush.  “Do you happen to know Baron Selmy’s class and level?  Because there is a very real chance that he might challenge me to a duel at some point.”

Auroras scoffed.  “He’s a level sixty [Merchant].  And he is a coward and a weakling.  I’m fairly certain you could have taken him as a [Child].  He will bluster and curse your name, but he will take it no further.  If he had the courage to do something to defend his honor, he would have denounced his wife and her lover decades ago rather than living in shame.”

I began to search my memory for the things Rain had told me to write and examine them again from a new angle.  I had always been encouraged to praise a virtue of the letter’s recipient, or one of their near relatives, and I now began to suspect that those individuals lacked the very virtue I was told to praise.

“What of Marquis Peori?” I inquired, for that was the most dangerous name of the letters I had sent out.

“Ifailed to intercept his letter, although I haven’t heard of his reaction to it,” Auroras admitted.  “Why, what did you say?”

“I praised his faithfulness to his sacred wedding vows,” I admitted.

Auroras laughed.  “Why he is Keithan Selmy’s father!  It’s his influence and power which prevent the poor Baron from denouncing his wife and her son in the first place!  And he has a dozen other little bastards throughout the city besides.”

I hung my head in shame.

“Well, at least the marquis would have simply laughed at the letter, rather than declaring lifelong enmity,” Auroras said, chuckling.  “In fact, I believe that between the letters you sent to the baron and the one to the marquis, Peori’s opinion of you might actually be favorable.  He loves a good jest, and unlike the poor baron, he can laugh at himself.”

I sighed, unhappy to learn that I was the unwitting dupe in a final game played by my grandfather and his court.  “And the criers, denouncing interest in the throne?” I asked.

“That, actually, is perhaps the one thing that you’ve done right,” Uncle Auroras admitted.  “But then you screwed it all up by making an enemy of your Uncle Storm.  You should have followed Gwen and Tom’s lead rather than shouting your mouth off.  The criers would have gotten the assassins to leave you alone, but now Storm will no doubt see you as an obstacle in his path to the crown.  He will seek to weaken and imprison you, if he can.  And possibly kill you once or twice, just to check whether the rumors of your immortality are founded or not.”

I sighed.  I found the glass of wine halfway to my lips before I caught myself, remembering that it was poison.  It was a shame; I could use something to calm my nerves.  I’d only had very heavily watered wine before, and the scent of this vintage was heavy and deep.

“So if I didn’t mess up with the criers, why did you have them arrested?” I asked.

“Sending the guards after anyone carrying a missive from you was the easiest way to make certain I got all of the letters,” Uncle Auroras explained.  “And also it gave me an opportunity to demonstrate another mistake that you didmake.  Specifically, that you failed to account for what would happen to the parchment once the quest was completed.”

“I don’t understand, what’s the problem with that?” I asked.

The gray man wearing my great-uncle’s face pulled several sheets of paper from his inventory and passed them to me.  I examined them, and I quickly began to blush.

One was an order for the supplies for a week of debauchery and hedonism, with promises that the coin for the food, wine, and ‘entertainment’ would come from the royal coffers.  The requested entertainment was longer than the rest of the paper, and my ears were burning as I read it.  The parts of it I understood were quite … graphic.

Another was a request to assassinate the matron of an orphanage.

The final letter was a confession to a string of murders and the promise to continue ‘the good work’ until someone put a stop to the writer of the letter.

All three were written in my hand, signed with my name, and stamped with my seal.

“These are forgeries,” I said.  With a flare of magic, the papers burst into flames.

“Of course they are, I did them myself,” Uncle Auroras agreed.  “But they look authentic enough.  And there’s a very real chance that the system would have generated a quest should they have fallen into the hands of a Traveler.  It’s a very simple matter to modify a document written in simple ink.  Were you not a [Spellblade], I would insist that you hire a [Scribe] immediately to properly enchant your letters to prevent tampering and allow for proper disposal.  As it is, you have the capacity to learn those abilities for yourself, and so I will ensure that you do before I allow you to leave.”

“So I am indeed your hostage, then?” I asked.

“No Hail, it is far worse than that,” Uncle Auroras teased.  “You are my student.”