Chapter 4: Cold Comfort
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The door opened. Beyond it, Elmyra stood with a silken wrap clutched around her, her coppery hair unbound, falling in soft waves around her shoulders. Sleep softened her face, dreams still clouded her eyes. She blinked, her mind slowly registering the impossible sight before her. The Archmage Falazar. On her doorstep. In the dead of night.
Her eyes widened, first with disbelief, then with a dawning realization. She saw him. The raw wound in his eyes. The shame. The grief. The desire.
He reached into his pouch, his hand trembling slightly, and produced a handful of gold coins. They gleamed dully in the faint light from her chamber. He held them out to her, an offering that was also a confession, a surrender.
Elmyra was speechless. Her mind, usually so quick, so sharp, went utterly blank. Every possible response—died on her lips. She had seen powerful men at their most vulnerable, had witnessed the secrets and shames of half the nobility of Alkaer. But this… this was different. This was a titan falling. A star collapsing right on her doorstep.
After the transaction had been completed in the shadowed intimacy of her chambers, he began to move, to sheepishly get dressed, to leave. He pulled his robes around him, averting his face, his eyes unable to meet hers.
Elmyra blocked the way to the door.
“No,” she said, as sweet as honey, as hard as steel.
“Mistress Elmyra…”
“Sit down, Falazar.” She pointed to a wooden chair by her cooling hearth. “Sit. And talk to me.”
With a resigned sigh the legendary Archmage of Argren sat down.
Elmyra’s face was a furnace, glowing red in the dim candlelight. There was embarrassment, a hot flush of it for her own part in this drama. There was second-hand embarrassment for a being who should have been above such mortal frailties. Fear at the sheer recklessness of his actions, at the danger he had thoughtlessly brought to her door. And rage. Rage at his weakness. Rage at his stupidity. Rage at the arrogance of his despair.
The fear of scolding a two-hundred-and-thirty-year-old demigod who could turn her to dust was there, a cold knot in her belly. But it was fuel, like the fear of facing down drunken brutes in back alleys, the same fear that had sharpened her wits and hardened her. The fear that made her dangerous.
She stood before him, arms crossed on her silken wrap.
“What – in all the nine hells of every forgotten cult – did you think you were doing?”
Falazar flinched. He looked… small, slumped like that on a wooden stool. A child caught red-handed. He opened his mouth, but she cut him off.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done? You, mighty Archmage Falazar, striding through the city like a man on his way to his own funeral, no disguise, not even a bloody hat! The entire city saw you! Guards, merchants, refugees, every gossip and cutpurse from the Citadel to the Docks! You might as well have hired a town crier! ‘Hear ye, hear ye, the Archmage is having a crisis of faith and seeks solace in the arms of a common courtesan!’” She acted out ringing the bell with flair. It would have been funny in any other occasion.
“It will be the talk of the town for a year. No, for a decade! Do you understand the position you have put me in? The target you have painted on my back? Every agent of Lanza, every fanatic, every Verranzan spy will now know that Elmyra the Nightingale apparently has the… affections of the most powerful man in the kingdom! My life, which I have so carefully built in the shadows, is now a beacon!”
“It… it was not… planned, Mistress Elmyra. I assure you. I have not been… harboring some untoward desire for you. It was a moment of… weakness. A lapse.”
“A lapse? You think that’s the point? You think my concern is your… your romantic intentions?” She let out a sharp, hysterical laugh. “Gods, you truly are a fool, aren’t you? Do you understand nothing of the world the rest of us live in?”
She paced, a caged tiger in her elegant room. “There are a thousand ways, Falazar! A thousand discreet ways for a man of your appetites to seek release. A quiet word to a trusted aide. A discreet summons. A disguise. It could have been a clean, safe, professional transaction!”
She spun to face him, her eyes blazing. “But no! Not you! Not the great Archmage Falazar! You had to make it a spectacle. A tragic, self-pitying pilgrimage all the way to my door!”
Falazar stared at the floor, bent under the truth in her accusation.
Elmyra, her rage spent, slumped against the wall with her arms crossed, still shaking with the aftermath of her fury. The broken old man in her chair was now a ruined heap of shame.
He was losing his grip. The pillar was crumbling. And if he fell, the roof of their world would come crashing down with him.
The mournful cry of a City Watch horn cut through the uncomfortable silence. She pushed herself away from the wall.
“I was in the plaza, Falazar,” she said, her voice now cool, measured. “I saw what you did, the power you wield when you are… untethered. And now, in this state, you are not a shield for this city. You are a thundercloud waiting to break. A danger to yourself and everyone around you.”
“Maybe it’s time for you to take a leave,” she said, pacing to gather her thoughts. “Get out of this city. Get away from this maze of conspiracies. What can you truly do here now, like this? If the southern lords turn, if Lanza and his friends make their move… what is your plan? To unleash those horrors on the streets again? To burn down the city?”
She stopped, her gaze piercing. “And what counsel can you offer the King right now? You are the Archmage, Falazar. Your words shape the fate of this kingdom. And right now… your words are poison.”
Her words were undeniable truths, each one knocking down a bar in the cage he had built for himself. He didn’t need to be here. Not in person. Elmyra, with her network of spies and her understanding of human nature could provide better intelligence on the city’s undercurrents than his ravens could. And Cyros… gods, the thought was galling, but Cyros, with his flexible morals and his insatiable, amoral curiosity, was the perfect tool to infiltrate the enemy’s ranks. They could feed their intelligence directly to the King, or better yet, to his two most trusted disciples, Maren and Porcius, who could then temper the… unorthodox… nature of their sources and present the information in a more palatable form.
The thought turned a lock he hadn’t even realized was rusted shut. He could leave. And be where he was truly needed. But where?
To Solyma, to delve into their dust-bound archives? No. The Keeper of the Scrolls had given what he would. The city of whispers would offer no more.
To Verranza to track Vespasio and confront the Verranzan high mage on his own ground? A tempting thought, a direct confrontation. But Vespasio was a serpent, his true lair hidden. And Falazar suspected the Verranzan may still have been here in Alkaer, hiding in plain sight. Pursuing him across the continent would be a fool’s errand.
To Meridia, to liaise with the mercenary companies, to use his own authority to break the diplomatic impasse? Perhaps. But it was a problem of coin and politics. Tyrell or even Lanza could solve that, given enough time and leverage.
No. The answers were in the north.
He could seek out the great dwarven kingdoms of the western Stone-Halls, places he had not visited in a century, to learn more of the forging of Marta’s Key, of the ancient alliances between their peoples and the giants.
Or… he could rally the Sylvanesti. Ruthiel had spoken of a council of elders unwilling to engage. But if Falazar, Archmage of Argren, student of Lynneus, were to appear before them in person… could he persuade them to rise, to bring their full might to bear on this war?
Then there was the most perilous, and most compelling path. The one his own heart screamed for him to take.
To go north himself. To find Ronigren’s party. To see the boy, to offer what comfort, what guidance he could, and lend his own power to their quest. To be there on the front lines as a soldier once more.
The thought ignited a fire. To leave this cage and feel the cold northern wind on his face, to face the enemy directly, with his own power, his own hands… it sounded like a siren song.
Elmyra was looking at him with a surprising compassion. She had scolded him, but with her brutal back-alley wisdom she had also shown him the key to his own cage.
“You are right, Mistress Elmyra,” he said, “I am of no use here. It is time for the Archmage to take a vacation.”
Falazar rose from his chair.
“You have done Argren a service this night, Mistress Elmyra, the kingdom and I are in your debt.”
He walked towards the wall, his robes flowing around him. “You will receive a retainer. A substantial one. My disciple Maren will handle the… particulars. She is a woman of formidable efficiency and little patience for haggling, so I suggest you name a fair price.” He paused, a flicker of his old, dry humor returning. “Or perhaps, an entirely unfair one. She will respect you more for it.”
“You will continue your excellent work,” he continued as a statement of fact. “You and Master Goldenvein will be my eyes and ears in this city and report directly to Maren and Porcius. They have my full authority, and through them, you will have a direct line to the King. I trust you will use it wisely.”
He placed a hand against the solid stone wall of her apartment. “The city needs its shadows watched. And you, Mistress, know them better than any.”
With that, he employed his sorcery: a soundless, effortless dissolution. His form became immaterial, translucent, like smoke in moonlight, and then, with a faint shimmer of displaced air, he simply passed through the wall, disappearing into the cold night outside.
Elmyra stood staring at the solid stone where the most powerful man in the kingdom had just gone through. She was open-mouthed, not in awe of the magic, but of the mind-boggling absurdity of it all.
A being of two hundred and thirty years. A demigod who could command the elements, conjure nightmares from the void, and walk through walls. And he was, at his core, an utter idiot. A foolish man who had just needed a sharp tongue to tell him to get a grip and take a vacation.
Ha! What a bitter joke. She had always suspected that the men who ruled the world were just boys playing with bigger, more dangerous toys.
A slow smile spread across her face. There were no adults in the room. Not in the Citadel, not in the southern manors, not even in the highest towers of arcane power. They were all just… making it up as they went along. And somehow, the knowledge was liberating.
She walked over to her bathing chamber, a small but luxurious space. She turned a series of polished brass taps—a marvel of Verranzan engineering and dwarven plumbing—and steaming, perfectly heated water began to gush into her marble tub. It was worth every single silver piece she had spent on it.
She picked up her half-finished glass of Arbor Gold, its fine, complex taste a welcome break to the bitter realities of the night. She sank into the hot water with a sigh, letting the warmth seep into her flesh. The fate of the kingdom, the schemes of mages, the approaching apocalypse… it could all wait. For now, there was a hot bath, a good wine, and the knowledge that the world was being run by a council of clueless fools. And she, Elmyra the Nightingale, was now officially one of them.