Alex Irvine - The seal of Karga Kul

There was a long moment of shocked silence. “How can this be?” Shikiloa said. “Avankil has been our staunchest ally, even when Toradan and Saak-Opole turned against us.”

Biri-Daar pointed at Remy. “This is Remy, also of Avankil,” she said. Then she looked at Remy and he knew he was expected to speak.

He took a few steps forward, to stand next to the empty seventh chair. He and Biri-Daar flanked it, with Lucan, Paelias, Keverel, and Obek in a gently curved rank behind them. “Since I was a boy,” he began, “I have been a courier for Philomen. I do not know how it started. But he had always been good to me. A few…”

Remy faltered, realizing he had no clear idea of how long it had been since he left Avankil. “The last thing he asked of me was that I take something to Toradan for him,” he went on. “And I could not know what it was. I was attacked on the road to Toradan by stormclaw scorpions. They killed my horse. I would have died too, in the wastes there, if Biri-Daar had not stopped and Keverel had not healed me. I have been traveling and fighting with them ever since.”

“So you have betrayed your errand for Philomen?” Shikiloa asked.

“His errand betrayed me,” Remy said. “He sent me with this, and knew that it would draw the kind of attention that gets messengers killed.”

Holding the chisel’s box carefully in both hands, Remy angled it so each member of the trust in turn could see the sigils carved into its lid and along the front near the latch. They recognized the enchantments, he could see; their eyes widened, and even the red-bearded trustee set his goblet down and made a sign. “What is in it?” Uliana asked. “We have no time for roundabout stories, and less for theatrics.”

“A chisel,” Remy said, and opened the lid.

“Designed by someone closely tied to Orcus,” Keverel added. “Designed, I fear, to destroy the seal.”

“Ridiculous,” Shikiloa said. “Philomen is a scholar of languages, a peddler of petty court schemes, a bestower of favors upon women of little virtue. He has traveled thrice to Karga Kul in the last ten years. All of us have met him, and none has ever sensed anything ill about his demeanor. Yet you have this that you call proof?”

“There is more,” Biri-Daar said. “Much more. Yet as Uliana says, we have no time. For our news is not yet fully given. Moidan’s Quill,” she went on, producing it from inside her armor, “is more than what it seems. Uliana. Note the symbols, carved so delicately into the barrel near the point. Do you recognize them?”

The trustee paled, her skin fading to nearly the off-white color of her hair. “A phylactery,” she said. “It has been made into a phylactery.”

“It was always a phylactery,” Keverel corrected. “Was not the seal laid down at about the time the Road-builder disappeared and the Inverted Keep tore free into the sky?”

The Mage Trust was silent.

“We killed the Road-builder,” Biri-Daar said. “But as long as the quill is intact, he will return. We must act immediately.”

“Immediately? We must act decisively, yes, but not rashly,” Shikiloa said.

“Begging your pardon, Excellency, but if the Road-builder returns you will find a brief hesitation to have been extremely rash,” Lucan said as he stepped forward.

Redbeard raised his goblet. “So we have a quill containing a lich king, a chisel imbued with demonic powers, a secret enemy in control of Avankil, and an Abyssal horde about to break through the seal. There. The situation is described. Now let us address it.”

Suddenly Remy liked him.

“Quite,” Uliana said. “The seal is weakened almost to transparency. I fear it is too thin to reinscribe.”

Redbeard set down his goblet. “Then-”

“Then we must inscribe a new one and destroy the old as we lay the new one in its place.” Uliana looked at everyone in the room, each in turn. “Then we must destroy quill and chisel both, and before the return of the Road-builder. Guard!” she called.

The senior guard inside the door stepped forward.

“Close the gates to the city,” Uliana commanded. “Both at the road and at Cliff Quay. No one shall enter or leave Karga Kul until the seal is replenished and our citizens and traders may safely go about their business again.” The guard left and Uliana turned to Biri-Daar. “You have an unexpected comrade in your group,” she said. “And I do not mean the boy from Avankil.”

“I’m not a boy,” Remy said.

“Ah, but you are,” Redbeard said, “because you do not know when to keep your mouth shut.” He gave Remy a salute with the now-empty goblet.

Shikiloa rose and paced. “As the successor to Vurinil, Mage Trustee of Karga Kul-”

“Daughter, I believe, is the word,” Obek said.

She glared at him, a flush rising across the planes of her face. Remy had seen that look on faces before killing. “-Vurinil, who was killed by the tiefling Obek, may I speak?” she asked Uliana-a little too sweetly, it seemed to Remy.

“Certainly,” Uliana said.

“Obek will certainly say that my predecessor was a usurper, and a betrayer of the trust between this city and the trustees. He may be right about this. It is also true, however,” Shikiloa said, “that since his murder of Vurinil-my father Vurinil, a noble servant of the trust and of Karga Kul-the seal has rapidly deteriorated, there have been sightings of demons in the streets and in the lower portions of the underground keeps. Now Obek comes back, in the company of Biri-Daar, herself a member of the same guild that stole the quill! And with them comes yet another stranger, this Remy, bearing a demonic instrument for the destruction of the seal! Fellow trustees, it seems that we have not helped ourselves by entrusting our lives and the life of Karga Kul to these… adventurers.”

“Yet what strange deceivers they be,” Redbeard observed dryly. “Coming right to the front door and presenting themselves to us.”

With a shock, Remy realized that the other three members of the trust, the ones who had not yet spoken in the debate, were asleep. Could this be the feared Mage Trust of Karga Kul, he thought-the trust that strikes such fear into its citizens that they pick up orange peels from the street?

“You are drunk,” Shikiloa said. “As is your custom. Well, it is my custom to suspect the motives of those who preach unseen danger, when they might well simply be aggrandizing themselves. You, tiefling. Murderer. You risked your life entering this room, did you not?”

Obek nodded. “I did.”

“If we kill you now, will your risk have been worth it?”

“Erathis is the god of this city, and I am an adopted citizen of Karga Kul,” Obek said, standing erect and fearless, not looking over his shoulder at the guards who awaited Shikiloa’s command to strike him down. “I returned to fight for this city, and as far as I pledge myself to any god, it is to Erathis.”

“And I’m sure he is glad of your devotion. It’s Erathis we need, and Bahamut too, and perhaps the Lady of Pain thrown into the bargain, if the Knights of Kul are to do us any good,” said Shikiloa. “I expect neither the gods nor the dragonborn to offer us any assistance we might wish to accept.”

A pained expression crossed Biri-Daar’s face at this mention of the Knights. “When the Knights of Kul are needed, they will rise to that need,” she said.

“That is my hope as well.” Uliana turned to the window.

Shikiloa smiled. “Will you go and ask them yourself? Perhaps you could bring them news of Moula and the quill as well.”

“If that is your wish, I am willing,” Biri-Daar said, in a tone of voice that indicated she was willing only, and just barely at that.

“Do not,” Uliana said. “Not yet. Instead let us see what the minions of Orcus are planning. I do not believe the Road-builder’s return is imminent. I would feel it. So we have a moment to gather knowledge, and perhaps even to use it wisely.” The last was directed at Shikiloa, in whose eyes burned something more than anger but just slightly less than hate.