Chapter 47. Found

eleri was prodded awake some hours later by Nandao.  She was sprawled on the couch in the drawing room, both her gown and Brigit’s still lying where they had left them upon the ornate carpet.  The monk looked grim and as she sat up she noticed Geetha was panting as she padded around the room, her tufted black ears flat against her head.

“What’s going on?” she murmured, thanking Nandao when he gave her a round cup of sweet tea and sat on the couch beside her.

“I’m not exactly certain.  Ming came back, but she was badly wounded.  The Red Lotus was expecting her and she narrowly escaped.”

“Morisedd?” Teleri gasped.

“He did not come back.”

Teleri reflexively gnawed on her hand to hold back a wailing cry of grief.  If he did not come back, he was dead.  No one would go in after him.  That was all they had told her after he was gone.

“Six assassins got into the compound last night.  The Crystal Palm is in turmoil.  Master Dojin is dead.  So is one of their most beloved officers, Toralai.  They suspect she was targeted since Dojin had been preparing her for leadership of the guild.”

“Then Crystal Palm has their reason for war with Red Lotus,” Teleri stammered, giving in to tears, her cup of tea shattering on the floor as her hands went slack with shock.  Nandao put his arms around her and she yielded, crawling into his lap like a child and weeping inconsolably into his chest.

“I’m sorry, Tel.”

“What am I going to do?” she sobbed, “First Rhys and now my brother.  It’s not fair.”

“I know,” Nandao soothed.

“We’ve got to find him.”

“Let him go, Teleri.  He knew what he was up against and he would not have you throwing your life away going after him.  Think of Mabane.  No matter how much you hurt, imagine what it would mean for him to lose his mother as well as his father and uncle.”

She clenched her jaw against another rush of helpless tears.  Nandao was right, of course, but that did not make it hurt any less.   With the grace of a healer, he stroked the hair from her face while she clung to him, a safe beacon in her storm.

“There is another reason we must abandon Morisedd for the nonce,” Nandao said softly, “Shikai is going to help us find Pendaran.  There were items of his recovered from the Red Lotus compound and with them she can use her spirits to locate him if he still dwells upon this plane.  We would like you to come with us.  We cannot delay much longer, however, for if the Red Lotus know we are seeking him, they will ensure we never succeed.”

Teleri nodded numbly, glad to put her mind to a different task.  She thanked Nandao as she rose and moved stiffly toward her room.  Nandao followed in silence, his dolphin smile sadly absent from his boyish face.

Once she was in her room she found her armor and weapons restored, all grime removed and her quiver filled with a score of beautiful green fletched arrows.  She moved in a trance to the wash basin to cleanse the night’s sadness from her body before donning her war garb and grimly making an oath of vengeance before Melandru and Balthazar.  When she was ready, Nandao met her outside her room stripped down to his tattoos and battle barb, his gleaming staff in hand.  Geetha sat nonchalantly upon her haunches, her ears back in irritation but clearly planning to go along.

They met up with Shikai and two men of the Crystal Palm, a necromancer named Kazuma and Mashiro, an elementalist.  Brigit stood awkwardly beside the hunched figure of Kazuma with his skull encrusted staff and grim scarred visage.  He put Teleri in mind of an old tomcat that had seen too many battles.  His features were distinctly Canthan, delicate and almost feline.  His left eye, however, was an unnatural shade of porcelain blue and a long scar trailed over that side of his face so that he could not quite close that eye.  His long black hair was gathered at his nape and threaded with bone beads.

Mashiro she would not have guessed was an elementalist.  His garb was subtly colored and subdued and his black hair was cropped nearly to his scalp so that at first glance she thought him a monk.  A gleaming blue stone moved in a lazy arc around his head and other than a shallow nod of greeting, he remained expressionless, his gray gloved hands clutching a dark staff in an attitude of relaxed attentiveness.

Their little band moved out with Shikai in the lead clutching a red box of ashes like a child in her arms.  At intervals they stopped and the ritualist carefully tipped the ashes onto the cobbles, drawing an elaborate pattern with them and dropping a small purple bundle in their midst.  Teleri watched in wonder as a translucent green spirit emerged from the earth, its eldritch chains pulled taut in one direction and thus guiding them deeper into the city.  With a soft incantation, Shikai thanked the spirit and the ashes poured up into their red box, once more to be held to her breast as a treasure.

Brigit trotted beside the ritualist protectively clutching her axe and watching the streets warily for trouble.  Her armor was meticulously polished and gleamed in the early morning sunlight as they strode between light and shadow where shabby tenements leaned against the walled compounds of the wealthy.  A large sledgehammer was strapped to the warrior’s back and Teleri noticed that Nandao carried a heavier than normal pack and a pair of stretcher poles.  Clearly they were intending to return with a body.

“Do they know if Pendaran is alive?” Teleri asked Nandao while the ritualist once more drew her mystical sigils with the ashes and cast her finding spell.  The monk shrugged.

“No idea.  If Shikai knows, she doesn’t say.”

“We are not certain,” Shikai whispered, tilting her head toward the spirit that had materialized upon her command, “He is between.”

Nandao smirked behind Shikai’s back. 

“If he is between, he might not fully come back,” Kazuma said grimly, “Let us hope enough of him remains here to incriminate our foes.”

“As if we need further evidence,” growled Mashiro and at once his emotions crept onto his face, painting his visage scarlet with rage and grief.

“They shall be repaid for their evil soon enough, my friend,” Kazuma replied coldly, “but if we are to honor our fallen master, then let us perform our tasks so that the defeat of Red Lotus is beyond reproach.”

Silence clasped the party once more.  Teleri was afraid to distract Shikai and she sensed the raw emotions of the Crystal Palm and let them choose the time for words.  By noon they had waded through sewers and crossed rusty causeways for the better part of an hour.  Disgust clung to them as heavily as the stench of the place.  There had been a few awkward moments with Geetha for the lynx did not like water at the best of times and it howled miserably as they waded across vast streams of effluent that called for the beast to swim.

“This is not fun,” Nandao mumbled as they paused on an opposite bank to tip the rank water from their boots and squeeze the filth from their robes and cloaks. Shikai stood higher up the bank making her ashen circle and consulting her spirits once more.

“Now the spirits point that way,” the ritualist murmured, “but we came from there.”

Teleri’s eyes watered at the very thought of having to cross the filthy river again.  She wondered if she would ever be able to feel clean again after this wretched expedition.  Geetha was howling again, flatly refusing to cross and going back and forth between the far wall of the sewer and the shore.  Teleri noticed the cat kept clawing a certain stretch of the dull brown bricks.

“There,” she gasped, cursing angrily as she entered the stinking water once more and went to rejoin her companion.  The lynx glared at her and swiped her leg with claws retracted to show its displeasure at her stupidity.  As Teleri neared the wall, she could clearly see that some of the bricks were indeed newer and of a different kind.  She gazed back, watching her companions wade miserably toward her.

Brigit was just about to fetch the sledgehammer from her back, however, when the deep shadows of the sewer shifted to reveal eight armed figures stalking toward them.  They proudly bore the cape of the Red Lotus Clan and it was clear they had been lying in wait.  Brigit swore and dropped the hammer in favor of her blackened axe.  The shield hooked to her shoulder shrugged loose and slipped gracefully onto her arm.  She shouted for them to take cover, raising her shield and spinning as a volley of arrows rained down upon them.  Then, with a calculating look in her eye, she charged their front lines, bursting past their lone warrior and tearing ferociously into their mesmer.  Nandao swore filthily and uttered a prayer that caused an enchantment to swirl around his tattooed form.

Teleri swiftly strung her bow and nocked an arrow, grinning as she expertly silenced the slow deadly utterances of a fire elementalist.  Ice and hexes flew from Mashiro and Kazuma, their chants cold and merciless as they focused upon their hated foes.

“Taking their monk,” Brigit shouted, her eyes bright with adrenalin.  Nandao crept forward to cover her as Teleri followed Brigit’s call and laid into the hapless figure with a volley of brutal arrows, each cutting through the man’s prayers and leaving him helpless before Brigit’s brutal swings.  He went to the earth amid cries of rage.  His lifeless body had hardly hit the ground when Brigit once more rounded on the hapless mesmer.  Storms of ice froze their foes in place, preventing the Red Lotus mesmer from escaping.  Without their healer, Brigit easily tore the man to shreds and started after the elementalist.

The Red Lotus, not to be outdone, turned upon Nandao.  The monk weaved and dodged, finding solace amid a fortress of angry spirits drawn into the world by Shikai’s strange gift.  The Red Lotus warrior swore in rage as he was variously blinded and struck by the angry spirits, driven back to his allies to fall upon Brigit in a last desperate bid to take someone with them to Grenth’s domain.

“Brigit!” Nandao cried, “Come back!”

Seized by battle lust and rage, Teleri feared her friend was lost, surrounded now by a pair of assassins and a warrior while the two rangers tore into her with arrows.  She staggered, roaring in pain and frustration as she limped back toward Nandao, her life spared but at great cost to the monk.  Crying out, Teleri rushed to Nandao’s side, gasping as the arrows meant to finish him tore into her flank.

The impact spun her around and she staggered to her knees, relieved to see Nandao unharmed.  Kazuma rushed to the monk’s side and cut himself swiftly, anointing Nandao with his blood and wrapping him in a potent enchantment.  Then, uttering an oath to Grenth, the necromancer rose upon a ghostly wind and with a snap of bone and sinew, a horrid creature emerged from the corpse of the Red Lotus monk.  The nightmare vision of flesh and bone flexed his enormous arms, its sickle hands scything the air and its great central horn lowering for a brutal lunge.  Beside it, a creature of bone clacked into being from the mesmer’s corpse and a third rose snarling from the elementalist’s crumpled form.  In unison, all three turned on one of the rangers.

Mashiro showered them with ice once more and grinned with malicious glee as the ranger became fodder for Kazuma’s vile army.  Giddy with pain, Teleri regained her feet, thanking Nandao as he drove the arrows from her flesh with a prayer and restored her to fighting trim.  Now she lashed out at an assassin that had been foolish enough to step into their backline.  Snarling, Geetha shredded the man’s form-fitting silks while  Mashiro snared the idiot with ice.  It was a simple matter for Teleri to fill him full of arrows as he slowly fled bleeding toward his companions. He fell within convenient proximity of Kazuma’s army and his corpse was immediately put to good use.

Panic reigned as the last surviving members of the ambush turned to flee.  Teleri crippled one and was gratified when Geetha bounded after the man, taking him down with a vicious pounce.  The other two succumbed to Mashiro’s icy spells, unable to flee from Brigit’s blood slaked axe.  In the space of a few short minutes, the final members of he ambush had fallen and the six of them stood gasping and trembling with excitement and exhaustion.

“Don’t do that again,” Nandao grumbled at Teleri, although it was a light chiding and there was a gentle smile of respect upon his lips.

“It was the right thing to do,” Kazuma replied, nodding to Teleri in respect, “We won because their monk died and ours did not.”

Nandao winked at her, his back to the necromancer.  She realized he agreed but was too proud to say so.  Geetha trotted to Teleri’s side with the gruesome remains of a dismembered hand in her teeth.  In the heat of battle, Teleri had functioned with little thought for the humanity of her foes and now it struck her.  Her gorge rose and she feared she was about to be sick.

“Geetha! No!” she moaned, “Get that away from me.  You know I don’t allow that.”

The cat dropped the morsel with a disappointed growl, drawing laughter from Kazuma.  Trust a necromancer to find such a thing funny.  Brigit approached wearily, cleaning the gore from her axe with one of the Red Lotus cloaks before slinging it at her belt and looping her shield back over her shoulder. Grasping the sledge hammer, she neared the wall and tapped experimentally on the newer bricks at the edge.  The mortar had been laid inexpertly and chipped away promisingly at Brigit’s first blows.  She paused for a few moments to pull a brick free of the wall, kneeling so that she could peer through the opening and call Pendaran’s name.  Shikai lit a small oil lamp and the light was passed to Brigit.

“I can’t see anything.  Smells bad, like everything else around here.  Let me remove a few more bricks.”

Brigit continued cautiously, afraid of collapsing the wall inward and harming the person they hoped to save. Soon she had excavated an opening big enough for her to reach inside and feel around.  She placed the oil lamp on an interior shelf and poked her head inside.  Teleri grew tense as Brigit’s body shuddered with disgust and her face re-emerged more pale than normal.

“I think he’s dead.  The rats think he is at least.”

And then she turned away and vomited.  Nandao went to her side to comfort her.

“Where is he lying?” asked Mashiro, taking up the sledgehammer.  Brigit swallowed and panted, gesturing vaguely to a point near Teleri.

“There against the wall.  You can probably clear an opening where I started one without crushing him.  Not that it matters.  He looks pretty awful.”

Teleri watched the elementalist clear the bricks above the opening, his powerful blows swiftly reducing it to rubble.  Nandao looped a rope around his waist and crawled through it while Mashiro and Kazuma braced it on the other side in case the ledge collapsed.

“Holy Dwayna,” the monk sighed in dismay, his voice muted by the wall, “Pass me a chisel and hammer, please.  He is chained.”

“Alive?” Kazuma asked.

Silence.

“Nandao?” Teleri called, “What is happening.”

“He’s alive, but my prayers are having little effect.  I’m afraid to move him. How could someone do this to another human being?”

Teleri waited impatiently as Nandao’s hand emerged through the opening to receive the requisite tools.  The dull sounds of hammering and metal chiming under stress filled the long minutes until at last the tools dropped back through the hole and they heard the shift of something being dragged over stone.

“Widen the hole a bit. I’ll shelter him. Oh, and give me a blanket from my pack first.”

The strain in Nandao’s voice was palpable and she noticed his hand was shaking as he reached through the opening for the thick woolen blanket.  Brigit rose to her feet and seized the sledgehammer before Mashiro could take it.  Harnessing her anger and disgust, she shredded the wall in three blows, knowing exactly where to strike. 

“Next time I swing a hammer it will be to crush Red Lotus skulls,” she snarled, “They had better not have harmed Morisedd.”

Teleri lowered her face as a sudden wave of grief washed over her. If Kiku had done this to Pendaran, what else was she capable of?  Gods help Morisedd.  If he were dead, let him not have suffered like this.

At last they pulled Pendaran out of the hole, laying him gently out on his back upon the stretcher.  The gaunt figure seemed hardly human, so crusted with filth and matted hair it was hard to imagine what he must have looked like the day he was sealed in his tomb. Rats had nibbled at his feet and hands and his flesh was rife with infected boils and sores.  Nandao fussed over the man for a few moments but had to give up when he grew too exhausted and it was clear his attempts were in vain. 

“Is there a spirit inside of this?” Kazuma asked Shikai.

“Yes, but it is far away.”

Teleri knelt beside the still figure, at once repulsed and saddened.  Something gleamed in his right hand, clutched there in a death grip.  Slowly she touched his knuckles, disgusted by the way his bones nearly protruded through his flesh.  Then she felt the warmth of life.  His fingers were still pliable, not as brittle as they had first seemed.  Slowly she unfolded his grasp as if she were opening a bud before its natural flowering.  And there in his palm lay the most enormous sapphire any of them had ever laid eyes upon.  Even in the dimness of the sewer it gleamed and shimmered as if it were alive, a captured remnant of fallen stars.

“There are entire kingdoms whose value is measured less than that stone,” Kazuma croaked.

“Why would they have abandoned him with such an amazing treasure?” murmured Mashiro.

Nandao shrugged and nodded at Teleri.

“Keep it for him.  We need to get him to the infirmary.”

“Agreed,” Brigit replied, backing up and lowering her body to take up the front of the stretcher while Mashiro took up the rear.  Once Pendaran was off of the ground, Nandao fussed over him for a moment, using blankets to cover him and cradle his head for the long journey back to the compound.