Interrogation Room

Soon after his call with Fiona comes to a close, Brennan feels the gentle stirring of another trump contact.

Brennan is flipping through the Maghee's prayer book and making notes when Folly calls, although he doesn't seem to have made very many. Possibly the wait just wasn't that long. He looks up at an angle through the contact, smiles briefly and says quietly, "Ready when you are. If you're having trouble following the conversation, I've got paper and a pen to take notes with so you can see them." Although Brennan rather suspects that they won't be needed, he does tend to come prepared. As he stands, he also tucks a pair of leather gloves into his belt.

For a moment, Brennan may feel Folly regarding him through the trump in appraisal -- taking in his posture and bearing, his attire, his expression, his movement. Whatever she learns from this, she seems quite pleased by it.

"I'm ready," she says. "We should be free of interruptions from my end for at least a little while." Brennan can see that she has moved from a porch overlooking a beach to a room that might almost be an office if it didn't have so many musical instruments in it.

Brennan nods, and hands the prayer book back to Folly, so she can flip through it and refer to it unseen while Brennan gets on with the interrogation.

With that, he makes his way briskly to the tower where they've stashed the prisoner. When he gets there, he enters the room, and surveys the scene-- Guards? Furnishings in the room? Restraints? Condition of the prisoner?-- before saying or doing anything.

The prisoner is in what seems to be a combination family chapel and library. As Brennan enters, he's looks up from a stack of books. Open in front of him is some sort of history of the island, with an emphasis on the mountain people. The room is well-appointed and there are no guards, no restraints, and the furniture is overstuffed leather. It's hardly a prison cell at all.

If Folly's view through the trump catches the aspects of the room that are most chapel-like, she'll take a moment to try to pick out any religious iconography or interesting motifs. Otherwise, she's quiet and listening as Brennan begins his interrogation of the Maghee.

The religious iconography centers around spears and horses.

"Ah, Captain Walker, these are a fascinating people. Are you familiar with them, beyond the current conflict?"

There is no possible way Brennan would stand for being interrogated by his own prisoner. Walker, however, has a very slightly higher tolerance for it, if only because he might get more out of the Maghee by playing good cop to what had been Balen's bad cop.

"These ain't my people," he says. "I ain't signed up to fight a war, neither, I'm just here after a job that went real bad at the end. What I hear, though, these folks ain't think much of you. Neither do those boys outside. They all just call you 'the Maghee.' What's your name?"

Brennan glances at the spines of the books he's reading, so he can return to them later if he needs to, or at least the subjects.

The books are bound folio-style, with no spines. They look to be hand-copied instead of printed.

The Maghee seems unsurprised. "Forgive me for not introducing myself sooner, I was rushed in our initial meeting, as you may remember. My name is Cameloeopardis Maghee. Our people are not loved. It is difficult to be the children of a diaspora."

Cameloeopardis? Apparently even the Maghees' mothers don't love them if they're naming their sons after giraffes, Brennan thinks.

Walker grunts at the memory. "Nothin' personal, I just ain't want these walls fallin' down till I'm done and gone. I reckon that gives these boys a pretty good reason not to like you, though." He gestures with a free hand to taken in, nebulously, everyone in the castle walls.

Then, "Diaspora. That means... you're lost? Looking for home?" Walker intentionally misunderstands the word somewhat.

"Ooh," Folly says, "he might volunteer it, but if not I'd be interested in his take on how his homeland fell and any legends about how his people might return to it, or gain a new one. And whether it seems weird to him that anyone -- like that high priestess of his -- might actually live in a sunken city beneath the waves." She experiments with shifting her view through the trump a bit, so that she can see the Maghee in addition to Brennan.

[OOC: Seeing both is not easy. Either Brennan has to sit beside the Maghee or he needs a "mirror of truth" or somesuch.]

The Maghee nods. He may have been a teacher, sometime in his life. "An interesting word, 'Disapora.' It means 'those who have been sewn throughout'. Do you know of the Fire Climax Pine Tree? The seeds can only germinate in a fire, thus assuring the species survival by creating new growth in burned-out areas. It's quite interesting. We call it 'the Disapora Pine' becuase it is so like us. Our home is gone, Walker.

"It's a story the Maghee tell of themselves."

Walker seems perhaps more interested in this than he ought to be. And he will take advantage of the Maghee's presumed pedantry as best he can.

"Gone can mean a lot of things," Walker says. "Occupied. Destroyed. Can't get there from here." Which, all things considered, might be an odd comment from a mercenary soldier like Walker. "Occupied means you can take it back. Destroyed means you can rebuild. Bringin' down these walls gonna help with those?"

He shrugs. "If Lir so wills, then perhaps it will. But Maghdeberg is on a sunken island, and the silver towers were, occupied and then destroyed in the final assault on the Sorcerer-King. We proudly sacrificed our home in that noble fight, but the aftermath of the war was not kind to those most victimized by it."

"I reckon if anybody could raise up a sunken island, it'd be a god. But I ain't never noticed the gods pay any much attention when you really need them." Walker punctuates his bitterness with an act of desecration-- he spits on the floor of the chapel library.

Go ahead, try to convert me, he thinks.

Folly may not be able to hear Brennan's thoughts through the Trump, but she reads his intent well enough; she blows out a breath, not quite a laugh, at his in-character goading of the Maghee.

"How'd your island sink?" he asks, although he sounds as though he can guess the rough outline of the answer-- the Sorcerer-King did it. Or at least caught the blame.

"I'm having trouble getting eyes on him to read his answers," Folly says softly through the trump. "If he says anything surprising, or interesting, you might want to jot down a note or two."

"Sinking it was our greatest achievement. We cut the land from beneath the Sorcerer's feet. It took our sorcerers a score of years and a bargain with the Fae to make it happen. He could not rebuild our towers against us." He smiles. "We are proud of our ancestors, but it ushered in an era of continual war. It was not until the Protector's Pax that anyone in this land felt safe, and then only those he was not oppressing directly."

Walker manages to scowl and smile at the same time, as though the Maghee managed to make his own point for him about the fickleness of the gods. "Sank your own island? Impressive, I suppose, but that's a rather Tartanian victory, you ask me." Walker turns to look out the window of the tower and let Folly get her eyes on the prisoner. The gesture gives him a moment to think, as well-- the Fae interest him quite a bit, but unless one of them is masquerading as a High Priestess of Lir, they're beside the point of this conversation.

Folly sees a man in what look like stereotypical monks' robes. He's middle aged, but fit, and looks like he's no stranger to physical activity.

"Better," Folly says.

Then, as though the thought just struck him, he asks, "Wait, though, ain't that where your Priestess came from?"

"And did they even have Priestesses in the city before it sank?" Folly adds to Brennan.

"When we brought down our towers, we brought down half of Avalon with it. The island was much larger then. It was home to a great forest, and when it sunk, the forest went underwater as well. Those with the magical skills to breathe underwater can visit both, as long as they keep their wits with them. It is an easy place to get dangerously lost."

Walker looks back over his shoulder with some skepticism. "Wouldn't you just be able to swim upwards?" he asks. He knows the Rebman answer to that one. Does the Maghee?

"In the forest? Then you're lost and tangled in the kelp and you may run into monsters. At least on the floor, you can be sure one direction is safe from attack."

When he gets the answer, he turns back to look out the window, trusting Folly to give him any visual information he might need. In fact, if he thinks Walker isn't watching, the reactions might be more genuine. "Your priestess caste-- they went along with this? They helped?"

Folly is, in fact, watching very closely to see if the Maghee's face shows any particular reaction, especially at reference to the 'priestess caste'.

The prisoner nods. It's clear to both Folly and Brennan that he doesn't quite agree with Brennan's characterization, but isn't going to argue too much.

After a moment, he replies. "They did. The priests and priestess were different then. I'd've been a priest in those days, or I wouldn't have been a magician. Lir was more sparing with his gifts, before the Towers fell."

"...And that makes me wonder about the possible sources of 'Lir's gifts'," says Folly, who caught enough of that through lip-reading to get the gist. "Too bad Brita's not there to... y'know, sniff him."

No conclusive Rebma, though Brennan mouths, still looking out the window.

Walker doesn't seem too impressed with the idea of being caught in kelp, but maybe that's because he's never actually been caught in such a forest. "And this is something people do, breathe water in a sunken city." It's not quite a question. "This is something you've done?" That is. "Why? Pilgrimage?"

The Maghee smiles. "Not I, soldier. I am not religious. No, I was a seeker after esoteric knowledge when I entered the sunken city. Some of my kin wanted to go, doubtless to recover the great treasures of the clan, but they needed to breathe water, so that needed a mage. I had my own needs, so I went with them.

"My kinsmen did not survive, and I was taken prisoner. It is good for me that the spell to breathe water is so very, very simple."

"You were captured?" Walker asks. Brennan is moderately surprised at that, too. "So you're saying people... live there in this sunken city? This I gotta hear about. Why'd you go? What's this place like?" Unremarked upon is the terribly cyclical nature of the Maghee's existence, bouncing from one failed expedition to another, always ending up captured and, presumably, escaping.

Walker continues to divide his attention between the window and the Maghee, giving Folly as much opportunity to keep her eyes on him as possible without looking artificial.

Through the trump, Folly looks as though she may have had a question or two to add herself, but the bit about being captured takes her rather by surprise, too. She peers through the connection and over Brennan's shoulder to try to read the Maghee's response.

The Maghee nods. "I was captured twice, before this. We always knew some of our magical creations might have survived. Some of them were hardy, and some would have had no need to breathe. But it was not these who captured me. There is some part of an army there, men who fled from a battle in some distant place, who breathed water with no magics. They were surviving well, netting fish and establishing strongpoints. They'd fled the deep monsters of the forest and come to this edge. They told of kingdoms on the far side of the forest where people lived undersea as if it were land and where women ruled over men. It was like a fairy tale."

He waves his hands, trying to encompass the whole of the island and the ocean and failing. "They were going to the city, which they had seen as they exited what they called 'the accursed city'. I was spared to be their guide. I did not tell them I had never dared to venture into it before. They were reasonably kind, for soldiers. I gave them no trouble.

"No, that was all the doing of Lir's Chosen." He pauses, to see if Walker has questions.

That makes almost no sense compared to Brennan's model of how things work. Rebma-- because that's obviously what he's talking about-- and Avalon should be connected along the Faiella-Bionin, not some arbitrary meander through an undersea kelp forest. They are connected along the Faiella-Bionin, Brennan proved it. And that kelp forest, in relation to Rebma, sounds like Nedra. Having it also be the remnants of a surface-Avalonian forest is... troubling for the timeline. But not as troubling as the recollection that Nedra has a Dragon associated with it.

He lets some of that confusion register on Walker's face.

"So these deserters that took you captive, they was on the run from the accursed city on their way to your sunken city, Maghdeburg-- and this kelp forest between them is what used to be the forest on land?" That wasn't entirely for Folly's benefit. There were just enough loose pronouns in there that he wanted to clarify and try to fix the geography in his head. He lets the Maghee correct him if he got anything wrong, then lets him proceed.

The shaggy-haired wizard shakes his head. "No, I misstated. I speak Thari poorly. They called the forest accursed, because it was full of monsters that chased them out. They did swear about the city, because it bested them in war, but the edge of the forest was where they were when they sighted Maghdeburg. I do not think they intended to enter Madghdeburg when they entered the forest, but once they were run off, it seemed a good enough goal."

Walker nods his understanding and gestures for him to continue.

"They were loud and whatever denizens of the city we came across chose to avoid us rather than confront us. I would have investigated the towers, but I was in no position to insist. I was curious to see the palace, so I did not protest at all.

"The palace was a ruin, but we were not the first to approach, not by centuries. The opulence of the Sorcerer-King had long been stolen or drowned. 'The treasure is below', their Captain said. We were looking for a way downwards.

"I was the one who found the way to open the throne room door. The room was huge, perhaps a thousand feet across, and we had entered from above, behind the throne. What a throne! Carved from a single giant sapphire, it was both the apex of the decadence of the King, and so bulky as to defy thievery. As soon as I saw it, I was struck by a vision. I saw the floor of the throne room light up in great spirals of light, centered on a man, following them along the floor. Sparks flew from his feet where they touched the line.

"'Do you see that, Captain?', I asked and he said nothing, or at least to me. Something was happening to him and his men, but my eyes were glued to the man. He was struggling, and the sparks threatened to engulf him.

"I know it was a vision, and not reality, because the next thing I saw was the Sorcerer-King, Karol Le Magne in our tongue. Corwin. He was in front of the man, with his sword raised. He was fighting the Protector, who was not even in Avalon at the same time as the Sorcerer-King."

Folly has been watching the tale-telling closely through the trump, but that really gets her attention. She leans forward, wide-eyed.

"They all disappeared behind the sparks and I passed out and fell to the ground next to the throne.

"When I woke up, she was on the throne and the floor was no longer blazing."

He reaches for a tankard of water and drinks half of it down.

In the back of his mind, Brennan makes a promise to himself to somehow, someday, plague Brooke, Leif, Jasmine and the rest of the youngsters similarly.

Walker takes out a pewter hip flask with the characteristic wolf and hawk motif of Reme pressed into it. Perhaps it was once fine, but now, it's mostly been beat to hell. Walker takes a pull from it out of good faith, before offering it to the Maghee to steady himself. It's got something in it that's technically brandy, but isn't now, never was, and won't ever be fine. But it's drinkable.

He makes sure to take it back with a murmured, "All I got left to remember," comment.

Once the Maghee looks ready to proceed, he says, "If that was a vision, that mean you know what comes next is real?"

"Have we gotten a physical description of this priestess-woman yet?" Folly says. "I've got some sketches you can show him to try to rule out anyone we know. Not active ones, just pictures." She's pulling a small box from her pocket and thumbing it open one-handed as she speaks; she retrieves three cards by touch and offers them face-down to Brennan through the contact.

The Maghee takes the flask and drinks the brandylike liquid. Of all the things he may be, averse to alcohol is not one of them. His enjoyment is clear, and he thanks Walker for the refreshment. "She was sitting on the throne, tall and thin like a reed, and dark. She was paying no attention to me, but instead to the rune-carved sword, held by no hand, at her throat. She spoke, addressing the phantom swordsman as 'Corwin', and I saw that the Protector stood on her far side. The protector clashed with the invisible assassin, or at least with his sorcerous blade.

"The Protector's blade had changed hands, and his free hand shot forward and fixed itself upon some unseen target. The two blades parried one another, locked, pressed, their points moving toward the ceiling. The Protector's right hand continued to tighten. Suddenly, the Sorcerer-King's blade was free, and moving past the other. It struck a terrific blow to the Protector's right arm, severing it cleanly.

"Then the Protector turned and dropped to one knee. He clutched at the stump of his arm, and I watched as it regrew from the stump like smoke from a fire. The severed arm hung in the air near the floating sword. It was moving away from the Protector and descending, as was the blade. When both reached the floor, they did not strike it but passed on through, vanishing from sight. When I looked for the Protector again, he was enveloped in smoke, and gone when the smoke cleared.

"Before I had time to regain my wits, the enthroned woman spoke to me. 'My name is Dara. What did you seek here, if not your death?'"

There are a lot of responses that bubble up immediately to Brennan's consciousness: 'Was the arm mechanical?' is one. 'That's no Priestess of Lir, that's my insane cousin!' is another. And, 'I wonder where the arm went if it wasn't mechanical?' (And his mind immediately answers him, 'In the basement of this place, probably.')

Absolutely none of those things is appropriate for Walker to say, though.

"Well, what did you say, man?"

While he's distracted by his telling, Brennan takes the sketches from Folly if he can do it surreptitiously.

"And unfortunately, if it really was Dara, she could have looked like anyone," Folly says, frowning.

The sketch handoff goes smoothly. The Maghee is quite wrapped up in his storytelling.

If Brennan glances at the sketches, he sees that they are vividly colored in an art nouveau style: the images are stylized but still recognizable as their subjects -- Moins, Moire, and Dara. Something about the layout or decoration of the Moire card gives a faint sense of unease; the Dara card, even moreso -- there is even a hint of a skull-and-crossbones shape hidden in the negative space of the background swirls. Brennan might guess that their primary purpose is as a teaching aid.

"I was too stunned not to be honest, Captain. 'My past, Lady,' I said. 'Here my ancestors overthrew the sorcerer-King Corwin, at great cost.' She became quite excited when I mentioned Corwin, and claimed to be of the house and lineage of Lir, the great patron of the Maghees. She told me many mysteries of the home of the gods, and the lives of Lir and Corwin and the Protector." He pauses, and drinks the last of the drink Walker handed him.

"She was here researching the Sorcerer-King as well, for he has returned. When she stated her intent to destroy him and bring down his new kingdom, I naturally offered my aid. She said I would receive my instructions shortly, and that I should sleep, and that a priestess of Lir would tell me her bidding. Her magics made me sleep then and there.

"And so it was. Through I know not what magics, when I awoke Lady Dara was gone, but another woman was tending to me. 'Are you Lir's Priestess?' I asked her, and she said she was. She ordered me to take command of her ships and attack Methrin's Isle. It was not until I left the sea that I began to doubt my experiences. I am not usually so ... revolutionary.

"Which brings us to the present, Captain. I fully intend to stay on this Island until I die, for I fear that the sea will not appreciate my change of heart."

"I ain't so sure it does," Walker says, "and there's a lot in that story that ain't make sense about the Protector and the Sorcerer-King. But before we get to that, I want you to look at these, tell me what you think."

The Maghee is about to interrupt, but quiets at Walker's last request, merely nodding at the delay of the former subject.

He arranges them where Folly can see them, then puts them on the table in a stack face down. When the prisoner turns them face up, they will do so in the order of Moins, Moire, and finally Dara.

The Maghee deals them out, the first two upright and the last turned 90 degrees.

"There are so many ways to read a spread of three. Virtue, Fault, Fate is one. Past, Present and Future is another. The cause, the case, and the conclusion in some descriptions.

"In one deck, these could be The Creator, The Defender, and The Usurper. Or in another, The Empress, The High Priestess, and Justice.

He points to Dara. "She is Dara, a goddess of Amber, of whom I have spoken. On the other end," he says, pointing to Moins," is Lir's wife, Dido, in whose service he died. She is Elyssa, the Blessed. The Dido. You can read much of her, and their eternal love that went beyond even the bounds of death in the book of my people that I gave you." He smiles.

He pauses on Moire's picture, his confidence from before abandons him. "I ... This one I know, but I do not know why. Who is she?"

Brennan makes a mental note to research Moire's paternity.

"I was hoping you'd tell me," Walker says. "But I know more now than I did. A seer woman told me they was the only hope I had of getting back home from here. She ain't sound so hopeful when she came out of it, though. But now I know where one is-- or was, anyways," he taps the image of Dara, "and this one's name," he taps the image of Moins, or as the Maghee called her, the Dido. "I ain't have time to read your book, much, but maybe it'll tell me where she's at, too.

"That leaves this one," he taps the Moire card. "What's it mean, you know her but you ain't know why? You met her but ain't remember it?" Walker seems to decide that's the case and presses it a little, trying to jog his memory: "What else comes to mind, looking at her? A time, a place? Some other people? By God, if she's the Present, she could be my best hope!" There is increasing urgency in Walker's voice as he continues, slipping further into the dialect from his putative homeland.

Folly, smirking through the contact at Brennan's strategy, says, "Probably not that 'Priestess of Lir', then, although perhaps it's possible she was among the ships he brought to Methryn's Isle. I don't really see what she'd have to gain from being part of this attack though -- what either of them would gain, for that matter, if Dara's stated aim is to bring down Corwin. Unless this was some sort of test-case: win against Benedict, or at least against his Optimized War Shadow, and you know a win against Corwin will be easy by comparison." She shakes her head, not fully satisfied with that explanation.

"Do we know where this sunken city is relative to where the known path seaward hits land?" Folly asks. "From his story, it almost sounds like he ended up on the skyward side, you know?"

The magician sits, his brow knitted in thought. "Captain, I can only say that I don't know. My mind wars, with half saying she is the Priestess who sent me here and half denying that thought." His hand shakes, slightly as he reaches out and touches the Moire card.

While the Maghee sits and thinks, Walker's face is composed but his teeth grind so hard in frustration that the sound is audible. "Stay here," he tells the man, as though he really has any choice in the matter. He sweeps up the three cards, puts them in a pocket (not with his Trumps) and leaves the room, closing the door behind him.

"Fetch Balen," he directs the guards outside, then takes up a position to guard the door himself... far enough that he won't be overheard when he talks to Folly, but close enough that he'll see Balen coming.

Once he's got suitable privacy, he says to Folly, "If one of them put a geis on him, she won't be able to break it, but she'll probably confirm it. And it gives us a chance to confer." Pause for a beat, then, "What a mess. Either of them alone I could understand, but together...?" He scrubs a hand through his hair. "How many calls you think we'll need to make?"

"My count is up to four or five at least, probably starting with Corwin. Or possibly Merlin," Folly says grimly. "But there's something a bit off about the whole topology of his story, both in time and in space, you know? Like, I might believe that what he witnessed was another angle on the singularity of that wackiness with Ben and Corwin, rather than being actually 'here' and 'now', except for Dara making reference to Corwin's 'new kingdom'." She frowns. "And it feels more plausible to me that Dara would herself take on Moire's guise to... I dunno, imply a broader alliance, maybe, or tap into this guy's own mythology, if I thought she were that subtle... than that they're actually working together."

"It's like we've got the pieces of three puzzles all mixed together," he agrees. "I don't buy the masquerade angle, though, at least not with that motive. Why impersonate someone and then magically prevent the witness from remembering or talking about it? I will note that she doesn't seem to have said the 'new Kingdom' is here, though-- only that he should attack here. Which... still makes very little sense."

He sighs. "I can make a case for the Present," he is still too cagey to name names even when he's sure he won't be overheard, "taking those actions even if it's a thin case. I can make a case for the Future having some interest in the area, but the actions make no sense. But I can't come up with any excuse for them to work together at all. We're going to need to wring more information out of the prisoner and if local talent can't break that block... well, I have a better chance, but then I can't let him go walking around free afterwards."

And as cold as Brennan can be, sometimes, it doesn't sound as though he is enthusiastic about casual murder.

"Yeah, I'd rather we avoid that option if we can," Folly says grimly. "I'm rather beginning to feel sorry for the poor guy. And I suspect there could be other reasons than just a geas from that priestess that he's having trouble working out or remembering what exactly he saw. I mean...." She hesitates, and Brennan can tell she is choosing her words carefully. When she speaks again, her voice is unexpectedly gentle. "...This isn't the first person we know of to end up on an unexpected vision-quest on the edges of that realm and then not really remember it afterward."

"Well, he could always be... relocated," Brennan says. "But at that point, there's no way to leave him in a position to help his people and avoid being a Family catspaw." He shrugs. Whatever is going to happen is going to happen, and while he's not going to cut the man's throat as a result, Camelopardalis' happiness in life is not his uppermost concern.

Then he frowns, evidently having worked out what Folly meant about vision quests. "Vision-quest. That's... true... I suppose," he says finally. "But it seems an awfully specific effect. Speaking of that, I could almost understand the vision about the arm as a sort of resonance of what we heard about from during the War." When Brennan capitalizes it, there's only one war to refer to. "But again, the geography of it. Why would there be a resonance in a place that isn't a Realm? As unhappy as the Uncles will be that's a mighty curious thing. There's been enough of those freak visions that I think I'm going to have to bother an Aunt about it."

"Well, I can certainly believe there might be a resonance effect from being at a metaphysical balance point between two realms -- or among three," Folly says. "If it really were at the balance between just the landward and seaward sides, I would have expected you to see it on your trip up. But if you throw in the skyward side...."

She hesitates, pursing her lips, then continues, "I just can't shake the feeling that there's some kind of screwy time effect at play in all of these vision-things. Like Brita witnessing a walk from the history books. Which, come to think of it, she experienced at about the same time as that other vision-quest." She frowns thoughtfully. "You should ask your mage whether there was a full moon when he had his vision. And have any members of that fleet that the mystery high-priestess gave over to him been captured? It would be interesting to hear their side of the story."

"No, I had the same thought myself," Brennan says. "There's no reason at all to think they were both in the same time frame. It's not normally my first conjecture, but given the circumstances... it might make my head hurt less to consider that, than to figure out why those two would be working together.

"As for the rest of the fleet, I have no captives but there's a whole bunch of them sitting outside. You can see them from the window if I stand in the right place while I look at him. I don't have their full story, but they seem to be just corsair thugs and their arrangement is one of the things I meant when I said part of his story was shaky. It might just be ethnic tensions and greed, but they don't seem to think of themselves as being led by our new best friend. In theory, I traded this guy for the weapon he summoned that would bring down the castle, so I'll have to give him back soon and they can go on their way and mug someone else." He shrugs, faintly. "I figured outright destroying the invading force would send up red flags. I may alter the deal, though."

"Captain Walker? Who are you speaking to?" Balen steps silently into the passage. "What deal do you speak of?"

Folly, who doesn't have quite the right angle to have seen Balen, asks, "Do they declare any particular loyalty to anyone else, though? Someone of our gifts could have rallied a fleet like that and pointed them in this direction. If that's the case, it would be interesting to know who pulled the strings."

Walker has the grace to look sheepish. "Myself, I reckon. Can't say much more useful to that Maghee until you have at him, and then we may not want to cut him loose. Something about that boy just ain't right."

He gives a long, slow exhalation and proceeds to fill her in. He gives her a thumbnail sketch of the conversation, but adds more detail when they get to Camelopardalis' Excellent Underwater Adventure: It is the encounter with Dara and then the high priestess that receives the most detail, especially the priestess' command to take her ships and attack this island. "...And by this time, all the hair on my neck's standing straight 'cause I ain't heard anything that fey-weird since-- well. Not for a long time. Before I ever set foot on Methryn's Isle, I asked a seer-woman how to get back home. She gave me these pictures and reasons to believe she ain't a fraud. So I followed my gut, showed him the pictures."

Brennan holds them out in turn. "This one, he says is the woman on the throne and it matches the description he gave before he ever saw the card."

"I have seen her in an ancient book. She was a Hell-Maiden? I don't recall. Some sort of minor demon of temptation."

"This one he said is Dido, someone from his religion. I still got his book, I can read about that."

"Dido was Lir's lover, and when he left her to go seek adventure in foreign wars, she cried so much that she drowned her kingdom, and turned the sea-water salty. It is a chlidren's tale. I am not surprised they still tell it amongst the Maghees. I have no idea why he would think he knows what she would look like."

Walker looks as though he might hazard a guess, but decides not to get her on a tangent. It's the middle one he's interested in.

"But this one..." he shakes his head like he's trying to get a gnat out of it. "This one he says he yes and no, he knows her and he ain't. Gets confused when I press him. I think someone's... done something to his head." Walker gives a perfectly unambiguous shrug that is wholly unlike Brennan's trademark finger-waggle but has the same meaning: Magic. "I reckon we both got our reasons for wanting to know more, and I reckon you're the one to tell me if someone's messed with his head. And maybe un-mess it."

He doesn't yet advance the hypothesis that she is the priestess-- he wants her to make that connection for herself.

It should go without saying that Brennan watches her reactions to the cards as closely as he can through Walker's story-telling.

"I can at least tell if he is under a glamour, and depending on what it is, may be able to lift it. It sounds as if it is breaking down already."

She hesitates. "He shouldn't recognize Queen Moire of Rebma, unless he's also working for the Protector, and that's not the story you told."

"Moire," he repeats, as though fixing her name in his mind. "Now I got names for all three."

Then, "No, he ain't say nothin' about working for your Protector. Don't really know what he thinks about him. He ain't say she's this priestess he seen, either, that's just my hunch. So, yeah, let's go see if you can get rid of this glamour," he uses her expert word for it.

Unless she stops him, he moves for the door and escorts her in.

Balen puts her hand on his arm. "There are risks. Sometimes removing a glamour kills the subject. Sometimes worse, it might disrupt other spells on him. It's not common, though. I'll warn you before it starts, but be prepared to defend us."

Brennan may notice that Folly has gone very still and quiet on the other side of the trump contact as Balen touches his arm. She's still there, but there's a feeling of partial withdrawal, as if she's peeking out from behind a mental screen.

Walker is no more a huggy, physical-contact kind of guy than Brennan is, and Brennan is aware that he's in Trump contact with Folly. If there's a way to decline that physical contact with grace or subtlety, he'll do it. At the very least, he'll make sure it lands on leather, not on bare skin.

She then lets him escort her in. She nods at the prisoner, and looks around the room. "Maghee, you seem glamoured, at least to the Captain. Are you willing to let me try to remove it?"

He sighs. "There's not much choice, is there? Remove it or none of us know when it might make me do something I cannot control."

She nods. "I will do my best to prevent that." Balen turns. "Captain Walker, please lash him to the chair." She points to a number of leather straps on a shelf on the wall. Cameleopardis sits down and puts his hands against the chair arms, ready to be strapped in.

Now that Balen is no longer touching him, Folly says to Brennan, "I don't know if there are likely to be any effects from being in a trump contact while a shadow sorceress does her thing in the same room. If you're concerned -- or if you start to get a headache or something -- just scratch your nose, and I'll drop the contact and call you back in a few minutes."

Brennan thinks that over while he starts to rearrange the furniture, clearing a broad circle for the chair to sit in, and selecting the stoutest chair he can find. By the time he's done that, he's come to the conclusion that it's for the best that they cut the contact-- not because of Balen, unless she's got a notable fraction of Amber or Rebman blood and is a true Sorceress without knowing it, but because he can't figure out how to secure Cameleopardis without touching him. And because if things go very far south he may need to take actions that would be profoundly unwise while within a Trump contact.

He srcatches his nose and waits for Folly to drop the contact before proceeding.

When she does, he secures the Maghee properly to the chair: Boots and footgear off, no jewelry or any other adornments he may have that might fray the leather, etc. Hands behind the chair back, not on the arm rests. Feet bound at the ankles under the seat. Legs bound at the knees, thighs bound to the seat, abdomen to the chair back. He considers trying to bind the man's head into position, or bind the neck, but decides against it. That might end up killing him if he ends up possessed, or convulsing. Neither Brennan nor Walker are sadists or fools, either: The bonds are secure and professional, but not injuriously tight or torturous. The Maghee will be glad to stand up when this is over, but not injured. Not as a result of the leather straps, anyway.

"You're a brave man, Cameleopardis," he says.

He laughs, ruefully. "I am a Maghee. My ancestors demand it. I feel an injustice has been done to me, and I must know."

Then, to Balen, "His eyes?" Frankly, Brennan thinks that will be more protection for Balen than anything else if someone-- Dara, Moire, anyone similar, ends up looking out of his eyes, but he can't really say that. If she nods, Walker will find a hood or a blindfold or something suitable and secure it into space.

"No. I need them open. They will reflect."

Walker shrugs and leaves his eyes unobstructed.

Brennan notes to himself that Balen seems to have been extremely well-briefed about people like Moire, although perhaps the level of threat that Moire poses may not fully have penetrated. Or more competent than Brennan would expect for a Shadow wizard. Belatedly, he is beginning to suspect that she actually is one of Benedict's agents... although he still has no intention of giving up the cover at this point. What she doesn't know serves to protect her as much as Brennan's current task.

Either way, when he's finished, he'll give his work a weather eye, then fish a piece of chalk from a pocket and put marks around the chair, about a foot farther away than what he thinks the man's reach would be if he broke loose in a spasm.

Then he takes up position behind Cameleopardis, pats him on the shoulder twice to reassure him, and nods to Balen.

Balen produces a candle, which she lights. She walks widdershins around the bound man, along the chalk circle. She's chanting, and so is Camelopardis.

The smoke from the candle is unusually dark and cohesive. It spirals in around the Magee, not dissipating. The room was always warm, but now it's sweltering and even Brennan can feel the soporific effect of her actions.

She steps up to Camelopardis and slowly begins to part the clouds of smoke that surround him. She digs deep and the smoke moves like mud, swirling back in, but slowly. Eventually she is down to his bare head. Balen sighs.

"So, yes, then?" says Camelopardis.

She nods. "And very old. The dangerous kind. Should I procede?" She's talking to Camelopardis but looking directly at Walker, through the break she's made in the smoke.

Walker shifts his stance as though about to take some action to secure the Maghee even more, then realizes it's futile. Unless he grapples the man while he's still seated, there's not much more than can be done to further immobilize him.

"Do it," he says, and adds, "Don't get killed doing this." To both of them, really.

Brennan also brings up the Third Eye, entirely passively, with no special Astral component. If he can passively use it while in a Trump contact, he should be able to passively use it here without drawing attention to himself. Especially since Balen and Cameleopardis are going to be otherwise occupied.

Astrally, the magician looks no different than he did before, although the smoke seems to be causing something else to show up. Camelopardis seems to have some chaosian Sorcery applied to him, with a principal of Time, but used differently than the way Brennan knows it. It's definitely affected him and drastically so.

Whoever cast this wasn't very good with the principal, because it seems that it is vulnerable to local magical tampering. Balen reaches out and undoes a strand of the magic. That goes well. Then she removes another of the loops, and Camelopardis, who has resumed chanting, breathes easier. "Oh!", he says. Brennan sees the sorcery begin to shimmer, as if it is unstable.

Balen bites her lip, and starts moving her hands faster. "I'm not sure I can control this anymore. I'm trying to do this in a controlled fashion, but it's about to come loose."

Camelopardis lets out another noise, as if he's been hit. He's chanting again, through clenched teeth, and his sweating profusely. "Don't stop!" he hisses. His head snaps back, to the extent that it can.

Balen reaches in and pulls one more loop, and the entire edifice slides off, including all of the Time-based Sorcery that was so loosely attached to Camelopardis.

The smoke stays pooled on the floor, and starts dissipating. Balen snuffs the candle and the room becomes noticeably cooler and brighter.

"I'm free of the compulsion, then?" says Camelopardis. His hair has turned completely white, and he looks somewhat fragile.

Balen nods. "Yes. But I suspect there's still a price to pay. I'd rather if we'd had to wrestle with an actual demon. I have a bad feeling."

Brennan knows full well that Dara knows the Principle of Time. There's a good chance that Dara doesn't even know that he knows-- not that she would have any reason to suspect Brennan, of all people, to come romping through whatever scheme the spiders in her mind have hatched. But there's no way she's that sloppy with it. If this is Dara's work, then this was meant to unravel that way. Not unlike Brennan's entropy bombs.

If Balen is smart and has any heart at all, she'll want to be somewhere else, right about now. So, as he starts to undo Cameleopardis' bindings, he says quietly, "Why don't you let this man and I finish our chat?"

Balen nods and steps out.

There are no mirrors in the room, so there is no fear that he'll see his own face. Once his hands are free, though, there will be no way to prevent him from seeing his own skin.

"The woman, Cameleopardis," he puts the cards in front of him again, Moire front and center. "Who is she?"

While he's concentrating on that, or his new condition, or both, Brennan shifts from the passive third eye to a much more active Astral view trying to determine two things:

How much time has he got left? Minutes? Hours? Days? Is he still aging out before Brennan's eyes, or has he just been aged and still has a brief but natural span before him?

He's still aging.

And is there any residual Sorcery left on him that Balen couldn't discern and/or get rid of?

There's a bit of the time sorcery, but it's dissipating fast without its anchor, which was itself. It was a neat piece of work, but it's irrecoverable, now. It's like his time is reeling back into him.

"I ... don't recall, clearly. She was the one who woke me up. She wasn't really a Priestess, was she? She just told me that to get me to do her bidding.

"She told me the Sorcerer-King had a daughter who had wrested Dido's kingdom from her, and that I was to prepare the way here." His lips form a thin line. "I must have been ensorcelled to believe that. That one has made an enemy of all Maghees."

"You shouldn't judge people by their fathers, anyway," he says. "My father was no prize, either. This is important, Cameleopardis: How were you to prepare the way? Why this place and were there others? Why were you to prepare the way here? How did this help with the Dido's realm?" All of which is to suggest that the best way for him to throw a wrench into Moire's plans is for him to tell everything he knows about them. Walker does, after all, have a demonstrated ability to screw peoples' plans just by sheer orneriness.

Although for the moment, out of respect for the dying, he's dropped the Walker dialect.

"I don't know, I wasn't consulted, just told. She wanted a lot of fighting here. Doesn't make any sense, it's not like this island is of any importance. I didn't even know there was a castle up here."

He nods as though it does make sense. "All right, one more question for me, and then one for you," he says.

"First: Describe to me every piece of jewelry these women were wearing, ever piece of jewelry you saw."

He coughs, and it is disturbingly wet. There doesn't seem to be any blood in it. "I am a magician, young man, for all that I may look like a shopkeeper. I would only notice such things if they were magical.

"No, I do remember. The Queen, she had a pendant jewel on a chain around her neck. She used it a focus when she awoke me."

Brennan nods. Of course she was. It's a cause for curiosity and mild concern, then, that Balen was able to do anything about it at all.

Brennan, still looking through the Astral-enhanced Third Eye, glances back at the door to make sure no one is huddling behind it eavesdropping.

No one is. While Balen is in the hall, she is some distance from the door. Unless Brennan leaves by another exit, she'll see (and presumably intercept him).

"Second: I will not give you a mirror, but look at your hands. Feel your skin. You've been used more terribly than you may know, and while I am... not innocent, this was their work, one of them. This was the consequence of releasing the glamour. Tell me, Cameleopardis, what do you want for your people, going forward? If you could guide them, how would you do so?"

He looks at his hands. "My age is catching up to me. I guessed this might happen. When no one on the corsairs' ship had heard of a Bobbit Worm, I thought it odd. I suspect the glamour kept me from wondering why. Luckily it kept me from worrying about undoing it as well.

"I should write a letter to the clan. It will be brief. If I had my materials, I'd dictate it to an enchanted scroll, but that I will not see again.

He looks Brennan in the eye. "How long would you say I have?"

Brennan looks back, and doesn't flinch. "I'm sorry, Cameleopardis, but... not long. Maybe not long enough to write, with those hands. If you think it will serve, I will be your scribe." He produces paper and a writing implement, either for Cameleopardis or for himself.

Camelopardis nods. "Please write exactly as I say it, so that they will know it is from me." He waits for Walker's acknowledgement before continuing.

"To the Council of the Sons of Ghee, greetings. I am Camelopardis Findanus, and I give this testimony freely to the Mercenary Sorcerer Walker of Afalon. I am in the new castle on Ynys Meithryn, where by the trickery and dark magics of the Corsairs I was made to fight the allies of the Protector.

"You have not heard from me in many years, and I assume you govern well by our old custom. I say unto you that the Corsairs of the Gogledd-Orllewinol sea are allies with the Queen of Rebma, whom I declare our enemy. The time is coming when we once more may have to battle with Gods, like unto the great heroes of our people in the war against the Sorcerer-King.

"For now, I die. The magics that unnaturally extended my life are dispelled. I grant my blessings to all of the clan. Fall upon our enemies like wolves, my people.

"Triogal Ma Dh'ream/ Een dhn bait spair nocht"

He turns to Walker. "If you can add my arms, that would be best. It's a giraffe's head erased Proper, crowned with an antique crown Or. The girl outside can get it drawn, if you're not skilled in heraldry."

It is at about this point that Brennan again feels the gentle stirring of a Trump contact.

Brennan hesitates over taking the Trump call, but decides to allow it-- or at least, not to fight it. He doesn't acknowledge it immediately when it come through. Instead, he reads back the draft of Cameleopardis' letter back to him, for Folly's benefit-- it will give her almost all the context she missed.

"'Camelopardis Findanus'," Folly repeats as she mulls the letter over. "I wonder if the whole clan traces its descent from Finndo?" she muses.

That is not a thought that had occurred to Brennan. But he suspects it is more a reference to following Lir, than being descended of him. Even so, one never knows.

"That part about the Queen of Rebma might want to change," Brennan suggests, mildly. "She's not, anymore." The passage about the Sorcerer-King, he leaves unchallenged, and offers no explanation of how he might know any of that. And he's not going to waste his breath denying he's a sorcerer to a dying man.

"Did you say this Balen and Trippel are the Protector's allies?" he asks. It's almost, but not quite, a non-sequitur, to Cameleopardis. But not a non-sequitur to Folly.

Camelopardis nods. He's still getting older by the moment. His skin is like parchment. "I did. It's a conclusion. The Queen expected the Protector to support him, which would help her." He takes a deep breath, as if he was going to say more, but doesn't.

He begins sketching Cameleopardis' device on a separate sheet of paper, to present for his approval. He's no Ossian or Folly, but his hand is steady and captures the image of his mind well enough.

As Brennan moves to draw the device, Folly catches a glimpse of Camelopardis and sucks in a breath. "Poor man," she says. She hesitates, then adds darkly, "If he really is descended of Finndo, I wonder if he gets a death curse? Besides calling on the wrath of the Maghees, I mean."

Brennan suspects not-- it's been centuries if not millennia-- but there's no easy way for him to say so.

He finishes his sketch and hands it to Camelopardis for his approval. "Then we don't actually know they are the Protector's true allies, since we don't have it from him," he says. Again, more for Folly's ears than for Camelopardis'. By Brennan's way of thinking, she has spoken to him recently.

"I will see these delivered. But what Moire has done, angers and offends me." Certainly a true statement in both senses-- the treatment of Camelopardis, and the treatment of Rebma. "Should the need come, will your people join me? Is there a phrase or a token by which your council may recognize me?"

Camelopardis coughs, and Brennan can see his hair falling out. "The letter you have, with our motto in it, should be enow. 'Triogal Ma Dh'ream/ Een dhn bait spair nocht'. It should move the Maghees to war."

He doesn't seem to have long to live.

Brennan nods and closes his eyes for a moment.

"Very well. Rest now, Cameleopardis Findanus. I will see your words to your people spread wide, and Moire opposed. I regret your passing, for I feel we may have called each other friends had things fallen out otherwise, and that is a rare thing. I am sorry, Cameleopardis, for the use that was made of you, and I will mourn you."

Brennan gives the man what comfort he can.

Camelopardis nods. "Don't mourn. Waste of time. Fight. Of all my captors, you were ... the--" He closes his eyes, and slips peacefully from his elongated life. He slumps in the chair and is gone.

"I mourn as I choose, my friend," Brennan says.

Out of respect, he covers him with his cloak while he talks to Folly in the same low tones he was speaking to Cameleopardis. Since he no longer needs to worry about Folly's viewpoint, he keeps a Third Eye view of the door to make sure Balen doesn't barge in and find him talking to himself again.

After a long moment of respectful silence, Folly chants in a lilting tone that is not quite a song, but sounds as if it ought to have distant bagpipes behind it:

"'Triogal Ma Dh'ream,' the red Magruder said, 'Een dhn bait spair nocht' -- and here is where they bled: The enemies of peace that by this shore we fought. 'Mine is the blood of royals; slay, and spare ye not.'"

She falls silent again after the chant ends. Then, "I don't even remember where I learned it, but that phrase made me think of it. That was what made me think he might actually be one of Finndo's, way back."

"Possible," Brennan says. "But not of greatest concern. Even if they are, it's probably been fifty generations or more, from then to now. Here's what I got out of that-- Moire just played the corsairs and the Maghees both, possibly as a diversion for the Protector. Diversion for what, I think we all know, but not the details.

"We now know of two routes from here to there-- one through the Kelp, and one along the Great Road. It doesn't seem like something through the Kelp would need a diversion, but the Road probably would. And it would be my preferred route if I were invading. And if I really wanted to hit hard, I'd do both-- a visible force through the Kelp to draw the City's defenses and an elite force along the Road. Something like that.

"So. What to do and who to tell," he asks.

"I'd say Corwin, Celina, Benedict, and Random are at the top of the 'who to tell' list," Folly says. "Did any of the stuff I missed when I dropped out shed more light on whether Dara and Moire are actually working together? -- because it doesn't seem as though they'd be interested in going the same direction. Who do we think put the magical whammy on him?"

"Maybe not in that order, but yeah," Brennan says. "The Queen might be hard to reach. But for reasons of my own I'll be talking to my Aunt soon, and her children should hopefully have returned there by now. My brother was there as well.

"To answer your question, almost no new information. He was convinced that Moire did it, and I'm inclined to agree. The bits with Dara just seem... off, somehow. They just put me in mind of the kind of visions one has in Tir," and despite his best efforts, Brennan's concentration wavers for a moment before he forces it back to Folly. "I'm going to be aggressively agnostic, because I hate being wrong and I don't want to close my mind."

"Well then, let me ask you this: Do you think it's possible that vision might suggest active involvement by an agent of Tir rather than just a passive proximity-related effect?" Folly gives a little shrug. "I don't know that we have enough information to say one way or the other, but it might be worth bringing up with your aunt if you're--- Oh, there's a thought...." Folly squints a bit, as if searching for a memory. "When we told Fletcher the story of Ben and Corwin and the Magic Arm, Martin guessed that the weird temporal effect might have been his grandfather's doing. Which might have no bearing on any of this, but I thought I should mention it."

"What about the family here-- any information? It may be years out of date for you, but it's still fresh for me," he asks and says.

Folly has to think for a moment before she replies. "Yes, I think we did talk to Ben right after the last call we had with you, to fill him in on what you'd told us before the attack...." After another moment's thought, she fills Brennan in on the details she remembers from that call -- that Ben expected to be done with his own negotiations within a tenday, but might send some of his allies to Montparnasse to see what was happening; that Brennan was welcome to stay and gather more information or pursue his own agenda; that the attack seemed to him more foresighted than the opposition he usually saw from his neighbors. "He, ah, did mention he would be interested to question any prisoners you take," she adds ruefully. "Oh, and he was familiar with Balen. He'd suspected that she had been turned against him, but reckoned that her hatred of her sister may have put her back in his camp. Er, perhaps I should've remembered to say that earlier."

"I don't think we have anywhere near enough knowledge to make an informed speculation," Brennan says. "Even with the arm, when I heard about it, I had the same thought... and then later on we learned the Floaty Woman had some skills in time manipulation, too. Maybe not on that scale, but I can think of a half a dozen people that I know or suspect have some skills in that area." And that's not even including Brennan himself.

"As for the family here, thanks. I doubt knowing that would have changed my actions too much. I'm still inclined to play close to the vest, here. She knows I'm someone from somewhere doing something, but I doubt she knows any details to divulge, intentionally or unintentionally." Brennan mostly overlooks the comment about questioning prisoners, although he gets back to it tangentially.

"So that brings me to figuring out what to do about this. Locally, I had been inclined to let the corsairs loose. They have no special fangs anymore, without Camelopardis. If they stay here and keep the siege, I think Montparnasse can weather it. If they move on..." he shrugs. "Either way, no special need to relieve this place. But that's local, tactical. Before I left, our Uncle and I discussed the larger situation. As far as I'm concerned, I've just found evidence that makes this, in his words, 'a different sort of war.' It's tempting to go win the war in this theater, hand-deliver the note from Camelopardis, and have an army standing ready when we know what to do. Or, go hunt down Cledwin and get more information that way. Or," and he gives a Bleysingly evil smile, "go looking for Moire, and let myself get captured.

"Any angles I'm missing, here? There's enough work here for three or four of me-- was there any word from Lilly or Fletcher?" Brennan asks.

Folly shakes her head. "We hadn't heard anything from Lilly before we left. Fletcher was still at the castle; I believe he was considering heading in your direction, but he may have decided to stay and hold down the fort until his father's return."

She pauses, thinking. "Cledwyn -- that was one of the weapons traders you were traveling with, yes? But the other one... Crunch... Crisp? ...was the one that looked somewhat... substantial?" She hesitates again. "I guess if we really are thinking Moire is behind at least part of this attack, it would be interesting to know if they're her agents. Or someone else's. And just how far her reach extends. Of course, if they know the 'hedge wizard' portion of the attack failed, they may already have turned tail. Were they or other members of the caravan obviously joining in the fighting that you saw?"

"Cledwin," Brennan says. "I remember it like was yesterday. Cledwin was the mercenary captain that hired me. Disappeared the night all hell broke loose and everyone is sure he's the one who let the assassins in. He's probably the one who shot Prince Maibock personally. Crisp was the one who came here to get married to the younger Princess. Those two were taken into custody as soon as we found our feet. I'll be talking to them, too. The rest of the mercenaries have been following me."

Folly nods as she gets all the pieces sorted out in her mind.

"As for Cameleopardis, I had arranged a nice low-key solution to the siege-- the corsairs would get Cameleopardis back, we'd get their summoned weapon, and they'd go away and bother someone else." Brennan shrugs. "Seemed about right-- a reversal for Moire, but not so drastic as to be suspicious." He glances over at his might-have-been friend's body. "Not any more. Now we owe them blood price, or we'll have to kill them." From Brennan's tone, those sound about the same difficulty.

Folly blows out a sigh. "There's just too much we don't know yet. You could go rally your Army of Maghees, but then what, if we haven't yet figured out where to point them? In my experience, righteous anger without an immediate target is its own kind of danger -- although perhaps these Maghees are more level-headed than that." She gives a wry smile; that's not something she'd bet her life on.

Brennan lets that pass without comment. But not without an arch look that expresses his cynicism quite well.

"On the other hand, if you keep poking around trying to find the major players and what they're up to, at some point you might wish you had that army. And it still bothers me that the attack here does not seem to offer any obvious tactical advantage, except perhaps as a distraction to draw our attention -- and our uncle's -- away from the real plan, which might include sneaking agents or an army up or down along one of the paths connected to that realm...."

Her eyes light with a sudden spark of something akin to mischief. "Do you think your Maghees might like to become Guardians of the Ways?"

It takes Brennan a minute to unpack that. "You mean park them on the Queen's Gift? Ah, no. That's not an option right now. Even if I didn't know that our Uncle wants that route kept hidden, I think raising and placing an army that close to the Castle unannounced is a bad idea. But talking through that makes me lean toward finding Cledwin or letting myself get captured. Or did you mean something else? Also, can you cast the cards for me while we're talking like this? I mean, is it even possible?"

"I was just having a very similar thought," Folly says. "I don't think I could cast while holding the contact open, but I can pass you my fortunes and have you do it. I rather like that better anyway, since you'll be the one taking the most direct action: I always take the spread to be situated relative to the person asking the question, particularly the bits about 'forces supporting' and 'forces opposing'; my feeling is that you get a cleaner reading when the one in the middle of the situation is also the one to ask the question." She digs around in a pocket, comes up with a deck, thumbs a few cards into her own lap -- Trump sketches that wouldn't survive the transit, perhaps -- and offers the rest to Brennan.

"You've got my three witches already; feel free to shuffle in any other cards of your own that might be relevant." She regards Brennan through the contact. "What are your thoughts on what question to ask?"

"Has anyone ever asked the cards a question that does not amount to, 'What should I do next?'" he asks. "I was thinking something along the lines of, 'What's the best way to catch Moire?' which, yes, begs a bunch of other questions along the way."

Folly can't help but smile at Brennan's suggested question. "I often favor more open-ended questions myself; that way the cards may give you hints about things you didn't even think to ask. Like 'where should we look to find those who sent Cameleopardis against the Protector' or 'what is the true target of the plot for which the Corsair attack served as a diversion'. But then, I'm always looking to dig through the signs and symbols and see the bigger picture. When you're there on the ground, you don't necessarily have that luxury." Her smile turns wry. "...says the girl hanging out on the beach while her cousin the man of action is in the middle of a raid."

Brennan shakes his head. "I see the reasoning, but my priority here, in this place, is Moire. That first hunch that she would be here is why I'm here. For the moment, everything else is secondary."

Folly nods; she certainly understands -- and respects -- his reasoning, too.

He takes the cards that Folly offers and thumbs through them-- carefully-- to see what the deck will consist of, before adding any of his own to the mix that aren't already there: Amber, Paige, Folly, and then with a fatalistic shrug, Uxmal. "Too bad we can't throw mine in there, too, but that would kill the connection. But does that even work, just adding mundane sketches to a deck like that?" If she indicates yes, he'll add all three to the pile.

Folly has handed over a full fortune deck, plus Ossian, her own Paige trump, Garrett, Random, and Xanadu. At Brennan's question she hesitates, cocks her head, and says, "Ahhh... perhaps not. I mean, on the one hand the Fortunes themselves are 'mundane' in the sense of not being Trumps, but on the other they play by their own rules." She hesitates again, longer this time, then plucks one of the cards from her lap. "Perhaps you should add this one, too, then," she says with a small frown.

It's Martin.

"I don't know exactly what they are, but I don't think the Fortune cards are mundane," Brennan says, absently. He assembles a deck composed of the Fortune cards, the Trumps he has, and the Trumps Folly first passed him. Not Dara, Moins or Moire, although he does keep those in a separate stack well out of the way. And not, when he sees who it is, Martin. That card, he places face down on the table in front of him.

"Do you think he'd approve?" he asks quietly.

Folly gives a little half-shrug, more 'it's complicated' than 'I don't know'. She knows she doesn't have to dissect that part of Martin's history for Brennan -- he already understands it, more than most. What she says is, "He knows I trust you." The words have an almost palpable weight.

And yet, Brennan may have taken a different meaning from her words. A cheek muscle twitches, his chin rises almost imperceptibly. "But he doesn't."

After a moment she adds, "I think he'd approve of the larger goal of trying to stop any scheme of Moire's that she might be trying to hatch against the family. Particularly if it turns out she's not the only player."

He thinks it over. Her points are good, and without a Dara, Martin Reversed is the best way to read Meg's involvement in the whole emerging debacle. Still, no. He puts an index finger on the card, still face down on the table, and moves it decisively back toward Folly.

With a little nod of thanks, she takes it back and tucks it among the other cards in her lap.

He shuffles the assembled deck, sans Martin, asks the question: "What is the best way to catch Moire?" and casts them on the table where they both can see them.

Cockatrice

War reversed

Unicorn reversed

Middle row:

Defender reversed

Overlooking the Diamond

Top row:

Knowledge (sideways)

"Hmm," Brennan says, once the cards have fallen. "We always ask what to do next, and cards always say, 'I dunno, boss.'"

He looks at them skeptically. "Okay, I guess the bottom row depends on what the cards think the context is: The current situation in Rebma, or the current situation here in Avalon, or somehow both. Either way, the situation at hand is-- was-- poisoned by something unseen. I'll tentatively read that as the situation in Avalon and its natural state of war, poisoned by Moire to her own ends, while admitting that it just as easily refer to Dara, or both. The present: War, reversed. Either Moire is fighting for the wrong cause, or I am, or less severely the current situation is her poison bearing fruit. The less severe reading is "safer" in that it doesn't require me to believe that the cards care about me or Moire directly, I suppose. I'm not even going to pretend to know what the future card means.

"The Defender Reversed, as a virtue? In this context, cliche though it may be, I could read that as saying that the best defense is a good offense. Which would be uncommonly direct advice, so I'm sure it's wrong. And Overlooking the Diamond is just useless. Someday I should ask Dworkin if he can replace that card with a dunce cap," he grumbles.

Folly smiles; but as she peers more closely at that row, her jaw begins to take on an odd set.

"And then Knowledge as the fate. Interesting. Up, I usually regard that as knowledge of some fundamental truth; Down, as a preconceived notion or a stubborn fixation on one element of a larger truth. Anyone can learn something new, but it's hard to replace an old truth with a new one. Sideways... might it mean that the actual truth, or which aspect of it is important, is still in doubt?" he asks.

"Well, it could just be the cards being cute and telling you that if you do catch Moire, you'll know what she's up to," Folly says, directing a look that might best be described as 'stink-eye' toward the cards in question, "but it could also be about bigger questions related to Rebma, and its rule, and the bigger mysteries of why it survives if its Pattern scribe doesn't, because...." She hesitates, and Brennan can feel the agitation rolling through the contact. "Because I think the cards *are* telling you one way to catch Moire. I didn't see it at first, because I thought the Defender had to be the Protector--"

Brennan starts physically at that, and nearly claps his hand to his forehead, but lets Folly finish without interruption.

"-- and so the Defender Reversed as a virtue was just about seeing past that diversion you're in the process of foiling, and looking where the Protector isn't, but maybe that's not it at all, it really is about putting someone in peril, because... because...." She gives Brennan a hard look, hard and a little desperate. "Look at that bottom row. What's the best way to tempt a Unicorn?"

"Defender, Protector. Defender reversed, Protector offspring," he says. He glances up at the door with the third eye again to make sure no one is snooping. "Lilly? Fletcher?" He shakes his head, "Possible, but probably not. Redheads? Nnnneh. If Lir is his, not Finndo's, then I could believe the Maghee. But absent that..." he taps the Defender, Reversed, and then the Dara card he had set to the side. "Dara. Not exactly an ally, but very possibly the enemy of an enemy."

Brennan finds the mental note he made earlier about asking Fiona about Lir, underlines it, and puts it back in place on the top of the stack.

His eyes move back to the Unicorn, Reversed and, finally addresses Folly's question: "With a virgin, canonically. A ship that's sailed, for most of us. And I... don't... even want to know what that means in terms of the larger metaphysics. What are you thinking?"

"Not just a virgin," Folly says, her eyes wide. "Purity. *Innocence.*" She swallows hard against a tightness in her throat and nods toward the spread. "That second row: What the cards are telling you, the answer to your *exact* question, is that there is an innocent sitting here, un-Defended by a Pattern, that your target would really just love to get her bloody hands on, except that no one knows we're here."

She meets Brennan's gaze again, her own eyes glinting with black humor. "What's that principle where the act of asking the question changes the answer? Because oh my GOD we are so going back to Xanadu now."

Brennan frowns in thought, then says, "Okay, I see how you got there by the cards. I don't understand how that maps to the real world, though. She'd do anything to get her hands on this innocent.... why?" As usual, Brennan is too cagey to name names even when he keeps looking to make sure no one is eavesdropping. "For what purpose? Seems the only thing Moire would accomplish by that is hardening nearly everyone in the Family against her... including the three that outweigh the rest of us combined."

Folly shakes her head minutely. "I don't think she'd do anything so blatant as to draw immediate ire. It's more her style to manipulate the situation -- or the facts -- so that if anything untoward happens, she can set it up as someone else's fault." There's bitterness in her voice as she says that. "It may be that what she wants is just to take the measure of this new player in some way, even if it's just over tea and biscuits. I'm just not sure we're ready for that yet."

As she speaks, she rises from her seat; through the contact, Brennan can see that she has moved through the door and opened it just a crack to listen.

Brennan nods. It is, after all, Folly's child, not Brennan's-- he can afford more clinical detachment than she can, by a large margin.

"All right. That, at least, I understand. But I promise you this-- no one knew your whereabouts from me, nor will they," Brennan says. "Do what you need to do to be safe. There is another interpretation of that card, though," he taps the Unicorn. "If reversal sometimes means children or offspring, then the Unicorn reversed might mean descendants of the Unicorn. Which we know Celina is. Do we know that Moire is?" It's a rhetorical question, unless Folly has more information than she did the last time they discussed the ancient roots of the Family Tree.

Folly can hear the sounds of splashing bathwater with what might be Martin singing in the distant background of the other end of the house. Two Rebmans at bath-time can result in long delays, especially when one of them can keep the bathwater improbably at temperature for a while.

Folly smiles at the sound, closes the door, and turns her attention fully back to Brennan and his question. "We know Dworkin and the Unicorn had other children besides Oberon. I've been running on the assumption that Lir might be one of them -- that in fact all the scribes of the three original realms might be -- but no, we don't know that for certain. If that is Celina in the spread... well, I'm not certain what that means. One could also take it to mean, more generally, the decline of the primacy of Amber or the influence of the children of Oberon. Taken that way, and taking the 'Defender' to be the 'Protector'.... Honestly, it could be telling you that if you want to find her, she's right there hiding in plain sight, there where the Protector isn't." She hesitates, then adds, "But then that might make the Unicorn Reversed a warning: Don't be too tempted to try to take her on by yourself." She hesitates again. "Do we have any reason to believe Moire might be capable of shapeshifting, speaking of hiding in plain sight?"

She doesn't say, "...Because if she really has teamed up with Dara, maybe she's learned a new trick or two," but she's thinking it pretty loudly.

"No reason I know of, except a desire to make our lives more difficult than they are," Brennan says.

"And I keep coming back to the question of why some of us can Walk, and some can't," he continues. "With no evidence beyond a gut hunch, I look to differences of parentage, even at the Scribe generation." He shrugs, gathers up the cards on the table, and partitions them into his own and Folly's. "But this isn't the time for that. I think we've rung all the information we can out of the cards, and time presses."

He gives a long exhalation through his nose. "Our Uncle will want to know my plans. They're fluid, and my gut and my head are disagreeing. My gut's winning, though, and it's telling me to wrap this battle up in favor of the Mountain and make sure it's bound to Avalon and ready when the time comes. If it's not flashy, well, reversals happen in war. Eventually, she'll know something is up and start taking a hard look at who is screwing up her plans in this area; better to make that later than sooner, but I'm not going to tie myself in a knot trying to preserve that ambiguity for a few more days or weeks." His eyes flick inward briefly, considering. "If you reach our cousins before I do, and for some reason can't convince them to contact me, tell them a distraction on their end may divide her attention. And then, after I'm done here, I may try to find Cledwin and beat some information from him. But," he shrugs. "It's a war, now. It's fluid."

Folly nods. "You're still pretty limited in who you can call, right? I'll plan to fill in the four Monarchs -- er, three Monarchs and a Protector -- on at least the broad strokes of what's happened here. Anyone else?"

"Very limited, yes," he says. "Use your best judgement. There's only one or two people I'd actively avoid, and I'm sure our lists are damn similar in that respect."

As he hands back Folly's cards to her, and takes back Camelopardis' prayer book if she has it, he adds one last thing: "By the way, right now, it's not personal, it's professional. Her departure is formally understood to be abdication, and history moved on without her. If she starts involving children... Stay safe. Don't let her make this personal."

"Thanks. You stay safe, too, okay?" She thumbs out the Three Queens and hands them back to Brennan. "And maybe you should hold on to these, in case you need to play 'Have You Seen This Sociopath?' again. I can always make more."

"Thanks," Brennan says, to both the cards and the gesture. "But it's not my job to stay safe-- there's work to be done." The way his lips twitch, that work likely involves violence, and he will likely relish it in some part. "Say hello to everyone, too."

"Will do," Folly says. "Good luck." With a little smile of farewell, she closes the contact.