Author: Jolinn
Notes: "Always the floating disc in the end..."
"More wine?" The serving women, her fine Earendam accent a melodious break in the bustle of the surrounding crowds.
"Wine? Why, open up a new bottle my dear, this one appears to be more than a bit empty. Vintage of the Silver Zephyr, that's a dear". The man doing the ordering the ordering hesitated for a moment, perhaps feeling a bit of the most recent bottle. Robed in fine silk adorned with bits and piece of ribbons and the occasional sewn jewel, he looked the part of an Earendam dandy. Young, rich, and quite possibly concerned nothing more than with the latest aesthetic fashion about the town.
And yet, the man across the table from the youth seemed highly out of place in this tavern frequented by the upper crust of Earandam's nobility. Unshaven, unwashed, and clad only in poorly tanned leather, a skittering of whispers passed through the crowds of the elegant tavern as the young nobles eyed what was clearly some sort of rogue.
The waitress, returning to the table with the new bottle of the wine, covertly listened to their conversation, hovering around the table of the two so very interesting gentleman.
"Do you have what I wanted, Zilba?" snarled the bandit.
"Hjar, my good man. I would never think of denying you. As promised, I have here the ancient griffin ring, long held by my father, who passed it to me, clutching at his chest on his ill-tended deathbed, beset by plague..."
"Shut yer yap! Ye stole it just like I did, only with yer fancy trickings rather than a good honest club. Hand it over!"
"Well, shall we place our gifts to each other on the table?"
With a snort, the bandit pulled out a worn hide skin bag, dumping a small fortune in gems on the table. In one fluid motion, Zilba raked the gems into his own pocket, and placed a rather intricately carved ring with a feather on the table.
Eyeing his prize greedily, the bandit clutched the ring to his hand, and jammed it onto a slightly dirty finger. "It better work!" he snapped, and began reading the script on the side of the ring. "Taylandil" he muttered. Grinning wickedly, the air scholar uttered a few words of his own surreptiously, and the bandit began floating off the ground!
The waitress's mouth opened in a quiet "O" as she noticed a faint transparency to the ring. Zilba, noticing her glance, held a single finger briefly to his lips, and chuckled merrily, and their eyes met, both appreciating the joke. Laughing merrily, Zilba held up a small diamond, shouting "Drinks for all courtesy of Zilba the Great, Archmagi of Air, Son of Earandam, Scholar Exuberant!"
And, just as his words echoed through the chamber, a loud banging came from without the tavern. "Open up! In the name of the Patrician!"
The innkeep, a timid merchant of some repute among Earandam's small bult elite merchant class, cautiously opened the door.
"He is HERE! We have an order issued by the Patrician himself for the arrest of one Zilba Gralci, scholar of ill fame!", shouted the guardsmen.
Standing up, Zilba grinned. "I surrender...I surrender!" Turning quickly, he grabbed the young serving girl and in one motion tossed the bag of gems up into the air, scattering gems wildly!
Then, as the guardsmen ran toward him, pushing aside patrons and twirling his hands, tapping into a bit of the power of air, Zilba turned thrice in rapid succession, and out of the dust on the floor swirled an enormous air efreet!
Roaring at its freedom in the elemental plane, the efreet went wild! It hurled tables about the room, brusing and battering patrons. Those who drew too close to its maw disappeared in bursts of magical air, flung about the surrounding air.
Taking advantage of the distraction, Zilba whispered a few more words, softly, and in a matter of seconds no longer appeared as himself. A pale, blonde youth had become a stockier blacked haired nobleman, who still sat at a nearby table. Tugging at the young serving girls arm, he slipped out the kitchen exit of the tavern. Out in the street, they observed the guardsmen hauling away the bandit.
"Sarlock Drenigar, you are under arrest for banditry and associated with the known felon Zilba Gralci, and the pillaging of Var Bandor."
The bandit chortled and called on his ring again. "Taylandil!" he shouted, then let out a moan of despair as the ring vanished into an insubstantial mist. "But...but..." he stammered, as a diligent thief-taker tripped the man, and he stumbled and was quickly subdued.
Zilba giggled, and the girl gasped. "I can't go with you! You're wanted for stealing that ring, and associating with bandits!"
Zilba gasped "My dear, I am shocked and apalled that you would even contemplate that I am a norhing more than a petty thief. Surely, my grin has been called rakish. Certainly, I am perhaps a poor judge of the character of my companions. But a thief? Hardly!"
"But if you're not a thief, then you at least defrauded that bandit!"
"Did I?" he grinned, gazing evilly at the young women.
Pulling the last of the gems out of the sack, he held it up to the light.
"Nothing but glass, my dear. A plan of mine from the beginning"
"But...why go to all that trouble...fool the bandit...weird magic"
"Why, to let the guards know I'm here, of course! It wouldn't really be sporting to just skulk about and not let them know I was still in town!"
"Then.. what were they after you for?"
"Well, a thing lesser men might call a crime, but I am obliged to admit I have done from the goodness of my heart. In my search to free Avendar from its shackles, somewhere I seem to have... um...borrowed the Patrician's daughter."
"The Patrician's daughter!"
"Yes, simply dreadful. She even has warts. But, nevertheless, the equally loathsome grandnephew of Baron Krilin has found some joy in her toad-like appearance, and they seem to enjoy some measure of love for each other. I, never one to pass up promises of huge purses of ACTUAL gold, have graciously agreed to secure not only their elopment, but their families approval as well."
"But why me?"
"Because, unlike the other dreary aristocrats about this city, you have a rare gift - magic! And unless I miss my guess, you probably have the same whimsical association with the skies that I do."
The girl opened her mouth, then was interrupting by Zilba, "Don't bother to resist really, I'll just lash you up with air and toss you on a big disc until you agree. It happens to all the women in my life. Always the floating disc in the end..."
"So anyway, girl, here's what we'll be doing. The Patrician has enlisted a charlatan of some cunning to help arrange things. Princess Listensia will be wed on the Day of the Sun, in two days time. Or rather, she will appear to be wed. Listensia, always a rather vacant sort, is rather easily copied by a talented illusionist. That's why we'll be on hand to make sure things turn out a little differently."
"Now, you fiddle around here, and I'll go.. pick up a few things. "
With a few words, he faded into a misty cloud, and was gone. The young girl, a bit jarred by the whole experience, began to think about what Zilba had said. She knew she had a gift, ever since that one lightning storm, as a child. Somehow, the lightning bolt that had struck her had just... flowed around her.
An hour later she was in her room in the tavern, practicing her newly realized abilities, skittering a bolt of lightning over her knuckles, wondering what she had gotten into.
Midday on the Day of the Sun, the weather was living up to the day's name. Zilba stood by his newfound companion, and both were carrying a variety of different oranments and small articles of armor, and Zilba seemed unusually happy. With them were a very toadlike young woman, and a rather pasty faced and pox-ridden young man.
Stretching before them was the Plaza of the Patrician's palace, diamond steps leading down to the golden tile floor. Looking down on the wedding precession, Zilba nodded. "Looks like it's time for some inclement weather". Holding his arms aloft, a cold northern wind began, bringing in thick black clouds from the Brintor. Small jags of lightning began striking all around the plaza, occasionally striking nearer and nearer the crowd of people.
"Ah, here we go inside the palace."
Hurrying ahead of the crowd, Zilba set up inside the palace, tracing a small rune in the air.
"Stay here And don't move until I signal."
Zilba muttered a few words under his breath, and disappeared completely. Chortling at his complete invisibility, he moved quietly amidst the crowd, and began conjuring. Bolting upright, the priest of Jolinn officiating the ceremony shouted, "Where has the groom gone?" People began shouting "Why he's right there!" "No, wait, he's invisible!" "I can't see him at all!" In a panic, the hapless Earandam groom looked to the Patrician for guidance. Unhappily, the Patrician began shouting "Fraud! I will not have this fool marry my daughter! In the presence of all assembled, I cast this man out of the city!"
Grabbing his mouth, the Patrician irked "I didn't say that!"
"Yes he did!" said the priest of Jolinn, surprising most of the people in the room (including himself) with his frankness.
"Scholars! Guards! What IS going on?!?" howled the patrician.
Bursting boldly into the room, a wedge of the Patrician's finest darted in, alert for magical trickery...
Right into a noxious green cloud, which began creeping along the floor of the room. Coughing and gagging, most of the nobles and a good number of the soldiers pressed for the exits of the room, leaving both the mood and the furnishings akimbo in the great chamber.
From outside, there came a great roar, and a burst of shouts.
"Gods help us, we're outnumbered!", "Death with honor, save the citizens!", "Looters at the gate!" came the series of shouts from the guards outside.
"Ah, that would be good Sarlock, come with his Raider friends", exhulted Zilba.
The chamber was no emptied of its people, save the Patrician, his retinue, and a few of the guards and the illusionist in the employ of the Patrician.
Zilba stepped forth, shedding his invisibility. "Ah, Patrician! I've come before you with a very urgent matter. You see, that woman in the ceremony isn't your daughter at all just some bits and pieces of light THIS charlatan has no doubt duped you into believing is the apple of your eye."
With a thundering crack, the hired illusionist fell to the ground, struck deaf by Zilba's thunderous boom.
"He always was a bit of a hedge wizard. And, he couldn't hold his liqour, either. No greater sin, I'm afraid..."
"Guards! Guards!" the Patrician shouted, his personal retinue heading towered Zilba.
Clucking his tongue, Zilba lashed out with a jagged tempest, tossing guards about with wild abandon, doing everything from scratching to annihilating his opponents into helplessness.
Those that remained, he let slip with a long arcing lightning bolt, which popped from one target to another, fizzling out just as it reached the Patrician.
"Now then, this priest here is going to perform the real ceremony!"
The priest stammered "But.. but..."
"Come now, are you a servant of Jolinn or the patrician? Unity, love, reducing your damage from evil by one fourth, that sort of thing. These happy two really DO want to be wed, you know." With a whistle, he brought forth the Princess and the Krilin noble, and coached the reluctant priest through a quick ceremony, while the Patrician fumed in helpless rage. He bolted for the door, but Zilba just caused a quick vacuum to form, sucking the man back into the room.
All said and done, the two where married, and Zilba laughed and laughed. "And now, friends, we shall have words with the Raiders!"
Pushing the party outside into the Plaza with gusts of air, they found themselves surrounded by a party of Raiders, mounted on their infamous birds of prey.
"You see, my dear, I decided that poor Sarlock probably DID deserve that ring after all, so I paid him to do a little raid he'd already been planning, and those stones of power I liberated.."
Sarlock shouted to Zilba, "So, you have the girl? I have the scrolls of ancient magic you asked for payment on delivery!"
Zilba tched, and answered "I'm afraid I've had a rather unfortunate attack of conscience, good Sarlock. I've decided to let the girl be wed, and you can have your fun here in Earandam."
"No toad-faced girl? Aarrrrgghhhh!".
The bandit was livid with anger, and his Raiders advanced.
Nonchalantly, Zilba whispered one word softly, and a roaring gale filled the room. Raiders were whipped away on their birds out of the room, leaving only the lone bandit chieftain.
"Aargh. I'm more than enough to finish you, scholar!"
Sarlock advanced on Zilba, who actually seemed visible shaken. Still, he whispered to the Patrician, "Pay attention this is the good bit!"
Weaving his hands a few times, he uttered more than a few malicious syllables at Sarlock.
At first, Sarlock seemed nonplussed, but then Zilba picked up a fallen sword, which began to float beside him. With a soft swishing, it began hacking away at the bandit, while Zilba sat back and watched the results. Sarlock, under the influence of the early illusion, evidently seemd to see something more than a lone scholar floating a sword to hack away at him. Overwhelmed at his illusionary injuries, he fled away, flying his bird out of the city.
"Well, Patrician, I think you'll find you have a toad-faced daughter who loves you very much, and despite your taste for frontier life, a very valuable political ally in the Krilin boy. As for me and mine, I see your guards are heading this way, so I must bit you adieu for now!"
Taking the girls arm, he dashed down the street.
"Where will we go the guards are at all the gates!"
"As usual, you underestimate my resourcefulness. We are taking the river!"
"But-"
"Now, you recall what I told you about open mouths and flies."
Taking hold of her, he jumped headfirst in the river. Just as they reached the surface, they found themselves surrounded in a bubble of clean air.
Floating gently out of the city walls underwater, they emerged, bobbing in the Uthlin.
"Did I ever ask you your name? I thought not..", he said distractedly as they both disappeared in a puff of random air. "Other people talk so much sometimes I can barely hear myself think."
And they were gone.