In the common room of The Trader's Blessing, a fierce battle raged. Korchanja and Falandil sat across from each other, both staring intently at the chessboard on the table between them. Falandil, eyes never leaving the board, slowly brought his flagon of ale to his mouth, and sighed with contentment after taking a long, noisy slurp.
"Its not bothering me, you know," growled Korchanja. This was the fourth long slurp in as many minutes.
"You always grip the table like that?" quipped Falandil smugly, noting the kankoran's nails digging into the polished white pine. "Dust?"
"Knight Falandil?" Dust replied, sitting at the next table with Kelv. He had been studying a thin red book, while Kelv had been studying a shy, silver-haired ch'taren maid at a table across the hall.
"Dust, this game will be over in about five minutes," Falandil said, drawing a snort of disdain from his opponent. "You and Kelv go... Kelv," Falandil said with an exasperated tone, noticing how Kelv's eyes were riveted to the fair ch'taren lass. "Kelv, remember: For a young Knight there is as much peril in the sweet smile of a ch'taren girl, as in a shuddeni demon-priest's frown." Kelv blushed slightly, and turned his attention to the chess game.
"Hah!" barked Korchanja abruptly. No one was sure if he was referring to Falandil's comment, or his position on the chessboard.
"Now," resumed Falandil, "Dust and Kelv, gather up your things. Five minutes, and we leave."
After Kelv's rather embarrassing attempt to approach the tower the night before, the Knights had conferred and finally agreed to lend Kelv a little assistance. Falandil had a water scholar friend on the island--the acquaintance that he and Korchanja had visited the day before. The scholar, Aminad, was a human who sold healing potions and scrolls in the arcane marketplace. He had given them some useful information about Shelratha.
Aminad had told them what was common knowledge about the basics of the tower's outer defenses. There were eight pairs of statues ringing the base of the tower. These statues could detect the presence of magic, and would raise an alarm if anyone passed by them bearing magical enchantments, or if magic was invoked inside of the ring they formed around the tower. Dust and Kelv had looked at each other and grinned wryly, when they had heard that.
The difficulty in entering, then, hinged on one factor: there was no visible or open doorway to the tower. Ch'tarens, by nature translucent and able to pass through walls, found this to be no problem. But for any other race, magic would be required to gain translucence--thus, the effectiveness of the warding statues.
Kelv would have to rely on his thieving skills alone, to enter the Shelratha. He would have to find a way to scale the tower, or get high enough to grapple-hook his way into one of the upper windows or balconies.
Aminad's pudgy, mustached face creased with a worried look as he opened the door to see Kelv and the three Knights standing in his entryway. "Now, Falandil, I do owe you, as I said yesterday. But promise me that your scheme won't involve me in anything...criminal?"
"Of course, there is nothing criminal," Falandil quickly replied, as Kelv and the Knights stepped inside the portly watermage's home. "Don't worry, Aminad. This is just a harmless exercise for our Knight-to-be here."
Aminad sighed, "Oh, very well then. I trust you, Falandil."
Aminad led the group down a flight of narrow stone stairs, into an unusual basement. The walls and floor were awash with mosaic images of fishes, naiads, mermen, and other sea creatures, done in white and aquamarine shells. At the far end of the room, set in the floor, was an unusual fountain. Several slender pillars of sparkling water rose upward, to stop at waist height and then fan out over the center of the basin, creating a hazy table-like effect.
"My scrying pool rises up to me. I've seen many a fellow watermage develop a hunched back by constantly bending over his pool," Aminad chuckled. "Not to mention that those of my, ah, robust proportions don't often care to bend."
"Are unable to bend, is more like it," Falandil whispered to Kelv.
Aminad waved a hand over the pool. The fountain-table slowly lowered, its streaming legs diminishing until they had merged into the bottom of the basin. Aminad then made a gesture of invitation to Kelv, complete with a half bow, towards the still water.
At first Kelv had balked at the narrowness of the duct set in the bottom of the basin, but entered with less hesitation after Aminad offered him use of the wastewater duct. Shortly after, Kelv found himself completely immersed inside the confining stone channel. He had often considered his small size an advantage in his profession, and again did so. Even Falandil would have been hard pressed to squeeze through.
Kelv wore a softly glowing stone on a necklace, a temporary loan from Korchanja. It helped to illuminate the dark channel; otherwise, he would have become quite disoriented. He was totally submerged, and felt the strange sensation of the cool water surrounding him like a blanket. Aminad had granted him a water enchantment (of short duration), one which would allow him to breathe water and to emerge from the water completely dry. This Kelv would do some two blocks from the watermage's house. The duct joined a larger channel which passed below the street, Aminad had said, and Kelv could follow it and take the fifth right, which should lead to the basement of a bakery.
Despite the enchantment, the water still felt cold, and Kelv began to feel numb in his fingers and toes. He noticed several small pipeways opening up from the duct, leading to other rooms in the mage's home. After half-crawling, half-wriggling in the cold water, and picking up some scratches and scrapes along the way, Kelv at last reached the entrance to the main channel below the street.
It was much broader--five times the size of Aminad's house duct. Once inside it, he could feel a moderate current pulling at him, with occasional changes in the current that felt like small tugs and pulls. Kelv was no architect, but he could appreciate the marvelous aqueduct system created by thankful human watermages for the ch'taren after the War of Night. He had too much experience with the rusty hand-pumps and smelly chamber pots in Var Bandor to not be impressed with the magical underground system he was invading.
He at last approached the fifth duct to his right side, and wiggled inside it. Several feet into the duct, he was stopped by a locked metal grate bolted down into the stone. The lock took Kelv less than ten seconds to pick. Then with a final wriggle through the open grate, he pulled himself up into the bakery basement.
The room, empty now as business hours had long passed, served as the bakery kitchen. Kelv had emerged from a large sink. Sacks of flour and cooking pans filled one half of the room, and immense stone ovens the other. Quickly locating the stairs, he pocketed the glowing pendant, and then ascended to the main floor, picked the lock of the entrance with ease, and was on the street.
It was about the same late evening hour as of Kelv's attempt the day before, and again the streets were quiet. Kelv knew that while he was in the duct, if all had gone according to plan, Korchanja would have headed off southward to the docks to visit with the captain of their ship. Dust would have gone westward to stop at the Jh'ten library. That should have drawn most, if not all of the watching eyes away from the northern route that he was taking.
Moving with stealth and shadow, Kelv proceeded directly towards Shelratha. Regularly checking the roads behind him, he made slow but steady progress, and shortly he turned onto a side-street, the same corner at which he had been caught the night before. This time, however, his backward scan showed no trace of the thieves that had followed him.
He proceeded up the four remaining blocks to the tower grounds. The lower level of the tower was immense. The area surrounding it was rather more like a park than a fortification, however. Soft, ankle-high grass provided carpeting for large hardwood trees, and a few stone walkways wound through the grass. Kelv moved from tree to tree, like a flying squirrel who had been grounded, feeling a bit out of his element.
Soon, the trees gave way to the tower base. Kelv approached one the pair of huge guardian statues. It was around thirty feet tall, and sculpted from white stone in the form of a beautiful female angel wielding a sword. The statue pairs were placed back-to-back--or, more accurately--wingtip-to-wingtip, Kelv thought. Each angel's sword pointed outward toward another angel in the distance.
Trusting that the water incantation had long since ended, Kelv reached up and touched the smooth cloudy stone of a statue. Nothing happened. He then quickly stepped over to the base of the tower. The ch'lonin-streaked stone was polished smooth, without mortar joints or handholds whatsoever. Impossible to scale. Kelv looked up at the tower, and saw that the lowest windows would be out of reach of his rope and grappling hook.
After a short, stealthy inspection the nearby tower perimeter, he realized that he might make one of the lower windows with his grappling hook, if he were to scale one of the statues. The stone of the statues was also polished like the tower, but there were handholds, and Kelv could use his grappling hook if necessary. He again approached a statue.
He admired for a moment the beautiful, angelic features that loomed above him. The features were delicately sculpted, and the eyes of the statues appeared to be made of ch'lonin. Then, he quickly began to climb. Kelv nearly slipped twice before he had gained the shoulder, but was soon in position next to the statue's head, readying his length of rope and grappling hook. Then the noise of soft, sibilant speech rose up to him, and he froze. Someone was coming toward him, through the trees.
Kelv slipped his rope back into his pack, and slid over the shoulder, and down onto a wing of the statue. He leaped across to a wing of the statue's twin, and then scrambled over its shoulder, sliding down onto its chest. He nearly lost his balance as his foot and ankle lodged between the angel's breasts and sculpted robe.
The sound of the voices, cheerfully speaking in the tonal ch'taren tongue, continued growing louder and louder, and then suddenly stopped. Kelv waited for several minutes, before pulling his foot free from the wedge, and peeked over the angel's shoulder carefully. The grounds below were empty--the ch'tarens must have walked through the base of the tower.
Again mounting the shoulder, Kelv readied his rope, and threw. The hook caught the window ledge, with only a few feet of rope to spare. Kelv swung over to the tower, and skillfully began to scale the wall. The ankle that had been jammed down into the angel's cleavage was a bit stiff, but didn't slow him down. Finally, he was at the ledge, peeking through the window. The open sill was ringed with ch'lonin runes that felt cooler than the cool stone, and the room beyond was dark and empty. Kelv wondered what the runes meant, for a moment wishing he had Dust or Falandil there to interpret them. But he didn't--and so he deftly pulled himself over the ledge, and slipped through the window.
From the room, Kelv couldn't see the faint glow that slowly arose from within the eyes of the guardian statues, their ch'lonin irises gleaming out into the night for the first time in decades.
