Pathfinder Tales: Lord of Runes (11 page)

“But the seers said he wasn’t murdered.”

“Then we cannot trust their report. They may have intentionally deceived you, knowing you would share their report with me.”

“So perhaps the professor
was
murdered—well, not for the codex, which they didn’t take—but maybe for whatever was stolen from the lab?”

“That seems more likely.”

“Do you suspect someone from the Acadamae murdered him?”

Keenly aware that Lady Illyria could be reporting to her uncle as much as to me, I kept my response vague. “Most murderers are known to the victim.”

Illyria frowned. “But if the thief was adept enough to break into his laboratory, why kill the professor? And why not take the stolen items then instead of waiting until a few days before your arrival?”

“Perhaps the motive relates to Ygresta’s creation of a golem.”

“Which we haven’t found.”

“And which he might never have completed.”

“Do you think he might have hidden this codex because he knew someone was after the golem manual?”

“An attractive hypothesis, but what evidence do we have to support it?

She hesitated before answering. “It makes more sense if he had written the note himself.”

“But he did not.”

“That means he didn’t put it on the box, either.”

“Ah!” I retrieved the teak box in which I had first found the codex.

“Ah!” she mimicked me.

I frowned, but in truth I was beginning to enjoy her teasing. I showed her the trade stamp under the velvet lining of the box. “What do you make of this?”

“Kaer Maga,” she said, recognizing the symbol. “The professor was getting fat. What do fat wizards and Kaer Maga make you think of?”

“Bloatmages.” I shuddered to think of the blood-gorged practitioners of hemotheurgy.

Illyria shivered in agreement.

“It seems unlikely Ygresta had turned to blood magic. The weight gain among hemotheurges is a symptom of their organs’ generating surplus blood to fuel their spells. Besides, one of Ygresta’s colleagues would surely have noticed a ruddy appearance, the burst veins, and of course the leeches.”

She gazed at me with an uncomfortable intensity.

“What?” I said.

“We’re in the middle of one of your stories, aren’t we?”

“Pardon me?”

“The stories you told when you visited after Uncle Fedele’s funeral. Most of them started with you not knowing the answer to a problem. That’s where we are now. You’re just starting to solve a mystery, and I’m helping you.” She spoke with such open delight that I dared not trust its sincerity. Better to change the subject.

“Ah.” I took another tart and held it up as evidence. “As for the bloatmage theory, your confectioner’s testimony suggests a more quotidian explanation for Ygresta’s obesity.”

“And for yours, too, if you keep inhaling those like snuff.”

I would have protested, but it is rude to speak with one’s mouth full.

“Perhaps the codex holds the answer. Professor Ygresta must have known you’d discover its secret. What did he want you to do with it?”

“If he suspected a threat to his life, perhaps he meant me to solve his murder.” The words had barely escaped my lips before I dismissed the theory. A man does not plan for another to revenge his death when there is time to prevent it. “Never mind that. It is preposterous.”

She tapped her chin as she thought. “You know, I recall a guest lecture about famous spell collections. ‘Obscure Necromantic Texts,’ or something like that.”

That lecture had not been part of my Acadamae curriculum. “The speaker was not memorable, I take it?”

“Dry as dust, but I remember bits of the talk. Most of the texts covered were caught halfway between legend and history. Could Professor Ygresta have found such a book?”

I touched the teak box. “It stands to reason that the sihedron is another intentional clue, either from Ygresta or from whoever placed the codex in the box. The sihedron suggests King Xin, Thassilon, and the runelords. Do you recall the names of the last runelords?”

“Alaznist, Belimarius, Karzoug, Krune, Sorshen, Xanderghul, and Zutha.” She curtsied like a child presented to her parents’ friends—which was precisely how we had first met.

I chided her. “Rote memorization is the least of the academic virtues.”

“Shall I recite their associated sins, Professor?”

Illyria clearly knew the foundations of rune magic as well as any Acadamae student. The original runelords aligned their magic specialties with the ideals of just rule. Sadly, the later runelords perverted these ideals into the seven sins. It was a perfect allegory for the way each school of magic had its positive and negative sides—even, I had to admit, necromancy.

My imagination careened at this suggestion that Ygresta’s codex had a connection to the runelords of Thassilon. Yet it was Illyria who arrested my attention. Her girlish demeanor put me on my back foot. Accustomed if not immune to the designs of women drawn to my wealth and title, I found myself quite unable to determine Illyria Ornelos’s motives. Was she attempting to manipulate me? Or were her flirtations as genuine as they were obvious? As though caught in some transgressive act, I cleared my throat. “There is no need—”

“Wrath, envy, greed, sloth, lust, pride, and gluttony.”

As she pronounced the final word, I found myself with another tart in my mouth. A sudden intuition caused me to choke. Setting aside the uneaten portion of the pastry, I scanned the library books for a particular volume.

“What are you looking for?” said Illyria.

“Gluttony is the sin of necromancy.”

“That never made sense to me,” she said. “Most undead don’t eat anything.”

“But the exceptions are striking. Vampires crave blood, for instance. And ghouls crave rotting flesh.”

“Zombies eat brains.”

“That is a myth perpetuated by penny dreadfuls. How could you credit such a ridicu—?”

She was laughing again. “For such a clever man, you are rather easily gulled.”

“Only by—” I stopped myself before concluding, “alluring young women.” Instead, I tossed aside a copy of an old volume of the
Pathfinder Chronicles
and found what I had been seeking: Anders’s
The Fall of Thassilon
. “Only when distracted.”

“Distracted by what, pray tell?”

She could fish for compliments all she wished, but I would not bite. “By the thought that the runelords were all wizards, and all wizards collect their spells in grimoires.”

“You don’t think honestly believe the professor left you a runelord’s spellbook, do you?”

“I recall a reference to a
Gluttonous Tome
in which Runelord Zutha collected all of the spells known to the necromancers of Thassilon.”

“That sounds familiar. I think it was one of the lost texts in the lecture.”

“What do you remember about it?”

“Not much, I’m afraid.”

I found the relevant chapter in
The Fall of Thassilon
and summarized for her. “The runelords foresaw Earthfall, the terrible meteorite strike that destroyed their empire and ushered in a thousand years of darkness. They devised various means to survive the event, or to instruct their followers how to return them to life. Karzoug was one. And here, Zutha was another. He compiled the
Gluttonous Tome
, an enormous volume of leathered human flesh bound in bone and inscribed with the blood of a thousand slaves.”

“Charming.”

“There is little here to describe its contents, except that it contained ‘both his knowledge and a portion of his power, that it might never be stolen from his person.’”

“It doesn’t seem likely that a wizard as powerful as a runelord would worry about burglars.”

“Must I remind you that one of the most fearful aspects of necromancy is the power to steal one’s life essence?”

“Oh, don’t worry. I hardly ever use that sort of thing. Not unless a boy tries to get fresh.” She went to the desk and leafed through the codex.

I found no further reference to this
Gluttonous Tome
in
The Fall of Thassilon
. I set the book aside and envisioned my memory library. From the imagined shelves of my past readings I drew a slim volume. History retains little of the cataclysm known as Earthfall, when the Starstone fell to Golarion, its impact leaving the crater that became the Inner Sea. The collision destroyed two great empires: Azlant, which sank into the sea, and Thassilon, much of which remains buried beneath mountains and steeped in swamps across northwestern Avistan, where we now stood.

Much of the information in my imaginary library involved the survivors of Earthfall, most of them descending into barbarism after the deaths of their great wizards. Their priests and scholars dissolved into sects. New warlords arose, their conquests muddying with dogma and propaganda what could be reliably understood about their cultures.

Searching for references to the magic of the runelords, I found far more romance than chronicle. Too many historians embellish and amalgamate their meager facts.

That thought reminded me of Ygresta’s golem and the mystery of its absence. Like the study of history, my investigations depended on balancing fact with hypothesis. The latter could suggest a direction for exploration, but only on fact could one lay a foundation for the truth.

Between my borrowed books and my memory library, I had too few facts on which to build a more substantial theory. I needed more information, and I had an idea where to find it.

“I must go to Kaer Maga,” I said.

“How wonderful. I have always wanted to see the City of Strangers.”

“But you have an eclipse party in Riddleport.”

“Oh, that tedious thing. I’d much rather have a ride in your famous Red Carriage than another sea voyage.”

“But your friends are expecting you.”

“Do you always do what your friends expect?”

“They invited you.”

She understood what I had left unstated, but she did not accept it as an answer. “They will certainly understand that I couldn’t refuse your invitation. You should probably offer me one now, so I won’t have to lie when they ask me.”

Her manner had gone far beyond impertinent. My initial suspicious arose again. She wanted something more than she had revealed. Worse, she had abandoned all pretense of flirtation in favor of absolute bullying. “Lady Illyria, what exactly do you want from me?”

She fixed her gaze on me. “Everything you promised.”

“Pardon me?”

“The stories you told my parents and all their friends. I heard all of them.”

“After you had been sent to bed? I hardly think so.”

“Please. I was one of five sisters. I learned to escape the nanny before I could walk. Whenever she put us away, I just crept back out and listened from the top of the stair. To this day, I remember every detail of your Pathfinder stories.”

“Surely not. No doubt your imagination has exaggerated my little stories.”

“Your guide on the expedition to complete your
Bestiary of Garund
was a boy named Amadi. He was a talented artist, and he helped you catalog your discoveries.”

“Much of that information appeared in the
Pathfinder Chronicles
, which you told me you read.”

“You fell off the first time you rode a flying carpet in Qadira, but the satrap’s concubine saved you with a spell that made you light as a feather. You were so grateful that you cheated the bandits out of thirty-four camels and gave them to her new husband as a dowry.”

“It was less cheating than leveraged negotiation.” I was impressed that she remembered the precise number of camels.

“But you never reported that in the
Pathfinder Chronicles
, did you?”

“No.” In fact, it might have been indiscreet of me to share the story of my duel with the Keleshite prince. Fortunately, he was long dead at the hand of another, whose torments they say lasted thirty-seven days before the djinn ended his agony along with his life. I had been sometimes reckless in my younger years.

“A noble lady of Ustalav seduced you in Caliphas. You fell so desperately in love with her that you arrived six weeks late to Lepidstadt University. You never revealed her name, however, so I suppose you are still a gentleman even after telling that story.”

I winced at the thought of a child’s overhearing such an intimate story. “That sort of anecdote is exactly why parents send their children to bed before cordials.”

Her lips formed a wicked angle. “I didn’t just hear your stories. Sometimes I stayed up even after the adults had gone to bed. I spied you canoodling with my mother’s friend Sestina.”

“Ah.” That was even more indiscreet than my tale of Caliphas.

“‘Ah’ was definitely one of the sounds I overheard.”

My face burned. “Is it your intention to embarrass me? Is that what you want?”

An exasperated sigh escaped her. “What I want is everything you described in your stories. I want mystery, adventure, far lands and dangerous people. I want what you have. I want it for myself.”

“Then why not join the Society?” Nobles were not unknown among the Pathfinder Society. Some hesitated to join because of the menial tasks demanded of applicants—a requirement easily avoided by placing a purse of platinum coins in the right hand—yet some of my most cherished Pathfinder colleagues, as well as one of my most persistent nemeses, were noble men and women. With her intelligence and knowledge, Illyria would soon distinguish herself among the famous company of adventurers, geographers, archaeologists, and secret-seekers of all stripes. Neither station nor nationality offered impediment to membership.

“How many of your stories took place during Pathfinder expeditions?” she said.

“Most of them. Well, many of them. Quite a few, anyway.”

“You see? I don’t want to be a Pathfinder. I want to be like you, free to travel the world without waiting for some functionary to send me instructions.”

Overlooking the fact that as a venture-captain I had been the very functionary she disdained, I pointed out the obvious. “Your family has more than sufficient means. What prevents you from mounting your own expedition anywhere you like?”