The following morning, Terchin was not surprised when Oreus failed to show up for breakfast. Still, the lad had already slept in the day before. Terchin had let him, as he had traveled long and had just returned. But he did not want to become indulgent. Oreus would have to assume duties befitting his station now that he was back in the city. He was not entirely sure what those duties would be, but he would think of something.
Using more courtesy than he would have in earlier days, he knocked on his son’s bedchamber door and called to him. Receiving no reply, he opened it, prepared to roust the boy out of bed if he was still asleep. But to his surprise Oreus was not in bed – nor anywhere else in the room. Frowning, Terchin looked around for some indication of where he might have gone. He noticed the playing cards scattered about the bed. He examined them, eventually spying a blank gold card. He began to get an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. His well-honed intuition was shouting at him that something sinister had befallen his son.
Terchin began by summoning the servants and questioning them, but no one had caught sight of Oreus since he had retired for the evening. Eventually he entered the stable, where he learned from a groom that a horse was missing, and that from his garret next to the hayloft he had sleepily noticed someone saddling a horse and leading it out into the courtyard in the small hours of the night.
“Curses!” Terchin thought. What was the lad up to – was he off to go wenching? Or to partake of unseemly habits he didn’t want his father to find out about? Terchin could feel anger beginning to grow in him. Maybe his son had been on his own unsupervised for too long. Terchin had permitted this, and as he conceded it his temper subsided somewhat. Still, Oreus had not reached the age of majority and was not a man. And with Terchin being a ruler there were now additional risks that made wandering about the city alone at night more hazardous. He conceivably could be abducted by political opponents or waylaid by opportunistic criminals. As various disturbing scenarios presented themselves Terchin became more worried than he had been angry mere moments before. He realized that he needed help.
It took a bit of doing to extract him from his laboratory, but several hours later Melanthus the Mordent stood with Terchin in his son’s bedchamber. Melanthus was dubious that his presence could be of assistance. After all, he did not have a lot of experience with parenting.
“Oreus has already been on his own for a considerable period of time; mayhap a more carefree, nomadic life suits him. The djinn is out of the bottle, my friend, and you can’t put it back in,” Melanthus chided. “Oreus is no longer a child.”
“I may be making a big deal out of nothing, but I trust my instincts. They’re what has kept me alive all these years – and right now, they are telling me something is amiss,” said Terchin. “Just take a look around and see if anything appears 'off'.”
Melanthus sighed. “Very well.” The mage looked idly about, poked into a few drawers and opened the wardrobe. Then he saw something that he regarded with more interest.
“What’s this?” asked Melanthus, noting the deck of playing cards spread out on the bed. As Terchin explained he bent over and examined them one by one. When he got to the gold card he peered at it with pursed lips. After some hesitation he picked it up and squinted at it, turning it over and running one finger along its crisp edge. Then he brought it up to his nose and sniffed.
“This is a bit odd. This card is not magical...but I sense it once was. A barely perceptible whiff of concluded enchantment lingers on it. I am quite sure that the card featured some kind of arcane figure or symbol that is now gone because the magic was triggered. Once discharged, the magic is spent, aside from this trace residue of...,” he sniffed again, “unused reagent, perhaps. Card was probably treated with a solution containing excess antium bromide salts,” he concluded with disapproval at the less-than-perfect workmanship.
Terchin groaned at the revelation. He had had bad experiences with such magicks before. Not long ago a magical symbol had ensorcelled him, robbing him of volition at a most inopportune time.
“So he is under some kind of spell.” A thought then occurred to Terchin. “He hasn’t been transformed into something, has he?” He looked around the room once more with a panic he hadn’t felt previously. Was there a piece of furniture in the room that had not been there the day before? Terchin felt like he was going mad.
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“I highly doubt it,” said Melanthus. “And there is no further magic in this room. I believe he left – I won’t say of his own free will, but there is no sign that anyone else was here to spirit him away. I think we need to focus more on where he went rather than what transpired here. Finding the lad will provide that answer, anyhow.”
“We need to find that accursed dealer, too!” Terchin declared hotly. “This was deliberate! No one can tell me that he was handing out an enchanted deck of cards unknowingly!”
“That may well be,” conceded Melanthus. “But one thing at a time.”
“Is there some way you can locate him? Use a scrying device?”
“To scry you more or less need to know where to initially look. Our current ignorance rules this out as a course of action unless we knew he was traveling along a specific road or sailing down a river – anything with a linear path. Then I could pan along the length of it, although that would be very laborious and might take more time than it would be worth. It wouldn’t even be foolproof – I would likely miss Oreus if he was relieving himself behind some bushes or in a thicket on the side of the road, for example.”
“But fear not,” Melanthus continued. “There is a form of divination I know that may be of use.” He went over to the stand for the washbasin. He picked up the washbowl, walked over to the balcony and dumped out the water it contained, then dried it with the hem of a tunic hanging on a hook. He placed the bowl back on the stand and opened its single drawer. “Ah,” he said in satisfaction as he took out a tortoiseshell comb. He plucked the several strands of hair that were woven about its teeth and placed them in the washbowl. He took out a vial that contained some orange liquid and with practiced finesse placed four drops of the liquid into the bowl on top of the hair. Then from his capacious robe he took out a small leather pouch that contained some finely ground black powder. He added several generous pinches of the powder into the bowl. Finally, he held his hands out flat directly over the bowl, where they hovered as Melanthus closed his eyes in concentration before uttering an incantation.
When he had finished he quickly withdrew his hands and there was a brief flash as the contents of the bowl ignited. An acrid smoke issued from the bowl, temporarily obscuring the view of its interior. Terchin leaned forward eagerly to look anyway. The two of them peered at the small orange flame in the bowl that slowly died away. The black powder had arranged itself into a small circle, and as the seconds passed it enlarged, the diameter of the circle increasing as it crept up the sides of the bowl, somehow still adhering to the sloping surface. As the circle got bigger, the line that delineated it became thinner and thinner, until at last it stopped a finger’s width below the rim of the bowl. Melanthus grunted.
“What? What does that mean?” demanded Terchin.
“It means,” said Melanthus, sounding weary, “that Oreus is beyond the radius that this spell can cover. Otherwise, the powder of the circle would have reformed into the shape of an arrow indicating the direction in which he could be found. And due to the length of that radius, it also means that your son is not in the city. He has left Eskemar, and is beyond my sight.”
The remainder of the day was a frenzied blur. Terchin sent out guards to bring in Tenzen Twoside for questioning. But the itinerant dealer was nowhere to be found, and the staff of Letressa’s Nether Region professed complete ignorance as to the man’s whereabouts. Word concerning the absence of Oreus was spread and a single lead was generated. A guard coming off duty who had been stationed at the Caravan Gate claimed that someone possibly matching the description of Oreus came down the grand boulevard and then rode out of the city at a brisk canter in the middle of the night, eventually turning east before he vanished from sight.
So it was, that promptly the next morning Terchin left Eskemar at the head of a column of armed riders with a dozen pack mules. A score of men from the city guard were accompanying him on his travels. They were all volunteers who were a bit tired of manning the walls and patrolling the same streets day after day, and who jumped at the promised disruption of their routine – as well as the offer of double pay. These were men who wanted adventure. Well, Terchin grimly reflected, they would most likely get their wish.
In times past, when he was a thief who sold his services to whoever would pay for them, he would have thought nothing of going out on a mission with just a couple of friends or partners, infiltrating a hostile domain or fortress, trusting to stealth and a group size small enough to escape notice. But those days were over. He was one of the rulers of a great city; why should he slink about the countryside, having to worry about bandits, random monster attacks or taking turns at watch during the night? No, he would ride out with well-equipped men at his back, sworn to protect him and follow his orders. Why not take advantage of the perks of leadership?
He didn’t know where this journey would take him and he didn’t know how long he would be gone. In his experience, these ventures had a way of getting more involved and complicated than it would seem possible at first blush. No matter, he would prosecute his cause to the end. Oreus was going to be retrieved and saved if he had to go down to the Underworld and drag his son’s soul up to do it.
