By Fate and Ill Fortune Hunted
Twenty-Ninth Day of the Tenth Month 293 AC
Something about this stinks, and it isn't the fish stew of dubious quality the innkeeper is handing out halfheartedly for three pennies to the bowl. Even if Lord Mallery were not inclined to read 'treasonous writings' about the the sins of Tywin Lannister, he is still the sort of man who refused Lannister gold and made common cause with Jon Arryn, as close as makes no difference to pledging their support to the faith. So what had changed? Why not leave the boy Denys to the company of squirrels and trees where his magic would likely go unnoticed? Why suddenly hand him to the Lannisters?
Was it the Lannisters? the voice of suspicion oft proved right whispered. Many are the powers able to make their agents seem as something they are not, particularly to those with no spellcraft of their own to guard them. Hiding your lips behind the tankard of middling ale already gone flat you murmur
a spell of finding, the strongest you know... and find that Denys Mallery is indeed in Castamere, carried there by Lanna or some other senior Golden Shield no doubt, but still a score of questions linger about the boy and about his father's mysterious hunting trip.
"The boy is second in the line of succession, that's two lives between him and the lordship," your mother speaks the suspicion aloud, though not in Common nor in any of the tongues of men but the language of True Dragons, heavy with layered meaning. A treasure two steps away, a triumph two fires kindled distant. "I should probably be the one to speak to Minisa Mallery, I know her not as well as I knew others at court, but I hope enough that she will at least give me a hearing. I think you might be a touch too intimidating..."
"I can be utterly harmless, mother," you protest mildly.
"Yes, when you put on a mask and lie through your teeth," she replies, startling a small laugh from you at the way the human simile sounds when spoken in the tongue of Wyrms whence the most common things to come through teeth are fire and death. "I think we should be as honest as we can here since I doubt the Lannister lackeys were so in the slightest."
***
However it is Varys who sets off first, following the vision in a scrying mirror to translocate into the sky above the glade through which Lord Mallery and his eldest son Edric ride. Finding them both together out in the wild only makes your suspicions grow, but Varys can see no mark of enchantment upon either and so you seek Yss' counsel, asking of the Great Serpent if any sorcery was used to guarantee the lord's unexpected change of heart and indeed if Denys was even now enthralled somewhere in Castamere. The answers you receive are not what you had expected...
"On the one hand it is good the Lannisters did not stoop to enchanting other lords or their sons to do their bidding," you muse half to yourself and half to Ser Richard and your mother as the three of you leave the temple. "If that had been discovered it could have started a war early."
"But they did use magic to give their words more weight," your mother replies. "Perhaps that was enough."
"No," you shake your head. "I've used those sorts of spells more times than I can count and they don't change deeply held values lightly, nor make one act against his own self-interest so blatantly. There is something we are not seeing."
"Or not hearing," she adds. "I'll speak to Minisa, be sure your Varys does not lose sight of her husband in the meantime."
Varys of course could no more lose sight of several horses in a forest than one might lose sight of a idol's retinue at high holy day, and having little else to do until your mother returns with news from Lady Mallery you listen in on her comments through the mind link.
"The boy, Edric, is miserable, angry at his father from the way he answers the simplest question, but mostly at himself. He barely seems to be present much less interested in hunting..." Her voice cuts off.
"Well... well, looks like the hatchling has fangs after all, he just shouted at his father for sending his brother away, to which the lord replied something about curses. I think he might not have the highest opinion of sorcerers, whatever the most recent doctrine is."
"Anything else?" you send intrigued.
"Sadly nothing that would not fit in the mouth of any half-grown boy the world over." You are not entirely sure how Varys manages to insert a whine into her mental voice.
"'You don't know anything about what happened, you don't know anything!'"
Thankfully you do not have to piece together the mystery entirely from the argument. Your mother soon returns, looking grim though determined to see the end of this. "That poor woman," she sighs. "It seems Lord Mallery has conceived a dislike for his younger son after something happened to both Edric and Denys in the woods, something that left the younger with magic while the older had night terrors, for a time he even refused to go outside the keep. The boys hid the magic until it was discovered by a servant..."
"Leading to the lord concluding that the magic was somehow to blame for the harm done to Edric," you conclude. Likely as not they had a brush with some otherworldly horror, the sort that can awaken magic slumbering in the blood, but to a man of deep faith possibly now fearing that his sorcerer son seeks to usurp his brother that might be cause enough to send Denys off as soon as the Lannister mage recognized what he was. "How is Lady Mallery?"
"Coldly furious," she hesitates a moment. "To be entirely honest I do not think I would trust her around her husband's wine cup. She was more inclined than him to read the Imperial Times, the accusations of Tywin enslaving his mages you see."
"But since she did it in secret she couldn't confront the Golden Shields with it," Ser Richard finishes wearily. "What a bloody tangle this is."
"It's not bloody yet, and I would rather keep it that way Ser," you reply firmly.
What do you do next?
[] Confront Lord Mallery
-[] Write in
[] Try to speak to Edric alone to find out just what happened that day in the woods
-[] Write in
[] Write in
OOC: Here we are, some family intrigue to unravel.
