Common Knowledge and Uncommon Folk
Seventeenth Day of the First Month 293 AC
Two figures faintly silhouetted against the whitewashed houses moved quickly almost furtively down Barber's Street. While most of the prosperous gods-fearing residents had long since gone abed, those still peeking through the shutters would have found nothing particularly exceptional about the matter. Ever since the new maegi healer had set up shop in the old Pricker place after Old Man Pricker did himself in, a veritable parade of furtive visitors had passed down the street to seek sorcerous healing for their ills, most coming cloaked and hooded under the cover of night... By all accounts they left healthier than they had gone in, but who knew what dreadful price the foreign wizard asked for his cures? Most people preferred honest barbers and butchers for their healing still, and a good thing too or the other inhabitants of the street would come out a good bit poorer for it.
***
"Remind me again why we are here at this ungodly hour to see this healer when we can take whatever shape we like and we know his door is open day and night?" Tyene Sand groused to her companion.
"Because the mage might take us using glamours or other arcane trickery amiss," Garin replied sounding far too cheerful and awake for the Dornishwoman's liking.
"But not other kinds of trickery, eh?" Tyene asked. Truth be told she was rather proud of the disguises she had managed to craft from purely mundane means, subtle a skill she did not often get to practice. It certainly was not as easy to pass herself as a boy as it had been four years or so ago, but the bright true-silver armor and fanciful helm she wore beneath cloak and hood did wonders to help her play the part of a fresh-faced young knight.
After all, who ever heard of a woman armed and armored for war? she thought with no small amount of irony.
Why you would have to travel all the way south of the Red Mountains to find such a fantastical creature?
"Are you alright there, m'lord?" Garin jested, playing up a truly atrocious nasal accent that owed more to the polyglot patois Braavosi slums than anything a Reachman might say.
"Servants should be seen and not heard... especially when they sound like
that," she countered primly.
The house they sought had a handsome green painted door with a polished brass knocker in the shape of a hound's head. The servant was polite and prompt too and obviously used to late night visitors, but as they entered Tyene felt an chill like ice water down her back,or eyes on the back of her head.
The master of the house seemed a kindly old man, his eyes twinkling merrily beneath bushy brows that almost joined in the middle. His robes were rich and obviously tailored to an eastern cut, though Tyene could not quite pinpoint his city of origin. Some had said Qohor, others Qarth, and there had even been a fellow who swore the healer was from Yi Ti of all places. To most of the people of Ashford, anything east of the Narrow Sea might as well have been the inside of a child's tale, to judge from the tales they would cheerfully swallow and spread.
Then she surreptitiously called on the power of the earring hidden beneath her helm... and saw the true face of 'the maegi from the east'. Had she been any less skilled in deception, any less inured to the horrors that lurked beneath the placid surface of the world, the smile would have slipped off her face to be replaced with a look of revulsion.
Pink glistening skin emerged from the crimson folds of the robes, ending in a curricular saw-toothed mouth like an enormous leach, twitching curiously as it moved its head from her to Garin beneath its veil of illusion.
"What seems to have afflicted you, young Ser?" the thing asked, and in her left ear she heard the kindly old man where in her right it was a horrible fleshy gurgle that betrayed a hunger for more than flesh or blood.
It seems that the mystery knight and servant of the dragon prince might be making 'his' appearance a little ahead of schedule, Tyene thought, as she 'accidentally' bumped her left knee against the table to signal to Garin that their host was likely a foe.
She considered trying to interrogate the creature without it knowing, but quickly discarded the notion. After all, she did not even know what manner of being it was beyond the dark tales she had heard and discounted these past days and the sheer visceral horror the sight of it awoke in her, and that alone was not reason to judge... but those same tales gave her just the notion how how to go about things.
"Can you treat consumption?" she asked abruptly with all the tactlessness expected of a young knight out of his depth.
"I can treat all the ills of the body with spells and philthers... but at a cost, and magic's cost is not always easy. Who is the patient?"
The Dornishwoman promptly launched herself into a tale of woe involving a sickly brother and the trials he had to live through, feeling slightly bad for drawing inspiration from her father's recollections of what aunt Elia was like growing up.
"Bring the child here on the morrow, I shall have to examine myself and see if he is willing to bear the cost," the thing answered.
"Can I not bear it for him?" Tyene asked with feigned earnestness.
"Perhaps... perhaps... Tell me, ser knight, have your gods been a comfort in these trying times, or would you be looking for a different patron to lead you to greatness?"
"I care nothing for such vainglory..." Then as though the words were torn from her lips, "And I would serve not her god if he were kindly..."
"Alas," the false healer sighed. "I cannot promise you kindness for such is not the nature of the Great Powers, but honor certainly, aid for service such as no mortal lord can match..."
Thus, slowly Tyene allowed herself to be 'tempted' step upon step, she could almost admire the skill as a swordsman might admire a worthy challenger. When the parchment inked in blood and brimstone was set before her, the letters kindly arranging themselves into Common, she did not gloat nor call out the game. There was no point... she merely bound the fiend in chains of light and fire that it could not escape.
"That won't hold it long!" she shouted to Garin, not that he needed much encouragement. The shadows twisted, then bright shone his blades of dragonsteel and adamant as they spilled the fiend's life blood.
Drawn by the sounds of battle, the manservant who had let them in entered. The look on his face as he beheld the pile of tainted faintly twitching flesh that had once been his 'master' was not one of anger or fear, but incredulous joy. "How... you killed him... 'e said he couldn't be killed."
"Devils lie," Tyene answered plainly. "Do you know where the rest of
those are kept...?" She motioned at the infernal contract.
"Yes, in the laboratory, this way..." the man replied as though in a daze.
Thus it was that a great many alchemical substances and devices mysteriously vanished before 'the Knight of the Leaping Flame' announced the fiend's death to the local notables, asking for no reward and offering no name, only 'his' allegiance to the True King and heir of the Conqueror.
Tyene had not been tempted to keep the soulbinding contracts... not much in any case.
OOC: Much like a stopped clock, sometimes the peasants are right.
