With the ownership of Gaenyn’s sword settled, Kachen, Heppa, and Tric turn their attention to the research projects they have been working on for Thrandolil. After all, that is why they arranged to meet in South Tower at the start of autumn. The abandoned manor is a secluded enough spot for this conversation, but even so, Tric sends Mate off to do a quick sweep for unfriendly ears.
Heppa, meanwhile, pulls out her folio. She scribbles down new thoughts on magic theory and dangerous swords next to a sketch of a pitchfork and then finds a clear enough spot for notes on whatever Kachen has to say. “If you want to write anything down, we can deliver a letter to Daddy,” she offers.
Kachen declines. “I would prefer a verbal exchange. Paper has its weaknesses, which is why I didn’t want to correspond by falcon to begin with. Letters can be intercepted and lost and…” He deflates a bit and adds, “Just like my journals.” Clearly their fate remains a source of stress for him. “You can take back to Thrandolil the information that I did locate the circlet. It is with my things that were taken by the goblins, but I was able to find it. It was at Mal-Ravanal’s stronghold.”
“You went into Mal-Ravanal’s stronghold?” Heppa echoes in disbelief.
Kachen sighs. “I can walk right in.”
At this juicy tidbit, Tric gives up scanning the skies for Mate’s return and sits down with the others.
“What is the circlet for?” Heppa asks.
“Or what does it do?” Tric throws in.
“The magical signature I got off it was a command presence,” Kachen says, taking the questions in reverse order. “What is it? Some sort of elvish jewelry. It’s got an amethyst embedded in it.”
“Did Thrandolil say what he was planning to do with it?” Tric asks.
“Thrandolil had some theories on using it as a conduit for repulsing undead. I’m not really certain how he intends to do that. I do not know what approach would use such a piece in that way. However, since it is an elvish item, there could be things about it that I was not able to discern from my arcane analysis.” He gives a more detailed description of the circlet, including the braided gold setting around the amethyst.
“That sounds like an elvish noble’s circlet,” Heppa says. “Anador was partial to amethysts.”
Tric reaches into his backpack and pulls out a small sack. He fishes out a piece of jewelry that his grandfather gave him in Wesmere. “Designs like this?”
“Yes, that’s similar to the mount that the gem was in on the circlet,” Kachen confirms. “Oh, so you were also sent to recover similar materials.” He holds out a hand. “May I?”
“I don’t think this is magical, but feel free to check it out.” Tric hands over the piece.
After a moment, Kachen hands it back. “You are correct, this piece is not.”
“No, they belonged to Tric’s father, my uncle,” Heppa says.
“Long story,” Tric says.
“Not very,” Heppa disagrees, breezing over all the aspects of Tric’s parentage that have caused him grief. “We’re cousins; it’s not that convoluted. Kachen isn’t one of the people we’re not supposed to talk about Anador around. That’s Daddy’s brother.”
Believing Tric to have studied at least some aspects of necromancy, Kachen turns to him and asks, “So is that why you personally are interested in these sorts of studies?”
“No. I never knew Anador. My understanding is he died shortly after I was born, cut down by undead.”
“He may have been cut down by undead, but that was not the end of him,” Kachen says.
“What do you mean?”
“The circlet was at Mal-Ravanal’s fortress.”
“Ooooooh. And it got from our forest to there somehow. Would some dark adept or necromancer have taken it? Why would they have taken this circlet? How was it useful to Mal-Ravanal or his lieutenants?” Tric asks.
“Do you think the lich raised him and took the whole thing?” Heppa asks.
“Well, I doubt it was Mal-Ravanal specifically,” Kachen replies, dismissing that notion.
“Anador was very magically talented but I don’t know if that carries over after death. Is there more value to using such a corpse?” Heppa is too caught up in the academic nature of the matter to think about her cousin’s feelings.
Tric finds the discussion rather unsettling, but he maintains an air of calm as Kachen answers at length. He speaks about revenants, draugs, and death knights, undead that take on a leadership role in the armies of necromancers and liches. They definitely retain some of the skills they had in life.
Heppa has many questions, of course. “But what would it take to raise something like a wraith? We fought one who used to be an elf in the Grey Woods. But it takes more than just an elf’s skeleton, right? Does how they die matter? There’s not some sort of magical way you have to die to become something like a revenant?”
“If a sufficiently skilled warrior dies and a necromancer or lich of advanced experience is around to re-equip them, that can be accomplished on the battlefield,” Kachen tells her. “They would retain some of their skills, but I’m not sure how much would linger magic-wise—separate, of course, from the magic of the undead. Certainly their military prowess would.”
“Where exactly did you find this in Mal-Ravanal’s fortress?” Tric asks. “Was it on a body? On an altar? Or was it just strewn about among the debris?”
“There was a storeroom of inactive forces,” Kachen answers. “I removed the circlet from one of them. So I suppose that was your father’s corpse.”
“It was an elf? Long ears?” Tric prods, looking for further confirmation.
“With all the decay…” Kachen shrugs. “It was not a very comfortable place to be. I didn’t linger.”
Tric nods in acceptance. “Thank you for sharing what I understand was also a trying experience for you. Even with, as you say, free passage.”
“It’s disturbing that he’s inactive,” Heppa murmurs.
“How large is this fortress compared to South Tower?” Tric asks. “Or is it hard to judge because it has fallen into decay?”
Kachen considers for the moment. “It is built into the mountain, so I am not sure. It is larger than the tower here, but it is smaller than the whole city. Have you ever seen the king’s palace in Weldyn?” Tric nods. He and Heppa got a glance at it through the trees when Ethiliel took them to the fancy park. “It’s approximately that size. Mal-Ravanal was extravagant in his use of power.”
“What would it take to torch a place like that?”
“It would attract a lot of attention,” Kachen cautions Tric.
“But if you had a sufficient supply of dwarvish black powder…” Heppa suggests.
“It would take something like that to actually collapse the structure,” Kachen agrees. “It is built mostly of stone.”
“I’ll file that away,” Tric says, already mulling over several approaches to get what he needs.
“And also I apparently need to find out about faerie fire,” Heppa grumbles, sounding annoyed. The outburst seems to come out of nowhere, but she has been pondering ways to deal with large groups of undead.
Kachen looks at Heppa, confused. “Oh, does it do more than the standard burning attack of elvish sorceresses?” he asks.
“I don’t know!” Heppa cries, chagrinned that this human knows more on the topic than she, an elf, does. “I didn’t finish my schooling.”
Trying to calm things down, Tric returns to the previous topic. He claps Kachen on the arm and tells him, “I’d like to thank you for reclaiming the circlet from—”
“Reclaiming it and then losing it,” Kachen says, downcast.
“You couldn’t do anything about that,” Tric consoles him.
Kachen looks up at Tric. “I had the opportunity to clean up. I could have done away with those inanimate corpses. I want you to know that the only reason I did not do anything about that stockpile was the exposure it would have caused for me. Mal-Ravanal’s lair is surrounded by swamps infested with saurians and goblins. I could not have collapsed the structure, but I could have set the bodies ablaze. But that would have drawn more attention than I personally could have dealt with.”
“Oh! I had thought the whole place was swarming with feral undead,” Tric says. “But that’s not the case?”
“Um… there are feral undead swarming elsewhere now…” Kachen says reluctantly.
“Yes, I gathered that. But at the time you were at the lair?” Tric presses. Kachen shakes his head no.
“That doesn’t sound like a job for one person,” Heppa tells Kachen, assuring him he made the right choice. “That doesn’t even sound like a job for a small army. That sounds like a job for a united force.”
“You said an army was amassing to deal with the orcs. Do you think they will continue and march further east?” Kachen asks.
“I don’t think we can convince them to do that,” Tric says. “But I do think a small team with enough explosives—”
“And paladins!” Heppa suggests.
“I don’t think paladins are good with explosives,” Tric points out.
“They’re good with the light magic,” Heppa clarifies.
“Yeah… but they might… not… get along well,” Tric says, glancing at Kachen.
“If there’s something that could unite elves and humans against a common foe, it’s undead,” Heppa counters.
“I don’t know if we can convince them that it’s still a threat. Hmm… Maybe we could say that we’ve scouted it and there are undead reserves there, so we need to bring the whole place down,” Tric muses.
“Does Thrandolil not intend to eventually go there anyway?” Kachen asks.
“He’s never mentioned it,” Tric says.
“He hasn’t? He asked me an awful lot of questions about it.”
“Did he?” Tric murmurs.
“Did Daddy use his name?” Heppa suddenly asks. “What did he tell you about the circlet?”
“He told me that it was an important elvish artifact. He described it to me and told me the conditions under which I was likely to find it.”
“But did he mention Anador’s name?” Heppa presses.
“He did not mention the name of the elf who wore it,” Kachen says. “But he clearly knew that a revenant had worn it.”
Heppa sees no reason to keep her family secrets from Kachen at this point. “Apparently, when my uncle died, Daddy—according to my mother—lost his acorns. Mother did some magic to erase Uncle Anador from Daddy’s memory. We weren’t allowed to speak of him in the house. I didn’t even know he existed until earlier this year! Her concern is that if we speak his name or even bring people in that might remind him, it will cause another mental breakdown. If he is actively searching for this circlet, that says to me that he at least remembers something and won’t have a breakdown. That’s why I’m asking if he seemed like he remembered his brother. That would be a lot to remember about Anador if his memories are all erased.”
“Well, maybe that circlet belonged to our grandfather or grandmother originally, and it was passed to Anador. So he could remember the circlet but not his brother?” Tric suggests.
“Thrandolil told me that he saw this circlet leave elvish possession,” Kachen says. “He saw the revenant who had the circlet on. So he did witness his brother as an undead on the field. Now, perhaps that sight is what caused his mental breakdown, but that is not a memory he has lost. He has that memory now. He spoke with me about this matter.”
“Mother may not have known about that,” Heppa says.
“And we don’t know the nature of the magics that were used on Uncle Thran’s mind,” Tric points out. “That’s no longer Anador when it’s raised as a revenant, so that memory could still be intact.”
“I know I didn’t finish school,” Heppa says, “and I definitely don’t condone erasing someone’s memory—especially Daddy’s—but I don’t think this is a common elvish practice.”
“Well, one does not normally see one’s close brother cut down on a battlefield and raised as a revenant,” Tric counters.
“My point is that I suspect that Mother may have hacked something together for a quick fix. It must have been a very customized spell, and I don’t know how accurate it was.”
“If great magics were worked but not maintained with fidelity, it is possible that some have unraveled,” Kachen suggests. “But I’m certainly not an expert in elvish magics.”
“Bodies heal,” Heppa says. “Unravel or no, his brain could have just healed from what the magical procedure did.”
“Whether or not Thrandolil knew that this circlet belonged to his brother, he knew of the circlet. And he felt that it was of sufficient importance and significance that it would turn the tide in his magical research,” Kachen says. “I think it is unlikely that he does not, on some level, know whose circlet this is.”
“When we get back to the forest, we should just ask Uncle Thran why he wanted the circlet and how much he knows about it,” Tric suggests. “Such as what its lineage is.”
Heppa is fine with that. “It’s going to force the issue when Grandmother and Grandfather come to visit, anyway.”
Tric tosses the piece of jewelry in his hand and snatches it from the air. “Or maybe this will similarly jog his memory. I don’t know if that’s a good idea or a bad idea. Ultimately, it’s going to Nasir, but we can still show it to Uncle Thran.”
“Mother’s going to kill me,” Heppa mutters.
“Now, now, I’m sure the worst she’ll do is banish you,” Kachen jests dryly. He may not know Lady Penna personally, but she was on the council that tried him.