Lillandra

They had little trouble finding the entrance to the Dwellmer -- it was a gigantic, cavernous tunnel, only about a hundred yards from the city's southern gate. One of the main roads led directly into it; it was big enough to allow for a horse and carriage.

It had an ominous look about it, though -- a huge, gaping maw, opening up into the depths of the earth, right in the middle of this otherwise ordinary neighborhood. He frowned at it.

"It was your idea," Lillandra reminded him.

His frown deepened. He turned to her. "Do you have any magic that might be useful, in helping us hunt down this salamander?"

"You know how my magic works," she said. "I need time and materials to make zemi." She put on a thoughtful look. "I might be able to create a Candle of Hours with a twig and a ball of candle wax, but it would take about a half an hour."

"A Candle of Hours?"

"A light that won't go out. It's a very simple zemi." She looked into the tunnel. "But if there's one thing we'll need down there, it's light."

"True. But where are we going to find any candle wax?"

They ended up scrounging through a pile of garbage in a back alley. Once again, Arai found himself shaking his head at the ridiculousness of the situation -- Lillandra, the century-old Queen of the Night, and Arai, her implacable opponent, reduced to digging through the garbage behind a general store in order to find a bit of candle wax.

They eventually found an old lamp that someone had thrown out, which happened to have a bit of wax at the bottom. Lillandra scooped up the wax, dabbed it on the tip of a tree branch (collected from an oak tree that Arai had spotted a few blocks away) and spent about twenty minutes staring at it, occasionally tilting her head this way or that, as though she were trying to solve some kind of problem.

"What exactly are you doing there?" Arai asked.

"I'm performing a calculation," she said, her eyes fixed on the branch. "Don't distract me."

Arai quieted down, and after a few minutes, she nodded to herself. "There, it's done." She held up the branch, and the tip of it, where she had placed the wax, immediately began to shine with a very intense light. It was so bright, in fact, that he had to shield his eyes. "That will be useful," Arai agreed. "How long will it last?"

"Several hours. But I can always recharge it by performing another calculation."

"How does that work, anyway? That calculation business."

"I thought I explained all that."

"You explained the steps involved in doing magic. You gather magia out of the air, hold it in place, do this calculation thing, and then release it as a spell...but you didn't explain how, exactly, you're doing it."

She shrugged. "Calculation is an intuitive thing, like painting a picture. Manipulating magia, adjusting its flow, connecting one thread to another, shaping it with your emotions, trying to guess where it will go when you release it..." She shook her head. "It's impossible to explain to someone who can't even sense magia."

"Is it difficult?"

"Not for me," she said. "I enjoy the challenge. But as I told you before, for most sorcerers calculation is the most difficult part of spellcasting. Only a handful are capable of sketching out the kinds of complicated spells I use to make my zemi."

And that, Arai supposed, was probably how the Night Queen had managed to conquer Velon. It took her a long time to create her zemi, but her magic was much more useful, and could produce much more complicated effects, than that of any other sorcerer in Velon -- most of whom were limited to throwing fire from their fingers or levitating a few feet into the air. She really was a prodigy.

Now with the Candle of Hours in their possession, they returned to the tunnel, and with some apprehension, descended into the Dwellmer. The road leading into the tunnel was well-worn, and someone had hung lamps from the ceiling; even without the Candle of Hours, they would have had little difficulty seeing where they were going. They followed the road perhaps two or three hundred yards, and eventually arrived at a huge open area, a gigantic gallery with a stalactite ceiling, and containing a large underground lake. To Arai's shock, there were literally hundreds of people in this cavern -- some sleeping on blankets and bedrolls, some milling about, some lined up to receive bowls of gruel from a table that had been set up in their midst. He saw women knitting, and men sleeping, and old codgers playing cards, but it was a very dismal sort of place, and except for a few oblivious children, almost no one looked happy to be down here. The expressions he saw were grim.

"People with nothing left to lose," Lillandra muttered.

Arai went to the table where the bowls of gruel were being doled out. "Excuse me," he asked one of the women working there. "We're looking for a guide to take us deeper into the catacombs. Can you recommend anyone?"

The woman studied him. "It's not safe to go down into the depths. Haven't you heard there's a salamander down there?"

"I have heard that, yes," he acknowledged.

She shrugged. "It's your life to lose, I suppose. You want a guide?" She pointed to a lone figure standing upon the shore of the underground lake. The figure, who appeared to be contemplating the glittering waters, was wearing a hooded cloak, and was facing away from them. "Try her."

Arai thanked the woman and approached the hooded figure, who was no bigger than a child. He tapped the little person on the shoulder. "Excuse me."

The figure lifted the hood and turned to face them. Arai blinked. "Shell?"

"Eeep!" The elf girl's eyes went wide, and she immediately tried to make a break for it, but Arai managed to grab the hem of her cloak and hold on.

"We meet again," Arai said. "What are the odds, eh?"

She struggled. "Let me go! Let me go!"

"I'll let you go," he growled, for the second time in as many days, "when you give me back my money."

"I don't have your money," she cried. "It's gone."

"What did you do with it?"

"I owed a silver to the baker," she said, "and a copper to Roggett, and I spent the rest of it on this cloak."

It was a nice cloak, and it did indeed appear to be new. "What about your brother?"

"I don't have a brother," she admitted.

Lillandra snorted. "What did I tell you?"

"You lied to us," Arai said, "and then, after I went to the trouble of buying you a meal, you picked my pocket."

"I was desperate."

"Desperate for a new cloak?"

She scowled at him. "I do what I have to do to survive."

"We all do," Arai said. "That doesn't give you the right to steal."

"Try living down here for a while," she scoffed. "You'll change your mind soon enough." But then she looked frightened. "What...what are you going to do to me?"

"I'm going to put you to work," he said. "You're going to be our guide."

"What?" Her eyes fell on Arai's sword. "Who are you people, anyway? What are your names?"

"I'm Arai," he said, "and this is Lillandra, the Queen of the Night."

"The...Queen of the Night? What does that mean?"

"She's a witch," he explained. "A very powerful one. Trust me, you don't want to make her angry."

She looked skeptical. "A witch? You're kidding."

"How well do you know these underground passages?" Arai asked.

"As well as anyone," she said guardedly.

"Good. Let's get going."

"Where?"

"You're going to help us find this chthonic salamander that's been terrorizing the Dwellmer," he said.

She stared at him. "You're crazy."

"And if you don't," he went on, "I'm going to turn you over to the guards."

"You wouldn't."

"You help us, and we'll help you," he said. "It's as simple as that."

Once again, Lillandra pulled him aside. "This is a terrible idea."

"What makes you say that?"

"She knows these tunnels better than we do, and she has every reason to lead us astray. We can't trust her."

Arai couldn't deny that. "I still think she could be useful to us."

"You can't trust her," she insisted.

"I don't trust her," he said. "Any more than I trust you. But we need a guide; there's no way around that." He turned back to Shell. "Captain Bagra is offering forty pieces of silver to anyone who can kill this salamander," he said. "I'll give you five of those silvers if you lead us to its lair."

"You're joking. Have you ever seen a salamander? They're huge! They can bite a grown man in half. It'd take a dozen men to kill one of those things, and that's only if they managed to catch it by surprise."

"You underestimate us," Arai said flatly.

Shell looked at them incredulously. "Who are you people?"

"I'm Arai," he said again. "The son of Hetsu, the captain of the Steelmen, and the leader of the Velonese rebellion. And this is Lillandra, the Queen of the Night, the Shadow of Velon, and the most powerful witch in the known world."

The elf girl frowned at Lillandra. "Are you really a witch?" she asked.

"Yes."

Her frown deepened. She gave them both a long, hard look, folded her arms over her chest, and after a few moments said, "Ten silvers."

"Six."

"Eight."

"Seven?"

"Done," she said, reaching out and shaking Arai's hand. "I'll lead you to its lair, but that's it; I'm not going to help you fight this thing. In fact if I even catch a glimpse of it I'm turning tail."

"Fair enough."

"You're making a very big mistake," Lillandra told Arai. "She's going to lead us straight to our doom."

"Maybe," he agreed. "Maybe we were headed there anyway."