Preparations

I returned to the Lower Ward, to the Great Foundry, to see what my receipt would get me.

When I gave the receipt to a clerk, he returned with a metal framework, which I unfolded. It was a shimmering piece of filigreed metalwork. It looked almost gauzy, sharp edges protruding from it. It must have been important if I left it behind for myself.

Then it struck me. I must not have been the only incarnation to learn of the importance of the night-hag Ravel. This item had been commissioned by another incarnation, the ‘practical’ one, and whatever else he may have been, he was extremely clever. It would have been just like him to devise a plan that would take decades to reach fruition. The clerk at the foundry had said the receipt looked like it was a hundred years old, which if he was right implied the project had already been nearly fifty years old when my ‘practical’ incarnation created the legacy to hold the receipt.

And if this was a means to reach Ravel, it could only be a portal. More, I already knew what the key was to open it, a ‘piece of Ravel.’ I knew just where to get the key, as well. I folded the portal back together, and stowed it. The Foundry clerk, who had been staring at the portal trying to figure out what it was, would probably never learn anything more. I smiled at the thought; it was just as well for him.

I hurried from the Foundry, headed back to the Clerk’s Ward, and the Brothel of Slaking Intellectual Lusts. As we entered, Morte asked Grace a question.

“So, Grace… you uh, have any sisters?”

“Thousands.” was her reply.

“Give me a moment to be delirious with joy.”

Despite the urgency of my self-imposed errand, I decided to visit Yves the Tale-Chaser first. I was curious if Nordom had any conception of what a tale was, and I asked him to share a story.

“In the 13.7th Revolution, we were required to fix gear and cog sub-set thirty-one in the fifth ring of Mechanus. We removed the obstruction and the gear turned as per its normal speed. Upon completing our task, we were then returned to the Source.” Morte exploded as Nordom finished.

“What in the hells was that, you stupid polygon?! That’s the most boring story I ever heard!” Nordom replied in his maddeningly even voice.

“It was what took place. With embellishments, of course.”

“Embellishments?” Morte gasped with disbelief.

“I thought the return to Source was a particularly fitting image to close the tale.”

Yves smiled. “A fine tale, Nordom. And now I've one for you and your companion… ‘Flowers and Sensates’ ”

“There was a man who read much of flowers — essays, treatises, biological texts, poetry — and as such considered himself well-learned in the way of flowers. One day, he came across a half-blind gardener who tended the Sensate gardens. Who was blind in the way of flowers?”

While Nordom and Yves had been talking, I had been examining the magical mirror which had also been in the ‘practical’ incarnations legacy. Seeing it, Yves offered to share the tale ‘Fanged Mirror of Yehcir-Eya.’

The Fanged Mirrors of Yehcir-Eya were the hope of an empire.

The last Great Matriarch of the Sea of Black Sand, Yehcir-Eya, found herself slowly dying. Surrounded by rival nations that wished to claim her lands for her own, Yehcir-Eya sought to choose one of the Lesser Matriarchs from the surrounding nations and enter into an alliance, preserving her nation against invasion. Yet she knew not which of the Lesser Matriarchs to trust.

Consulting her oracles, she asked them for a means of testing the hearts of the Lesser Matriarchs. They told her to travel to the edges of the Sea of Black Sand — there, where the shifting black sand gave way to slate, she would find what she sought.

The Great Matriarch journeyed many leagues, travelling on foot until she reached the edges of the Great Sea. There, her feet fell upon a great plate of silvered glass the size of a courtyard embedded in the floor of the desert.

Her oracles instructed her to cut the great glass and fashion thirty-three mirrors. These mirrors were sent to the Lesser Matriarchs of the surrounding nations as gifts. The mirrors would test their hearts, the oracles predicted.

No one is certain what happened on that final night, but with every mirror that was delivered, a Lesser Matriarch fell dead. There were wild tales of spectral forms that crawled from the bodies of the Lesser Matriarchs as they gazed upon the mirrors, and the howling cries as they strangled their owners.

In response to the assassination of their leaders, the surrounding nations attacked the nation of Yehcir-Eya and razed it to the ground. The Fanged Mirrors of Yehcir-Eya were scattered and lost.

According to several planar scholars, the Fanged Mirrors had the ability to cause a soul to slip from its owner and take on physical form. Whether it was because the Lesser Matriarchs were consumed by greed and a desire for conquest or whether the great plate of silvered glass found on the edges of the Sea of Black Sand was evil in itself, the mirrors created a vicious reflection of their owners. Their souls took on substance and killed their owners.

When she was done, I asked if she knew if Kesai-Serris was Ravel’s daughter. She replied with another tale.

“Once upon a time, an elderly man from the Clerk’s Ward vanished, and his body could not be found. To conceal it, the murderer buried beneath him another body in the cemetery. A diviner told of where the body could be found, and so they dug, and uncovered a body, but not that of the elderly man. They were confounded. They were forced to release the man, and it was not until they continued to dig to re-bury the older man’s body that they found the second body.”

“Sometimes one must dig deeply to find the truth.”

I decided to talk directly to Kesai-Serris, who I had previously learned was a daughter of Ravel. I asked her directly if Ravel was in fact her mother. Kesai suddenly bared her teeth, her eyes narrowing to slits of blazing crimson.

“What?! Where'd you hear such a thing?”

“Ecco told me.”

“Ridiculous! I think I'd know if that wicked hag was my own mother! Now stop bothering me about it.”

“Who is your mother, then?”

“I don’t know, all right? My father raised me; I never knew her. But do I look like a night hag, to you?!” This was too important to spare her feelings, and I was absolutely frank in my response.

“Well… there is the skin… and the eyes… and maybe the teeth, too…”

She refused to even admit the possibility, so I decided to follow another path.

I talked to several of the other prostitutes about Kesai, and finally got a lead that might get Kesai to admit to her parentage. I looked up Kimasxi Adder-Tongue, and braved her rough tongue to ask her some questions.

“I heard you’re Kesai-Serris’ half-sister. Is that true?”

“Yes, I'm related to that chubby, mewling, hook-nosed day-dreamer. Same father, different mothers. So?”

“I was hoping you could help me find out if Kesai is really Ravel’s daughter.” Kimasxi frowned at me.

“Normally I'd be loathe to help you like this, but I've a feeling it'd upset that flirting, preening doxy good and well. Tell her to ask our father… he’s a powerful cambion, so she ought to be able to call to him right then and there. That'll get you your answer.”

“Cambion?”

“Yes, cambion.” Kimasxi rolled her eyes. “Didn’t hear me the first time? Ears all stopped up with last of your brains running out of them?”

“I'm asking what one is…”

“My, you’re Clueless.” She shook her head sadly, tutting all the while. “A half-fiend, berk; sort of like you… but you’re half dung, I think. You smell it, at any rate.”

“Better than half you, Kimasxi.”

“You wish you were half-Kimasxi, sod… even if you ended up with a goat’s bum on your shoulders it'd be better than that scarred-up face of yours.”

I hurriedly left, not wishing to endure any more of her verbal flaying, and found Kesai again. Kesai had lost her anger at me, although that wouldn’t have been enough to stop me. I shared my new information with her.

“Kesai, I talked to Kimasxi. She told me she’s your half-sister, and that Ravel’s your mother.” Kesai snarled, her eyes blazing with malice.

“That… that… hells, how I loathe that woman! Why would you even believe that sort of tripe?”

“She says that you deny it, and in fact may not know it, but that it’s true. She said you could ask your father… that he would tell you.” Kesai stared at me silently for a time.

“Give me a moment.” She turned from me, and began to mutter softly… the air seemed to shimmer around her slightly, and filled with a coppery smell, like warm blood… I strained, trying to overhear what she was saying.

“Haughazanenel, Banished Prince of Ithag, Marquis of the Bloody Shadow, my father, hear me, for I call upon you…”

“Yes, beloved father, it is I, Kesai-Serris. I would bid you answer me one question, a question I've asked you time and again…”

“Yes, beloved father. I cannot bear to have another ask me and not know myself. You must tell me… I have asked for nothing save this. Tell me, I beg of you…”

“Y-yes… yes, beloved father, I understand. I thank you… farewell…”

“Well? What did he have to say?” Kesai remained turned away from me for a moment before finally facing me.

“I did not want to believe that wicked hag may have been my mother. I have lived long, I do not appear to age, and have… disturbing dreams, sometimes.” She shuddered. “But still… I do not wish to be the inheritor of the evil she caused, nor draw the Lady’s gaze as my mother did. Such evil things she did!”

“Tell me what you know of her, will you?”

“I heard she would pose impossible riddles to people, riddles she could answer but no one else could. She would devour the person if they answered incorrectly, or leave them dangling in her horrifying gardens as examples to all. Those few who somehow escaped she tormented in their dreams, riding them like steeds, breaking their wills and hurling their souls into the colorless oblivion of the Gray Waste…”

“Her magic was said to be beyond anything most had ever seen; it was imagination woven from nightmare and given substance. Stone and solid shapes bent to her will like soft clay; the laws of the Planes would bend beneath her feet and from nothing she could weave illusion… and from illusion, weave realities that could horrify and kill and confound.”

“She was a mistress of all the Dark Arts, mistress and master of them all. She hounded a Guvner that dared quote Sigil law to her with shadows that devoured him all but his tongue, his fingers and the flesh of his face. She turned Mercykillers inside out, and shattered buildings of those who displeased her. Terrible, terrible powers were at her command.”

“She changed her shape like water, and would use it to destroy some for amusement, and to steal knowledge from others. She was a monster, like all that has been spawned from the Gray Waste.”

“In the end, she threatened to open the Cage and let the fury of the Planes come rolling in, like a wave. Fortunately, she did not succeed. She existed solely to cause malice…”

“I do not know if she is dead… but I know, now, that she was my mother.” Kesai’s shoulders slumped, and her head hung down. “Oh, that I had tears, so that I could weep with sorrow!” She suddenly fell into my arms, shuddering as if she were wracked with sobs. For a time Kesai simply stood there, clinging to me… but then she pushed away.

“Thank you, but… I'll be fine. I just need some to time think about it, that’s all.”

“I hate to ask this now… but I need you to give me a piece of yourself, Kesai. The portal key to Ravel’s maze is a piece of her, and you are of her blood. It is close enough.”

“You intend to seek her out?” Her surprise quickly changed to an expression of wariness. “What… what would you need of me?”

“Your blood, most likely. Only a drop or two, I'm sure.”

Kesai nodded, and took a handkerchief and gingerly pricked the tip of her finger on one of her fangs. After letting several drops of blood soak into the cloth, she gave it to me. “You’re placing yourself in grave danger, you know. Even if the stories of my mother are greatly exaggerated, she’s horribly powerful and completely evil. Good luck.”