At Xylox's suggestion, the members of the group had separated, so as to maximise the chance of gleaning relevant information about General Quelgrum; they were to meet at a stone obelisk in the town centre in five hours' time. Each member of the team was expected to garner at least one relevant fact concerning the mysterious General.
For a while, Grimm wondered just how to pose appropriate and useful questions without arousing suspicion. He decided to engage some of the Grivense townspeople in casual discourse, including the apparently innocuous word 'general' in his speech, while using his Mage Sight to study the aura of each person to whom he was talking. It made him uneasy to do so, but he guessed this was the only way to elicit the information he required without giving away his true purpose.
It took some effort to approach each stranger whilst maintaining a spontaneous, innocent, carefree air, but Grimm managed to do so.
"Greetings, friend; a lovely day, is it not?" he carolled cheerfully to the thirtieth person or so, a surly-looking, one-armed individual sitting at an isolated knife and sword stall.
The knife-seller shrugged. "It's all right, I suppose. Have you come to buy, or just to pass the time of day?"
Grimm smiled. "That depends on the quality of your wares, good stallholder. I find myself in need of a decent hunting knife, like that one."
He indicated a blade near the front of the display. It was a fine piece of workmanship, with an ebony haft and a blade of fine-grained blue steel with a gold inlay in the shape of a fire-breathing dragon. It looked very expensive.
At once, pale-green tendrils of avarice flickered through the stallholder's aura, and the man's smile showed that he sensed the prospect of a lucrative sale.
"Ah, yes, that's a lovely piece of work, Lord Mage; you have a keen eye for quality. It was one of the last pieces forged by the great Amar Strufel before he died. Blades like this are rarely seen since the death of Amar, I assure you. Please, pick it up and feel the fine balance in the knife. Note the keen edge. Such a blade will stay sharp when inferior examples would become dull and notched."
Grimm did as the stallholder suggested. The man had not lied; the workmanship was superb. He hefted the blade, turned it this way and that and rubbed his forefinger along the wide blade. The steel bore the texture of the finest silk, a texture he knew well from his youth in the smithy.
"It is indeed splendid," he said, "a marvellous piece of work. I have an idea of the prices of blades for general use, but I imagine this would cost a little more."
Grimm noted a definite surge in the knife-seller's emotion at the use of the word 'general'.
Interesting, he thought. Perhaps I'm getting somewhere here.
"Of course, the knife is a little more expensive than your ordinary blade," the stallholder said, with the confident patter of a salesman who senses a big sale. "Nonetheless, it is a bargain at three gold pieces; you will never have need of another. Three golds; say it quickly. Not too much for a piece of this quality, is it?"
"Indeed, the offer does seem tempting," Grimm said, rubbing his bearded chin. "I had not expected to come upon such a fine blade so easily, without having to fight through a crowd of eager buyers. It makes a pleasant change to be able to do so, rather than to have to wait in a general line."
Grimm saw a massive, unmistakable spike of naked fear flower in the stallholder's aura before it was subsumed by the swarming tentacles of avarice. As the knife-seller opened his mouth to close the sale, Grimm looked around himself to verify that nobody was close, gathered his will into a tight knot in his sensorium and projected it at the vendor with the force of a cannonball. No magical word or gesture was necessary; this was a naked contest of wills, and the mage felt confident of success.
He needed a fair amount of energy in order to crush the hapless man's will, but he did not begrudge it.
After a few moments, the knife-seller's eyes became blank, staring orbs and his body relaxed.
"Your will is mine," Grimm droned. "You will do as I command."
"I'll do as you command," was the lifeless response, devoid of personality.
"What do you know of General Sleafel Quelgrum?" Grimm asked, in a pleasant, conversational tone.
"I sell weapons to his army," the one-armed man replied. "I make little, if any, profit from the sales, but he isn't a man to be trifled with. He frightens me. I'm not supposed to tell anybody about him."
"Do you know what his interest might be in controlling a group of Guild Mages?"
"No. He has an army, but I don't know anything about any mages."
Grimm paused a moment as a man-at-arms strode towards the stall, but the guard seemed uninterested in purchasing weapons, and he passed on by.
"Does the General, or one of his acolytes, buy the weapons in person, or do you ship them to him?"
"He made the first few purchases in person. I think that was just so he could scare me; it worked. Since then, I have had the blades and other weapons shipped directly to him at Glabra."
"Glabra? Where is that?" Grimm asked.
"It's thirty miles to the northwest of here, as the crow flies but, of course, I have to send the wagons around the Shest Mountains, through the Grunet Badlands. That adds another forty miles to the trip. I lost several good men there; they got sick and died."
Grimm had read of the Grunet Badlands during his researches. He knew that a vile, wasting sickness resided in the desolate region; a reputed legacy of the Final War.
He furrowed his brow. From his limited knowledge of the local geography, there seemed to be a far more direct route.
"Why don't you ship over the mountains?" he asked, puzzled. "That way, you could avoid the Badlands."
"I can't get a wagon train through the mountain pass," the knife-seller replied, his eyes still glassy and dispassionate. "A pack-horse might get through, I suppose, but not a caravan of heavily-laden carts. The General wants his weapons on demand, and I'm scared to refuse him. After I sent a few loads to him, he gave me some metal… clicky things he said would help in Grunet. When it clicks a lot, you move until it clicks less; then you don't get so sick. I don't lose nearly so many men now."
The knife-seller's talk of 'clicky things' meant nothing to Grimm but, from what the vendor had said, crossing the mountains on horseback seemed to be a valid means of access to Glabra.
"How far is Glabra from the other side of the mountain pass?"
"I don't know," the ensorcelled man admitted. "But my men tell me they can see the General's camp from miles away. There's a great big curved wall you can't miss. It should be easy to find."
Grimm decided he was unlikely to glean much more from the knife-seller. He hoped Xylox would approve of the information he had gathered.
The mage glanced at a large clock-face on a nearby building; he was supposed to pick up the girl from the guardhouse in ten minutes.
Drawing a deep breath, he began to withdraw the sharp strands of his will from the glassy-eyed stallholder. As the first vague signs of self-awareness began to show on the man's face, Grimm said, "You will remember nothing of what has just passed between us. All you know is that I am interested in the blade. Is that understood?"
The one-armed man squirmed as Grimm lanced into his mind a blade keener than any on his stall.
"You only want to buy the knife," he moaned, as if caught in the crossfire of pain and ecstasy. Grimm sighed in relief as he drew his mind back into his own head. The knife-seller was disorientated for a few moments, but he soon gathered his wits with a shake of his head.
"What was I saying? Oh, yes. You will never find a blade of this quality for such a low price," he said, recovering his confident sales patter. "It is a bargain at three golds."
"I might pay three if you were to include a good quality leather scabbard," countered Grimm, maintaining an even tone despite the painful pounding in his temples.
"Three-fifty," the stallholder replied.
"Three-twenty-five. That is my final offer."
"Are you trying to steal the food from my children's mouths?" the vendor cried, but he paused for a few moments. "Very well; the blade is yours. You drive a hard bargain, Lord Mage."
Grimm was out of breath by the time he reached the guardhouse, a squalid little ivy-infested rotunda at the southern side of the market square, and he took a few moments to compose himself. He made to open the heavy oak door when he saw a movement in the bushes to the left of the building.
"Lord Mage!" A harsh whisper came from the greenery. It was, of course, the guardsman with whom he had arranged the transfer of the girl to his ownership.
"Why are you skulking there in the undergrowth? Is there some problem?" Grimm snarled.
"No problem, Lord Mage," the guard assured him. "I have the papers of ownership ready, signed and sealed, and the girl is in one of the cells, untouched as you requested. However, I would be very grateful if you gave the remaining seven golds to me now, outside the guardhouse. Some of the boys inside are asleep, and I don't want to disturb them."
Grimm smiled. No doubt, the guard had told his cronies little if anything of the offer. Suppressing a grin at the man-at-arm's evident discomfiture, he handed over the gold coins, which rapidly disappeared inside the man's jerkin.
"If you'd be so kind to wait here, Lord Mage?" The guard all but skipped into the rotunda, now apparently unconcerned for the slumber of his fellow watchmen. Several minutes passed, and Grimm began to wonder if he had been duped, despite his earlier warning of dire retribution, but the guard emerged at last, dragging the kicking, cursing girl behind him.
"You've got a live one here, mage," the man gasped, jerking his arm away from the girl's mouth as she attempted to bite him. "All I can say is 'good luck'. I reckon you'll have your hands full."
"Oh, I like a good fight," Grimm said. "Do you have the papers?"
The guard, still struggling with his captive, managed to produce a pair of documents from his jerkin with his free hand.
"Paper-quieten down, you minx!-of ownership, five years-ouch! Five years, but if you don't say anything, I won't either. Look here; grab hold, will you? She's eating me alive!"
Grimm took the girl's wrist, and he had to force her to the ground to stop her trying to sink her teeth into his arm.
"All right, just hand them over. I haven't got all day," he grunted.
"Would you sign here, please, Lord Mage?" the guardsman asked, grinning at Grimm's predicament and holding out another scrap of paper and a pencil. The Questor saw that the sum written on the bill of sale was five gold pieces, but he pretended not to notice. With some difficulty, he transferred the fiercely struggling girl to his left hand.
"Lean over, please, guardsman." As the guard obligingly bent down, Grimm felt tempted to ram the pencil into the loathsome man's back, but he restrained himself and signed the receipt, using the obligingly offered expanse of leather-armoured skin as an easel.
Straightening up, the watchman pocketed the slip of paper, smiling.
"She's all yours, Lord Mage. Enjoy yourself."
With a repulsive wink, he excused himself and headed into the town square, doubtless in search of Griven's fleshpots. The girl continued to squirm and spit at Grimm, and he subdued her with an intense push of Questor power combined with the Minor Magic spell of Inner Quietude.
"Listen, girl!" he whispered. "You're free. Your life is your own again. Take it, and find a better way of living; one that doesn't involve trying to steal from Guild Mages. Most of them aren't as forgiving as I am.
"If you need money to rebuild your life, I'll give you money. Take the paper. You are your own person once more. I have no claim upon you. You're free."
Recovering her senses as the spell wore off; the girl stared at the paper in her hands.
"I have this collar round my neck," she said, in a quiet and surprisingly educated voice. "It marks me as a slave, no matter what pieces of paper I have. The guards put it on me; they say even a blacksmith couldn't cut it without cutting my head off."
The collar was an ugly, heavy brass ring, hinged at the back and welded at the front.
Grimm shrugged. "Perhaps a blacksmith couldn't get it off, but maybe the son and grandson of blacksmiths can do better," he said. He had expended a considerable amount of his inner store of energy that day, but he knew that he had more than enough in reserve for his spell of Enhanced Disintegration.
The spell-word "K'shaat'ka" escaped his lips, and a tendril of energy entered the collar, travelling around its circumference, feeling the inner structure of the metal. With a blue coruscation, the ugly slave-collar shivered into glittering dust that drifted to the ground. The girl looked amazed.
"There you are," Grimm said in a matter-of fact manner. "Now you are truly free. You can go where you will. Just don't steal any more, and you should be all right."
"Thank you," the grubby girl whispered, bowing her head in apparent sorrow. "I am grateful, really, but I can't stay here. The town watchmen know me as a thief now. I didn't want to steal in the first place, but my parents were killed when our house collapsed in high winds two years ago. I had to get enough money to eat, and I was not prepared to become somebody's doxy. I guess I'm too proud to beg, and beggars are tolerated no more in Griven than thieves in any case. I do have some small talent with witchcraft, but not enough to set up a stall."
At the mention of the word 'witchcraft', Grimm thought of the manipulative Madeleine. "You are a witch?" he found himself asking in disbelief. His tone was harsher than he had intended.
"Not really," the girl said, apparently taken aback, if not offended. "I have the basics, but little more than that. I know a few small healing charms and pot-mending spells, but little else. Don't you like witches or something?"
"I'm sorry if I offended you by the question… what is your name, by the way?"
"Drexelica," the ex-slave replied, pouting. "Most people call me Drex."
"Well, Drex," Grimm said, his hands spread wide in an attempt at conciliation, "I'm afraid my only experience with a witch wasn't a good one. She tried to enslave me with some sort of love spell."
Drexelica snorted. "We aren't all like that, mage. I was taught only to help and heal with magic, and I can't even do much of that. Witches are pretty common around here; it's a perfectly respectable occupation for a woman."
"I'm sorry, Drex. Let's start again, shall we? My name is Grimm Afelnor."
"Pleased to meet you, Questor Grimm," Drexelica replied. "Questor Grimm, I think perhaps I should tell you about a little custom around here. If you save somebody's life, you're responsible for them until they save yours. Now that I can't show my face around here, I need you to take me with you until I can stand on my own two feet again. In return, I'll cook for you and do as you say. Within reason, that is. If you say no, I will follow you anyway."
She crossed her arms defiantly.
"Drexelica," Grimm replied, shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot in some embarrassment, "I think you ought to know we are going to a hazardous region to face a powerful and dangerous man who seems to be able to collect mages like other people collect rare bottles of wine. You would be a liability to us."
He tried to sound firm and decisive, but he knew he had failed.
The grubby girl looked unimpressed, and she smiled in a reasonable imitation of sweet innocence. "I've survived two years of living rough on the streets of Griven. I'll bet that was scarier than anywhere you're going, Questor Grimm. I'm going to stick with you, so you'd better get used to the idea."
Grimm pondered. What if Drex was a spy for General Q? He dared not take the risk.
"Drex," he said firmly. "I want to use magic on you, to see if you're telling the truth. If you refuse, I will leave you standing here like a statue until my companions and I have gone, and you'll never find us. I promise not to extract any information other than the assurance that you pose no threat to us. Do you agree?"
Drexelica shrugged. "I don't seem to have any choice."
The girl shut her eyes in apparent resignation as Grimm engaged his Mage Sight. Her aura was as white as snow, featureless and blank. Grimm now knew that this was the mark of a witch, but Drex had already told him that she was a Geomancer.
He groaned: he knew he would have to dig deeper into his depleted reserves of energy. He was glad that he did not have to use as much power as he had on the blade-seller; he would not have to block all memory of the mental invasion from the girl.
To ascertain that she was utterly under his control, he ordered her not to blink, and then touched her eyeball. She did not flinch in the least; this satisfied him that his spell had succeeded. To dispel all doubt, he walked around to her back and pushed her suddenly. Had he not been ready to catch her, she would have fallen flat on her face. She must be at his command.
"What is your purpose with me?"
"You are responsible for me because you freed me. I cannot stay here, and I need protection until I can find a new home."
"What do you know of General Sleafel Quelgrum?"
"Nothing."
"Do you intend any treachery, or theft from me or my companions?"
"No."
Grimm could think of no more relevant questions, and he released the spell. "Drexelica, you said that you are my responsibility until you save my life. That may be sooner than you think."
"How so?" Drex asked, puzzled.
"Because my dear colleague Questor Xylox is going to try to kill me when I bring you with me," he said and sighed. "Come along."