12/22/1347
Madrid
I dreamed, last night.
Oh, did I dream.
A dream of the present, an overheard conversation between two Personages. Dreams of the future, with varying feelings of immediacy, varying degrees of "this is what will be" and "this is what may be".
And a dream of the past that shocked me from my head to my feet.
If I ever find my father, if he's still alive, I'll be having a chat with him. But, you know, it's not every girl who can say that she has three mothers.
Waking up was unpleasant. But Galvin was woken by my fear and confusion, and because he knows me, knew where I was--out in the stables, with Daffodil and Spot. He brought blankets, and himself, and I slept with him curled up around me until the sun was high. Something shifted last night, between us; I've known him for so long, and I guess sometimes that can blind you to what's right in front of your face. A couple of offhand remarks made by the others years ago make sense, now.
Threw myself into work today. Choosing a new headmaster for Ireland (I need to travel there sometime soon, to meet the people I chose), cleansing and rehallowing the ritual circle on the hilltop, meeting with Galvin and Contessa to make sure that all three of us are up to speed on what's been happening here and elsewhere. Contessa's going to stay in Madrid for the time being, and Galvin's going to be traveling with us for a while, at least. I also spent a while talking with Endraya, learning about what's been going on in my absence; fortunately, no new crises have cropped up in the past three weeks. A small blessing; the old crises are really quite enough.
Dispatched last night's letters off by courier this afternoon, as well.
Work helped with the heartache of last night, but it's still present. I could see it on everyone's faces, everywhere I looked. I'm not really very good at being comforting, but I did my best. I held one of yesterday's initiates as she broke down sobbing; evidently, she had a relationship with one of the clerics abducted yesterday. All I could tell her was that I thought he was all right, that I thought they were being held hostage for the moment, and that we'd be going to get them back as soon as we could.
It's cold comfort, that.
Acting on a hunch from one of my dreams last night, I asked to see the orb that bonked Arnie/Aiden on the head yesterday--it was oddly *squishy*. And it was absorbing energy from Aiden at a frightening rate. Aiden, of course, just said that he was a bit sick to his stomach. Aiden is really frighteningly powerful for being a drow stuck inside a dwarf's head. I'm glad he's on our side.
I turned on the orb, and it powered down magic in a half-mile radius--not the most powerful I've ever seen (the one in Atlantis was a mile, I think, but they'd been feeding it for months) but certainly among the strongest. This is Not Good. Not good at all.
Dinner was interrupted by, of all things, an illithid showing up with a chained dwarf in tow. It took everything I had not to burst out in giggles; all I did manage to say was, "I was wondering when you'd show up." I did hear Gavião mutter, "Teenagers and their prophetic dreams. Feh." or something like that. Anyway, the illithid was returning a favor that I didn't know we'd done, or, rather, we'd done in self-defense--killing the illithid yesterday was evidently a favor in to this specific illithid. I considered it ungracious to point out that he'd been trying to kill us, and we really hadn't done it on purpose. Besides, the dwarf had information about how we could find the one person who could sort out the whole Arnie/Aiden mess--Arnie's father, currently the involuntary guest of the King of Finland, who also happens to be Arnie's uncle.
(Why did I not realize that Arnie's actually royalty? I think he simply forgot to mention it.)
A bit of questioning and the dwarf's desire to get to the other side of the world resulted in some useful information--if we were going to get Arnie's father back, we need to go talk to the Queen, who'd evidently had a relationship with him in the past.
We popped the dwarf off to somewhere called the Cape of Good Hope, and I really hope we never see him again.
Tomorrow, off to Helsinki. Tonight, after I finish writing this, there's some more, ah, personal business to conduct. That I'm looking forward to, quite a bit.
Goodnight, diary. Here's to hoping I'll live through tomorrow.
12/24/1347
Helsinki, Finland
Helsinki is gods-be-damned COLD. We left the horses behind, as we were coming into a gate that was located in the sewers. I feel rather naked without the small herd around me, though having the two-legged herd helps, quite a bit. I had a bit more business to conduct, so we ended up leaving a day later than we'd thought.
Arnie went off to talk to the queen. For a dwarf, he's not bad at the whole sneaking business. i guess being a psionicist helps in that department. Hammerhands (Arnie's dad) is being held at the center of the Winter Castle in a room filled with red mithril, which causes both the body and mind to go all twisted. We got a stroke of luck in that the queen both dislikes her husband, King Clemper, and has fond memories of Hammerhands, and is willing to help us by arranging for the castle to be emptier than usual tomorrow. The local humans also have a holiday they call Christmas, one of the traditional feasts of Belenus, the god of light and the sun. If I lived somewhere where the days were only four hours long in the winter, you bet I'd worship the sun god, too! We needed a diversion, and Gaius wanted to do an illusion, but as Gavião said, why have an illusion of people storming the castle when you could have actual people storming the castle? There was enough dissatisfaction with the king that we figured we could stir something up, even if it was only a bunch of shouting.
Gavião is good at the rabble-rousing. Frighteningly good, as a matter of fact. It's partially him, and partially Excalibur; they don't call it the Kingsword for nothing. I'm....worried. A lot, actually. Partially because I liked him the way he was, and partially because of one of my dreams played out somewhat like that, only more so--and Gavião looked as if he meant every word, there.
And, also, he's giving me more guilt trips than he used to, as well. He knows every single one of my guilt buttons at this point, too.
Cold. Very, very cold. Very cold toes. Need to go to bed and warm up very cold toes, and cold nose, on very cute naked person who is waiting in bed for me. I'm glad I've known Galvin forever; he's used to my cold hands and nose at this point. The cold feet are new, though.
Tomorrow, we storm the castle.
Goodnight, diary. With any luck, I'll live through tomorrow.
12/25/1347
Helsinki
I'm really hoping that Galvin and I aren't keeping Gavião awake. I *swear* I'm trying to be quiet, but, uh, I get really distracted. I thought having Gavião sleeping in the next room would be a barrier to certain activities, but Gavião seems to be all right with it. Encouraging of it, even. I'm being teased by the others, but gently.
(Small side note: if Malik weren't already dead, I would hunt him down and kill him. Much more slowly this time. Seeing his handiwork up close...I am so very glad we made the decision that we did. Galvin doesn't seem to hold me responsible, though in truth I am, indirectly.)
So, today, it was off to the castle. Boy, I feel tall in this city, I tell you.
Gavaio roused the rabble, we did a bit of ass-kicking on our way in, and found Hammerhands, who looked as if he had had red mithril running through his veins for far, far too long.
(He knew who I was without having to ask. Damned psionicists are spooky like that. I bet Arnie didn't get away with anything while he was growing up.)
Transferred Aiden into the squishy orb, which made him into an artifact, which means that we're now one step ahead of the other team, artifact/orb pair-wise. A minor but important victory, I think.
We then went and fetched King Clemper, and Hammerhands jumped into Clemper's body and left Clemper in his own dying one. While part of me was really not happy about it, the rest of me thought it was really rather poetic justice.
Back to Madrid tonight. Gavião has a bunch of dwarfs who look as though they think Gavião is the next best thing to god, which, though it makes sense, is really rather disturbing. I'm used to thinking of Gavião as, well Gavião--while certainly an admirable person if a bit morally suspect at times, not really the sort of hero who commands armies. He's the person I lean on the most, whose judgment I trust before anyone else's, more of a father than I've had since Papa was taken away from us. It's hard to reconcile that with the person whose name an army was chanting today.
Then again, I'm having difficulty really conceiving of myself as a Headmistress, too, so I seem to have a lot of adjusting to do.
I'm trying to learn everything I need to know to actually be a good Headmistress, now. I wasn't really taking it very seriously before, because I figured it was just a big mistake that we'd sort out in a few weeks. Only now, I am deadly certain that it's not, that this is, for the moment at least, what I'm meant to be doing. Me not taking this seriously resulted in people dying, people who were the next best thing to innocent bystanders, people with families and lovers who will miss them forever. And they all expect me to be strong, when all I'm doing is trying to keep my feet under me.
I will fight to my last breath to protect those who have been entrusted to me. My heart broke on the solstice, and there is nothing I can do to make right what happened on the hill except find the person responsible and make sure he never hurts anyone ever again. That still doesn't make it right, but it will help.
I'll be doing some divination tomorrow, to see where the two kidnapped clerics are being held. We'll be walking into a trap, I know; Arumaga is old and very crafty, as unlike the stereotype of the stupid white dragons as can be. We underestimated him once. I don't intend to do it again.
I didn't wear the amulets last night, so I only had the usual nightmares. And Galvin was there every time I awoke, to soothe me back to sleep. The dream about killing Nara that I've had for years (that was a premonition and now a grisly memory) replays again; something about it won't let me be. And there are the others; dreams I've had for years that are now starting to come clearer; a sense of being hunted, the smells and sounds of battle and the sense of blindness, of something large and dark and old that I cannot see, that I am blind to, that is turning to look at me and I know that if it sees me I will extinguish like a candle. Yet I cannot see it, to avoid it. If I run away, I may run in the wrong direction--what if I run towards it? If I fight, I will die. If I surrender, I will die.
Only now, the dream has changed. It's coming a little clearer, now. And there are others with me, now. We still cannot stand against it, but somewhere, there's a little bit of hope, some extraordinarily long odds somewhere.
I don't want to know. I really don't. But that small, warm voice inside of me says not yet. You're not ready yet. But you will be, soon. You will have to be.
I'm wearing the amulets tonight.
Goodnight, diary. Here's to the hope of living through tomorrow.
Back to Callas de Navarre | Back to the Twilight of the Gods campaign