The day after Harpis was supposed to have left, Wren could not help his curiosity as he made his way to the Ravnice wharf area. He had other business in the waterside market, but he first stopped at The Siren’s Scream. He spotted the barmaid who had served them the other night sweeping off the entryway and hailed her with a wave. “Good morning, miss.”

She smiled and paused her work. “And you as well, Master Gnome.”

Wren found it odd that he was almost nervous to know the answer despite having not seen Harpis around Ravnice once since they parted.

“My companion the other night?”

The barmaid winked at him. “He was all dressed and ready for the day when I went to wake him. He left before lunch, and I have not seen him since.”

“My thanks again,” Wren said, waving goodbye to her. Visiting the wharf shops was his weekly errand. He would pick up supplies for the mortuary, mostly linens and oils, to prepare the bodies. Today though, it was just linen that he needed. His usual vendor exchanged a stack of white sheets for a few of his silver coins, and a few pleasantries later, he was on his way home.

Passing near The Siren’s Scream on his way back, he fought an internal debate about a bite and a sip. Something about the look in his linen vendor’s eyes sent him straight back to his morgue. Locking the front door and checking that he had the closed sign placed out, he headed upstairs. Closing his apartment door behind him, he set the stack of linens on his table.

He then walked over to the apartment’s singular window, which overlooked the street below. Staying in the shadows of his curtain to not be seen from the road, he surveyed it for anything suspicious. For several agonizing moments, he waited to see if he saw anyone from the wharf who may have uncharacteristically made their way to his street. Finally, he let out a long breath at not being followed.

Undoing the ties around the stack, he began taking them off one by one. He made a new pile next to them until he picked up a linen halfway down and revealed a parchment sealed with wax. He scrutinized it for signs of ink droplets. Seeing none, he sat on his chair before snapping his fingers. Sulfuric odor and a puff of smoke later, Xissay stood on the table before the two piles of linen.

“So, old gnome, when did you take up quilting?”

Wren ignored her and broke the seal on the parchment, noting thankfully the several drops of ink that spilled out.

Xissay provocatively stretched her lithe form as she stepped between the linen piles and continued. “I’m just saying, Wren, if you’re going to make a quilt, I think you need linens of two separate colors.”

Wren looked over the parchment at her with one raised eyebrow. “Word from the Navigators, and they seem unusually skittish.”

Her interest piqued, she floated without a flap of her wings onto Wren’s shoulder to read with him.

Sorry to hear about your eye.

Well done abroad.

Go Pray for Sirul Amun.

“Looks as if we are bound for Fjall and The Sanctum,” he told Xissay as he handed her the parchment. “Be a help and take care of that.”

Xissay left his shoulder holding the parchment in her hands, and it burst into flames almost immediately. The ashes fell to the floor below her as he stood from his chair. “We shall leave in the morning.”

Being a devout death speaker of The Sleeper and one of the senior necromancers meant that Wren always had an excuse to leave town for religious reasons. As such, it was never suspicious for the morgue to be closed for weeks at a time with little notice.

It was a coincidence that this time his journey was truthfully to The Sanctum. He had no idea who Sirul Amun was, but apparently, the Navigators wanted to know if he or she was alive or dead. There was only one who could ask that of Lady Death. So, it seemed that he was to head west in the morning, to the mountains of Fjall and The Sanctum.

*****

They had been at sea a little over a full day, and Harpis had lost his sense of direction long ago. Not that it had mattered. He was locked below deck in a tiny cabin at the front of the boat’s hold while still unconscious, so he had no sense of his surroundings. Since one could sail around the entire Island of Quaj in just over two days and Ravnice was only a day’s sail from any major city, he had no idea where they were going.

There was only the two crew on the ship as far as he could tell. He was sure they were the same two Wren had seen at The Siren’s Scream, an older thin man who seemed to be in charge and a burly sailor who fit the gnome’s ox-like description.

The past two times, it was the bigger man who had brought him food. On both occasions, Harpis had tried to reason with the man and solicit information but received only smirks and grunts. When the brute got him his dinner, he had a surprise in mind. Finding a sharp nail head on one of the walls, Harpis had taken off his shirt and rubbed it against the metal until he cut a line almost entirely down the back of it.

His pulse pounded in his throat, and adrenaline coursed through his veins as he heard the man approaching. The wood cover slid open on the grate at the top of the door, and the sailor peered at him suspiciously before sliding it shut and cracking the door open to throw some bread and a waterskin into the cabin. Once the man turned to go, Harpis took a steadying breath.

“Hey, ass face!” he shouted through the door.

The man’s footsteps paused, and he smiled to himself before continuing his taunting.

“Oh good, so you know your face looks like an ass. And let’s be honest, we both know I’m not talking about the lovable livestock. I wouldn’t insult the animal so. I am talking about the lumpy thing your mother puts in her customer’s laps at the cheapest brothel in town!” he yelled.

He grinned at the approaching angry stomps. The sailor snapped open the wood cover to the grate.

“Watch your mouth, idiot, or you are going to regret it,” he growled.

Harpis sucked in a breath through his nose and spat in the man’s face.

Bellowing in rage, the man unlocked the door, flung it open, and grabbed a handful of Harpis’ shirt before pulling back his other fist to strike. The larger man almost fell backward as Harpis’ shirt effortlessly tore off, and his punch swung wide.

Harpis quickly shouldered into the off-balance sailor and sprinted for the ladder at the other end of the hold as his shouting captor chased after him. Harpis made the hatch at the top of the ladder and heaved himself onto the ship’s deck facing the stern. He didn’t see the other sailor, only an unmanned helm. As he swiveled his head to look around, he barely caught sight of the swinging oar before it knocked him unconscious.

*****

The city of Mer sat mostly contained on a peninsula jutting outward from the middle of the island’s eastern coast, with the harbor opening to the north. The College of Elements sat on the southernmost portion where no ships could port, providing easy access to a mostly private beach area where science and magic could go awry with minimal destruction to the surrounding city.

Rallis was one of the newest trainees of the college’s Tower of Stone. It seemed that the gifted and non-gifted elementalist trainees alike often aspired to manipulate the more exciting fire, wind, or water.

Stone may be dull, Rallis thought to himself, but his plans for today most certainly were not. He had found the dusty book covering the life and works of Stone Magus Breyva left open in the apprentice area the other night and was determined to know if the writings were rumor or fact.

If Stone Mage Vennil possessed the Stone Mask of Breyva, it could allow Rallis to don someone else’s face and have all kinds of fun.

He waited for the stone mage to take his lunch in the courtyard like he did every day. As soon as the older man passed the trainees and went out of the tower door, Rallis rose and headed upstairs. As he passed the two apprentices who happened to be on the second floor, he held up a bag that contained his books.

“Errand for Stone Sage Mara,” Rallis offered and carried on to the third floor unimpeded.

He could not believe his luck that the stone mage had not locked the door. He slipped quietly into the room, hoping he did not alert Stone Sage Mara in the other quarters and locked the door behind him. He spotted what he was looking for on top of the bookshelf against the far wall.

Grabbing the stone coffer from the bookshelf, he gingerly placed it on Vennil’s desk. He used one of the few spells he did know and sensed the chilly tingle along his spine from the magic of the coffer and noted the aura of the item within it as well. It must be this, he thought.

*****

A commotion from outside the room caught his attention, and the thief spun around in panic. The locked doorknob jiggled once, and then the door exploded inward. Behind it stepped a dwarf-sized stone elemental familiar followed by the fuming Stone Mage Vennil and a confused Stone Sage Mara.

The middle-aged mage from Ravnice had short-cut red hair that only accentuated his aggressive demeanor.

“Rallis, you are one of the most impudent, know-nothing, belligerent trainees I have ever encountered. I’ll have you painting rocks in the courtyard until your dotage. You dare to steal the Clay Mask of Breyva?” Vennil said as he looked down at the thief’s trapped fingers. The stone of the lid held firmly all ten.

“Serves you right for opening the coffer,” he said, closing his eyes, he laid a palm on the lid, and it released the thief’s fingers.

“Master Vennil, I wasn’t going to steal it. I just wanted to use it to prank the apprentices.”

The explanation did nothing to cool Vennil’s temper as he continued to glare at the trembling young man.

Vennil pointed an angry finger at the thief. “Now put this back and forget it exists. It is nothing to be trifled with.”

“But master…the Mask was not in the chest, and I did not unlock it…” the would-be burglar stammered while still holding the coffer.

Vennil’s gaze slowly drifted down to the empty coffer, looking as if he would be sick. For her part, the much older Stone Sage Mara was rubbing her grey temples in frustrated thought.

“Rallis, if you speak of this, I will have you expelled from this college,” the stone mage said, pausing in thought before continuing. “You were up here at my bidding, the coffer’s magic trapped you, and I had to burst in here to save you from it. Now leave. Stone Sage Mara and I must consult the Arch Mage immediately.”