Chapter 9 – Part 2

“Neddiken, quit pacing,” Aruunis snapped. The two elves were alone, save for the druid’s eagle. “I am trying to construct a potion, if you don’t mind.” The druid was hunched over a worktable, eyeing a vial that was slowly ceasing its bubbling.

“I wondered how you were financing this,” the pudgy elf noted as he forced himself to take a seat in a chair covered with bearskins. “Couldn’t figure out why Vadalis was so hospitable. You get a little loft, you see people, you get contacts…”

“Stop yammering,” Aruunis told him. Neddiken stopped yammering.

After a few minutes, the druid was done, and he carefully stoppered the potion that he had created. Anyone drinking it would gain the power to talk to animals, and do so for a longer duration than most nature spellcasters would be capable of.

As always, he felt a bit tired when was done. He own life energy went into keeping the spell locked into the swirling liquid. “Done then.” He stood and stretched before turning to regard his pudgy guest. “Any word from downstairs?”

“That Medani psychopath is in the courtyard,” Neddiken said, checking a scrying mirror. The mirror was a fixture to the room, although the wary Aruunis always kept it draped in a lead-lined blanket when he wasn’t actually using it. “Your instructions about keeping his kinsman away is slowing things down, like you figured.”

“Yes,” Aruunis said. “And I’m glad I did. I don’t want you here when he comes in.” The druid took some gloves from his belt and put them on carefully. The gloves appeared to be leather, but were soft, and a fine stitching covered them, showing the shapes of rearing forest animals. “Of course if you had come when you were supposed to, I wouldn’t have been involved in my potion work, and you’d be gone by now.” He sighed. “Tell me your instructions.”

Neddiken visibly stifled a sigh. “I take the berth in the Brelish ship that you arranged, and head to Wroat. Once there I check in with the herbalist professor that you know, and he’ll set me up with a key to a Kundarak vault that will hold new identity papers for me and some money.”

“Yes, originally intended for me,” Aruunis said. “But I don’t need that particular back up plan anymore.” He narrowed his eyes. “But you forgot something. You didn’t tell me your other instructions.”

“Wherever I stop, I mention the strange warforged with no armor plates,” the pudgy elf said hurriedly. “A warforged that fought in Merylsward and is friends with Pienna. I say that I saw him here, with House Vadalis in Varna.”

“Correct,” Aruunis said.

“Now, um, don’t get me wrong,” Neddiken said. “I’m going to do just what you said, honest. I’m just curious why. You know, so I can do it right.”

“You’re another thread I spin,” Aruunis said. “Leave it at that.”

Neddiken raised his hands in a gesture of peace. “I merely chatter, good druid. I usually trance at this hour, and that plus the early morning cold makes me jittery.”

Aruunis harrumphed, and then checked the scrying mirror. “You’d better go,” he told the other elf, finally handing him the passage papers. “He’s on his way up.”

For an overweight elf, Meddiken moved very fast to avoid being in the same room with Parnain.