Underkeeper

Frustration roiled in Bernt's stomach as he made his way out of the building. The library hadn’t been entirely a dead end, but it wasn’t going to help him get Jori back any time soon. He’d been hoping that he might stumble across something, anything that could help right now. As he had that thought, though, Bernt realized just how ridiculous it sounded. He wasn’t acting rationally, here – he was grasping at straws.

This wasn’t helping. He needed to start thinking things through. Ed was gone, and so was Jori. Maybe he could eventually learn how to summon her without immediately being found out, but it wouldn’t be soon, or here. The Solicitors were going to watch him closely as long as he was in the city, he was certain. And there was nothing he could do about Ed. Maybe nothing anyone could do. But at least he wouldn’t be the only one interested in finding a solution.

He took the other way back toward the Undercity Gate, cutting through the Temple District to avoid most of the destruction. While the buildings here still stood, the place was practically deserted. Most of the people who worked here would be tending the wounded for days yet – burns were difficult to heal properly, even for clerics.

His moment of clarity earlier felt as though it had kicked something loose in his mind, allowing him to finally step back and look at the situation more objectively – if only a little. And as he considered what had happened more carefully, he kept coming back to a few specific details.

Jori hadn’t waited to be deported. She’d gone back herself, despite the fact that she hated the hells. He’d felt her determination as well as her reluctance, even as she did it. Besides that, there were her words to consider, both as she left, and in the hours and days before. She’d gone back to save someone. Someones, rather. Bernt recalled the strange comments she’d made, and her refusal to talk about it when he asked. The pain she felt when she thought about home. And then yesterday, how she’d called out to the enemy imps by name. She’d gone to save them, somehow, Bernt was certain.

Them, and Ed. Hopefully. Jori liked and respected the old man, and she’d seen what happened to him just as well as Bernt had.

But did that change what he was going to do?

Not much, Bernt decided. He needed to slow down, that was true, but it wasn’t illegal to learn summoning rituals, provided he could find the information. He could decide whether and how to use it later. If nothing else, it would provide him with new options. The most obvious person to ask about it was Josie, but he doubted she would help. She was happy to see Jori under the Solicitors’ thumb, and thought that if they simply waited long enough, the imp would agree to a pact with one of them.

Bernt knew better, though – he’d felt Jori’s reaction when he’d offered to pact her. Then a woman’s voice interrupted his train of thought.

“That’s right! I heard the goddess blessed her and she tore right through the Duergar army to drag their evil prince straight down to the hells to punish his transgressions.” Bernt perked up, looking left and right. That voice sounded familiar. “Can you imagine it? A demon with Ruzinia’s own favor! A goddess for desperate times, that is.”

When Bernt found the speaker, he frowned in confusion. She was an old woman wearing a worn off-white robe with her gray hair tied back. She was gossiping to a young man selling sticky buns on the corner. Her face looked so familiar, but he couldn’t place her. The ludicrous nature of the gossip didn’t provide any clues, either.

He shook his head and continued on, stepping through the gate on the far end of the District into the ravaged Crafter’s District. Only then did it click. The old woman was a Solicitor – her hair had hung in a ragged bush around her head yesterday, but it was her. She’d been there last night, at the battle.

The Solicitors were spreading rumors about what had happened last night, trying to twist the narrative to their advantage. And they were trying to make it sound like Jori’s disappearance had to do with her defeat of Nuros, not the Solicitors’ ultimatum.

Moreover, they were trying to give her credit for Torvald’s contribution to the battle to make her out as some kind of holy figure. Why not? It wasn’t as though anyone could prove differently, now that she was gone. Nobody in the Temple District would believe it, of course, but it made for a great story. Bernt had no doubt that the rumor mill would cement Jori’s supposed canonization into the local lore for generations to come.

Ice cold anger condensed in the pit of Bernt’s stomach. Radast was trying to profit from Jori after sending her back to the hells, and it was going to work. He could see through it now – what they’d been doing. There was no way they could have planned it this perfectly, but they’d set themselves up to be able to capitalize on anything she did. Radast was probably delighted at how it had all turned out.

The Solicitors had insisted that the Underkeepers and the Mages’ Guild take responsibility for her, but they had worked hard to maintain Jori’s association with them in the mind of the public. Josie had seen to that. Now, they were going to burnish Jori’s image to a shine using a combination of half-truths and outright fabrication and leverage it for all it was worth.

And everyone was going to let it happen. Why wouldn’t they? The Solicitors were Ed and Iriala’s allies. This was going to strengthen their political position in the city. Worse, with Ed gone for the foreseeable future, the Underkeepers didn’t have an archmage anymore – they would need all the support they could get.

Bernt ground his teeth. He couldn’t believe that he hadn’t seen it. They’d set her up as a pawn, to be disposed of as soon as she became inconvenient. It was so obvious in hindsight – they hadn’t even tried to hide it. No, he was the fool here. He’d imagined that, because of Jori’s growing reputation and the way she’d befriended Josie, the Solicitors might have started to see her a little differently. That they’d find a way to work something out, if he was willing to make a compromise. But of course they hadn’t. He’d been naive and allowed his own wishful thinking to get the better of him.

It was exactly the sort of thing he should have expected from Solicitors.

***

“I don’t care if it was an accident or who was doing what at whatever time.” Iriala said sternly, staring at the Chief Solicitor over the rims of her glasses. “I am here to find solutions, and you are going to help me. If you choose not to cooperate, I will assume foul play and take appropriate measures on my own. Do I make myself clear?”

The younger man maintained his composure admirably, but she could see the sheen of sweat at the base of his neck. He was nervous, and it was making him act foolishly. Why would she want to hear his version of events if she suspected him of trying to purposely dispose of Ed? Besides, she saw what happened with her own eyes and knew it hadn’t been on purpose. Only an idiot betrayed an ally while they were being overrun.

Of course, that wasn’t to say she wouldn’t personally destroy this man if he didn’t apply himself to finding a satisfactory solution.

“There’s no need for threats.” Radast responded smoothly. “Of course we will provide whatever information and assistance that we can. Our relationship with both Archmage Thurdred and yourself have been nothing but advantageous, and doing anything less would be nothing short of self-sabotage. Besides, mutual aid is a clause in our contract.”

“Good.” Iriala said shortly. “Then, what do you have?”

Radast reached into a hidden pocket in his robes and drew out a scroll, which he unrolled on Iriala’s desk. “While our maps of the third hell are incomplete, it’s still by far the best-understood of the hells. This map based on the reports of summoned demons, and includes major landmarks, rivers, and cities.

Iriala frowned. “Demons have cities?”

“Of course. Spawnlings behave much like animals, like some of the less-intelligent types of demons, but most kinds of demons eventually assimilate into a sort of civilization they have. Their hierarchical nature lends itself well to these kinds of efforts. Each major city is ruled by a greater demon, who might subjugate other powerful demons and their cities in turn to create a kind of empire. Nuros doesn’t rule any city that I’m aware of, but Varamemnon does.” Radast pointed to a dot on the map labeled in demonic runes, which Iriala couldn’t read. “He’s a class 9 demon and his city sits at the wellspring of this river, here. Nuros and his servants were most likely summoned from within his territory, so that’s where the archmage will have been pulled when they were banished.”

Iriala grunted noncommittally. This was a godsdamned disaster. Who had ever heard of someone getting bodily dragged into the hells? If she hadn’t seen it through her own scrying lenses, she wouldn’t have believed it. “Can we confirm whether he’s even still alive?”

Radast maintained his stiff posture, but fiddled with his robes unconsciously. “No, but we should assume that he’s fine for now. Unless he appeared right in the middle of their city, he’s very unlikely to run into anything he couldn’t handle. A class 3 imp like the one that took him would spend most of its time outside, foraging for unclaimed souls to bring to its master.”

“Alright. What can we do with that, then? I assume you can’t just go and get him.”

The chief solicitor shook his head. “No. Traveling there is, as you might have guessed, relatively simple. It’s even been used as a dramatic method of execution in some places historically. The problem is getting back out. The only method that I’ve heard of is from old stories and imperial records.”

Iriala scowled at that, and Radast hurried to continue. “It’s plausible, though! It runs parallel to the way the archmage was drawn there in the first place. He needs to be touching a demon as it is summoned back to our plane.”

“Oh.” Iriala said, relaxing. Why hadn’t he just led with that? “That’s not too bad. You just have to bind a demon to go find him, deport it and then summon it back at predetermined intervals with instructions to take him along whenever it makes contact.”

“Well…” Radast said carefully. “That’s going to be a problem, actually. Demons don’t accept pacts that attempt to compromise their loyalties and obligations on their home plane. There are some theories that posit we can’t bind them outside the material realm at all, though I consider those to be problematic.”

That was, indeed, going to be an issue. Pursing her lips in thought, Iriala considered for a moment. “We only have maybe a week or two. Ed can conjure enough water to sustain himself, I’m sure, but I doubt he can do food. Can you do something more informal? A trade of some kind, maybe.”

Radast nodded uncertainly. “We could try it. Time pressure makes this even more complicated, though. The bomber that attacked our offices managed to destroy our reagent stores, so I’ll need to send my people out to look for what we need. It’s unlikely that we’ll have the resources to just summon random demons until we find one close enough to reach him in time. Fortunately, we do have the name of an imp that Josie recorded in one of her reports. It should be in the region somewhere, but there’s no guarantee that it’ll cooperate. Demons rarely break their word directly, but they’ll still do it occasionally – especially if they consider the summoner an enemy, which this one certainly will. ”

“Then we’ll just have to make it a good offer,” Iriala said with more confidence than she felt. Ed couldn’t afford for them to wait around wringing their hands. “I’ll arrange the supplies and notify the Underkeepers, so whoever’s in charge there right now can pass along a message if they like. When can you do it?”

Radast rose, offering her a respectful nod. “I think we can do it tonight. ”

“Wait a second.” Iriala said, as he turned to go. “Speaking of imps, why don’t we send Bernt’s imp after him – Jori? She has both a contractual relationship and a personal attachment to Ed. Even if she has to travel farther, she’d be more reliable, and we could send her right now. I assume you’ll need to deport her anyway, now that she has ascended again.”

“Ah. yes," the warlock said with a wince. "That’s already been done, unfortunately, so I’m afraid we would need to summon her as well. We can certainly attempt it, provided we can acquire enough reagents for multiple summonings. Still, Dzhorianath could be anywhere – we have no idea where she was originally summoned from, and she couldn’t tell us, as she wasn’t sapient at the time of her summoning. For all we know, she might be over a months’ travel away. She should be considered as a contingency at best.”

Radast turned to go, but then continued the motion, spinning around entirely with his finger raised as if he’d just thought of something. “One more thing. It may also be worth it to bring the young Underkeeper into this, if he can be persuaded to cooperate. The imp listens to him, and while she doesn’t appear to bear us specific ill will, she made it clear that she doesn’t wish to work with us for the time being.”

As the man swept out of her office, Iriala took off her glasses and rubbed at her tired eyes. This wasn’t the first time she’d had to take measures to pull Ed’s ass out of the fire. This, though, was getting ridiculous.