Chapter Seven: The Stalemate At Loton's Cove

Martjan draws herself up straighter. "My life in Hazard -- the life I laboriously, painstakingly built for myself -- has been utterly destroyed because years ago, in my youth, a drunken lover shared with me the secret, impenetrable hiding place he would squirrel away the priceless artifacts we foolishly dreamed of finding. It was this place that I thought of when you came to me asking after the Iron Sphere, and like a dutiful mother I shared this information with Zora when I thought there was no time left to deliberate. When Gavrel brought me here I asked him only one thing, that he not harm my daughter. He promised. And then I shared that information with him, too." She walks right up to Zangua. "Tell me, mercenary, how much torture and debasement should I instead have endured before telling him? Or should I have held out until he invaded and pillaged my mind with magic?"

OOC, I'm not trusting this at all. What are the odds that the first person we see in this fortress is the person we are looking for, and she tells us, essentially, "we've already got one and it's very nice"?

"He didn't need to promise me anything about Zora. He didn't want Zora. He wanted what I gave him. Do you not know where he went? Did Zora not show you the shiqq knots I gave her? Why are you here instead of there?"

"Domarc, let us not be coy," Martjan says. "I am a hostage. That changes nothing. I am safe here. Gavrel's standoff could end any day, any moment, and if he doesn't already know you've come here, he will soon. Kharin will not kill you over my objections but none of Gavrel's other friends take their commands from me, I promise you that. I'll let him be angry with me for letting you leave here alive, but you must leave!"

What was the message in the shiqq knots?

"Second home by the sea," which Zora appeared to recognize. She told you that if you asked a particular fish shop in Sthombo where they source a particular ingredient, you would be directed there.

Martjan shifts her weight and takes a breath like she's about to tell Mordred off, but instead she pauses and seems to come to a different decision.

"Kharin, wake Potmouse," she says. "We're going to serve tea and give them guest rights. You all -- come. Follow me."

She leads you through the left doorway to the servant's dining hall, a long and somewhat narrow chamber with a pine table and backless stools providing the barest essentials for civilized dining and nothing more. Kharin returns with a gangly slip of a teenage half-orc and stands guard by the kitchen door while the younger one boils water. Martjan, seated at the head of the table, idly finger-combs her hair and launches into a story.

"As I'm sure you've been told -- or maybe not, I don't know -- Edvers' conflicts with his father were the stuff of legends, at least to hear him tell it, and so on several occasions before he attained manhood, he ran away from home. One of these times, he fell in with the fisher family who dwell in Loton's Cove, ten miles or so up the coast from Sthombo. They were able to get the choicest fish, the rarest shellfish, and even do a decent enough trade in pearls because -- according to Edvers -- they had made some pact with the local merfolk clans. Anyway, to hear him tell it, they became as close as his own true family. He called Loton's Cove his 'second home by the sea.' There was an unbreakable bond there, he told me. Edvers was never one to underestimate the potency of his own charisma.

"Now, the context in which we're having this discussion is when we're less than a day out from recovering the Lapis Claw of Giurat. We know the Black Ribbon Riders are hot on our trail and that we've only got a day or two to throw them off. Edvers says listen, we can hide the Claw with my friends the fisher-folk at Loton's Cove. No-one will ever find it. No-one but us can get it back. Safe from scrying, safe from everything. I didn't entirely buy it, but he was so sure of himself. He told me he'd leave the very Eye of Vecna there for safekeeping if he ever found it."

She shrugs. Potmouse walks in with a pot of tea and a tray of dingy clay cups.

"So this is the story I told Gavrel. The honest truth of what I know and where I think Edvers would have hidden the Sphere. Only he doesn't have it yet, the family won't help him, so...I don't know. I don't know what he's doing. Plying them with riches, murdering them one at a time, weaving mindbending spells, who knows. It's not something he wants to discuss with me anymore. But he seems entirely satisfied that the Sphere is out there under the waves, somewhere. I don't think he'd mind that I'm telling you," she adds, with a quick glance at Kharin. "He seems to think you can help him somehow. Where was it you ended up after you left Hazard? Vorch? I think he's impressed that you made it back alive."

Did you guys want to try to get any more information out of Martjan, or are you eager to get out of here?

Yeah, she seems to be on the level. I'm ready to head for Loton's Cove, unless anyone else has other ideas?

Martjan rolls her eyes. "He's going to use it to 'holometabolize the Pharate,' whatever that means, and then -- he's not terribly forthcoming about all this -- he's going to merge with its godhead, or the land of Bload itself is going to, or something to that effect. Don't ask me what the Pharate is, I've only gotten cryptic little hints. Some kind of starchild or cosmic worm or something, I don't know. He likes to talk, but he likes to build a mystery, too. Some devils put this idea in his head -- literal devils -- and I have no idea why he has such faith in this story they've sold him. Then again, Gavrel is far more experienced at communing with the infernal plane than I am, so what do I know?" She sips her tea and wrinkles her nose. "Do any of you want any spirits in this? We have apple brandy and some other bottles I haven't investigated yet."

"There are probably hundreds of wizards working feverishly to end the Werld as we speak. I understand that bringing down apocalypse is all that sustains the economy of Parz these days." Her eyes flick around as her joke falls flat. She blows out a little soundless sigh. "Potmouse, go fetch the apple brandy. No, I don't think Gavrel is trying to kill us all. Nor am I entirely convinced that he'll succeed at whatever it is he is trying to do, with or without the Sphere. Bashing my head against fate and the will of those more powerful than myself is not how I have been able to live a comfortable and independent life for many years. Gavrel says I can return to Hazard once the matter of the Sphere is settled. If Zora is safe, how dare I ask for anything more than that?" She picks up her tea, remembers that the apple brandy has not yet been furnished, and sets it back down. "Bload will need merchants and traders even if devils come to rule it."