Liara's Missing Month

[Anaris]

Just over a month ago...

While camping in Craigmore, Liara notices a man approaching quickly.  He holds aloft something that looks like a courier's baton, but something seems slightly...off.  She loosens her sword in its sheath and moves to meet him.  He slows and stows the baton, reaching in his saddlebag and producing a message.

Only too late does she recognize him.  "Rodis?" she exclaims.  "How did you—"

But she never gets the chance to finish the question.  His eyes wide with something between terror and grim triumph, he raises the hand holding the papers, and points it at her.  She half-sees a flicker of violet light arcing from him to her; then the papers crumble into dust in his hand, and the world goes dark.

* * *

When she awakens, she is in a small room, lit by a single candle.  It is burned most of the way down.  She remembers the strange attack by Rodis, and wonders where he has brought her.  She quickly takes stock of her situation.  Her sword has been removed, but she has been left everything else—her armour is still on, and even the three knives she keeps concealed about her person are untouched.  The room has a single door, and no window.  The door seems to be—not locked, when she tries it, but blocked from the outside.  The room itself is of a type familiar to her, with a small, simple bed, a chest, and a table, and only barely room besides that to stand up and turn around.  It is the sleeping chamber of a personal servant, and on the other side of the door would be the bedchamber of the master—or mistress, as the case may be.

Given what else she knows, she suspects it must be Rodis's chamber.

As she waits, she makes a catalog of the questions to ask when Rodis comes in.

How did you find me?

Where is this place?

How long have I been unconscious?

Why did you bring me here?

How did you knock me out without touching me?

That last, she is afraid she knows the answer to.  That violet not-light is something she has heard of before, though never seen: it is the indicator, to those with the eyes to see, of demon-magic.  And if Rodis has contracted a demon, even a little one...Five Gods, that would be answer enough for why he left his home!  For a Quadrene to carry a demon is deepest heresy...

The candle has burned down nearly to a stub before there is a muffled scraping on the other side of the door, and it opens to admit a light that nearly blinds her, adjusted as she is to the dim light within the room.  As she blinks away the spots dazzling her vision, she hears Rodis's voice.

"Please don't try to attack me or anything, Liara.  I don't want to have to put you to sleep again.  I don't want to be able to do anything like that!  I just...I need your help.  You're the only one I could turn to."

Her vision beginning to clear, Liara looks at him again in the light from the room beyond—which is, indeed, a bedchamber, with its windows bright with daylight.  "If you need my help, Rodis, you picked a very strange way to go about it.  How did you find me here?"

He shrugs one shoulder, glancing from side to side.  "I found out where you had sailed to by bribing some harbour officials.  Then I bought passage on another ship going the same way.  It...it barely made it.  I think the timbers were rotten clear through."

Liara grimaces.  The timbers were probably in quite reasonable condition before he came on board.

Rodis continues, "Once the ship docked in Strombran, I just had to ask around, and they told me you were riding to the front, and where you were.  From there...well, it was easy.  It's not like you were trying to hide.  ...Not like me."

"Where are we, Rodis? This is some Lord's house, isn't it?"

"Well, yes.  I'm an honoured guest of the Baronet of the Southmarch of Craigmore.  I...smuggled you in in the night."

Liara rolls her eyes.  How typically melodramatic of him.  "How long have I been unconscious?"

"Only the one night.  I...I tried to make it as gentle as possible; I'm not really that good at it.  Four Gods, I don't want to be good at it!"

Liara's nose wrinkles, just briefly, at his oath.  He doesn't seem to notice.  Then she sighs.

"So, you have contracted a demon?" she asks.

His eyes go wide, and he looks around in terror, shushing her frantically and stammering something vague and negative. 

"Don't worry," she says, cutting through his babble.  "There's no one here but you and me who would know what it means in the first place.  And, by all the Gods, you're the only one here who thinks it's heresy!"

He stops, and looks confused.  She puts her hand on his arm.  "Rodis, you do remember I'm a Quintarian, right? The reason most of our meetings had to be in secret?"

He just looks sullen.  She sighs again, and asks her last question.

"Well, anyway, since it's clear that is exactly what's happened to you, why did you come to me? There's nothing I can do about a demon! You need to go to a trained exorcist or a saint of the Bastard!"

Rodis flinches at the name of the fifth God, Who he has always been taught is no God at all, but a demon, after His father's lineage.  Then he turns his face away, and looks both stubborn and dejected.  He mutters, "I'm a Quadrene.  Quintarians wouldn't want to help me, and other Quadrenes would only want to burn me.  You're the only one I could trust.  The only one who can help."

"Five Gods!" Liara bursts out.  "You're being ridiculous, Rodis! No Quintarian with the ability to banish demons from this world would turn away anyone who has contracted one, no matter whether he signs the Five!"

Rodis looks, if possible, even more sullen and mulish.  "There's...there's more.  I'm..." his voice, already small, becomes a nearly inaudible mumble, "...afraid I might be going mad."

Liara blinks.  "What? Why?"

"I've been...seeing things.  Things that no one else sees.  Things that aren't there.  Oh, Brother of Autumn, why have you let me come to this?" This last Rodis wails, his head back and his eyes shut, in pure despair.

Abruptly, he stands up, goes out into his bedchamber for a moment, and comes back with a tray of food.  The tray also contains a fresh candle.  He places it on the small table.  "Here.  You should eat this.  You need to think of some way to help me, and I can't let you go until you do."

"Rodis—" she cries, trying to get him to stay, to listen to reason, but he overrides this.

"No, Liara; I don't have any other choice! I'll be back in a few hours.  I hope you have a better idea by then."

He closes the door, and she hears scraping again, as whatever large object was blocking it before is moved back into place in front of it.

"Well," she mutters to the empty room, "that went well."

That last part seemed to scare him more than the demon itself, she muses.  Seeing things that aren't there...could he be not only a sorcerer, but also a saint?

Something very strange is going on.  And it appears that I'm not going anywhere until I can at least figure out what.