Azure bonds - Kate Novak [6]
Alias shook her head. Before the curate could babble anymore, she burst out, "I need a curse removed."
"Now, that does sound serious. Come in." Winefiddle ushered her past the silver-plated altar to Tymora, Lady Luck, and into a private study for an audience. An oil lamp lit the musty chamber. Dark oak cabinets lined the walls. A single, high window framed the night sky. The curate offered her a seat and plopped down into a chair beside her.
"Now, tell me about this curse," he prompted her.
Alias explained how she'd awakened after her unusually long sleep and discovered the tattoo on her arm. At a loss for any other theory, she told him the barkeep's story that she was a drunk left on the doorstep of The Hidden Lady. Then, she related what had happened when the Turmish merchant-mage had cast a spell to detect magic on the tattoo. "I don't remember getting it-the tattoo," she concluded. "I would never have agreed to it, not even drunk. This has to be some sort of stupid prank pulled on me while I was unconscious, but I have no idea who would have done it."
Alias did not bother to mention her hazy memory of the past few weeks-it was too embarrassing-and she omitted the incident with the lizard as inconsequential.
Curate Winefiddle nodded reassuringly, as if Alias had brought him nothing more troublesome than a kitten with earmites. "No problem," he declared. "There remains only the question of how you would like to arrange payment?"
Alias knew from experience that her coins were an insufficient "offering." She pulled out the only real valuable in her money sack-the small, greenish gem.
Winefiddle accepted the terms with a smile and a nod. "No. Don't put it there," he admonished her before she set it down on the desk. "Very unlucky. Drop it in the poor box as you leave."
Alias nodded. Winefiddle began removing a number of tattered scrolls from a cabinet. "The one advantage to serving an adventurer's goddess," he yawned as he spoke, "is a steady stream of worshippers in need of your special services, worshippers willing to pay in magical items."
The cleric stifled another yawn, and Alias gave him a blank look she bestowed on fools she needed to tolerate. As far as she was concerned, clerics were merely puttering quasi-mages who couldn't cast spells without worrying about converts, theology, relics, and other nonsense. If they weren't so useful when sickness, famine, and war struck, they would probably have died out altogether, Alias decided, taking their gods with them. Perhaps the gods knew that, and that's why they put up with the fools.
Winefiddle pulled bundles of scrolls from the cabinet with all the grace of a fishmonger hoisting salmon. He hummed as he checked their tags. Alias sat there as quietly and patiently as possible, wishing she had stopped at another inn for a pouch of decent rum. Finally, the priest pulled two from the lot that seemed to please him.
Despite Alias's warning of what had happened in The Hidden Lady, Winefiddle wanted to begin with a standard magical detection. He waved aside her objections, insisting, "I need to see this extreme reaction myself. Nothing to be afraid of since we know what to expect this time, right?"
Alias submitted with a grudging sigh. The cleric passed his silver disk of Tymora over her outstretched arm. The words he muttered were different from the Turmish mage's, but the effect was the same. Alias shuddered as the symbols writhed beneath her skin, and she squinted in anticipation of the bright, sapphire radiance which soon lit every corner of the musty study.
Winefiddle's eyebrows disappeared into his low hairline, amazed at the brilliance of the glow. Alias clenched her muscles involuntarily, and the rays swayed about the room like signal beacons, bouncing off the darkened window and the priest's silver holy symbol.
The glow peaked and began to ebb