It took Lillet almost ten hours of poring over alchemical and sorcerous grimoires and writing and rewriting the design of her Rune before she had it down to what she hoped would work. Gaff fetched her a dinner tray from the kitchens and made tea twice but otherwise left her alone, while Amoretta simply waited with literally inhuman patience.
When she finally dragged herself into bed, the work was complete in theory. The practice of it began the next day. The Rune was not only difficult to prepare, but it was not even like the harder Runes in her grimoires, for it had never been tested before. Moreover, it needed the support of two conventional Alchemy Runes, the Laboratory to provide the basic materials and the Chimera Spawn to support the creation's life force.
It took four tries to get it right, and took long into the afternoon since after each failure Lillet had to rest and replenish her spent mana as well as correct the flaws in her design.
The end result, Lillet thought, was everything Amoretta had suggested: a work of magic that only Lillet had the ability to create. It was over-Mastery work in alchemy to begin with, but it also took practical experience in the arcana of sorcery as well. Only to devils was the human soul an object, something separate and distinct from the person that could be bartered. Likewise, Lillet doubted there were a lot of magicians who had experience in trading their own soul who still had possession of it.
What she'd created was based on Dr. Chartreuse's design for Amoretta, an artificial creation of alchemy but built around a previously existing spirit as a core. Only in this case it was not an angel's spirit but Lillet's own soul that made that anchor. This was what had given shape to the creation's human form--it was an exact duplicate of Lillet herself.
"Lillet!" Amoretta gasped as the new familiar emerged from the Rune. "You made a homunculus of yourself?"
Lillet sagged to her knees, exhausted, and let her creation answer the question.
"Not a homunculus, although it is based on Dr. Chartreuse's work in making you. Actually, I'm more technically a chimera: an incomplete life form made through alchemy, by pure manipulation of the natural laws."
"How long will she last?"
"Probably around thirty-six hours," the chimera said. Lillet had done that for a variety of reasons, but the most important was that she wanted to get her soul back when this was all done! A homunculus had no fixed lifespan, and could go on for years and decades, and Lillet wasn't going to make something, then kill it to retrieve her soul. Better by far to use a chimera, and let it simply live out its allotted life.
"You look and sound just like Lillet," Amoretta marveled. "You even feel like her. I touch your hand and I can sense Lillet within you."
"That's because I used my soul as her core," Lillet said. "The angel inside you probably can sense that."
"Your soul!" Amoretta yelped.
"It's all right. I should get it back. Probably."
"Lillet!"
"I needed a duplicate that would look like me, sound like me, but more importantly act like me. Illusion could take care of the first two, but not the third, and magicians and familiars might sense it anyway. She can also function on her own like you can, while I'd have to command an illusion. Since the point is to be somewhere else while she's pretending to be me, that wouldn't work."
"Lillet, how could you do something so dangerous? You could have killed yourself playing games with your soul like that!"
"That's why she didn't tell you," said the chimera. "We'd take any risk if it meant saving you."
"Besides," Lillet said with a smile, "it worked, so there's nothing to worry about!"
"That's not the point, Lillet!"
"Of course it is. You've died for me, Amoretta, so at least allow me to take risks for you." She got to her feet, where she swayed as badly as after too many glasses of Master Benedictine's root punch at the Midsummer's Eve party. "You said you believed in me and my magic, so please keep thinking of it that way."
"Oh, Lillet," Amoretta sighed, embracing her. "How can I ever thank you for this?"
"Don't be silly. If you didn't love me you wouldn't be in this fix in the first place. Besides, there are no debts where love is concerned."
"No, I suppose there aren't."
"Speaking of which, can you help me to the bed? I'm about to drop from exhaustion, here."
"Oh, yes, yes, of course."
"Thanks. I need to rest up for tonight. While you and my doppelganger go to the meeting in the crypt, I'm going to be in a graveyard raising the spirit of our dead witness." With Amoretta's help, Lillet tumbled onto the bed.
"Why am I going with her?"
"Two reasons. It'll cut down on the number of watchers I need to look out for, because if you're with what they think is me there's no one else for them to be on watch for." Lillet yawned, then went on. "Plus, she can't do magic, because she's a chimera, so if there's any protective spells to get past or something, I'll need to count on you...to do...it..."
With that, Lillet drifted off to sleep. She slept soundly and without dreams, a relief given the worries on her mind. When Amoretta woke her at eight o'clock, she felt rested--no, better than that, she felt refreshed, even energized.
"Wow, what happened while I was asleep?" she asked.
"It...well, you looked so exhausted," Gaff said hesitantly. He was pressing his index fingers together in a nervous little gesture.
"Gaff has been retrieving mana for you ever since you fell asleep," Amoretta said.
"Gaff, you have? I'm touched."
"It's...it's just that you need to be at your best tonight, that's all," he insisted. Lillet giggled. He's such a typical boy! You'd need wild horses to drag out an admission that he cared.
"Well, I certainly will be. Thank you." Certain familiars, including elves, were much better than humans at extracting mana, the raw energies of magic, from the environment. In a large-scale wizardry battle magicians would send out squads of such familiars to gather mana to keep fueling their spells. Gaff had fulfilled the same function, restoring all the power Lillet had spent on making her doppelganger and more besides. "We'd better get started, then."
She looked over at the chimera. Amoretta had gotten the imitation Lillet dressed in one of Lillet's own dresses and steeple hats. The effect was positively eerie. It reminded her of old fairy tales about ghostly duplicates that would haunt their originals for the purpose of stealing their souls. The thought made Lillet shudder, considering what she'd done.
This is no time to be silly, she told herself harshly. Remember what's at stake.
"All right, then; we're off!" the doppelganger said cheerfully.
"Come on, Grimalkin. We may need you." The cat scurried over to his mistress and hopped into Amoretta's arms.
"Be careful," Lillet told her.
"You, too."
They shared a quick goodbye kiss and then the two alchemically-made ladies left the room to Gaff and Lillet.
"Well, that's done," Lillet said.
"So how are you going to get out of here? If the bad guys had somebody watching in the halls and they see two of you walking around, they'll know something is up."
"That's easy. I'm going to call on one of your cousins."
"Oh?"
"Right. A little touch of pixie dust and I'll be invisible."
"Pixies? Those guys can't go two seconds without poking their noses into everything. It'll take me an hour to clean up! You'll probably have to bribe them, too. I hope you've got a gallon of honey on hand, because that's what those greedy-guts will take."
It actually required only half a pint of honey--the size of the pot on the tea-tray--to satisfy the pixie Lillet called up. That was why they weren't one of the typically-used Glamour familiars; their lack of will to help without payment and their lack of inclination to take orders made them unsuitable to depend on in a battle. In this case, though, it went perfectly, letting Lillet leave the Royal House of Magic invisibly. She nearly startled a fruit-seller out of his boots, in fact, when she faded back into existence while walking past his barrow.
The potter's field where the capital buried its unclaimed or unknown dead was a desolate place, especially by moonlight. A yew hedge blocked the side facing the city, pierced by an open gate next to the gravedigger's hut, but the other sides were left open to the countryside. Lillet had no trouble in slipping into the burial ground unseen; it was sad how little care was taken.
The field itself was open and barren, with scrubby grass littered carelessly by crisped, dead leaves from the nearby trees. While the caretakers probably had some kind of map showing where they'd already dug, so that they didn't accidentally unearth one corpse while burying another, there were no markers to show where the graves might be. That would be a problem if Lillet were a grave-robber trying to dig up a specific body, but she wanted the spirit, not the corpse. It was enough for her purposes that the body was there somewhere, a physical connection between this world and Beammest's spirit.
Otherwise, the casting was similar to when she'd retrieved Grimalkin for Amoretta. She began with the basic Hades Gate, the Rune used to summon ghosts and phantoms, then made alterations to call more strongly to the one ghost she wanted and to shield out the spirits of others. The completed Rune shimmered into existence, its pale blue glow making the desolate graveyard seem even eerier.
"Spirit of Runcifer James Beammest! Come forth from the depths of Purgatory and attend to me here!"
The Rune sprang to life, blue fire flashing along the outlines of its design. From within it, Lillet caught hints of manlike forms reaching and clawing upwards, the dead seeking once again to enter the world if only as a bodiless apparition.
Then it was there, a leaping, dancing sheaf of blue fire drifting in the air, with nothing but two paler spots like eyes to let Lillet know it was a sentient being. As it appeared it gave a sepulchral moan as it was yet again exposed to the living world yet without the physical form to affect it.
"Answer my questions truthfully, spirit," she told the flickering flame. "Move up and down for yes, and side to side for no." Just like nodding or shaking its head.
The ghost bobbed up and down. There was no question of it resisting; once summoned, Beammest's spirit was no different than any other familiar and a minor one at that. The only tricky part had been getting the right one.
"In life you were a thief named Runcifer James Beammest?"
It bobbed up and down. Yes. That was good; her Rune had worked.
"Did you commit suicide?"
Side to side. Again good; it proved that she was on the right track in going to the trouble of summoning it.
"Were you murdered?"
Yes.
"Did a magician kill you?"
This time, though, it hesitated, not moving. Lillet blinked in surprise; there was none of that you-get-three-questions nonsense about proper necromancy. Then she understood and let out a sigh.
"I've got to pay more attention to how I phrase my questions. Did a magician's familiar kill you?"
Yes. Okay, that's better.
"Was the magician there?"
Yes.
"Did he--come to think of it, was the magician a he?"
Yes.
"All right. Did he interrogate you about when you broke into my room?"
Yes.
"Did you tell him about the flask that you picked up?"
Yes again. Thus far, the ghost had confirmed everything Lillet had already assumed about the series of events, but that didn't help much going forward. It was time for some more relevant questions.
"Do you know the magician's name?"
This time the ghost indicated no. Blast.
"Did you get a good look at him?"
Yes. That was more like it! Lillet could see her enemy's face, and if he really was a fellow Royal Magician she'd probably recognize him.
"Show me."
The ghost's outline flickered, and then it steadily twisted and flexed until it was the vague shape of a man. Steadily the flames took on more form and definition, until floating in the air was a two-foot effigy. Though it was all in shades of translucent blue, the depiction was perfect and detailed. Lillet recognized the outfit first as a priest's cassock--explaining how the magician had gotten into the prison--then leaned in to get a closer look at the face. It was long and thin, with an aquiline nose and cheekbones so sharply defined they almost looked like one could cut oneself on them. It was indeed a face she knew.
"Artos Benedictine," she said aloud. It was funny; she'd immediately thought of him upon seeing the Hades Gate in the Artifact Room, but had never made the connection between Benedictine's skill at necromancy, the Charon summoned by the trap linked to that room, and the Charon that had been used to break into Lillet's room when the flask was stolen. In her defense, at least half of the Royal Magicians were master-grade necromancers, but that it haven't even crossed her mind...
The image broke up and dissolved as the ghost could no longer hold its shape. With a wave of her wand, Lillet dismissed the ghost.
Now she knew whom she was facing. She didn't know why, but with any kind of luck Amoretta would be learning that within an hour or so.
Then it's my turn.
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