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From: stiltman@teleport.com (Stilt Man)
Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn
Subject: [Tor][AD] Bargaining Tools
Date: 18 Jan 1995 16:36:49 -0800
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[ADMIN:  Okay, credits go to Corey V. for providing the rubber stamp again and
for modelling the straitjackets.  Roll tape . . . ^_^ ]

In a chamber provided him in her own Great Tower, Talan fumed as he thought
of his initial meeting with Arcania.  He had prepared long for what he would
say to her, but her actions in dealing with him had caught him completely
off guard.  His all-too-human shape was reacting in its own animalistic fashion
exactly as Arcania's personal charms had intended it to.  She was a nymph,
he knew, and possessed many abilities to allure him beyond that of mortal
women.  Thus far, those abilities had worked quite well.  It was only a
short time before he might expect a "return bout," and some sort of plan was
needed other than what he had walked in with.

He sat upon the bed and placed his head in his hands, trying to comprehend
just how much of his hopes might be compromised.  In his haste to be gone
from her presence and collect his thoughts, he had promised to swear fealty
to her in public, before witnesses.  That essentially destroyed his credibility
as a swaggering Dragon Lord expecting to come to the capital and give the
Empress what-for.  Even the pretense that he expected to simply discharge
a grudging duty out of necessity was gone, now.

For a moment he considered if giving in to her wiles might be the best method
to accomplish his goal.  He chuckled as he thought of it.  The woman had a
heart that pumped demons' ichor instead of blood; the likelihood of her
giving the dragons independence out of love or affection was miniscule.

Talan wondered what result simply leaving the capital without swearing at
all would lead to.  Most likely an instant war upon his people.  Without
the aid of the dwarves, that would prove disastrous in no great time.

As he expected, there was a knock on the door.  The page informed him that
the Empress required his presence in her private chambers immediately.  Talan
raised a brow at the wording of that, but followed the page as he stepped
from the room.

			=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Talan was directed into a candle-lit chamber.  Incense wafted to his nostrils,
evoking a response from him that he knew was desire of some sort.

"Leave us," came the low tone of Arcania's voice.  The page bowed from the
chamber and closed the door behind him.  Talan's brows lifted when he heard
the sound of a crossbar being dropped on the outer portion of the door.

She was seated in a high-backed chair, facing the window out into the
night.  His eyes adjusted quickly to the dim light, and he could make out
her bed to one side of the room.  On a table near the door was a bottle
of port and an empty silver goblet.

So much for wondering what she was after, he thought with some amusement.
On the other hand, Kryalla had once told him that, in dealing with Arcania,
to assume the obvious was oftimes to overlook the obvious.  That Arcania
had seduction in mind was plain; what she might intend to do once she had
him seduced, anything but.

"I see you have a rather grand diplomatic function in mind for this evening,"
said Talan in his sibilant voice.  He stepped to her side, seeing her raise
a head, her lips drawn in a smile.  "It would seem that swearing fealty is
going to be a pleasing experience for us both," he continued.

The effect of his voice was not entirely effective, Talan observed.  Her
mind must needs be extremely closed to outside influence to resist, he
knew, and evidently closed it was.

"Only as pleasing as you desire," she said, a glint in one sapphire eye.

He looked down at her attire.  She wore only a thin gown, which did little
to hide her flesh and much to accent that which he could see.

Talan leaned down to whisper in her ear, "What shall be the terms of
endearment?"  She looked up at him strangely, the smile reduced to a
smirk of guile.

She sloshed the port in the glass she held in her left hand.  "What would you
suggest?" she asked with a sidelong, sultry look.

"I think that certain . . . areas remain open to conquest in your surroundings.
I think I might be the conqueror of some of those areas," he said in low
tone, rubbing her left shoulder with one hand.

She looked at the floor, her eyes half closed.  "These areas would be?"  She
turned her back to him, allowing him to reach both shoulders at once.

He complied, with the words, "I think the hills would be a good start.  They
have always been an attractive but firm resistor to conquest."

She cooed in pleasure.  "There might be certain small difficulties to your
hopes," she said.

"They are . . . dwarfed by your desire," he replied.

"My, my," she said.  "Ever the aggressor, are we?"

"When left to my own devices, I can accomplish much," he said.  "When dictated
in what I do, something is lost."

She froze, catching his hands on her shoulders with her own and holding them
fast where they were.  Talan knew that this particular term would be a bone
of contention between them.  Their words might have sounded steamy to a
passive observer, but every one was carefully chosen and had a meaning quite
serious to the both of them.

She stood, to stand opposite the chair, turn and fix his emerald gaze with her
twin sapphires.  He read a challenge in them.  A certain sway to her hips
caught his eye as she took the step between them, and brushed herself against
him.

"When left to your own devices," she echoed silkily.  His mind was abuzz with
her touch, now that she had finally returned some of the earlier flirtation.
She leaned against him, looking into his eyes from mere inches away, such that
he could smell every fragrance that wafted from her.  A collection of flowery
scents reached his mind, twisting their coils about his reason and making it
difficult to think.

"Does it please you to have a demonstration?" he said.

She grabbed him around the neck with one arm, her tongue tickling the shell
of his ear.  "Perhaps I might consider it," she said.

Some part of his reason asserted itself, and he took a half step back to see
her again.  "You might consider it," he repeated.

"We get along so well," she said, one fingertip gingerly touching the side
of his neck.  "We even repeat what each other says, we mesh so well."

"When we get what we want," he replied, taking her into his arms.

Her eyes half-closed as she gazed into his.  "And what do we want?"  She
stepped back, and the gown she wore was shrugged to the floor.  "Start with
the hills?"  She smiled.  "You may use your own devices," she added with
one eye narrowed and the adjacent lip curled a little further upward.

The negotiations seemingly having been sealed, no more was said for a while.

			=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Kronos had difficulty not expressing his contempt at the sight of the half-
burnt-out shell that passed for the ducal seat of Emrikol.  Thrull stood
behind him, a sneer on his face and a tight grip upon the hilt of
Aldorshennibon.  The red flecks in his ebon eyes danced wildly, and Kronos
knew that the sword was pressing him strongly for battle.

"Hail the gate," said Kronos.  He spoke calmly, but he knew that those who
undoubtedly watched him from the parapets could hear the voice clearly.
"I am come for the Duke and his ladyfriend."

Up in the parapets, First Sword Rejak shivered at the sound of that low-
toned voice that spoke to them with confidence and poise.  The hackles on
his neck raised in response, a small drop of sweat dripping into his mail
under his arm.

"Come no closer, good sir, lest you fall to the keep's defenses!" shouted
Rejak.

Kronos looked at him as though he were insane, and stepped forward without
another word.  As it had when Emrikol and Kryalla had come here, the bailey
itself seemed to hurl a hail of arrows at him.  He looked up at the guards,
who seemed to expect him to turn and run for his life.  More than one jaw
dropped as the arrows fell to the ground as though they had been far heavier
than the invisible bowmen that had launched them expected.

His hand rose, and the katana blade slid into it as if called from air.
The blade was red, and flames of a paler crimson licked the length of the
blade.  Thrull hefted his own weapon, cried out in fury, and sprinted
towards the gatehouse.  Kronos lifted his weapon to a ready pose and
stood silently, watching his hireling.

The portcullis was closed, but Thrull ran towards it as if he could not even
see it.  The edge of Aldorshennibon bit deeply into the metal, and as though
it were fire hotter than any forge it slid through the bars, melting them to
slag at his feet.  He stepped over them, taking no heed of the heat emanating
from them, and put his shoulder to the thick wooden gate.  As though he had
the strength of a team of elephants, the gate splintered before him.  The
scarlet flecks swarmed like a pack of angry bees in his eyes, the battle
fury of Aldorshennibon having fully overtaken him by now.

In four the defenders of the keep assailed him, and in four they were met
with Aldorshennibon's adamant edge.  The blade shattered their shields and
tasted with a perverse thirst the blood that surged upward from their arms
at its touch.  The blood shed by the demon-forged weapon burst into flame
the moment it touched the air, flames which spread to engulf the men in colors
of red, blue, orange, and green in mere seconds, leaving only an oily soot
of the first four men to stand against this hellspawned weapon and its
chosen wielder.

Three more men stood in the courtyard, their mouths working with fear and
horror at what had befallen those who had gone before them.  They did not
escape Thrull's notice, and he lumbered towards them with murder in his
eyes.  They backed away from him.  One unfortunate tripped on a short tree
at his feet and fell backwards.  Thrull's eyes fixated upon him instantly.
Seeing the distraction, the other two gave way to primal fear of the
supernatural and fled his presence, leaving their fellow to his mercy.

The sword urged him to drink the life of this man as he had the first four.
Thrull's own will asserted itself long enough to lower the weapon.  He
reached out with his left hand, which knotted in the tunic of this soldier
and lifted him clear of the ground.  He spoke, every word an enraged shout.

"Where is she?"

"I-I do not know of who --"

"The woman, Kryalla Simuel.  I know she has been here.  She accompanied your
lord in his return here.  She must still be here with him.  Where is she
hiding from me?" insisted Thrull.

"Th-they left this morning--"

"Liar!"  With a backhand sweep of his arm he hurled the man to the ground.
"You will speak of her, or you will taste the wrath of the Inferno incarnate
in adamant!"  He pointed Aldorshennibon down at the man's nose.

"O-on my l-life, they l-left to i-investigate th-that Vortex . . ."

Thrull pressed down on the blade, and ignored the flash of flame that came
from the man's transfixed cranium.  He hefted the blade again, turned to the
next man that fell within his sight.

"You!" he pointed with the blade at the man, standing at the gate of the
central tower.  He did not notice the arrows which bounced off his skin
as they might the hide of a rhino.  "This fool seeks to protect the lady
from me by telling me she has gone!  You will speak the truth!"  He closed
in on the man, who felt pinned against the wall by the blood-spattered
coals of this warrior's gaze.

"Thrull," came the voice of Kronos behind him.  The arrows that he had
only barely noticed ceased to fly at him, the bowmen suddenly confronted
by the images of their deepest fears.  "I suspect the first man spoke
the truth.  Kryalla and Emrikol are not here."

With a wordless snarl of rage, Thrull rounded on him.  Immediately, a
sudden vision of himself plummeting through the air, on an infinitely
long fall into the huge whirlpool of light that even now he could see
in the sky, played itself before his eyes.  The will of Aldorshennibon
was cleared from his mind, the blood-red rage it instilled in him
subsided.

Kronos' eyes fell upon another, a woman.  "You, wench!"  The woman meekly
approached him, her eyes on the ground.  "What is your name?"

"Brianna, sir," said the woman.

"You will accurately reflect to the Duke and his lady what happened here,
and you will tell him that Lord Kronos and Soralus Thrull came here to
seek an answer for her crimes against us and our Master," said Kronos.

"Yes, sir," she replied.

Kronos sheathed the katana in whatever mystical manner he had called it.
"Come," he said to the larger man.  "Our work here is done for now."

"We're just leaving?" asked Thrull.

"Indeed," he said.  He looked up at the sky.  Next to the dark blue swirl
of the Vortex, he could see a huge red circular object with the silhouette
of a black crescent before it.  The light of it was as bright as any sun
this world might ever have had, and its command could not be denied.  "The
Empress has returned, and expects a report from us.  We should be away from
here whilst we give homage to her."

Thrull nodded, though he could not see what the other could; the summons
was for Kronos' eyes alone.  With a menacing look at Brianna, he followed
the dark knight back through the shattered gate, and could hear the whimperings
of fear from those wards up in the parapets not yet free of Kronos' sorceries.

Vengeance, it seemed, would have to wait.

+=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=+
+	Arcania Dorval, returned from exile		  +
+=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=+
+       . . . scribed by the Stilt Man,			  +
+		stiltman@teleport.com			  +
+=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=+