Miranda's Page | Miranda's Logs
Miranda spends several hours trying to figure out how to remove the choker, without much success. She is able to determine that there are four stones with sigils, interspersed with five normal stones. Each stone is on a small piece of flat metal, and each metal piece is joined together by a small rod. The arrangement of the stones makes it impossible to touch any of the sigil stones together. One of the sigil stones resembles the piece of Comet that Miranda saw in Hell, so she assumes that one is the Trump ward. Two of the others look familiar. After thinking about it for a bit, she's pretty sure she's seen Jasra use them, but she can't remember where.
All of this scrutiny starts to give Miranda a headache, so she's happy for the distraction when a serving girl knocks and offers afternoon tea. After tea and scones, Miranda decides to explore her prison, and spends the rest of the afternoon wandering around the castle. It's apparently exactly the way Castle Amber used to look. She eventually comes across a hall of mirrors, which she spends some time examining. The style of one of the mirrors reminds her of Yut Lung's Shadow. As she's preparing to leave, Fiona enters from the other end and comments that she's happy to see Miranda about. Well, it's not like there's much else for her to do. True, but Fiona thought she would spend at least two hours in front of the mirror trying to get the choker off. Miranda jokingly points out that there are more angles here. Fiona gets a funny smile at that. Miranda observes that she doesn't seem bothered by the fact that Miranda is trying to remove the choker. No, she's laid out her traps, and if Miranda manages to find her way around them, there's not much she can do. Miranda gives Fiona a calculating look and comments that she must be under a tight timeline. Two weeks. That makes sense...Fiona figures Miranda can eventually escape from the choker, but not in that short a time. Fiona admits she'd be impressed if Miranda managed it. Then her expression changes, and she notes that she has a visitor. She asks Miranda to excuse her, then casts a spell on her that makes her feel very passive. Fiona sits her in a chair and leaves.
Miranda fights unsuccessfully against the feeling of lethargy for a while, then a phrase occurs to her that she somehow knows will free her. She speaks it, and it works! She stands and begins to leave, then notices Fiona talking to someone, reflected in one of the mirrors. She finds an angle that will let her watch without being seen and realizes that the other person is Brand. It quickly becomes apparent that Fiona is holding Miranda with his consent. He asks how Miranda is doing. Fiona says she's behaving herself - Jasra trained her well. Has she told Miranda the truth? About her parentage? No. She didn't think that would be wise right now. They discuss their upcoming time table. The necromancer will be released in two weeks. They're pretty sure the army will attack the Emperor's palace first. Brand has spoken to Belissa about Hendrake protecting Archangelsk, since that's where the army will go next. Fiona asks where Maevyn is. Brand says he's missing. They were expecting him to try to shift Shadow looking for Miranda, and when that didn't work, he'd return to Barimen and assist them. But he's simply vanished. Fiona is displeased, since they'll need him at the end. He's one of only two people who can repair it. Brand thinks Miranda might be able to do it by herself. He notes that Mandor's in position to break the next seal, but the one after that will be tricky. And they still have to recover the Eye. Fiona points out that Rinaldo can find it. True, but getting it back from him will be tricky. How's Faith coming along? She doesn't like it, but she'll do what she's told. Brand notes that Miranda and Maevyn must be in the right place at the right time, or everyone will die. Fiona comments that Brand could still rule over an empty Thelbane. He gives her a bit of a sour look at that, and says he must be going. He tells her not to harm Miranda. Fiona says she can't understand how Jasra managed to instill so much obedience in her. Brand notes that Jasra had many resources at her disposal, just like Fiona. Then he Trumps out.
As Miranda sits and fumes a bit about what she's just learned, she feels a breeze against her neck. She looks quickly around her, but sees nothing. She catches sight of the choker in a mirror, though, and notices that one of the sigils is cracked. Probably the one that blocks magic. She speculates that the phrase she spoke not only dispelled the spell, but broke the sigil as well. Or maybe it was the other way around. She arranges her hair to hide the cracked stone and feels the breeze again. She looks in one of the mirrors, hoping to see something reflected. She sees nothing directly, but catches sight of something in another mirror that's reflected in this one. It's the mirror she noted earlier, that looks like it came from Yut-Lung's Shadow. Looking into it, she sees the ghostly images of demons surrounding her. She shifts to her demon form, which causes them all to bow. She orders one of them to remove the choker. It acts very obsequious, but it's obvious that it can't. She orders them to find someone who can. They all leave.
Miranda examines the mirror for writing and finds some different sigils on the back. They remind her of Jasra as well. She memorizes them and then goes to Fiona's library. The librarian asks what she's looking for. Information on signs and sigils. Sorcerous or mythical? Miranda says she isn't sure. She'll get both, then. The librarian sends an assistant out of the room, while she leads Miranda to the section containing mythical books. Miranda begins flipping through these, but it's quickly obvious that the sigils she's looking for aren't there. The assistant returns with a couple of books on sorcerous sigils, and Miranda finds what she's looking for in them relatively quickly. The sigils on the mirror pertain to divination. As for the two familiar ones on her necklace, the broken one indicates an anti-magic ward. The other one indicates a magical lock...and a trap. Unfortunately, there's nothing on how to break the sigil or disarm the trap in these books.
Miranda tells the librarian that she's done, then leaves the room but lingers nearby. When the assistant takes the sorcery books away, she notes which room he goes into, then slips into it after he's left. There are hundreds of books in this room. She scans titles until she finds the basic, introductory books, which appear to be the least used. Not wanting to risk being caught in the room, Miranda smuggles a few of the more promising looking texts up to her room, figuring that the amount of dust on them means their absence won't be noticed very quickly.
After some reading, Miranda comes across a section devoted to dispelling. Apparently dispelling is considered one of the first things for a sorcerer to master, since you have to able to undo your mistakes. She finds a simple dispel, but is reluctant to use it, since she suspects dispelling the trap will be more complicated. As she reads more, she learns that by adding syllables she can make a more complex dispel. And suddenly, the phrase comes to her. She isn't positive it's advanced enough to counter whatever trap Fiona has laid, though. While she's trying to find confirmation that it will work, she feels the strange breeze against her skin again. She goes back to the divination mirror, and sees the demons around her again. One wearing robes steps forward. She asks if he knows the spell she asked for. He nods. She tells him to do it. He indicates that he can't. She looks around for something to write the symbols on. He pantomimes exhaling. She imitates him. He moves closer to the mirror and does it again. She does the same, and her breath makes fog on the mirror. She writes the command in the fog, and the demon nods. She speaks it aloud, and the clasp opens.
Miranda quickly returns to her room, places the necklace in a bag, and tries to Trump to Barimen's estates in the East. Nothing happens. She tries shifting Shadow, which works much better. As soon as she's a safe distance away, she Trumps Maevyn. He seems to be resisting at first, not surprising since he's never gotten a Trump call before. She says his name, then says that she's Miranda. Maevyn stops fighting it, and looks very surprised. He asks her where she is. She tells him to hold out his hand, then grabs him and pulls him through to her. He asks how she did that. It's called Trump. Is it a form of magic? No. There isn't time to go into detail, but basically it's how she got to his "house" when they were trapped by Fiona. Handy that. Yes. It's a House secret. She fills him in on what she learned while she was Fiona's prisoner. It turns out that Maevyn's heard a lot of it from Brand and Una. How did he wind up talking to Una? He walked a broken Pattern and told it to take him to Miranda. He wound up someplace else with Una instead. Based on what he's been told, after Brand uses the undead army to become the new Emperor, he'll break the last seal in order to force Una to allow Miranda and Maevyn to repair the Pattern. This will return things to the way they were before the Pattern was damaged, when the seals had no power, thus ending the threat. Maevyn reveals that currently, the avatars are all machines because Martin, the sacrifice Brand used to damage the Pattern, had a strong interest in technology. Maevyn thinks Una will let him repair the Pattern now, since she realizes she won't have a choice. They just need this artifact. The Eye? Yes. Una said Maevyn could fix it with that. That's interesting, since Brand told Fiona that he thought Miranda could do it without Maevyn. It appears that one of them is expendable. Maevyn adds that there is a Palatine trying to find the seals as well, a Helgram named Jerand. Miranda's never heard of him. Miranda tells Maevyn what she heard Brand and Fiona say regarding her parentage. She isn't very happy about this. Maevyn gives her a hug.
Since Una is willing to let them repair the Pattern anyway, Miranda wants to get the Eye and do it now, instead of waiting for the end of the world to do it. Maevyn agrees. The trick is getting the Eye. Maevyn heard that the Church has it somewhere in Thelbane. Miranda tells him that Rinaldo could find it, but he might not want to give it up. Maybe another Logrus user can find it, though. She wants to ask Driscoll for his help. He's already involved, he's a friend, and he might be even more inclined to aid them once he learns that Fiona is messing with Faith. Maevyn still isn't sure. Miranda says their only other option is to go to Jerand. Neither of them likes that idea. Driscoll, at least, won't sell out Brand.
That leaves the matter of contacting Driscoll. Miranda says she can't Trump him, explaining that revealing the existence of Trump to anyone outside the House is a crime punishable by permanent exile from the House. In the end, they decide to have Miranda draw a Trump of Maevyn's quarters in Succat's estates. After they go through, they shapeshift to disguise their appearance and travel to Hendrake's estates, where they claim to have a message for Driscoll. Once they are alone with him, they shapeshift back, much to Driscoll's surprise. He notes that Lily is quite annoyed with Maevyn - apparently he was on his way to have dinner with her when Miranda contacted him. Miranda and Maevyn explain that they know about Brand's plan to raise an army, but there's a part that happens next that they suspect he hasn't shared with Hendrake. This gets Driscoll's attention. They explain about the seals, and how Brand is getting the army by breaking the second to last one and releasing a necromancer. He then plans to break the last one, which will bring about the end of the world. Why? To force the hand of a god. He wants to fix it so that the seals no longer have the power they currently do. Maevyn and Miranda want to make this fix *before* the last seal is broken, so as not to cause the end of everything if they fail. Driscoll seems to have trouble grasping the idea of the world just ending without some massive final battle. Still, Miranda gets his attention when she reveals that Fiona is influencing Faith in some manner. She also tells him of Fiona's claim that Faith is Florimel, and Brand's thought that Faith might be a descendant of Florimel's. She admits there's no way to prove either possibility, and Fiona could easily have been lying. Driscoll asks what they want from him. They need to find the Eye, an artifact of some kind currently in the possession of the Church. Miranda heard Brand say that Rinaldo could find it, so she was hoping that Driscoll could too. Driscoll tells them that Rinaldo can know whatever any Logrus user is doing. Miranda had forgotten about that. This could present a problem.
While the trio is pondering all of this, a servant knocks at the door. Miranda and Maevyn shapeshift to conceal their identities before Driscoll tells the man to enter. The servant delivers a note and then leaves. Driscoll reads the note and says he'll have to excuse himself. Maevyn tells Driscoll they'll be at House Succat. He and Miranda leave.
Several hours later, Driscoll seeks them out at Succat. He tells them that Fiona won't be a problem anymore, but doesn't give any details. He's talked with Belissa, and they want to wait a week before Miranda and Maevyn make their attempt. Basically, they want to let Brand unleash the army that will overthrow the Emperor first. Miranda and Maevyn have no problem with this. Miranda points out that they'll still need to obtain the Eye. Driscoll admits Hendrake now has it. Miranda warns him that if Fiona is dead, Brand will likely realize it before the week is done. Once that happens, he may have Rinaldo retrieve the Eye. Driscoll can't think of any way to prevent Rinaldo from taking it. Maevyn can, but he'd have to go someplace where he'd be out of touch. Driscoll doubts Hendrake will be willing to let Maevyn have the Eye until after the week is up. Driscoll tells Miranda that she's placing him in a very awkward position, since he owes both her and her father, and that she might want to be careful how much she tells him of what she's planning. Miranda points out that she's in an equally awkward position, and assures him that she isn't opposing her father's plans regarding the throne. She just wants to eliminate the necessity of destroying the world afterward.
After Driscoll leaves, Miranda and Maevyn discuss their plans for the next week. Maevyn wants some Trumps of his own. Miranda says she can teach him how to do it, when they have more time. For now, she'll draw him a Trump of herself, and one of his room in House Succat. He also wants one of Corwin's keep. She warns him that she suspects that area is blocked to Trump, but she may be able to come close. Miranda asks if he knows how to fix the Pattern. Una claimed she would tell him when he returned with the Eye. Miranda thinks it might be wise not to rely solely on that. Maevyn says he'll try to find out from Brand, since right now Brand has no reason to suspect he's talked to Miranda, or even that she's free. Miranda plans to return to Fiona's castle. There is some research she'd like to do there, and once Brand realizes Fiona is gone, he'll expect to find Miranda still imprisoned there.
Miranda's Page |
Miranda's Logs
All text on this page is © 2002 by Kris Fazzari.
Last modified on May 13, 2002 by Kris Fazzari.