“You seem to have mistaken me for a mercenary of some kind,” Iskondra said. “I am no mere sell-sword. My services and skills with the blade are not mere commodities to be offered up for sale to the highest bidder. Though, incidentally… approximately how much would you be offering?”
“You can rest your scruples, dear Iskondra… I can hardly qualify as the highest bidder,” the wizard said. “That is, assuming that any other bidders started with you keeping your life as a given and then heaped some amount of money on top of that. I don’t intend to pay you anything. You are within my power… you may be a ‘wizard with a blade’, child of Devalion, but I am a wizard in the truest sense of the word.”
“Good pitch,” Tauri said. “Heard better, though. Okay if come back and try again.”
“Silence!” the wizard said. “I hold your very lives within my hands.”
“Washed first, Tauri hopes.”
“As if you would notice if he didn’t,” Iskondra said. “You’re filthy. I can smell you from here.”
“Way over there?” Tauri said, rocking his head back so that it hit the back of Iskondra’s head.
“Stop that!” she said. “Stop that at once! He’s touching me!”
“Silence!” the wizard roared again.
“Also, I am quite certain that I had a hat,” Iskondra said.
“While you were held in a state of unconsciousness, I inscribed runes upon your very souls,” the wizard said. “If I were to say the word… one single, very short word… you would find yourselves experiencing agonies beyond your worst imaginings, and then you would expire utterly.”
“Not just little bit?” Tauri asked.
“No, utterly,” the wizard said. He turned to the apprentice mage. “Artimaeus, leave us. See that my tea is ready.”
“But, my master…”
“Would you rather prepare my tea or stay here and serve as a demonstration of my powers?”
The mage scurried from the room as fast as he could.
“Now, then,” the wizard said. “As I was saying, I can activate the runes and cause you to die horribly. They can also be set to prompt you to act towards a specific set of goals, causing pain when you act against them in proportion to the level of transgression.”
“And how exactly are these runes supposed to judge that?” Iskondra asked. “You may look down your nose at my magical talents, but I am not uneducated in the mystic arts. To create something from magic and imbue it with that level of cogitation is far beyond the boundaries of known techniques.”
“Indeed,” the wizard said. “But as I said, these runes are bound to your own souls. You yourselves will be the judges of your progress. Should you choose to struggle against your leashes, to conspire against me, then it will be your own mind that condemns you.”
“And I suppose you want the book, then.”
“I have rooms full of books, rooms bigger than the houses most of the timid folk of this world live their whole lives in,” the wizard said. “I want the treasure… the assembled riches of a bygone age. When you’ve found it, the bond-runes will know and I will know… when that happens, you, swordswoman, will be free to fill your empty, threadbare pockets and you, assassin, will be free to gut her, but until that moment comes the two of you will never be free, not of each other and not of me, Mauricio of Montport. What do you think of that?”
“Maybe add ‘Magnificent’,” Tauri said. “Added alliterative appeal.”
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