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Cassandra torments her newly acquired maid some more until she is carried off by Trialla and brought to water for Cassandra's bath. Unfortunately, his water is in an unknown location, quite likely in another shadow, so the maid is probably doomed.
Malachai leaves bed with Serena and chats with Cassandra. Apparently, Darkstar's trumps expire. Malachai wants to walk Corwin's pattern, and has acquired Corwin's permission to do so. Cassandra packs to leave the current shadow, and heads to Pearl, the primal shadow containing Corwin's pattern.
Rivka, Zack, Cathryn, and Clarissa are at a party in Castle Black.
Rivka wanders around pretending to be a Tekla serving girl and works on learning Dragaeran. A guard decides that she doesn't belong, takes her upstairs, and locks her in a room. Rivka quickly grows bored with this game, and teleports into the hallway, after discovering that the doorway is apparently reinforced with a magical field of some kind. She wanders back downstairs to continue playing servant and learning the language.
Cathryn watches the long, drawn out, and excruciatingly painful duels, in order to pick up pointers on ways to torment Julian. She doesn't seem to like him.
Zack (as Zachnefaen the Issola) continues his conversation with Sethra and Morrolan. Apparently Sethra and Morrolan are going to ask for a favor, but they have difficulty reaching a point. Zack is also attempting to disassociate himself from an annoying uncle named Mikail who, unlike the rest of the non-Dragaerans, hasn't bothered to put on a Drageran face and appears as an easterner, thus getting into lots of duels.
Velaria is tending Gerard's infant son by his acknowledged wife who is also Velaria's mother. The only way out of the Locked Room is through a Faerie gate, which Velaria seems to be disinclined to pass through.
Arielle is a blonde woman, who was taken from a place without a name to Omega 17 to this party. She has strange magical abilities, including spellsinging. She seems powerful, and apparently doesn't draw power from outside herself.
Ilkandacian receives word that waiting farther for a reply from Rivka would be wasteful, and is told to sally forth and acquire information about Cathryn. He locates Rivka with a logrus tentacle. She's in a shadow about half-way between Ygg and Amber. He teleports in, arriving in a courtyard lined with invisible cobblestones two miles off the ground. Neat castle. He makes a mental note to look at the spell holding it up sometime.
Ilkandacian is greeted by a tall Issola lady who bows at precisely the right degree for his rank and says something in an unknown language. Ilkandacian returns the bow, erring on the side of granting the lady too much status, and then casts a translator spell, after requesting via hand gestures that the lady bide a moment. When the spell is completed, she repeats her greeting, welcoming him to Castle Black, and states her regrets that the host, Lord Morrolan, is busy at the moment.
He enters Castle Black, and encounters a Rivka, in her simple-minded Tekla form, wearing russet, yellow, and brown. Unfortunately, he has no way of detecting that she is the one he is looking for, and she ignores him, since he looks like an easterner.
Ilkandacian notices that everyone looks elfish here, so he wanders off into an alcove and shifts into a Hawklord form - a somewhat taller and thinner elfish shape than the norm here, with vaguely bird-like features.
Malachai's caravan pulls into a shadow and discovers that there have been a number of strange murders there recently, apparently committed by something with superhuman strength. Dapple doesn't seem to like, and even seems to be afraid of Aramek, who is currently shaped as a strange hunchback.
Malachai pokes around and traces a missing little girl.
Aramek does nothing obvious.
Ilkandacian discovers that the logrus does indeed work in Dragaera, and quickly finds Rivka and notices the trail of another initiate of the logrus. Ilkandacian greets Rivka in Dragarian, and she acts stupid. He then tries again using one of the more common demon tongues, in order to avoid being overheard by others. However, she doesn't understand that tongue very well, misinterprets his greeting, panics, and runs off. Sigh. Next time, use Thari.
Ilkandacian casts a spell that lets him bug Rivka, and hears her panicing to Cathryn about some strange person who said something to her in some demon tongue. The two of them decide to hunt down this strange person, and return to the party, by which time Ilkandacian has shifted to Athyra features.
After failing to find Ilkandacian, Rivka and Cathryn conclude that that the strange person that talked to Rivka must be a shapeshifter, so Cathryn tries to find him using a logrus tendril. Ilkandacian redirects Cathryn's tendril to have it find an angry-looking person carrying a big sword. Cathryn had dueled with this particular Dzurlord earlier, and concludes that their target must be doing strange things with the Logrus. After some more waffling, Rivka and Cathryn complain to Clarissa about this, and Clarissa does something that cuts the entire shadow (or at least this region of it) off from the Logrus. Ouch. She then advises them to look for the person who now looks disconcerted at the recent train of events.
Ilkandacian decides not to hang around in a shadow that isn't playing nice with the Logrus, and teleports out to a shadow near Ygg. Clarissa gives Rivka and Cathryn a teleport pointer to Ilk, and Rivka *bamf*s the two of them to Ilkandacian's location.
Ilkandacian sees Cathryn and Rivka teleport in, decides to stop playing around, and teleports Home. Rivka and Cathryn follow him there. However, The two soon fail to keep up with Home's rapidly changing environs, and flee to Chaos. From there, they return to the party at Castle Black.
Clarissa un-frobs Dragaera, letting the Logrus return.
Ilkandacian recasts his bug spell on Rivka, and listens to some more paranoid ranting. He then sends Rivka a note:
"Your excitability does not reflect well on your friend. Is it possible to have a polite, calm conversation?"
Rivka and Cathryn are paranoid about the note. Cathryn is convinced that there is an assassin after her and wants to find out who sent it, so she can kill him.
They write "Who are you?" on the front of the note, and "Return to sender" on the back. They try to send it back. Much confusion ensues. Finally, Cathryn deposits it on Cara's front desk with a logrus tentacle. Of course, Ilkandacian has long since seen the comments on the note, but has decided not to reply in the requested fashion, given the contents of the overheard plotting.
Velaria and Arielle chat. Arielle is actually good friends with the Julian from her Amber, and seems surprised to discover that this Amber's Julian is currently posing as a Ken doll.
Suhuy and Dworkin are making a marzipan golem, and Arielle and Velaria discuss different forms of magic, including spellsinging and Faerie magic. Much confusion and strange magical things ensue. Never accept a beer from Suhuy. Suhuy and Dworkin working together appears to be a very scary combination.
Ilkandacian sends a response to Rivka's last note.
"Certain recent events do not bode well towards your friend's opportunities for future enlightenment. Would acquiring the opportunity to dissuage this view be of interest?"
to which she replies:
"Huh? Talk to her about it, not me. And how did such a stuffy prig as you infiltrate a fun-loving House like Cara?"
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