“Now what to do about Elean you said she’ll wake up after an hour what shall we tell her happened when she does so?”
“Well I know I said it would render her unconscious for an hour but I have an antidote for that, once applied it will wake her up a minute or so later. When she does, she won’t remember the last half hour and you can simply tell her she fell after tripping over something. As for the loss of time, she will probably just assume that it was just an after effect of her fall and move on. If she doesn’t well just gently lead her to that conclusion and as long as it doesn’t happen to her again she will just naturally over time forget about the whole thing.”
“Seems like a good idea, Rachana is that OK with you?”
“Well I can’t think of an alternative approach so I suppose it will have to do.”
“Alright so that is what we will do, how is the antidote applied?”
“It’s just a small vial full of a liquid that you simply pour into her mouth before standing back and waiting for her to awake.”
“Well, in that case, hand it over so we can get on with it, that is unless their anything else we need to talk about.”
“I don’t think so not until I am ready to proceed with the repair attempt please return in a week so we can discuss it further. The guard unit that rendered her unconscious has a supply of the antidote, I will reveal its hiding place and it will hand it over to you.”
Once Mutnep finished talking part of the wall of the dungeon corridor vanished and one of the guard units was revealed behind it. It held out its right front paw which was holding a small glass vial and when Amondo held his hand below it the guard released the vial and Amondo had a look at it. As he was examining it the hole in the wall vanished and was replaced with what appeared to be the original rockface of the corridor.
“Mutnep we will now bid you farewell, I will be back in a week and if possible I will bring a Rachana with me. Have you any idea how we might deal with Elean or whoever else she will have to bring with her if she does?”
“I have just the thing, I would normally be unwilling to deplete my battery even so slightly to do so but I could create an illusion that will fool her into thinking she is experiencing something else. It shouldn’t pose much of a challenge for me to do so but I cannot guarantee that she won’t question the illusion but I shouldn’t think she would not unless she has knowingly experienced this sort of thing before which is extremely unlikely. Now back in the day, it wouldn’t have fooled anyone but those days are long gone and not even I might survive to see them return.”
“If you think that will work then go ahead with it I only hope we don’t end up regretting having done so.”
“Until the next time my new friends I bid you both farewell.”
With their farewells done and the vial in hand Amondo had Rachana help gently move Elean around from facing the door to facing away from it and then poured the contents of the vial down her throat. She was wide awake shortly thereafter and upon being told that she had tripped over some stone and had been rendered unconscious by the resulting fall she quickly accepted their explanation. The bruising that had developed on her left cheek, ringing in her ears and a shallow cut on her knee no doubt helped sell the story. She was a little unsteady on her feet for a few minutes so after checking to make sure she was otherwise healthy Amondo and Rachana had to help her walk up the ramp until she regained her balance.
Once they exited the dungeon it was clear to Amondo’s squire that something had happened and upon being informed of Elean’s fall he was quick to help her get on her pony and they rode back to the castle at a slower pace than usual. Once they returned to the castle Amondo had his squire escort Elean with Rachana in tow to visit the castle healer to have her checked out.
Amondo paid a visit to Elias to check how the plans for the trip to the funeral were progressing. Elias had it all in hand and thus it was only a quick visit after which he then went looking for his secretary
“Mavin have you began your investigation into my brother’s correspondence yet?”
“Not really I’ve just had a quick word with his secretary Berthold Hicks about how he had him deal with his correspondence. Pretty standard for the most part as far as these kinds of things go except for a few peculiarities that seem to be rather odd if you ask me.”
“Such as?”
“Well correspondence with certain individuals was never to be opened by Hicks nor was any that featured a small doodle of an eel. These Leonid always handled by himself, now according to Hicks they didn’t arrive all that often but the one time he nearly opened one by himself you brother threatened to fire him if it happened again.”
“And who were these individual in question?”
“Well, there was only three of them and no one I’ve ever heard of before, a merchant by the name of Thomas Thean, a scholar called Pretor Deau and someone by the name of Kamal Barras who Hicks thought might be some kind of lawyer.”
“So you’ll have a special lookout for any letters from the three of them or featuring an eel when you look through his correspondence. I imagine they’ll be well hidden, or he might even have burnt them once he read them. Did Hicks mention if any such correspondence had arrived after my brother’s death?”
“Actually according to him one arrived with a drawing of an eel the day after Leonid’s death but it seems to have gone missing shortly thereafter.”
“It’s possible whomever he was corresponding with has some agent in the castle or perhaps his widow is a part of it as well. Keep looking but be careful and report anything else odd about his correspondence whenever you can and don’t telling anyone else what you’re up to.”
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