‘You’re right,friends are hard to come by in difficult times and it seems thoseare upon us. I would much rather have you as a friend than an enemybut I also can’t have this bastard Curbut killing me all the time.’said Aquitain in a conciliatory tone.
‘I give you mysolemn pledge right now. He will not get the opportunity to do itagain.’ replied Featherdown with great conviction.
‘Good.’ saidAquitain. ‘Do you think that I could borrow some of those teleportrings. I need to do a bit of traveling.’
‘Not aproblem.’ replied Featherdown. ‘You can have all five of the ringswe captured off the dead druids.’ They returned to the tower andfive minutes later Featherdown handed Aquitain a small leather bagcontaining the rings.
‘In collectingthese for you I realized that I have some bad news for you. Afteryou were reincarnated and Miranda took you away Quab searched thearea for weapons and magic items and found your magic sceptre. Hegave it to me for safekeeping but I didn’t lock it away securely. Ididn’t think anyone would know that I had it. Last night itdisappeared. I thought at first that you might have come here andtaken it, as you knew how to get in. That’s why I changed the towerentry password.’
‘By the Powers’said Aquitain angrily ‘Are you saying it’s been stolen right fromunder your nose!’
‘Yesunfortunately that is what has happened. I don’t know who did it oreven how they did it without setting off my alarms but we didmanage to catch a strange creature in the town this morning thatmay have been involved. My esteemed colleague Granwell currentlyhas it imprisoned and is interrogating it as he is more adept atconversing with strange types of creatures than me.’
‘What type ofcreature are we talking about?’ asked Aquitain.
‘An offworlderas far as I can make out; it vaguely resembles one of the littlepeople but is brown and has a hideous look about it.’
‘Can I see it.I might be able to recognize it. All manner of strange creaturesturned up at Panmagica all the time.’ said Aquitain.
‘Of course!I’ll contact Granwell to see if he’s in and we’ll go over there andhave a look at it.
Featherdown andAquitain moved to the teleport circle on the floor and with a wordthey were standing in a similar entertaining area in the conjurer’stower. Archwizard Granwell was shorter than Featherdown and had aweasely look about his face. He was dressed in a fancy conjurer’sgown inlaid with gold, precious gems and pearls. Featherdown wore asimple gown that anyone of the villagers might feel comfortable in.To see them together, one looked like a prince and the other apauper, but both exuded confidence and power.
Granwell’slounge area was richly decorated with rugs and tapestries wovenwith exotic wools, silver and gold thread. They depicted rare andexotic creatures most of which Aquitain had never seen. He also hadstatues of all sizes scattered around the room, from as small as aNewman finger to larger than Newman size. Several looked almost asif they were real creatures but close examination showed that theywere made of various types of coloured rock.
‘Well, what’sso urgent that it couldn’t wait until morning?’ queried Granwelllooking rather tired.
‘I’d like tointroduce my shape changing friend Captain Aquitain who you’veheard a lot about recently. He’s no longer a bear but has been areincarnated as a rather strange creature. He’s interested inexamining the creature we captured this morning.’
‘Looks likesome spoilt child to me?’ replied Granwell grumpily.
‘Show himAquitain.’ said Featherdown so Aquitain shape changed into his newspider form.
Granwell didn’tseem a bit concerned. He had conjured so many weird looking beastsover the years that nothing seemed to worry him anymore. He walkedaround Aquitain looking from all angles and muttered
‘Veryinteresting, I haven’t seen one of these in the flesh before, onlyin a book. You’re a ‘thanthean’, I’d say. I remember it becausethey spell it in a funny way. It’s spelt ‘llanllean’ but the ‘ll’is pronounced ‘th’.’
‘Thosecolourful patterns on your abdomen are supposed to indicate family,rank and possibly even your emotional state. Those legs aredesigned for jumping, have you tried them yet and can you spin aweb? Do you know if your bite is poisonous?’
‘I’ve triedjumping, I can jump a huge distance, but I haven’t tried spinning aweb, I don’t know how and as yet I haven’t bitten anyone to see ifI’m poisonous.’ replied Aquitain eagerly using mindspeak as hecouldn’t talk vocally in his spider shape.
‘I wouldn’t goaround showing people your spider form. I suspect they’ll havetrouble accepting it. It’s interesting that The Lady reincarnatedyou as a Llanllean.’
‘The goldenrule as I understand it is that you can only be reincarnated as acreature that lives in your world. I’m not aware of any Llanlleansliving in Mudrun but it’s a big place. Perhaps there is a colony ofthem somewhere. It would be worth finding out where other membersof your new species live and visit them so that you can find out abit more about yourself. The Druid’s Council would know where theyare.’
‘That might bea bit difficult.’ stated Aquitain. ‘I don’t think they would bevery cooperative at the moment.’
‘Yes, I supposeyou’re right. Now do you want to see this creature we caught?’
‘Yes.’ repliedAquitain changing back to his child like Newman form as theyfollowed Granwell to the teleport pattern on the floor. Secondslater they were transported to a starkly furnished grey tiled roomwith no windows somewhere within his tower.
The room waslit by several magic globes, which were attached to the walls. Ithad a large red pentagram inlaid into the white tiled floor, aworkbench littered with various conjuring items, a rack containingwands and a large golden birdcage containing the creature.
It was aboutthe same size as a little person and covered in brown scales butits head and body was terribly malformed giving it a grotesquealmost gargoyle appearance. It looked back with a sneer but hecould see that it was actually quite terrified of them. It croucheddown in the cage trying to keep as far away from them as possibleand refused to say
