I raised an eyebrow. “No?”
“No,” he insisted. “They’re more like…familiars.”
“Familiars?” I repeated, skeptically.
“Yeah, like a wizard’s owl, or a witch’s black cat.”
“And you think that’s better?” I asked. “Are you listening to yourself?”
“It’s certainly better than this master-and-slave interaction you keep describing.”
“Fine, it’s not master and slave,” I growled. “It’s more like Dracula and Renfield.”
My comment caused Rune to burst into laughter, and a moment later, I joined him. He and I didn’t have quite the same banter that I enjoyed with my mentor Mouse, but it was close enough.
“Honestly,” I said after the laughter died down, “with everything you Incarnates can do, I don’t know why you need servants in the first place.”
“Well, sometimes you just need someone to bounce ideas off of,” Rune said. “Or, after you’ve done something, to tell you whether you did as good a job as you thought.”
“In other words, what good is it to be all great and powerful if there’s nobody to appreciate it.”
“That’s the sycophant argument again, and I’ll stress — as I did before — that you’ve got the wrong idea. It’s not really about having a servant. In fact, sometimes it’s just about having someone to talk to.”
“Because it gets lonely at the top, right?”
Rune simply gazed at me for a moment, then said, “Are you sure you’re not an Incarnate? Because even with my full slate of powers, I couldn’t manage to be as cynical as you about everything.”
Now it was my turn to chuckle at Rune’s comment. I had to admit that, although we obviously clashed on some things, I liked him.
“Hey,” I intoned, “I’ve got a question for you — a little off-topic.”
“Shoot,” Rune said.
“A couple of times now I’ve heard you referred to as ‘inscrutable.’ Why is that?”
He nodded, seeming to ruminate momentarily before answering.
“You’ve probably noticed by now that we Incarnates tend to have names that highlight our attributes,” he stated. “In my case, even among Incarnates, much of what I do is mysterious or unknown. On top of that, I tend to eschew traditional Incarnate conventions, like having a laamuffal — even though I defend the practice. As a result of all that, I’m occasionally referred to as ‘The Inscrutable Rune.’”
I thought about this for a moment, then asked, “So does that mean that the duties of the other Incarnates are well-known?”
“Not really,” Rune admitted. “For instance, I’m not sure I know anything about Static’s obligations — for all I know, he does nothing. However, he wields the power of an Incarnate, so I don’t question it.”
“So if you don’t know what the others are supposed to be doing, how do you know they’re doing anything at all?”
Rune seemed to ponder the question for a moment, then said, “There’s a certain level of order, shall we say, that Incarnates are required to maintain throughout the cosmos. If one of them is slacking off, we can often detect it by the amount of disorder that arises.”
“Interesting,” I mused.
“Now, getting back on point,” he stated, “what’s next on your agenda?”
I shrugged. “Not sure. Normally in a place like this, I like to spend some time getting the lay of the land. Being a teleporter, I can only go to places I’ve seen, so…”
I didn’t finish, but Rune picked up where I left off.
“You’d like to see more of the castle so you can fully utilize your powers, if necessary,” he said.
“Something like that,” I admitted. “Might be worthwhile to combine that with a search for Gamma’s laamuffal, Cerek.”
“Makes sense,” Rune conceded.
“Are there any places that are off-limits to me?”
Rune appeared to contemplate the question for a few seconds before responding with, “Yes and no. There are places you are forbidden to enter, but with respect to those, you won’t be able to get in. So basically, any room you can get into is fair game.”
“Is anyone likely to stop me?”
Rune’s brow crinkled. “What do you mean?”
“Well, I’m new here, nobody knows me, I’ve got no credentials… I’m just trying to figure out if there’s like a neighborhood watch that’s going to call Permovren PD on me if I just go wandering around.”
“I get it,” he said. “You want some kind of badge of authority. That’s easy enough.”
Rune brought his hands together and held them there for a second, almost as if he were praying. Then he opened his hands up in a gesture reminiscent of someone opening a book. There, resting on his palms, was what looked like an oddly-shaped badge of some sort with a red jewel in the center and a length of chain attached.
He handed the badge to me, saying, “Here you go, Officer.”
Chapter 17
I left Rune in our suite, where he was allegedly working on something related to the murder. Thus, on my own for just about the first time since entering the castle (and with my “badge” around my neck and tucked down the front of my shirt), I started exploring.
I’d been in situations like this before — basically, unfamiliar surroundings — and my standard operating procedure was to turn invisible so I could move about while being as unobtrusive as possible. (I would typically phase as well, becoming insubstantial, so I could travel freely and unhindered for the most part.) Thus, phased and invisible, I set about trying to get a feel for my new environs.
As I had already realized, the castle was enormous. As I went through it, I noted rooms as big as houses, hallways as wide as thoroughfares. It had been constructed on an enormous scale, as if designed to house thousands of people.
As it was, however, I saw very few individuals. Most that I observed wore the same livery as the majordomo, Dalmion. However, I came across a small number of others, haphazardly, that I assumed to be laamuffals, if only because I wasn’t aware of who else might be in the castle.
All in all, while I enjoyed the time I spent going through the place, my
