She lowers her shields obediently. ...presumably 'we are going to place some precautionary compulsions' is an order to do that? She isn't sure why you'd tell her that, if not to order her to do that. 

Well, if she hadn't done that it would not strictly speaking have prevented Altarrin from doing whatever he wanted anyway; it's hard to shield against compulsions from a mage with enough skill, and Altarrin is the best in the world. 

He is very uneasy about the headband-artifact she's wearing, though. The others too, but that one in particular might, no, will interact with compulsions - and if she was sent here by an agent aimed at tearing apart his plans, which is the prior until proven otherwise, then it doesn't matter what she thinks it does.

Ellitrea, tell her we are going to remove the– Pause. Tell her after I order one of the mages to do so. Hold off on the others, though, tell her to think very clearly about what they are for. 

Does a good yank with targeted mage-energies, from a careful distance, suffice to dislodge the headband-artifact? (The mage in question is not especially trying to shield the spy from any backlash, if the artifact doesn't like being removed; it looks stable enough, and besides she's apparently impossible to seriously injure.) 

Ellitrea is going to hesitate and keep reading the woman's thoughts before intervening. 

It comes off. Her expression doesn't visibly change; no one likes whiny prisoners, and they'll know exactly how she feels about it without her letting it show on her face.

(The way she feels about it is 'utterly miserable'. She will, realistically, probably never have one that powerful again, even if they decide to let her live, and - that's a bit like dying, and not like the kind of dying where you just show up somewhere else.)

Altarrin places the compulsions himself. Given his skill, and the fact that she isn't currently trying to resist in any way, it's probably not going to feel like anything at all to Carissa. 

:We are going to hold onto this at least temporarily until we understand its function: Ellitrea informs Carissa, while the mage-guards carefully - and without touching it at all - wrap the artifact in a thoroughly shield-enchanted cloth for transport to a Work Room. :We may be willing to leave the others for now, if we are confident that you are hiding nothing about their function and they pose no danger. ...I would like you to think very clearly for me about what the artifact we removed is for, and then about what the others are for: 

- they don't know? 

It's an Intelligence headband, the most powerful kind anyone in her civilization knows how to make. The pin does Glibness and they're obviously going to take it off her. Those are both of her own making; she's quite good at it and they shouldn't kill her they should just lock her up somewhere with a lot of spellsilver and let her earn her keep she's very talented and very well-behaved and in fact before she arrived here she was working on - actually she's going to steer herself to a different train of thought now, they can get that out of her if they try but she's not going to just hand it to them before she even knows if Asmodeus exists here/now.

The bag is a Bag of Holding, not of her make. Inside it is her spellbook which they're obviously going to take, spellsilver, a series of magic items meant to assist with various stages of headband-crafting so it can be done by idiots and not just her, some notebooks full of research notes, and some sex toys it's a long story. 

The ring is a Ring of Sustenance; they're probably going to take that too but she does want to point out that if they're going to have her at work enchanting things she'll be far more valuable with the ring on, and that if they're going to torture her for information, the ring'll make that involve much less in the way of irritating logistics of keeping her alive. 

From Altarrin's perspective, this is very densely informative, once it's relayed to him. 

It is not informative in a way that results in fewer questions. But at this point it's also stupid to interrogate their mysterious not-even-knowingly-a-spy while she kneels on the floor of his private office. 

He instructs the guards to take her bag - a bag that's bigger on the inside? it has to be doing something with other planes, maybe the Void? it wouldn't have occurred to him to try that and even having the thought he's not at all sure how he would start - but to leave her pin as long as she continues cooperating, it's mind-affecting but it's not that powerful. She can keep her ring. (They may want to study it, later, but he's going to want to bring Healers in on that anyway, and study its effects while she's wearing it, if it really does what she's claiming.) 

Ask her if she can walk, he tells Ellitrea. Tell her we are going elsewhere. Out loud, he asks one of the guards to go ahead and more thoroughly secure one of the rooms in the Palace infirmary - the one usually reserved for political prisoners. It's unfortunately a longish walk from here. 

Was he trying to light her on enough fire that she couldn't walk, when he dispelled her Gaseous Form in that incredibly aggressive way, and didn't realize she was fifth circle? ..probably magic works sufficiently differently, here, that it's very hard to guess what he intended from the result. Anyway, yes, she can walk. 

She's probably not going to see an opportunity for escape but if one does present itself no don't think about that they're Detecting Thoughts. 

Altarrin calls for another dozen mage-guards - not his most trusted inner circle, but they'll follow orders and they won't ask questions - and, once they arrive to escort the woman, he peels off from the group. He can comfortably scry from an artifact and cast at a distance anywhere in this region of the Palace, thanks to preparatory magic laid not just in this lifetime but in a dozen earlier ones, and there's no reason he has to be there personally. He wants to think. 

It's about a ten-minute walk to the secured infirmary. A dozen hard-faced guards wearing their own obvious magical protections join the existing crew, and the corridors the entire way are blanketed in permanent set-spells. And Ellitrea is reading Carissa's mind, ready to intervene if she somehow notices an opportunity to escape - unlikely - and then also slips it past the currently-invisible-to-her compulsions. (For this level of precaution, it's overkill to forbid thinking about escaping, even Altarrin can't do that without seriously impairing the subject in a surprisingly broad range of areas, but she would have to be exceptionally skilled and practiced at working around loopholes in compulsions in order to actually try it, or ignore the immediate orders to stop.)  

Once they arrive, there's a plain but comfortable room with a bed and armchair and even a small writing desk. Someone has already delivered a jug of clean water and another of wine. 

She's not seeing an escape opportunity. Maybe if she had spells prepared. 

Which means the obvious next thing to try is praying. Iomedae is really the person to ask about whether Asmodeus is here/now, and the god who might command her rescued or assassinated to keep her knowledge out of this kingdom's hands. Unfortunately she is pretty sure she can't reach Iomedae directly. She could maybe try for Abadar and tell Him that Iomedae would probably pay a lot to receive this message? Or try Irori on the principle that as a cleric of His she'll have an easier time getting His attention, except for how she literally just told Him to stay out of her way??

That's not a good sign???????!!!!!!!! 

:Archmage, we have a PROBLEM: 

Altarrin listens to the relayed summary. That is, indeed, definitely a problem! In fact, Altarrin thinks with a distant sort of calm, Ellitrea doesn't know a tenth of it. 

:Do nothing to alarm her, but - keep talking to her, keep her distracted. Tell her that she can sit or lie down and the Healer will do something about the burns. You can ask if she needs anything for pain, first: He grits his teeth. :And then as soon as the Healer is going to begin, have them put her to sleep. Obviously we cannot keep her that way, but it will buy us time to - try to figure out what is going on - and I will need to figure out a different set of compulsions before it is safe to question her about this...plan of hers: 

And then he can panic. It still won't help, of course, but at least if they can get the woman safely unconscious, it won't risk his current body and the Emperor and maybe the entire Empire. 

Wow. The Archmage is really scared. It's not that he's leaking much, but once you know him well enough, it doesn't matter. 

You need to be a good actress to reach Ellitrea's position. She gives scarcely any hint of being disconcerted or uncomfortable while she converses with Carissa, relaying what Altarrin told her to say. 

Well, if they're playing nice she's certainly not going to betray expecting worse. She'd be so grateful for something for the pain. (She's not even sure what they mean by something for the pain, separate from a Cure Moderate Wounds, which ought to be adequate for the burns). 

Apparently it means that they'll bring her a cup with some sort of unpleasant-tasting syrup in it! They offer her water to go along with it, and then the Healer brings a stool over and sits down next to the bed, and Ellitrea explains that he's going to need to touch her, and she should hold still and try to relax, this will take a few minutes. 

The Healer in fact just does some Healing first; putting someone to sleep is easier if they're relaxed, which this woman is not - she's incredibly jumpy, what sort of place sent her, is it the sort of place that tortures people for interrogations even though that doesn't help - but having a stable link to her will help.

(This is definitely not a Cure Moderate Wounds! It's not instantaneous, for one, and it feels a little like cool water being gently trickled over her burned skin, except it's instead under the skin. It itches slightly.) 

Whenever Carissa seems to be relaxing into it a little, the Healer will put her to sleep. 

She isn't starting out relaxed at all but she is, in fact, really tired, it's been two days since she slept at all. 

- she does notice it as it's meant to kick in. They're putting me to sleep, she thinks, and fights back a reflex to panic and fling the Healer across the room. She's a prisoner. They can do whatever they want. 

Altarrin passes on a few messages before leaving. 

First, he reaches out with a communication-spell to the commander of the Emperor's personal guard. <We have a potential situation> He explains, briefly. It's not like they know a lot to convey, yet. <Warn the Emperor and go to high alert, but follow the secret protocol for external threat>

Meaning that they don't expect the plot to be coordinated with anyone internal to the Palace, and relatedly it's a secondary concern to make sure none of the Emperor's political enemies notice there's a problem. Altarrin is so tired of tracking this as a concern. A functional empire shouldn't be like this. Even now, he's not entirely sure what went wrong. 

He orders his own guard to seal the infirmary. They are to keep the woman asleep until his return, which he estimates will be in several candlemarks but may be up to a full day. If something goes wrong, they are to render her unconscious; they should try very hard not to kill her, both because they desperately need to learn who sent her and because, whatever the danger of her arrival, she is still almost certainly an innocent catspaw in this game. 

He tells his people how to contact him, and then he Gates out. 

The Eastern Empire does not keep most of the records he needs to consult; it's another level of information security against the gods, in a way. Altarrin doesn't recognize any of the names that were relayed to him. He's not making too much of it, yet. All it means is that they didn't previously make it personal enough that he retained the memories of names across what could be dozens of lives by now, or clearly important to enough to put in his prioritized summaries. 

He Gates nine hundred miles, directly to one of his underground records caches, and spends a minute catching his breath, before ruthlessly suppressing the urge to spend a lot longer than that trembling on the floor. He might need to review quite a lot of notes, and he needs to make it back within a day. 

Three candlemarks in the first records cache does not turn up any answers. 

At this point, it seems reasonable to take a break and spend twenty minutes getting all of the terrified shaking out of his system. 

Afterwards, Altarrin Gates to the next cache. It's inconveniently far in the opposite direction. He'll need to rest before returning to the capital. It's not even just because of this new threat that he can't afford to be vulnerable there. 

The second cache doesn't have any answers either, even after he spends thirty minutes with a list of god-names and variants collected so far and half a dozen treatises on linguistics, trying to guess at possible phonetic shifts over recent centuries.

He's so confused. It's hard to think about, though, because it's taking an unreasonable level of effort just to keep his heart rate down. He hadn't realized there was so much fear here – it's not strategic, it's not helping, and if anything the lack of any answers could be positive information - if this wasn't an enemy he knows, that opens the possibility that it wasn't an enemy at all, or that it could be an enemy of the empire but not of his - and yet. 

Focus. Think. He needs a plan. 

He's so scared. 

Altarrin is back about nine candlemarks after he left. It's midmorning now. He hasn't really slept, beyond a twenty-minute nap he managed to snatch on a pallet on the floor in the safety of his cache, before waking with a start. 

(Working in a position of visible and acknowledged power within the Empire isn't good for him. He's known that for a while. The systems and precautions he built - the culture, the society, that he built up around them, over centuries - are enough to keep out the most egregious of the gods he now knows are his and perhaps the whole world's most dangerous enemy, but whenever he isn't personally there to keep pushing, the place starts eating itself. And so he's here, trying to build an oasis of trust while the people around him fight vicious, pointless, wasteful games, and it's exhausting and it leaves him feeling like none of the structures around him will really bear weight...) 

He takes stimulants instead, and Gates back to an obscure shielded Work Room, just in case someone did notice his absence and managed to get past the mages loyal to him in order to booby-trap his office or plan an assassination. He doesn't think it's likely, but this is how paranoid he needs to be, to avoid the risk that one in a thousand or one in ten thousand times - 

There are no reports of problems in the infirmary; the woman has been peacefully asleep, though the Healers are grumbling about the rotation required to keep her that way. The Emperor wants an update. Altarrin gives one, to the best of his ability; it can't be very satisfying.