Meanwhile, inside, BRB, Erose, and Vrba were interrogating the prisoner. He was quite terrified of them. Erose put the sqeeze on him, and got out that he'd been threatened by Teri into talking to the "guitar girl." Then, somebody (I would guess the real Teri) threw flaming oil into the room. We had to rush to put out the fire, and while we were at it, he snuck in and stole the guitar. I guess he had several backup plans. There was nothing for it but to go to England, and see what developed.
Dave took us to an underground pub, the House of the Rising Sun, where "illegal people" like us gathered. A band called The Clash was playing, they were pretty good. We crashed there for one night. Next day, Dave took us around the city. We saw the houses of Parliament (from the outside), and the Temple of the Bards, where Keef and Mick Glimmer are buried. I burned some incense in their honor. Apparently, the temple of the bards has been taken over by government flunkies who support the bard-licensing and other repressive policies of the Lord Chamberlain. The temple had many interesting ancient murals, but I didn't look at them too closely, because one of the priests kept looking at me oddly, so I left. Hal wanted to talk to the head priest, and made an appointment for later on in the day.
Hal, Vrba, and BRB went off to meet the High Priest of the Bard Temple. There was some "dissent in the priesthood" which led to this guy becoming High Priest. I bet there was dissent. Hal noticed an interesting mural of some twins, one standing in a doorway, one not. It is part of a set which are not well-understood. It may be some old story or a prophecy. Some thought it might have been about the Glimmer Twins, before they died. There was more on the story in a book which was stolen from the temple around 60 years ago.
A group of chicks calling themselves the Spice Girls were performing (not much talent, but very easy on the eyes) when Lively came in, on the arm of a heavy-lidded, dark-haired elf. Everybody in the place stood up when they came in; turns out the bloke was Archibald Glimmer, the Lord Chamberlain. He's very slick-looking. They and their goons were seated at their special VIP table. I looked over to our table to see what Dave was doing and was relieved to see that he'd managed to disappear. I stayed at the bar. A bit later, Mrs. Glimmer left her table in the company of the girl who'd given me the note earlier and one of the goons. As she went into the back, she gave me a _look_. I decided to take the risk and follow, but I got Sanjay's attention and told him where I was headed, in case I didn't come back. (Elspeth had somehow managed to get on stage with the Spice Girls and was slam-dancing with "Scary Spice.")
Anyway, I was directed by the woman who gave me the note to a private dressing room(!) where Lively was preparing for a performance. She told me that her husband was "up to something bad," and it somehow involved me. I played dumb, expressing surprise that the most powerful man in England was out to get me. When I probed for details, she said that her husband was upset about something, that he had a fixation on his dead brothers, and seemed to have a guilty conscience wrt them. She claimed that he has dealings with some nefarious priests, and that he'd wanted to prevent them from being reincarnated! When that failed, or proved to be too late, or something like that, he had his necromancers try to search out the reincarnations of his brothers. He has a reputation as a ruthless bloke, but I don't think anybody ever suspected that he was so incredibly evil to try such things! For some reason, he's been seeking out people with the same names as his brothers. This explains why he has been out for us, and also proves that the fellow is absolutely bonkers. Lessee, she overheard him saying that he had something which would make "the mick" come to him. I guess he meant Keef, or maybe the Amp, and warned me to be careful. I asked her why she was telling me all this, but she couldn't give me any concrete reason. Could it be that she did it out of purely unselfish reasons? I asked her why she married such a nutcase in the first place; she said it was because he was rich and powerful. It's unfortunate that such an otherwise nice girl has such a strong mercenary streak. Anyway, she sings in the club because she enjoys performing. She said she had some connections with the "illegal people," which is how she found out about me, and that she was afraid that her husband was suspicious of her, and would do something to her, like lock her up and not let her out, or something.
I asked her if she'd seen our friends Harris, Teri, and Linwere; she's seen Harris around at the same time as the "nefarious priests." She also knew of Linwere; she's apparently from the Lorechild clan, which is a noble Eldamar clan. (I guess she was't lying about that.) She hadn't seen Keef.
A knock came at the door, and a voice asked what was taking her so long. She indicated it was her husband, and so I hid behind the dressing screen, and prayed he would not search the place. She opened the door, he came in, and they had an argument; he said he didn't trust her, knew she was up to something, and threatened to keep her locked up in the house. She got rid of him, and told me to leave by the back door (not necessary; I'd figured that out for myself). I think she was being honest with me throughout, or at least wasn't setting me up for her husband; if that was the case, she could have turned me over to him when I was hiding in her room. Then it'd have been game, set, and match to Lord Chamberlain Archie.
We were introduced to a old elf named Darthier. He said he was the High Priest of the Temple of the Bards. He told us about the murals, saying they were records and/or prophecies about England. He also mentioned the book which was of very important religious significance, and which was irritatingly vague. About some of the symbols, he said the snake was taken to represent some evil person or spirit, the broken heart--?, the twins were either twins or one person looking in a mirror. I asked him whether it would be possible for an elf to be reincarned as a human; he said it couldn't happen unless the soul had been cursed by a necromancer. somebody asked about Linwere, and he said that she had run away from her clan and family. I asked him about my dream, and sang him the Lantern Song. He was quite surprised to hear about it; he said that it was written by Keef Glimmer for his brother Mick after that latter's death, and that it was never performed in public.
One of the murals we saw was the mirror/twin one, next to one with was filled with people. I immediately recognized it as that dream we all had on the road from River's End to Lubeck, and mentioned that to Darthier. He said that it sounded like some Power had been trying to contact us. I guess that dream was something trying to tell us that this image was important, somehow. Darthier also told us that there was another mural in the sequence, in the tunnells beneath the Lord Chamberlain's house, it shows a snake between the two figures, there is a horizontal line through one of the figures. Then, another image has the two figures, one big and one small, the big one stepping on the snake. It is surrounded by lots of vague writing. We decided to go look at it. Joe Strummer from the Clash took us. We fought some guards, and went past a door; it was a bit of a to-do, and it seemed like the house guard would be descending upon us soon, so I lit up Svengal to see if I could catch a glimpse of the picture before we had to run. I saw a figure lying on the floor, took a closer look, and saw it was Keef, chained to the wall. Erose and Elspeth ripped the chains from the wall, and we took off...