MALLOS
Evidently the job wasn’t so tedious as Mallos had assumed, since the minute the Auran entourage had turned away Tristan burst into peals of laughter, and Arthur swiftly smiled. The reactions were so sudden and so extreme that Mallos, who didn’t expect such frivolity from the king, was slightly taken aback. The conversation with Sir Walter was not particularly outrageous for him, nor intended to invoke such amusement, and the reactions left him momentarily nonplussed. He thought he could detect some relief in Arthur’s face, however, and had to presume that the priest had been a problematic visitor to whom neither were allowed to be rude to. Mallos had no such qualms, and got away with it because he was equally rude to all religious leaders.
At the king’s words, his eyebrows disappeared under his hairline. “Please don’t,” he implored, but couldn’t help but smile as his grandson collapsed into peals of laughter again. That smile faded quickly away when Tristan’s breathing altered and he started clutching at his chest. Mallos took half a step towards him, but restrained himself; while Arthur was present, he had the right to act. As long as Arthur was not overly concerned, Mallos shouldn’t be. It seemed that Arthur’s mind was elsewhere (and it wasn’t difficult to guess where), however, since he didn’t press his point when he said Tristan should go to bed. Mallos gave his grandson a you should really do as your father says sort of look, but didn’t press either.
The serious expression that befell him at Arthur’s next words twitched a little when Tristan felt the need to comment. Mallos nearly responded with ‘most churchmen are’, but was rescued from what would have been a fatal blunder in front of his son-in-law when that man immediately reprimanded the boy. He waited until Arthur turned back to the guards before dropping the prince a wink.
Once Arthur had requested the guards secure the grounds (intriguing), he invited Mallos and Tristan to follow him into the castle. Mallos fell back into step beside the prince, partially so that he wouldn’t give away the fact that he still didn’t know his way around the castle, and partitally because he noticed that the way Tristan was holding himself was indicative of pain. Once the king had his back to them and was striding ahead, Mallos placed his hand silently on his grandson’s shoulder and sent him a gentle wave of magic designed to relieve pain. It wouldn’t heal him, so technically Mallos wasn’t going against Arthur’s no-heal rule, but it would hold the pain at bay for a few hours. Once the magic had passed into Tristan, he removed his hand from his shoulder and followed Arthur with the beginnings of a frown starting to crease his forehead. He had a fairly shrewd idea he knew what this was all about.
Mallos wasn’t a huge fan of Arthur’s office, which wasn’t nearly as comfortable as his own one back in Madrid, although the real reason for his dislike probably lay in his being unused to being placed on the lower side of the desk. As they went in, he gave Tristan another pointed look but obligingly shut the door behind them without comment. As long as Tristan felt well enough to be here, he wasn’t going to send him away – especially since his shrewd idea turned out to be entirely accurate. He waved one arm casually, pulling two armchairs out of nowhere, and sat in the further one so that Tristan wouldn’t have as far to walk.
“Well, yes, they have for a while,” he stated, backing up his fore-knowledge of the problem with an unsurprised expression. “They’ve been on our case for months. Tsi thought evasive tactics would keep them at bay, but evidently they’ve decided to go over our heads.” Absent-mindedly, he pulled another cigarette out of thin air and was just about to light it with his other hand when he remembered that his grandson was still in the room. Regretfully, he returned it to the void. If Arthur missed that, he couldn’t fail to notice the other obvious sign that Mallos’ concentration was on the problem rather than the conversation, since his accent thickened slightly and he started inattentively slipping Spanish into his next words. “Señor Smythe is a member of the círculo superior, but is reasonably low within it from what I know. Certainly he is not one of the profetas. This is the one you want to watch out for.”
He focused for a moment, bringing forth the memory as clearly as he could, before lifting one hand slightly in order to create a life-sized three-dimensional image of a woman. She hovered in front of the desk, presenting Arthur with the clearest view and forcing Tristan to twist in order to see her front properly. She had light skin, short black hair and brown eyes, and she looked to be in her forties, although she was in good physical shape. She wasn’t a beautiful woman by any means, but something about her stare was captivating. The edges of her face, the line of her hair and the precise shape of her legs were blurred slightly where Mallos’ memory failed, but all things considered the illusion was impressive. His attention to detail had allowed him to capture a slight, characterful quirk in the woman’s slender pink lips.
“Señora Dahshoor, segundo profeta - er, second prophet of Aura,” he caught the Spanish that time and corrected it, but continued as if he hadn’t made the linguistic blunder. “That makes her second-in-command of the church. She is one of the most accomplished hypnotists on Earth.” He allowed the image to hover for a moment longer, giving Arthur ample opportunity to memorise it, before causing it to disintegrate. “She is the best, but not the only one. There are a number of other hypnotists within the church and most of the missionaries have magical persuasive abilities. Psychic attacks are difficult to identify, harder to counter and almost impossible to trace.” He leant back in his chair and glanced briefly at Tristan to check he was alright. “Once they have Thoth on Earth you have no chance of getting him back. If they can make him want to go, even if he believes only for a short while, they have him permanently. He’s stubborn and intelligent, so he’ll give them a harder time than they’re likely to expect, but a powerful or long enough exposure is all they need.”
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