Jewel from Azbo's tomb

The jewel from Azbo's tomb is a thorned jewel, sized for a large collar, that the great orc Azbo drew from his sarcophagus and sent floating towards Jonathan River in the campaign Zincirsiz ("Unchained"). Jonathan felt a strong, malign weight from it. Azbo said it had been made from the organs of innocent elves as a gift to a god, and that it holds power and elven secrets.¹

Azbo's charge

Azbo said that he and his brother had stopped the gift from reaching the god and had hidden it with him, and that it ought to be destroyed; breaking it with a mithral hammer was only a guess. He charged Jonathan and Olaf to carry it to the chain-bearers, and in return for their delaying his sister Kirka he planned to get them out of the mountain.¹²³

When Kirka broke through the passage and came down on vines, Jonathan stalled her with talk of a document and money, holding the jewel over the edge of the chasm with his mind and letting it drop and catching it again. When she saw through the delay and turned to bind him with a spell, he moved first, vanished from sight and pulled the jewel back. It never passed into her hands.⁴⁵⁶

The bracelet

Feeling an urge to search himself afterwards, Jonathan found the jewel on his wrist in the look of an ordinary bracelet; when or by whom it was given that look is not known. Examining it, he found a barrier that hides both its appearance and its power, a little more open to its bearer, but he could not make out all its properties. When he took it off and put it back on, its plain look changed slightly, and the sense of spiritual weight and of expansion stayed with him.⁷

In Sınır Sapı the elf scholar Ektelyon told Jonathan that he sensed a weight on his soul, without naming its cause. The town's sickness was said to have begun some six months earlier, while Jonathan had only just arrived with the jewel; no link between the two was shown.⁸⁹

One morning Jonathan's first light spell burned far brighter than it should. He took the bracelet off and laid it on the table, where it took back its necklace form, and his next light burned as normal. Later, while the jewel's teeth were in his skin, a spell to clean away blood worked more easily and better than usual. These were his experiences of it; that it strengthens every spell alike, or gives boundless power, was never shown.¹⁰¹¹¹²

A thing with a will

In the witch hunter Otto's carriage, when Otto's gaze drifted towards Jonathan's wrist, the bracelet slipped down under his clothes as if hiding itself. It gave the impression of a mind, and Jonathan did not tell Otto of it.¹³

When Jonathan woke in a cave after a span he could not remember, the bracelet had sunk thin, long teeth into his skin and drawn a little blood, and it looked brighter, more vividly coloured and harder. As he calmed, the teeth drew back and it was again a dusty bracelet. Whether someone had tried to take it, or it had held on as he fell, were only his own thoughts. Lady Teresa said that she had seen it up close while he lay senseless but had not tried to take it; she thought that strong relics with their own story, and something of a soul, may leave a trail for those who know how to follow. She felt its dense magic but did not know what it was.¹⁴¹⁵¹⁶

Jonathan placed guarding it from ill-meaning beings above and below the earth before much else, and worried that the enemy might have noticed it.¹⁶¹⁷

On an underwater journey its teeth caught in his skin again, without pain, and it could not be pulled off by force. When Jonathan thought of stowing it in his bag, eyes and a grin in the dark answered him, and that answer came from the bracelet itself. During a rain of sharp branches and stones he warned it that both of them would be harmed; it trembled, returned to its normal form, and he took it off and put it in his enchanted bag, though the sense of a bond and of weight remained.^18192021

Speaking through a wall, the water spirit Aqua pointed to the object and said that she feared it and knew it, though she gave no name or history for it. Jonathan offered his plan to take it south to the chain-bearers as a reason to trust him.²²²³²⁴

On the long road south, about a month and a half, dreams of invitation came more and more often: an empty table and chair, mounts facing one another. When spoken to, two eyes appeared again in Jonathan's mind. They invited and made contact; they did not seize or command him, and whether they could not or would not is not known.²⁵²⁶

Not every magical thing is made in the material world: there are relics of gods, of fey, of devils and of more besides.²⁷

Spoiler: The will in the relicRevealSpoils: Zincirsiz #18; Zincirsiz #19; Zincirsiz #20; Zincirsiz #21; Book of Dead · Say what you have read

In the cave battle against the foe of Sınır Sapı, time seemed to stop; in a dark vision two eyes appeared and the voice Jonathan knew from the bracelet offered to even the odds. He refused outright, and the offer was never carried out.²⁸

When devils came to a burned settlement on the road south, the voice asked his leave to show him something, and he refused again. Jonathan linked their dream of a master with that voice. The will later told him that it did not want his body, only that he hear its proposals; that it may have called its servants to show what the two of them could do together; and that the Celestial manuscript the devils sought held parts of a story telling where an ancient devil lord's sword lay. When he held it to blame for deaths, it argued that other devils would seek the writings anyway and that it had only brought the time forward, and that success might raise the dead to martyrs. Jonathan rejected this.^29303132

It claimed that it lacked the power to give direct orders and could show only dreams and visions of places, and that it had sent its night call by entering the dream of a bearded devil; yet the devils of the material world obeyed Jonathan's own open commands. Jonathan and the will reached a limited bargain: until he decided, it would cause no harm on its own, take no initiative apart from him, and order no one killed outright. He kept this apart from its larger offer, and said he was not interested in swords or great power but wanted to be rid of the thing he feared. The will warned that if he leapt from a cliff he would die and it would not.^33343536

At the end of that meeting a silhouette with great horns and a thorned body appeared that only Jonathan could see. Thereafter the will in the necklace was known to be at least a devil, though its name and past remain unknown.³⁷³⁸³⁹

It is said that the strongest devils often began as celestials, that a devil bound by one priestly method may still reach the dreams of those who guard it, and that such bound devils are usually so powerful that a host of others will do all they can to find them. Whether this relic was bound in such a way is not known.⁴⁰⁴¹

In Elm

In the village of Elm, when talk turned to a cursed object that might be affecting the children, Jonathan straightened the bracelet without thinking and remembered the eyes; this time the bracelet did nothing, and the image was his own. Asked about very old things he carried, he named none, though he later thought of the dark thing he was taking to the chain-bearers.^42434445

In a hall beneath the vanishing lake Jonathan showed the guest Max the necklace in its true form. A dense sense of evil came from it, the wounds on his wrist were plain, and as it returned to its old look it bit him. He told the story of Azbo and said, from what he had seen, that it was the personal ornament of an evil god. He thought of freezing it in time, or sending it into the far future, to keep it safe until it reached the chain-bearers; neither was tried. He then gave the will open leave to look through his eyes, and it promised to take no control; a moment of darkness and a headache followed. It said that it had never seen the right-to-left script there, though it had heard of such a very old tongue, and its hints about the holes in the walls and the feeling of being watched led Jonathan to think of a beholder.^4647484950

When Max urged him to use it, Jonathan offered to let him carry it, and Max drew back; Jonathan spoke of the risk to his soul and of his aim to bring it to the chain-bearers, and refused shortcuts. Later, puzzled by a sleeping man found below, he touched the bracelet to him. It tightened and made itself felt, the man took fright, and only Jonathan heard its voice. The will denied any part in what had happened to the man, said that he felt lately human and before that like some other being, and advised caging him below to weigh him up; Jonathan did not do so, and silenced it when it argued that they, not others, should profit.^5152535455

The jewel has not yet reached the chain-bearers, and what it truly holds is not known.⁵²