Meanwhile, the witch Lamia has used her sister's spellcraft to detect that the fallen star is coming her way. So she whips up an inn via magic.
And it is at this point that I came to realize that the music for this movie is highly inappropriate and horrifically overbearing. The scene of the visual effects for building the inn uses this incredibly overblown music that might be appropriate for an epic fight scene, but has no place in a scene about showing off dark magic. The whole movie is like that; there is no subtlety or grace evident anywhere in this film.
After this, we get a scene of Tristan finding the results of towering idiocy: no slave. He's naturally upset. Then, Yvaine is betrayed by her sister stars: they start telling Tristan where Yvaine is. No, I'm not kidding: the stars tell Tristan, the man they saw enslave Yvaine, where she is so that he can find her. Maybe they think that being his slave is better than being killed at the hands of an evil witch. But couldn't they find someone who wouldn't want either of those?
Like maybe Primus, the other remaining Prince brother. Primus drives by our "hero," who desperately tries to jump onto his carriage. This gets Primus to stop and accost him. But some fast talking by Tristan gets Primus to trust him and give him a lift to the inn.
Why? This makes no sense, at all. Primus is supposed to be the "good" brother, though this is only an Informed Ability; we never see enough of him to know. But at no time are we supposed to think he's a fool. In order for him to not have been killed off sooner, he has to either be considered not much of a threat or has been reasonably intelligent. And even if he's not much of a threat, he'd still likely have been killed sooner if he wasn't smart.
Yet here he is, giving a random guy a ride. Tristan could have been an assassin from Septimus, for all he knew. But he gives him a ride anyway.
So finally, Yvaine gets to the inn. There is some slightly funny comedy with Lamia's two goats. See, she turned them human; one of them was human before, and one wasn't. Making the real goat human made a, well, rather goat-like human. Then she turned the human guy into a girl. For some reason. And yet, she couldn't give him a girl's voice, so he/she doesn't talk.
That's some pretty lame spellwork, lady.
In any case, Lamia has Yvaine. But she doesn't want to kill her immediately; the magic works best if the star is glowing when they cut out her heart. And that requires making her very relaxed and happy. So Lamia is very kind to her, giving her a soothing bath. And then, Yvaine is in her bathrobe lying on a bed. When Lamia offers her a massage. And just as the movie actually starts to possibly be interesting, Primus and Tristan show up.
Hot, medieval lesbianism strikes out again.
Primus hops into the bath. Lamia tries to poison him, but he doesn't drink anything that comes from someone else (a lesson learned from an earlier scene in the movie). There's a bit of tension over the poisoned wine. At least in theory, because it is given to Tristan to drink, which is something the audience is rooting for and yet we know isn't going to happen, so the tension falls flat.
In any case, things come to a head when Primus sees the necklace around Yvaine's neck. Which brings us to the issue with the necklace.
Why is she wearing it? Why did she even pick it up? According to the movie, the necklace is what caused her to fall. So why keep it? What does she intend to do with it?
And what does Primus do when he sees it? He suddenly starts yelling and being belligerent. Right, that's really going to help you get the girl to fork over the necklace. Is everyone in this movie an imbecile or something?
Thankfully, Lamia appears and stabs him in the neck. Tristan shows up to protect Yvaine, but Lamia uses magic fire to contain them. So Tristan uses the magic fire to light his teleportation candle, and he tells Yvaine to think of home. They depart.
