"… go now. Can't keep holding to this… keeping, I mean, to… together."
– Chever's last notes
When he came to-when the white dimmed to the colors of earth-the man lay curled up in swamp mud. The first thing he saw was the rose-a hallucination. An illusion.
He reached out, palm up. The illusion's head rested softly upon his fingers. He wept.
When the tears ceased, the rose was still there.
He felt something hard beneath his ribs, lodged in the mud, and shifted to push it aside. A rock. A light touch brushed his cheek. When he had shifted, he had come nearer to the rose, and now it touched its face to his.
He pushed himself to a sitting position and cupped the bloom between his palms. It had taken root at a slant; it had fallen on its side when he had thrust it from himself in a time that seemed so long ago. Its stem had curved to enable it to capture what rays of sun it could through the swamp's mossy ceiling.
He gradually became aware of his hands; something about them had nagged at the back of his mind ever since he had awakened.
There: they had begun to rot. He felt no pain, and yet the skin hung from them in tatters. He thought he could see the bone of one of his knuckles.
So this was it. The woman had given him a disease as her parting gift, and he would die soon.
It had been worth it.
Now he would remain here. He would not leave his rose again.
Time passed. He did not count cycles of light and dark. Sometimes he lay on his back and stared through the moss and branches at the sky. At night, he saw the stars and thought of his love on their last night together. During the day, he imagined that certain strands of the whitish green moss overhead might be the remnants of Chever's notes, caught and molded to the trees in the rain. But no-the woman had brought them back after he had tossed them away.
Why had she done it? Why had she come to his house, lied, stolen his heart, brought him to the sewers, infected him with rot?
His only regret was that he had never reached an epiphany over Chever's notes. He thought longingly of the table in the sewers where he kept them, where they doubtless rested even now. Or… did they?
He strained to see into the blur of days between her disappearance and the present. And… yes, the image came: himself, standing over a table empty of all but a stump of a candle, frowning slightly, thinking vaguely that something was missing but not caring enough to think on it further.
An empty table. No notes.
She had taken them.
Of course. It made sense. What else of value had he to offer her? He had nothing special, no powers or insights. His rose was valuable only to him, but Chever's notes…
He could imagine those would be valuable to many of the woman's kind. He had been so caught up in his little world of garden, studies, and mountain cabin that he had failed to think beyond it. This was the price of that failure. To ensure he would not come after his treasure… a poison kiss.
But why had she not taken the notes sooner? He would never know. Perhaps he had been the one brief flash of light in her otherwise dark existence, her chance to know love before losing her life to whatever pit dark wizards swarmed in. Perhaps, having known love, someday she might also know remorse, penance… and, somewhere beyond that, peace.
Yes… that's what he would believe.
He had propped himself up on one elbow, and now he let his head fall back to his pillow of mud. Leeches clung to his face, and he smiled. Now the end would come.
That Curious Sword
R.A. Salvatore
The Year of the Shield (1367DR)
"It is not so different from Calimport," Artemis Entreri insisted, somewhat stubbornly.
Across the table from him, Jarlaxle merely chuckled.
"And you call my people xenophobic," the dark elf replied. "At least we are not so racist toward others of our own species!"
"You talk the part of the fool."
"I talked my way into the city, did I not?" Jarlaxle replied with that mischievous grin of his.
It was true enough. He and Entreri had come north and east, to the region known as the Bloodstone Lands. There, word had it, adventurers could do a fine business in goblin ears and the like, taken from the wild lands of Vaasa to the north of the kingdom of Damara and this city, Damara's capital, Heliogabalus. Liberally invoking the name of Gareth Dragonsbane, and reminding the city guards that the Paladin King of Damara was a man known for tolerance and understanding, a man known for judging all people by their actions and not their heritage, the dark elf had convinced the city's stern protectors to allow him entry.
They had agreed mostly because Jarlaxle was like no other dark elf they had ever heard of-and none of them had ever seen one. Outrageously dressed with a flamboyant wide-brimmed hat capped by a huge purple feather, a flowing cape-blue on the day he had entered the city, since turned red-an eye patch that daily changed from eye to eye, and with no apparent weapons, the drow seemed more a conversation piece than any threat to the security of the great city. They had let him and Entreri, with his magnificent sword and jeweled dagger, enter the city but had promised to watch over them carefully.
After a couple of hours, the assassin and the drow knew that promise was one the lazy guards didn't intend to keep.
"You're taking far too long!" Entreri yelled across the somewhat crowded tavern, at the hapless waitress who had taken their order for drinks and food.
They knew she was in no hurry to return to them, for she had been trembling visibly at the sight of a drow elf all the time she was trying to concentrate on their words.
The woman blanched and started toward the bar, then turned around, then turned around again, as if she didn't know what to do. At a nearby table, a pair of men looked from her to Entreri, their expressions sour.
The assassin sat calmly, almost hoping that the pair would make a move. He was in an especially foul mood over the last couple of months, ever since he and Jarlaxle had destroyed the Crystal Shard. The road had been boring and uneventful, even with his flamboyant companion, and Jarlaxle's plan to come to the Bloodstone Lands to make a reputation and some coin by killing goblins and other monsters sounded more to Entreri like a job for his former arch-nemesis Drizzt and his "gallant" friends.
Still, Entreri had to admit that their options were a bit limited, since Calimport was shut off to them and they'd have a hard time truly establishing themselves in the bowery of any other city.
"You've flustered her," Jarlaxle remarked.
Entreri just shrugged.
"You know, my friend, there is a saying among the drow nobles that if someone treats you well but is wicked to the peasants, then he is truly a wicked person. Now, in my society, that is a compliment, but here?"
Entreri sat back and lifted the front of his round, thin-brimmed hat-Jarlaxle called it a "bolero"-high above his eyes, so that the drow could clearly see his stare, could see the skepticism in his dark eyes.
"Do not pretend you don't care," Jarlaxle said against that smirk.
"Now my conscience is a dark elf?" Entreri asked incredulously. "How low must I have sunk."
"Artemis Entreri is a better man than to whip a serving girl," was all Jarlaxle said, pointedly turning away.
With a frustrated growl, Entreri shoved back from the table and started across the room, his small form moving silently and gracefully, almost as if he was floating across the room, heading for the serving girl. He passed the table with the two loud onlookers, and one of them started to stand as if to block the way, but a look from Entreri, so cold and strong, was enough to alter that plan.
"You," Entreri called to the girl.
She stopped, and everything in the place seemed to come to a complete halt, all conversations ending abruptly.
Well, except for the knowing chuckle from a peculiar looking dark elf at the back of the room.
The serving girl slowly turned to watch Entreri's approach. He moved right up to her and fell to one knee. "I beg your pardon, good lady," he apologized. He held out his hand and dropped a few gold coins onto her tray.
The young woman stared at him in disbelief. Entreri came up from his bow to stand before her. "I expect that you've forgotten what we ordered," he said, "which is understandable, given the…" He paused and glanced back at Jarlaxle, then finished,"… unusual look of my friend. I will tell you our preferences again, and with my apologies for not seeing your dilemma earlier."
All around him, the patrons went back to their private conversations. The waitress beamed a great smile, obviously relieved.
Entreri started to go on, to ask her forgiveness, but he couldn't quite bring himself to do that.
"My thanks," he said, and he reiterated the order, then turned back and rejoined Jarlaxle.
"Wonderful!" the dark elf said. "I do believe that I will have you in a paladin's order within a year!"
Entreri narrowed his dark eyes to which Jarlaxle only laughed.
"Thinked I was gonna have to kick yer arse outta here," came a voice from the side.
The companions turned to see the innkeeper, a burly older man who looked like a good portion of his chest had slipped to his belly. Still, the large man held an imposing aura about him. Before either of them could take his words as a threat or an insult, though, the man widened a crooked, gap-toothed smile at them.
"Was glad ye made me girl, Kitzy, happy." He pulled out a chair, reversed it, then straddled it, placing his huge elbows on the table and leaning forward. "So what's bringing a pair like you to Heliogabalus?"
"I just wanted to see a city that could boast of such a stupid name," Entreri quipped, and the innkeeper howled and slapped his thigh.
"We have heard that there is fame and fortune to be made in this country," Jarlaxle said in all seriousness, "for those strong enough and cunning enough to find it."
"And that'd be yerself?"
"Some might think so," the dark elf replied, and he gave a shrug. "As you can imagine, it is not easy for one of my heritage to gain acceptance. Perhaps this is an opportunity worth investigating."
"A hero drow?"
"You have, perhaps, heard of Drizzt Do'Urden?" Jarlaxle asked.
Once before, he had tried to use that name for himself, to impress some farmers who, it turned out, had never heard of the unusual drow warrior of Icewind Dale.
Entreri watched his friend's performance with budding anger, recognizing the ploy for what it was. Jarlaxle had been frustrated with his inability to impersonate Drizzt, or at least, with the lack of gain he would derive from impersonating someone that no one had ever heard of, but perhaps if this man knew of Drizzt, Jarlaxle could assume the identity anew, and begin this phase of his journey a bit higher on the feeding chain of Heliogabalus.
"Drizzit Dudden?" the man echoed badly, scratching his head. "Nope, can't say that I have. He another drow?"
"Another corpse," Entreri put in, and he shot Jarlaxle a glare, not appreciating that Jarlaxle kept bringing up that one's name.
Artemis Entreri was done with Drizzt. He had beaten the drow in their last encounter-with help from a dark elf psionicist-but more importantly than killing Drizzt, Entreri had exorcised the demon within himself, the need to ever deal with that one again.
"It does not matter," Jarlaxle said, apparently catching the cue and bringing the conversation back in place.
"So ye're here to make a name for yerselfs, eh? I expect ye'll be headin' up Vaasa way."
"I expect that you ask too many questions," said Entreri, and Jarlaxle tossed him another scowl.
"You do seem rather inquisitive," the drow added, mostly to downplay Entreri's tone.
"Well that's me business," the innkeeper replied. "Folks'!! be askin' me about the strange pair that came through."
"Strange?" Entreri asked.
"Ye got a drow elf with ye."
"True enough."
"So if ye're tellin' me yer tale, then ye're really saving yerselfs some trouble," the innkeeper went on.
"The town herald," Jarlaxle said dryly.
That's me business."
"Well, it is as we have already told you," the dark elf replied. He stood up and offered a polite bow. "I am Jarlaxle, and this is my friend, Artemis Entreri."
As the innkeeper replied with the customary "Well met," Entreri put another frown on and glowered at the dark elf, hardly believing that Jarlaxle had just given out their names. The innkeeper offered his name in reply, which Entreri didn't bother to catch, then began telling them a few tales about men who had gone up to fight in Vaasa, which interested Entreri even less. Then, after a call from the bar area, the man excused himself and walked away.
"What?" Jarlaxle asked against Entreri's frown.
"You are so willing to give out our identities?" "Why would I not be?"
Entreri's expression showed clearly that the reasons should be obvious.
"There is nobody chasing us, my friend. We haven't earned the anger of the authorities-not in this region, at least. Were you not known in Calimport as Artemis Entreri? Do not be ashamed of your name!"
Entreri just shook his head, sat back, and took a sip of his wine. This whole adventure on the road was too out of place for him still.
Some time later, the inn clearing out of the nightly patrons, the innkeeper ambled back over to the pair.
"So, when're ye off to Vaasa?" he asked.
Entreri and Jarlaxle exchanged knowing looks-the way the man had spoken the words showed it to be a leading question.
"Soon, I would expect," Jarlaxle replied, nibbling at the bait. "Our funds are running low."
"Ah, ye're lookin' for work already," said the innkeeper. "Killin' goblins only? Well, goblins and orcs, I mean? Or are ye in the game for more subtle forms?"
"You presume much," said Entreri.
"True enough, but ye're not tellin' me that ye're fighters of the open road, now are ye?"
"Would you like to see?" Entreri offered.
"Oh, I'm not doubtin' ye!" the man said with a broad grin. He held his huge paws up before him, warding the dangerous man away. "But ye look like a pair who might be doing better work for better pay, if ye get me meaning."
"And if we do not?"
The innkeeper looked at Entreri curiously.
"If we do not get your meaning," Jarlaxle explained.
"Ah, well, there're plenty of jobs about Heliogabalus," the innkeeper explained. "For the right crew, I mean. The authorities are all up at the wall in Vaasa, fighting monsters, but that leaves many citizens wronged back here in town with nowhere to turn."
Entreri didn't even try to hide his smirk, and in truth, just hearing the man ramble on made him feel a bit more at home. Heliogabalus, after all, wasn't so different from
Calimport, where the laws of the land and the laws of the street were two very different codes. He could hardly believe that he and Jarlaxle had been sought out so quickly, though, with no reputation preceding them, but he didn't think too much about it. Likely, most of the fighters of the region were away in the north, along with most of those who had made their living by keeping order on the street, as well, whatever order that might be.
"And you know of these jobs?" Jarlaxle asked the man.
"Well, that's me business!" said the innkeeper. "In truth, Fm a bit short o' help right now, and I got a friend askin' me to hire out a job."
"And what makes you think that we are capable of such a job?" Jarlaxle asked.
"When ye been doin' this as long as ol' Feepun here, ye get to know the look," he explained. "I watch the way ye walk. I see the way ye lift yer drinks, the way that one's eyes keep movin' side-to-side, watchin' everything about him. Oh, I'm guessin' that the work I have for ye, if ye want it, will be far beneath yer true talents, but it's a place to start." He paused and looked hopefully at the pair.
"Well, pray tell us of this job," Jarlaxle prompted after a lengthy pause. "Nothing against the law of the land, you understand," he added, a typical and expected disclaimer that any self-respecting thief or assassin would be quick to add.
"Oh, no, not that," Feepun said with a laugh. "A bit of justice sorted out, that's all."
Jarlaxle and Entreri exchanged knowing smirks-that was the common disclaimer response, usually meaning that someone either deserved to die, or to be robbed.
"Got me a friend who's lookin' to get an idol back," the innkeeper explained, leaning in and whispering. "He's paying good, too. Hundred gold pieces for one night's work. Ye up for it?"
"Keep talking," said Jarlaxle.
"Seems he's had a dispute over a little statue. Got stolen by a guy near here. He wants it back."
"How do you know that we are capable of doing this?" Entreri asked.
"Telled ye I knowed how to read me guests. I think ye can. Shouldn't be too hard a job, though this thief, Rorli, is a nasty one."
"Perhaps a hundred is not enough, then," Jarlaxle put in.
The innkeeper shrugged. "Said he'd give a hundred. Seems like a fair price to me. I can ask-"
"First tell us the particulars," Entreri interrupted. "We have much to do and need to buy supplies for the road north."
The innkeeper grinned and leaned in even closer, detailing all he knew of Rorli, including the location of the man's apartment, which was not far away. Then, on the request of Jarlaxle and Entreri, the innkeeper left them alone for a bit.
"It might be fun," Jarlaxle said when he and his friend were alone.
"Might get us killed or get Rorli killed."
The dark elf shrugged, as if that hardly mattered. "A hundred gold is a pittance," he said, "but so begins a reputation that might suit us well, perhaps."
"Give me a hundred gold now, so I might buy the items I'll need for the work," Entreri said.
Grinning widely, Jarlaxle reached into a tiny pouch and pulled forth some coins, then some more and some more-more than the purse could possibly hold, except that it contained an extra-dimensional pocket within- until Entreri had closer to two hundred.
"And we're doing this for a hundred?" the assassin asked skeptically.
"The things you buy will be reusable, yes?"
"Yes."
"An investment, then."
It occurred to Entreri that his companion was enjoying this a bit too much. He knew that usually meant trouble.
Still, he shrugged and motioned for the innkeeper to come back.
Deftly working his housebreaker harness and the ropes he had set with a grapnel on the building's roof, Entreri scaled the two-story structure, setting himself at the ledge of the second story window that he knew from observation to be Rorli's bedroom. A quick check had him confident that there were no pressure traps on this side of the glass.
In perfect balance and with amazing dexterity, the thief pulled forth his other newly-acquired tools, pressing a suction cup delicately against the center of the glass, then attached a swivel arm, with its diamond-tipped glass cutter. He traced a perfect circle and tugged lightly, though the cut piece didn't immediately pull free.
Jarlaxle calmly levitated up beside him. "An interesting contraption for one who cannot levitate," the dark elf said, indicating the harness.
"I make do," Entreri replied.
"But such a waste of money for the darksuit," the drow went on, shaking his head and sighing. "The cloak I gave you is far more effective, and the hat even more than that."
Entreri knew he shouldn't be surprised by anything Jarlaxle said concerning magic items, and he had been fairly convinced that the cloak he wore was some improved version of the concealing drow piwafwi. The remark about the hat, though, had him completely off-guard.
The hat?" he asked. He brought his free hand up to the short and stiff brim of his bolero.
Tip it down and to the left with your left hand and it will shield you from prying eyes."
Entreri did as the drow instructed and an immediate chill washed over him, bringing a shudder.
There," Jarlaxle announced. "When you feel warm again, just tip the hat."
"I feel like a corpse."
"Better to feel like one than to be one."
Entreri tipped his hat in agreement, and shuddered again, then went back to his work on the window, this time popping the cut circle of glass free.
Tight fit," Jarlaxle said dryly.
The assassin tossed him a smirk and gingerly reached through the glass, moving his hand slowly and gently, so gently, about the pane in search of a trap.
"Seems like a lot of work," said Jarlaxle.
He reached up to his huge hat and pulled forth a small black piece of cloth. Seeing it, Entreri just lowered his head and sighed, for he knew what was coming.
Jarlaxle spun the cloth about and it elongated, grew larger and larger. The drow threw it against the wall, and the whole area of the structure that the black circle covered simply disappeared. The typical portable hole, a rare and valuable item, created an extra-dimensional pocket, but as with most of his items, Jarlaxle's device was far from typical. Depending upon which side the drow threw down, the portable hole would either create the pocket, or simply put a temporary hole in whatever surface it had struck. Jarlaxle casually stepped into the room and pulled his hole in behind him, securing the wall once more.
So flustered was Entreri that he almost moved too quickly across the trapped part of the window pane, feeling the slight lump that indicated a pressure trap.
Regaining his wits, the man's hand worked with perfect movements, and in seconds, he had the trap disarmed and even opened, revealing a small needle, no doubt poisoned.
He had it free and safely stuck through his cuff in a few more seconds, then finished his check of the window, clicked the lock, and entered the room.
"At least I put the wall back," Jarlaxle quipped, indicating the circle of glass in Entreri's hand.
A flick of the assassin's wrist sent the glass piece crashing to the floor.
"So much for secrecy," said Jarlaxle.
"Maybe I'm in the mood to kill someone," Entreri replied, staring hard at the frustrating dark elf.
Jarlaxle shrugged.
Entreri scanned the room. A door was set in the wall across from the window, in the corner to the left, with an open closet beside it. Halfway down the wall to the right of the window stood a chest of drawers as high as Entreri's shoulder. A bed and night table across from the bureau completed the furnishings. Entreri went for the chest of drawers as Jarlaxle moved to the closet.
"Poor taste," he heard the dark elf say, and turned to see Jarlaxle rifling through the hanging clothes, most of them drab and gray.
Entreri shook his head and pulled open the bottom drawer, finding some linens, and under them, a small pouch of coins, which disappeared into his pocket. The next drawer was much the same, and the third one up held assorted toiletry items, including a beautiful bone comb, its handle made of pearl. He took that, too.
The top drawer held the most curious items: a couple of jars of salves and a trio of potion bottles, each filled with a different colored liquid. Entreri nodded knowingly, and looked back to the window, then he shut the drawer and moved along to check the bed.
"Ah, a secret compartment," Jarlaxle said from the closet.
"Let me inspect it for traps."
"No need," said the dark elf.
He stepped back and produced a silver whistle, hung about his neck on a chain. Two short blows and there came a pop and a flash as the secret compartment magically opened.
"You have an answer for everything," Entreri remarked.
"Keeps me alive. Ah, yes, and look what we have here."
A moment later, Jarlaxle walked out of the closet carrying a small statuette, a curious figurine of a muscular man, half white, half black.
"Back to the inn and our reward?" Jarlaxle asked.
In response, the statue began laughing at him. "Doubtful you will be going anywhere, Artemis Entreri!" it said, and the fact that it was addressing Entreri and not Jarlaxle tipped both off that the speech had been preprogrammed, and with foreknowledge of the assassin.
"Um…" Entreri remarked.
The door to the room opened then, and Jarlaxle fell back toward the window. Entreri stayed to his left, over by the bed. In stepped a muscular, dark-skinned man dressed in long and ragged-edged black robes, a many-crested helm on his head. Behind him loomed a horde of huge gray and black dogs, blending in and out of the shadows in the hallway as if they were made of the same indistinct stuff as those patches of blackness.
Entreri felt a pull from his belt, from Charon's Claw, his magnificent sword. It didn't feel to him as if the sword was relating its eagerness for battle, though, as it usually did, but rather, almost as if it was greeting an old friend.
"I take it you were expecting us," Jarlaxle calmly stated, and he presented the statue as his proof.
"If you give it over without a struggle, you may find us to be important allies," the large man said.
"Well, I am not endeared to it just yet," Jarlaxle replied with a grin. "We could discuss price-"
"Not that worthless idol!"
"The sword," Entreri reasoned.
"And the gauntlet," the man confirmed.
Entreri scoffed at him. They are better allies to me than you could ever be."
"Ah, yes, but are they as terrible foes as we?"
"Us? We?" Jarlaxle cut in. "Who are you? And I mean that in the plural sense, not the singular."
Both the dark man and Entreri looked at the drow curiously.
"The sword your friend carries does not belong to him," the dark man said to Jarlaxle.
The drow looked to Entreri and asked, "Did you kill the former owner?"
"What do you think?"
Jarlaxle nodded and looked back to the dark man. "It is his."
"It is Netherese!"
Entreri didn't quite know what that meant, but when he looked to Jarlaxle and saw the drow's eyes opened very wide, as wide as they had been when the pair had encountered the dragon to destroy the Crystal Shard, he knew that there might be a bit of trouble.
"Netherese?" the drow echoed. "A people long gone."
"A people soon to be returned," the dark man assured him. "A people seeking their former glory, and their former possessions."
"Well, there is the best news the world has heard in a millennium," Jarlaxle said sarcastically, to which the dark man only laughed.
"I have been sent to retrieve the sword," he explained. "I could have killed you outright and without question, but it occurred to me that two companions such as yourselves might prove to be very valuable allies to Sh-my people, as we shall be to you."
"How valuable?" asked Jarlaxle, obviously intrigued.
"And if I ally with you, then I get to keep the sword?" Entreri asked.
"No," the dark man answered Entreri.
"Then no," Entreri answered back.
"Let us not be hasty," said the deal-maker drow.
"Seems pretty simple to me," said Entreri.
"Then to me, as well," said the dark man. "The hard way, then. As you wish!"
As he finished, he stepped aside, and the pack of great dogs charged into the room, howling madly, their white teeth gleaming in stark contrast against the blackness of them.
Entreri fell into a crouch, ready to spring aside, but Jarlaxle took matters under control, tossing out before the dogs the same portable hole he had used to enter the room.
With howls turning to yelps, the beasts disappeared through the floor, tumbling to the room below. Jarlaxle bent immediately and scooped up the hole, sealing the floor above them.
"I have to get one of those," Entreri remarked.
"If you do, don't jump into mine with it," said Jarlaxle.
Entreri fixed him with a puzzled expression.
"Rift… astral… you don't want to know," Jarlaxle assured him.
"Right. Now, where does that leave us?" the assassin
"It leaves you with an enemy you do not understand!" the dark man replied.
He laughed and moved to the side, disappearing so quickly, so completely into the shadows that it seemed a trick of the eyes to Entreri. Still, the assassin did manage to flick his fingers and knew his tiny missile had struck home when he heard a slight chirp from the man.
"You favor the darkness, drow?" the dark man asked, and as he finished, the room went perfectly black.
"I do!" Jarlaxle responded, and he blew on the whistle again: a short burst, a long one, and another short one. Entreri heard the door slam.
It was all happening quickly, and purely on instinct, the assassin drew out his sword and his jeweled dagger and moved protectively back against the bed. He tipped his cap again, though he understood this to be magical darkness, impenetrable even by those who had the ability to see in the dark. It was fortunate he did, though, for right after the chill enshrouded his body, he felt the sudden intense heat of a fireball filling the room.
He was down and under the bed in an instant, then came out the other side as the burning mattress collapsed. "Caster!" he yelled.
"Seriously?" came Jarlaxle's sarcastic reply. "Seriously," came the dark man's cry. "And I fear not your little stings!"
"Really?" Entreri asked him, and he was moving as he spoke, trying hard not to give the dark man any definitive target. "Even from the needle off your own window tr-?"
His last word was cut short, though, as complete silence engulfed the room. Profound, magical silence that quieted even the yelping and howling dogs below. Entreri knew that it was Jarlaxle's doing, the drow's standard opening salvo against dangerous magic-users. Without the ability to use verbal components, a wizard's repertoire was severely limited.
But now Entreri had to worry about himself, for his magical sword began a sudden assault upon his sensibilities, compelling him to turn the blade back on himself and take his own life. He had already fought this struggle of wills with the stubborn weapon, but with an apparent representative of its creators nearby, the sword seemed even angrier.
The assassin wore the gauntlet, which minimized the effect the sword could have on him, and he was able to hold the upper hand-somewhat. For he also had to keep exact track of where he was in the room. He had one good shot because of his previous actions and words, he knew, and to miss the opportunity would make this situation even more dangerous.
He aligned himself with the heat emanating from the bed, turned in the direction he guessed to be perfectly perpendicular to the window, then took three definitive strides across the room, finally sheathing the stubborn sword as he went.
He struck once, he struck fast, and he struck true, right into the back of the dark man, his vampiric, life-stealing jeweled dagger diving in deep.
A strange feeling engulfed Entreri as the dagger pumped forth the life-force of the dying man, dizzying and disorienting. He fell back, then stumbled silently to the floor, and lay there for a long while.
Soon after, he heard the dogs barking again from below.
"It's over," he announced, fearing that Jarlaxle would drop another silence on the room.
A moment later, the darkness lifted as well. Lying on the floor, Entreri looked straight up to see his dark elf companion similarly lying on the ceiling, hands tucked comfortably behind his head. Entreri also noticed that the scarring on the walls and ceiling ended in a bubble about the drow, as if he had enacted some shield that magic, or the fireball at least, could not affect.
The assassin wasn't surprised.
"Well done," Jarlaxle congratulated, floating down gently to the floor, as Entreri stood and brushed himself off. "Without sight or hearing, how did you know he was there?"
Entreri looked over at the dead man. He had pulled out the top drawer of the dresser as he'd slumped to the floor, its contents spilled about him.
"I told him I had hit him with the needle from the window," the assassin explained. "I guessed that one of those bottles contained the antidote. He wanted to use the cover of the darkness and the silence to take care of that little detail."
"Well done!" said Jarlaxle. "I knew there was a reason I kept you around."
Entreri shook his head. "He wasn't lying about the sword," he said. "It held an affinity to him. I felt it clearly, for it even tried to turn against me."
"A Netherese blade…" Jarlaxle mused. He looked at Entreri, and his eyes widened for just a moment, then a smile spread across his face. "Tell me, how does your sword feel about you now?"
Entreri shrugged and gingerly drew the blade. He felt a definite closeness to it, more so than ever before. He turned his puzzled expression upon Jarlaxle.
"Perhaps it thinks of you as more akin to its original makers now," the drow explained. When Entreri gave him an even more confused look, he added, looking at the fallen enemy, "He was no ordinary man."
"So I guessed."
"He was a shade-a creature infused with the stuff of shadow."
Entreri shrugged, for that meant nothing to him.
"And you killed him with your vampiric dagger, yes?"
Entreri shrugged again, starting to get worried, but Jarlaxle merely laughed and produced a small mirror. Looking into it, Entreri could see, even in the dim light, that his normally brown skin had taken on a bit of a gray pallor-nothing too noticeable.
"You have infused yourself with a bit of that essence," said the drow.
"What does that mean?" the alarmed assassin asked.
"It means you've just become even better at your craft, my friend," Jarlaxle said with a laugh. "We will learn in time just how much."
Entreri had to be satisfied with that, he supposed, because there seemed nothing further coming from his oft-cryptic friend. He bent over and picked up the discarded idol. This time it remained silent.
"We should go and collect our money from the innkeeper," he said.
"And?" the drow asked.
"And kill the dolt for setting us up."
"That might not go over well with the Heliogabalus authorities," Jarlaxle reasoned.
Entreri's answer was one so typical that Jarlaxle silently mouthed the words along with him.
"Then we won't tell anybody."
A Little Knowledge
Elaine Cunningbam
19 Marpenoth, the Year of Wild Magic (1372 DR)
Long rays of morning sun slanted through Halruaa's ancient trees, reaching out like tentative fingers to waken the rain-sodden village. But Ashtarahh was already long awake and bustling with activity.
The summer monsoon season was over. The village diviner decreed that yesterday's storm would be the last. Already the rice fields and brissberry bogs were alive with harvesters, moving barelegged through ankle deep water as they sped their task with morning-glad songs.
Mist clung to the fields and swirled around the small buildings, pinned between land and sky by the hot, dense air and the swiftly climbing sun. No one wondered how the moisture-laden skies could absorb yesterday's rains; the answer was in the lush Halruaan landscape, and in particular the tall, thin trees lining the forest's edge, swaying dreamily to music only they could hear.
The vangi trees came with the first rains, sprouting up overnight like verdant mushrooms. They grew with incredible speed-two or three handspans a day. By the end of the monsoons, they were ready for harvest. Several children, agile as monkeys, shimmied up the segmented trunks to pluck the fist-sized purple fruit at the top. These they tossed into the canvas sheet held taut and ready by the four glum-faced, land-bound boys who'd drawn short straws. Several young men stood ready with machetes. Once the fruit was taken, the trees would be cut, dressed into lengths, and dragged to the road. The village streets were cobbled and the forest roads deeply sheltered, but the path leading through the fields was slow to harden. Each year fresh rows of vangi trees were pressed into the muck, forming a bumpy but mostly dry path for market traffic.
This path ended between two shops: the blacksmith and the wheelwright. Smoke rose in billows from the heating forge, and two apprentices busily rolled new wheels into waiting racks. A trip down the vangi corduroy road was a bone-rattling gauntlet, and more than one of the expected market carts would not survive it unscathed. But visiting merchants and artisans shrugged off splintered wheels, unshod oxen, and broken axles as the cost of doing business in Ashtarahh.
The late summer market was especially busy. Market stalls and tents rapidly took shape under the hands of carpenters and minor wizards. The owners of more permanent shops folded back the protective canvases, wielded brooms, and set out their wares. The clack of looms and the tart aroma of ripe cheeses filled the air. Bright glass vials of brissberry cordial stood in lines, looking like enormous ruby necklaces. Lengths of fine white linen gleamed in the morning sun, and skeins of brightly dyed yarn hung in arched windows in deliberate imitation of rainbows. But the most famous of Ashtarahh's crafts were its cunningly woven tapestries. These hung at every third stall, transforming the market into a veritable gallery.
Villagers who were not otherwise engaged strolled along the cobbles, admiring the woven art. Most of the tapestries depicted scenes from Halruaan history and legend. Skyships were commonly depicted, as were the magical creatures common to Halruaa: the brilliantly colored, many-legged crocodilians known as behirs, the winged starsnakes, even the dreaded laraken. Some of the tapestries depicted famous and infamous wizards. Small magical effects enlivened some of these scenes, sending bursts of light arching between spell-battling foes. A large weaving of a quite-literally blazing phoenix- the new standard of King Zalathorm-drew admiring attention. The biggest crowd, however, was the group stealthily converging upon the southwest corner of the square, where Ursault the All-Seeing sat with his crooked, cast-off loom.
Ursault was a thin, unassuming man of indeterminate age. His long, rather stringy locks had gone gray, and his face was unmemorable but for his pale eyes-a hazel more gray than green, an oddity in a land of dark-eyed, black-haired people. The title "All-Seeing" held gentle mockery, though it was rumored that it had once been spoken with respect. Once, it was said, Ursault had been a powerful diviner, one who saw many possible paths with equal clarity. But the vast and various potential of the future was a burden too large to carry, and Ursault had retreated to this sleepy village, content to weave his confused visions into tapestries no one wanted, and only he could understand.
A band of boys wove through the stalls as they crept toward the wizard, their grins wide and white in small dirty faces. Several of them scooped mud from between the cobbles and readied the first wave of attack.
The wizard looked up and smiled in gentle welcome. No knowledge of the coming mischief was written in his pale eyes, but a small, ominous gray cloud appeared directly over the head of the band's leader, a stocky little urchin who answered to Dammet.
The unwitting boy hauled back for the throw. Instantly the cloud exploded into a tiny, belated monsoon, drenching the boy and sending his comrades skittering away, hooting with delighted laughter. Liquid mud dribbled between Dammet's fingers as his weapon dissipated.
A second boy darted back and hurled his mud ball with a deft, side-armed toss. Ursault moved one hand in a vague little gesture and the mud changed in midair to a crystalline white. He caught the snowball and tossed it back to the urchin. The boy yelped with surprise and tossed the ball from hand to hand, marveling at the unfamiliar sting of cold.
"Taste it," Ursault suggested.
Uncertainty flooded the small face, but the mixture of encouragement and taunting from his friends decided the matter. He took a tentative lick, and his eyes rounded with delight.
"Mazganut cream," the boy announced grandly.
He dodged several grasping hands then darted off, his prize clutched possessively. Two of the boys started to give chase but abandoned the notion after their first few steps. There was a bigger game to be played, and their faces were smug with anticipation.
Dammet pushed a smaller boy forward-an ungainly lad with an intense but unfocused stare. Dammet flipped a lock of wet black hair off his face and draped an arm around the boy's tensely-hunched shoulders.
"Here's my man Tad," he announced. He leaned down to scoop up more mud, which he slapped into the boy's hand. "You might say he's skittish. If he kept his mind stuck to one idea for more'n a heartbeat, the shock of it would likely kill him. And he can't throw worth goat dung. There ain't no way you could know where this mud ball's gonna hit."
Indeed, the wizard's face furrowed as he contemplated the possibilities. An expression of near panic seeped into his pale eyes.
"Mebbe not, but you can figure out where I'll hit sure enough," announced a thin, nasal voice. A short, stout man stepped out from behind the stall's tumble-down wall, brandishing a vangi switch. "Now git."
The boys got, scampering off with scant regard for their less agile champion. Tad stumbled after them, howling protests against his abandonment.
Ursault glanced at his rescuer. Though the wizard was seated upon a low stool, he was eye to eye with the newcomer, a man whose barrel-chested torso was supported by uncommonly short, bandy legs. He was about the height of a dwarf but was most definitely not of that race. His face was as beardless as a boy's though he was well into adulthood. There was no hint of any other race about him to explain his stature-he lacked the small frame and hairy feet of Luiren's halflings, and the bulbous nose and blue eyes common to gnomes. Yet some wag had called him a Gnarfling-an unlikely combination of all three races-and the name had stuck.
Something that for lack of a better name could be called friendship had grown between the two village misfits. Gnarfling was the only person who regularly sought out Ursault's company and who actually seemed to enjoy the old wizard's tales. He leaned in and regarded the tangle of thread on the wizard's loom. "What do you make of this?" "Melody Sibar's peacock chicks," Ursault said, pointing to a matted blob of gray thread. They'll hatch today or perhaps tomorrow. At least, those that intend to hatch at all."
"That ought to cover it."
Gnarfling uncorked a flask, which they passed back and forth a couple of times. He belched companionably and settled down, preparing to enjoy the morning's story-telling. His look of contentment faded when he noted a stout woman bustling purposefully toward them.
"Landbound skyship a'comin' under full sail," he muttered.
The description was not far off. Vilma was Dammet's mother, a cheery, chatty woman who frequently-and justifiably-looked a bit flustered and windblown. Wisps of black hair escaped her single braid and her round face was rosy-cheeked from her morning's work. Like her son, she was always busy, never still. But unlike many of the villagers, she made time to chat with Ursault now and again, mostly because he was one of the few people in Ashtarahh who tolerated Dammet's pranks.
With a grateful sigh, the woman shouldered off the straps that held a basket of newly-harvested brissberries to her back. The fruit was heavy, covered with a thick rind and a nut-like shell, and extracting the juice was a long process. She unhooked a small cleaver from her belt-a needed tool for the task ahead-and began to smooth a whet stone over it.
"What's coming to this little corner of Zalathorm's realm, lord wizard?"
"A white dog," Ursault said mildly.
"Fearful doings," she said with a grin.
He nodded somberly. "That dog will be the death of more than half the people in a neighboring village."
A small brindle pup ambled by, not far from the wizard's stall. Vilma gave a good-natured chuckle. "That's Dammet's mongrel pup, and the closest thing we got to a white dog hereabouts. Not much of a threat there."
"Not for several seasons, no, but then the dog will wander far from the village and mate with a renegade wolfwere. Their offspring will have pure white fur and look more dog than wolf. In human form, she will be a comely maid."
Vilma responded with a thin smile. "My man Tomas will enjoy this tale, that's for sure and certain! His eye for a pretty girl will be the death of him." She shook her cleaver, an unconsciously lethal gesture.
"True enough, but his death will not come at your hands," Ursault replied.
The woman's smile faded, and fear crept into her eyes. When a wizard-even a mad wizard-spoke of death, it was time to start kindling the funeral pyres.
"Of course, if your boy Dammet remembers to tie the brindle dog when the harvest moon blooms full, the white maid will never be. A lot of trouble that will save." Ursault cocked his head, as if listening to unseen voices. "But on the other hand, a lot of trouble that will cause. This same wolfwere maid could bring doom to the floating city. A lot of trouble that will save. On the other hand-" He broke off with a grunt, momentarily silenced by a sharp, warning nudge from Gnarfling's elbow.
The woman's smile returned, edged with both relief and pity. "Floating cities now, is it? Here in Halruaa?"
Ursault shrugged. "Sometimes yes, and sometimes no."
"That ought to cover it," Gnarfling said meaningfully.
Vilma's gaze darted toward the short man and moved quickly away. Her tolerance did not quite embrace the odd little man. Everyone in Ashtarahh knew most everything about everyone else, and found comfort in this universal lack of privacy. But not even the most imaginative gossip among them could invent a story that could in satisfactory fashion explain Gnarfling, or define his purpose in coming to Ashtarahh. Vilma had a limited imagination and a healthy suspicion of anything than lay beyond its bounds. She gave Ursault a tentative smile, then hauled up her basket and took off at a brisk pace.
Gnarfling reached for his flask and gestured with it toward the loom. "What else you see in there?"
A forlorn expression touched the wizard's face. "Everything," he said softly, his voice sad and infinitely weary. "Everything."
The small man cleared his throat, uneasy with his friend's pain. "Well, how about you start a new weaving, and let's see where it goes."
Ursault obligingly drew a small knife and cut the tangle from his loom. He made a complicated arcane gesture, and a new set of vertical threads appeared on the crooked frame. For a long moment he studied the warp threads, as if examining and discarding many possibilities. Finally he took up a shuttle and began to layer in the weft.
His hands flashed with a wizard's exquisite dexterity, adding a thread here and a new color there. Before long a pattern began to emerge. Glowing, silvery threads connected in a fine web. The fabric between this web, however, remained a dark and indeterminate color, deep as moon-cast shadows. Gnarfling frowned in puzzlement as he noted that Ursault was threading in some mud-splattered crimson. Even this bright color disappeared into the shadowy gloom.
"What do you make of that?" he demanded.
"That's the Weave," Ursault replied, naming the web of magic that surrounded and sustained all of Halruaa, and for all Gnarfling knew, the rest of the world as well. "At least, it's Ashtarahh's place in the Weave."
Gnarfling leaned in and squinted. Sure enough, he could make out the faint outline of the village, as it might appear to a soaring hawk, carved out of the tightly packed web that represented the jungle. Fainter, thinner silver threads connected the fields and buildings, and tiny glowing dots seemed to mill about the open area-an uncanny representation of the market square and the people who readied it.
This was the first discernable picture Gnarfling had ever seen on Ursault's loom. For some reason that worried him. So did the intense expression on the wizard's face as he tossed colors haphazardly into the pattern, only to have them swallowed by the strange, shadowy void that separated and defined the silvery Weave.
In short order a small tapestry hung on the loom. Ursault studied the weaving intently, and Gnarfling studied Ursault.
"You see something, don't you?" "Everything,'' the wizard responded again in wondering tones. "Everything."
The response was familiar, but there was a new note in his voice, something that sent tiny fingers of cold dancing down Gnarfling's spine.
After a moment, Ursault moved one hand in a flowing circular pattern. The unseen colors shifted, and a man's face took form in a gap between the glowing silver threads, a face depicted with precision and clarity that the best of Ashtarahh's weavers could not match.
The man was young and exceedingly lean. His high, sharp cheekbones leaned precariously over the deep hollows below, and the thin black mustache on his upper lip looked as tremulous and impermanent as an alighting moth. His face was exceedingly pale for a Halruaan, and a sharp contrast to the feverish brightness of his black eyes.
Trouble coming," muttered Gnarfling. He was well acquainted with trouble and plenty familiar with wizards-which, to his way of thinking, was two ways of saying the same thing. "When?"
In response, Ursault merely shifted his gaze from the Iqom to the market square.
The square was filling rapidly. Visiting merchants strolled along the paths, eyeing the tapestries and sampling bits of cheese. The trundle of carts over the corduroy filled the air with a pleasant rumble. Already two of these carts had been hauled off the path to languish by the wheelwright's shop, listing heavily over shattered wheels. A young man stood by one of them, arguing with the apprentices and punctuating his complaints with overly dramatic gestures.
Gnarfling's eyes went straight to a thin young man, narrowing as they took in the too-familiar theatrics. The newcomer didn't have the look of a merchant or artisan. He was tall and thin, not much past twenty summers, and obviously possessed more money than sense. He traveled alone on in an expensive covered cart drawn by matched horses. His emaciated form was draped with fine robes of purple-trimmed black, and jewels flashed on his gesticulating hands. All of these things fairly screamed "wizard."
Even without the trappings, there was an intensity about the newcomer that suggested magic, yet Gnarfling could sense no hint of Mystra's Art about the young man. His nose for such things was as keen as any hound's- and more to the point, as keen as any magehound's. These instincts, and the permanent disguise offered by his stunted form, had kept him alive for over thirty winters.
Why then, he wondered, was he so uneasy?
"He's looking for you," Ursault said, as mildly and as matter-of-factly as if his companion had spoken his question aloud.
The small man shot to his feet as if he'd just sat on a hedgehog. The sudden movement seemed to draw the newcomer's eyes. Recognition flared in his strangely burning gaze, and for a moment Gnarfling stared into the youth's face like a hare mesmerized by a hawk.
Then, suddenly, the young man was standing directly in front of Ursault's stall.
Gnarfling blinked once in surprise, and a few times more to adjust his vision. He instinctively sniffed for the scent of magic, but all he smelled on the newcomer was the cumulative effect of several days on the road: the faint odor of wet cashmere, the musty stench of dirty clothes, and a perfume that smelled of dangerous herbs and pending lightning-a scent no doubt meant to mask the other, more mundane smells.
"I am Landish the Adept," the young man announced grandly.
Gnarfling collected himself and folded his stubby arms. "Good for you. Me, I got no business with the outlandish or the inept. You want I should ask around, and see if someone else might?"
Pure fury simmered in the man's intense gaze, a rage out of scale with the small insult. "Are you certain you have no business with me?" he said meaningfully. "Absolutely certain? Tell me jordain, what am I?"
A small sizzle of panic raced through Gnarfling, quickly mastered. Surely this revelation was nothing new to Ursault the All-Seeing, and no one else was close enough to hear the damning secret.
"What are you?" he echoed. "The back end of an ox, so far as I can tell."
The man's eyes narrowed." 'Outlandish and inept,'" he repeated. "A strange choice of words for someone who purports to be an itinerate field hand."
Gnarfling stared for a moment, then his shoulders rose and fell in a profound sigh.
"A magehound," he muttered. "And here I'm thinking I'd outrun every thrice-damned half-wizard busybody in Zalathorm's realm. Well, even a slow and stupid hound sometimes blunders into a vhoricock's nest."
"A jordaini proverb," Landish said smugly, clearly enjoying himself. "You should guard your words more carefully."
"Don't see what harm it could do at this point. A magehound," Gnarfling repeated in disgust.
No," stated Ursault.
There was a conviction in that single word that dismissed all other possibilities. Gnarfling sent a puzzled look at the wizard and was astonished at the simmering wrath in the old man's usually vague, mild eyes.
"Mirabella," Ursault said grimly.
The small man's heart seemed to leap in his chest like a breaching dolphin. Mirabella was the woman who'd saved an outcast jordaini babe, one whose stunted form was deemed unsuitable for the rigorous physical training given Halruaa's warrior-sages. But there was nothing wrong with his mind, and the soft-hearted midwife charged with his destruction knew enough of jordaini ways to give him a bit of the training. Enough to keep him aware and alive-until now, at least.
Landish's gaze snapped to the wizard's face and for a moment he looked deeply troubled. His face cleared.
"Ah. A diviner, I suppose. You see the results of my work, if not the actual workings."
Tour work? What'd you do with Mirabella?" roared Gnarfling.
He threw himself into a charge, his stubby hands leaping like twin hounds for the man's skinny throat.
Then he stopped, stunned by the white, leprous growth that had appeared on his short digits. As he stared, the small finger on his left hand listed to one side, then broke off entirely and fell to the muddy ground.
"That," Landish said succinctly. "She won't be missed. Just as you weren't missed, until now-and won't be missed after."
"Mirabella is not yet dead," Ursault said as he rose to his feet. "She may not die. The old speckled hen, the one destined for the soup pot, is going to lay her first egg since the last new moon. If she lays it in the hencoop, Mirabella will die. If the hen ventures into the gardens, a tamed hunting kestrel will see her and swoop. This will draw the eye of a passing hunting party. They will follow their hawk and find Mirabella. The hunter has a terrible fear of the plague. If he is the first to see the woman, he will flee in panic and the others will follow, never knowing what he saw. But if his horse throws a shoe-there is a loose nail and the shoe could be lost any time today or tomorrow-his greenmage daughter will be the first to find Mirabella. She can mix the herbs and pray the spells that will cure the woman. The herbs grow near Mirabella's cottage. She may find them, provided that-"
"Enough!" howled Landish, his dark eyes enormous in his too-pale face. "What madness is this?"
"He's mad, that's for sure and certain," Gnarlish said, jerking a leprous thumb toward Ursault, "but that don't stop him from being right. His way of telling the future is like throwing a really big fireball-the target can be found somewhere in the big, smoking black hole, if there's anyone left to look for it."
Ursault turned the loom around, revealing the weaving and the scenes depicted in it. Landish's face was still there, and so was a small, snug cottage, complete with speckled hens and an elderly woman sprawled, facedown and still, in the courtyard. A soft moan escaped Gnarfling. "You named yourself an Adept," Ursault said to Landish, "and so you are. You are a Shadow Adept, though this is not known to your master, the necromancer Hsard Imulteer. You intend to ambush and destroy your master, but fear that your growing powers will give you away before you are strong enough to prevail. Desiring to test your shields, you prayed to dark Shar, the goddess of shadows and secrets, and she led you to a hidden jordain. You wished to see if a jordain could perceive your true nature, and you believed that my friend here presented a small risk. Obviously he is gifted at perceiving magic in others, or how would he evade the magehounds for these many years? If he had been able to perceive you for what you are, what harm could come of it? He could not accuse you without also giving himself away."
The young man's face paled to a papery gray. "This is not possible. No one could know these things!"
"They don't call him Ursault the All-Seeing for no reason," retorted Gnarfling.
Landish began to pace. "Yes, I have heard that name," he muttered in a distracted tone. "A wizard who sees so many possibilities he cannot discern the truth, paralyzed, driven mad, finally fleeing into a hermit's life. Seeing all, knowing all-the possibilities are staggering!"
Gnarfling began to see where this was headed. He'd met wizards before who believed they were the exception to every rule, magical and otherwise.
He sniffed derisively and said, "If you're thinking the bat guano in your spell bag don't stink, think again."
But the Adept was no longer interested in his intended quarry. He stopped before Ursault and fixed his intense black gaze on the older wizard's face. "You can see all possible futures-including those influenced by practitioners of the Shadow Weave. This is a great gift, my friend!"
"Gift or curse?" said Ursault softly. "It is difficult to say."
Landish shook his head vigorously. "Halruaa is famed for wizardry, but few know of the Shadow Weave. We who are blessed by Shar can move in secret."
"But as you gain power, your ability to perceive the workings of Mystra diminish," Ursault concluded. "You may be hidden from wizards, but their ways, in nearly equal measure, are hidden from you."
"You grasp the salient point," the young Adept said, nodding approvingly. "Clearly, you do not want this gift and-forgive me-you have not proven strong enough to handle it. It has become a burden, one I would gladly lift from you."
"A little knowledge," cautioned Ursault, "is a wonderful thing."
Landish let out a sardonic chuckle and dismissed this notion with a wave of one skinny hand. "Come, let us make a bargain. I will give you the herbs needed to cure your short friend and the old dame who raised him."
"No deal," said Gnarfling sternly. "Ursault already knows what herbs are needed. He can find them himself, no help from you."
"Of course he can find them, and of course he can cure you and the old woman-'if this, and if that,'" mocked the Adept. "And let us not forget 'unless this and the other.' Count your fingers-how many remain? Are you willing to trust your life and the woman's to a mad old wizard, and the whims of fate?"
"Same question, back at you." The small man folded his arms. "That mad old wizard could just kill you and have done with it."
"No," said Landish smugly, "he couldn't." The wizard considered this claim for a moment then agreed with a grim nod.
"You see? This discussion is a mere formality. I could simply take this man's powers from him. He knows this, and he knows how. It would be easier for me, and far more pleasant all around, if he yields them willingly."
"Mageduel," Ursault said curtly. "Take the three of us to Mirabella's glen, and we will do battle for the title of All-Seeing."
"Done!" the Adept said gleefully. He stepped behind the wizard's stall and conjured an oval portal, gleaming with dark, purple-black light. He made a mock-courtly gesture for the others to precede him.
Gnarfling charged through the portal and hit the ground running. He bolted toward his foster mother, dropped to his knees, and gently turned her over with hands that felt strangely numb. He recoiled in grief and horror at the ravaged mess the Adept's spell had made of her face. He lifted one hand to stroke the old woman's hair away from her eyes, and grimaced at the sight of his own hand. He didn't look much better off.
He looked to the center of the courtyard. The wizards faced each other, an expression of intense concentration on each face as they attuned themselves to each other and to their competing Weaves.
A sly smile crossed Gnarfling's face as he perceived the wizard's stratagem: an Adept of the Shadow Weave would have little power in a mageduel arena.
Indeed, a dazed expression crossed the Adept's face as he ventured into the older wizard's convoluted mind. His feverish eyes started to dart about, as if tracing the paths of a hundred startled ground squirrels.
Landish pulled himself together with visible effort and said, "As you yourself observed, I am apprentice to a powerful necromancer. There is still enough of Mystra's art remaining to me to vanquish you, old man. Surely you foresee this."
"It is a possibility," Ursault admitted, "but only one of many."
The younger man sniffed. "A cube, fifty paces on all sides. I could manage more, but the smaller the arena, the swifter my victory."
"As you wish." Ursault smiled faintly. "And in defiance of the rules, you may take your spellfilcher gem into the arena with you."
He did not point out that the man was intending to do precisely that, but the meaning was there all the same.
Landish's face flushed at this gentle rebuke, but he spun around and began to stalk off his portion of the arena. Ursault did the same. A translucent, faintly glowing red cube began to take shape around them, growing on all sides as they moved farther apart.
"Just let him rob you and be done with it," muttered Gnarling. "That'll serve him right and fair."
Landish began to mumble the words of a spell. A brilliant golden flame erupted from the ground before him. Bright droplets turned into insects-deadly magical fire gnats whose touch could raise blisters and whose bite could set living flesh aflame.
A faint blue mist surrounded the older wizard as the glowing insects swarmed in. Each one met the aura with a faint, sharp sizzle and flared out of existence.
Tremors shook the ground as invisible fingers of necromantic magic reached deep into the soil. The clearing stirred, and small puffs of dirt and sod exploded upward as long-dead bones fought their way into the light. The older wizard countered with a quick gesture, then he clapped his hands sharply together. A thunderous rumble echoed through the clearing and the old bones shattered to dust.
On the battle raged, and each spell Landish cast was anticipated and countered. The young man's thin, wolfish face contorted with rage, and he hurled his remaining spells one after another, so quickly that spell and counterspell seemed to follow each other as quickly as two sword masters' thrusts and parries.
So intent was Gnarfling on the battle that he did not at first notice the glowing gem on the Adept's hand. A large amethyst, brilliant purple, was taking on light and power with each of Ursault's counterspells.
"The spellfilcher gem," he muttered, cursing Landish as a cheat and coward.
The light intensified until it filled the arena and spilled out into the clearing. Finally Ursault collapsed, falling to one knee and drawing in long, ragged breaths. As Landish has promised, the process of taking his magic from him had not been easy or painless.
The Adept stood triumphant in the eerie light. The hand bearing the glowing gem was fisted and held high, and his eyes shone with the bright, multifaceted dream that was his future.
Gnarfling eased Mirabella from his arms and went over to haul the old wizard slowly, painfully to his feet.
"You shoulda thrown the fight," he grumbled.
"And willingly pass this curse to another, even such a man as this?" Ursault shook his head.
"You knew he was going to win, though."
"It was a possibility. One of many."
With Gnarfling's help, the wizard made his way over to Mirabella. After a moment he shook his head. "She needs more help than I can give her."
The short man sat back on his heels. "If that and if this," he mused.
Suddenly he leaped to his feet, went to the hencoop and kicked it resoundingly. A half dozen hens exploded from it, squawking in protest. One old biddy scurried into the field.
Landish's howl of protest cut through the clearing like a machete. Even before he looked up, Gnarfling knew what he would see.
The small form of a kestrel circled against the clouds. Within moments the hawk went into a diving stoop, tempted by the plump, slow-moving meal below.
The rumble of horses hooves turned thunderous as the hunting party burst from the forest and onto the old corduroy path. Gnarfling blinked in surprise at the size of the entourage: at least six wizards, plus squires and a plain-faced young woman in simple tunic and trews. That would be the greenmage.
Her gaze fell upon the old woman, and she let out a small cry. A bolt of lightning sizzled toward her-and was stopped just short of a strike by an answering bolt flaring from one of the mounted wizards. The hunters spurred their horses toward Landish. They dismounted and began to circle the young adept.
"You didn't mention the other wizards," Gnarfling said. Ursault smiled faintly. "Knowledge is not quite the same as wisdom. It is not necessary or wise to speak of everything you know."
But Landish had not yet acquired this wisdom. He advanced swiftly, his hand fisted and his spellfilcher ring held out to capture the first spell flung at him.
"The first of many," Ursault observed. He sighed in resignation.
"What's going to happen?" Gnarfling asked. He suddenly seemed to hear his own words and grimaced. "Sorry. Old habit."
"The only thing that could happen," the wizard replied. "The ability to recognize several possible futures does not grant a corresponding ability to avoid them.
Gnarfling responded with a nod and an evil grin. When several powerful wizards were concerned, one possible future apiece seemed more than enough to ensure the Adept's thorough and messy demise.
The battle that followed was swift but violent enough to meet Gnarfling's expectations. When all that remained of Landish the Adept was a smoking, greasy circle on the blasted clearing, the greemnage came up and took Gnarfling's hands between hers.
"The same blight," she murmured, her brows pulled down in a deep frown. "It is a necromantic spell, but not one I have seen before."
"Are you not Suzza Indoulur, niece to Lord Basel of Halar?" asked Ursault.
Her eyes widened, and she responded with a nod.
“Your name is spoken as a capable greenmage, but did I not also hear that you are studying for the priesthood of Azuth?"
"News travels swiftly through this forest," she said cautiously.
"The herbal potions and prayer spells of Constandia of Azuth against the leprous blight may prove efficacious," suggested Ursault. "Even a novice priestess might be granted such a spell. I believe I saw some wild priestcap flowers just off the path. Shall I gather some for you?"
She considered this, nodded, then set to work. In short order Mirabella was sitting comfortably, sipping a steaming herbal brew as the greenmage gently smoothed priest-cap ointment over the old woman's face. Gnarfling was grinning like a gargoyle and flexing his ten pink fingers, which were longer and more dexterous than they'd been before Landish's spell and Suzza's healing ministrations.
"I can make more ointment for your legs, if you like," the greenmage offered. "It may lengthen them, as it did your fingers-to match the rest of you," she said hurriedly. "I mean no offense. Everything else seems just fine. That is, a man as handsome of face and form… What I meant to say was…" She trailed off a second time, her lips folded tightly together and her face blooming a vivid pink.
Gnarfling considered this, astonishment and hope dawning in his eyes. "Might not hurt to even things out a mite," he said casually. "Kind of you to offer."
The greenmage sent him a tentative smile and set to work with a wooden bowl and pestle. She scooped the ointment into a small pot and pointed to a curving mark carved into the pottery.
"This is my family sigil. Trace it with one finger and repeat the words I will give you, and it will bring you to our estates near Halar. I would like to see you again to make sure the cure is progressing."
"And if it doesn't?" asked Gnarfling, gesturing to his stubby limbs.
The greenmage's soft smile didn't falter. "Even then." She spoke a short, strange word and had Gnarfling repeat it. When she was satisfied with his pronunciation, she rose in one swift, surprisingly graceful move and strode to the impatient band of wizards. Her father's squire handed her the kestrel, and she tied the little hawk's jesses to her saddle pommel. They rode off without a backward glance, their horses clattering over the rough corduroy path.
Gnarfling watched them go, and for the first time, his future seemed bright with possibilities. He turned to his wizard companion.
Force of habit prompted him to ask, "What now?" Ursault's smile held a world of contentment. "I have no idea."
Astride The Wind
Philip Athans
7Alturiak, the Year of Wild Magic
Astride the Wind tucked his wings close to his body and felt his dive accelerate. Below him, the strange boat grew rapidly as he fell toward it. He could feel Atop the Sky next to him and could feel the cool rush of air from his own wake buffet the other kenku. To his credit, Atop the Sky rode the winds well. His dive was tight and fast- almost as tight and fast as Astride the Wind's.
He focused on the men in the flying boat, and his vision narrowed. The first barrage of arrows from Astride the Wind's brother kenku flashed among the soldiers. The arrow shafts ricocheted off the soldiers' gleaming gold armor, snapping and bouncing uselessly away without harming a single one of the startled humans.
Astride the Wind tightened his grip on his scimitar and continued his fast dive. The arrows shot by the three kenku archers were meant as a diversion anyway, but Astride the Wind was disappointed and concerned that of the three none had found a mark.
Two of the soldiers looked off the starboard side of the flying boat and pointed in unison in the direction of the kenku archers. Astride the Wind risked a glance in that direction and saw the archers-Embracing the Clouds, Whirling on High, and Above it All-fluff their wings to slow and pull to their right and down.
As he watched this, Astride the Wind muttered the ancient words passed from chief to chief for all the history of the Soaring Heights Clan. From the corner of his eye he saw Atop the Sky pull farther away from him, knowing well enough to give him a bit of room. In the air around Astride the Wind appeared first one, then a second, then a third and a fourth identical kenku to himself. The images mimicked his every move, sliding through the air around him in a swirling dance guaranteed to confuse any opponent.
It might have been the sudden appearance of the images or maybe he was just well trained, but one of the soldiers finally looked up. Astride the Wind had always had some difficulty telling one human from any other, but these six men were nearly as identical to each other as the magically conjured images were to Astride the Wind. The soldier who looked up had the same close-cropped black hair as the other five. His eyes, though, were bright green.
Astride the Wind expected the man's eyes to bulge in surprise or even fear. He expected the man to have some reaction to the sight of six kenku is a sharp dive in the direction of the top of his head, but there was nothing. The man with the green eyes took note of them and drew his black sword. He opened his mouth to say something and pulled his sword back to strike, but Astride the Wind was there. The kenku felt his blade take the man's head off, and there was a spray of red as Astride the Wind swished past and down.
The magic images followed Astride the Wind down along the side of the flying boat. An image came within reach of one of the gold-armored soldiers, who slashed back and around without even looking and took the image under its right wing. If that had really been Astride the Wind, the slash would have gutted him. Instead, the image burst painlessly in a flash of green and disappeared.
At the same time, Atop the Sky spun his carved wooden staff in a circular blur at his side, away from his wing and smashed the wood into the side of a soldier with crooked teeth-or he tried to, at least. The soldier with crooked teeth took one quick step back and placed the wide, heavy blade of his black sword into the blur of the spinning staff. The staff was cut cleanly in two. Atop the Sky followed Astride the Wind down and under the boat with a squawk of frustration.
The kenku-Astride the Wind, his three remaining images, and Atop the Sky-pulled their wings out to their sides and twisted them to slip under the boat and begin a gentle arc back up the other side. They were as tall and nearly as heavy as the humans they fought, but they were birds. Astride the Wind opened his beak to taste the dry air over the burning wastelands of Anauroch and sensed a storm brewing in the distance. The clouds were over the mountains and would stay there.
They'll need to be drawn there, Astride the Wind thought to his companion.
To the mountains, Atop the Sky responded directly into Astride the Wind's mind. To the storm, yes?
Draw them there, Astride the Wind told him.
The soldier with the crooked teeth looked over the edge of the boat just in time to meet the last two of the party of seven kenku. Borne on the Drafts and Suspended in Air were coming up from below almost as fast as Astride the Wind and Atop the Sky came down from on high. Suspended in Air's scimitar was out in front of him, and though Astride the Wind was sure his friend was going for the soldier's face, the tip of the scimitar drove hard into the man's chest. The human with the crooked teeth fell back hard into the boat.
As Astride the Wind came up along the opposite side of the flying boat, he saw the man with the crooked teeth sprawled on his back in the bottom of the strange vessel. He was breathing hard but was already starting to stand. Suspended in Air's blade had failed to penetrate the ornate gold armor.
Astride the Wind turned his attention to the human who had eliminated one of his images. Again, this human looked like a copy of the others, but he held his black sword in grotesquely hairy hands, hands like the hands of an ape-which is what these creatures were, after all.
Astride the Wind, his three magical images dancing around and through him, swooped in at the boat. The man with the hairy hands tried to follow them all. His jaw was set, and his eyes were narrow. He was obviously trying to figure out which was the real Astride the Wind but was having no luck. He'd seen one of the images disappear into thin air and didn't seem to want to be fooled again.
Astride the Wind's scimitar rang against the human's black sword, and the blow sent a vibration up the kenku's powerful arm, rattling the humanoid bird's skull and momentarily blurring his sharp vision. The human's grunt made Astride the Wind think he'd felt the same thing.
One of the images passed in front of Astride the Wind, and another passed through him. Astride the Wind turned one wing down to move out of the range of the hairy-handed human's blade. The kenku made the motions of a duel to keep the images active. The human stepped back, still trying to figure out which kenku was real and which illusion.
Astride the Wind took a second to scan the other soldiers and saw one of them, a man wearing a shiny copper ring, pull something small from a belt pouch. Atop the Sky and Suspended in Air were swooping in to engage the other soldiers and were coming in for another pass. For some reason Astride the Wind realized just then that none of the humans were speaking. Astride the Wind's experience with humans was limited, but he remembered them doing a lot of shouting and talking. Atop the Sky, his staff in both hands, shrieked a war cry and pulled around to face the boat. The man with the copper ring threw whatever it was he'd taken out of his belt pouch at Atop the Sky and Suspended in Air. Astride the Wind cracked a peel of kenku laughter realizing it was a small stone. The human was throwing rocks at them.
Atop the Sky ducked the thrown rock easily and Astride the Wind thought to him, Careful, Atop the Sky, they're throwing rocks at The flash was white at first, followed quickly by a roiling mass of orange brilliance. The light burned Astride the Wind's vision and made him close his eyes. He heard Atop the Sky and Suspended in Air scream in unison and felt a wave of thought from them that was the beginning of their dying wishes. It was their good-byes to the Soaring Heights Clan.
The orange fire broke apart in the air to reveal the blackened forms of Atop the Sky and Suspended in Air, feathers gone from their wings. They fell impotently, dead. Atop the Sky's steel scimitar whirled, spinning down next to the bodies. Astride the Wind had come with six seasoned warriors of the Soaring Heights Clan, the clan that called him chief, to confront six of the humans. One of the humans was dead, but now Astride the Wind had lost two of his own.
The man with the hairy hands growled something in his indecipherable human tongue and Astride the Wind saw that another of his conjured images was gone.
Some seventeen hundred years before, the kenku who would one day form the Soaring Heights Clan were an undisciplined, barbaric race who lived high in the Columns of the Sky and hunted in the Myconid Forest north of Shade Enclave. The kenku sometimes harassed the citizens of the town of Conch, which sat on the eastern slopes of the Columns of the Sky.
They could not speak. They had no written language, and their manners were more like the birds they resembled than the humans they stole from. They had mastered fire and were carving crude tools from shale and wood. Strangely, they were devoid of religion and superstition. They had no mythology or philosophy. They had no fear of gods or mortals.
Kaeralonn Jurneille was determined to put an end to that.
He was called "General," though the title was more ceremonial than a real military rank. The men he commanded were assassins, scouts-the sort of soldiers who went in either first or last, but never in the middle, and never in force. Not all of them were human. Kaeralonn drew his operatives from whatever race or construct was most suited for the mission at hand. He employed everything from enormous, powerful, and mindless golems to fickle and wily sprites.
The kenku were brought to his attention by a farmer who sold barley to Shade Enclave and kept an eye on the village of Conch for the Twelve Princes. Kaeralonn paid the farmer well for a dead kenku, then he erased the man's memory and began studying the bird-men in great detail.
Scouts, Kaeralonn thought. These creatures would make exceptional scouts.
Kaeralonn put the dead kenku on ice and started to think. He walked the streets of Shade, sailed through the cool skies on his private skiff, and haunted the libraries of House Tanthul.
The plan formed quickly enough. It was a simple plan and one he'd used before. Kaeralonn was three hundred years old and did very little quickly. It was months before he opened the self-freezing casket and began to thaw the dead kenku.
As the bird-man thawed, Kaeralonn removed the arrows and sealed the wounds. He set the creature's broken wing and helped some missing feathers to grow back. When the time was right, he brought in a priest of Shar, who muttered his prayers and waved his hands and brought the kenku back to life.
The creature burst up from the table and the sound of its wings unfurling echoed in Kaeralonn's laboratory. The priest grumbled and stepped back, but Kaeralonn smiled and stepped forward. It was a beautiful beast, and Kaeralonn knew it would serve him well.
The kenku twitched its head to take in the chamber, crowded with glass and apparatus. It glanced sideways at the priest, then fixed its eyes on Kaeralonn, who had just finished a hastily-cast spell.
Release me, a voice, shrill with panic and indignation, vibrated in Kaeralonn's mind.
"Is that you?" Kaeralonn asked the kenku, then he thought, That was you, wasn't it?
Release me, the kenku repeated into Kaeralonn's mind, the voice less shrill now and more insistent.
Kaeralonn could feel the spell he'd just cast fill his own mind, wrapping around the kenku's silent speech.
You are among friends now, Kaeralonn thought to the kenku. / would like you to stay.
"I will take my leave now," the priest said, almost startling Kaeralonn, certainly annoying him.
Kaeralonn waved the chubby little man away and didn't watch him shuffle out and slam the door behind him.
Who are you? the kenku asked. Kaeralonn stepped closer to the kenku and held out his right hand. I am Kaeralonn Jurneille of Shade Enclave. I would like us to be very close friends. Please, tell me your name and take my hand.
The kenku tipped its head to one side and stared hard into Kaeralonn's eyes. I am known as Amidst the Blue, the creature responded.
Amidst the Blue, Kaeralonn sent. That is a beautiful name.
The kenku reached out with one feathered arm and put its strong hand into Kaeralonn's.
Good, Kaeralonn thought. You will be a leader among your people, Amidst the Blue. Your name will be written in all the histories of the kenku, for a thousand generations to come-a thousand-thousand.
Leader? Amidst the Blue asked, obviously confused. Written? Histories?
Kaeralonn smiled and responded aloud, "First among many… chief… The rest, you'll learn. I'll teach you magic, as well. And you will teach your people."
Teach, Amidst the Blue repeated. Magic. Yes. You are a friend.
Kaeralonn laughed and drew back so the kenku could step down from the table. There was another rustle of wings, and Amidst the Blue sank to the floor, still a good head taller than Kaeralonn.
The human didn't want to give himself away so he kept the words "charmed'' and "enchanted" out of his mind. He never let himself think the word "slave." He knew what the kenku was and what his people would be-the kenku would figure it out soon enough.
Astride the Wind smashed his curved blade at the human's midsection, but the man with hairy hands was fast enough to drop his heavy black sword to his side and smash the kenku's weapon away.
The mountains, brothers, Astride the Wind sent to the other kenku. Withdraw and let the fools follow.
Astride the Wind faked another slice to the man's mid-section, and when the human drew his blade around to block it, the kenku tucked his wings tight against his side. Astride the Wind fell back and kicked up with one thin, bony leg. At the end of the frail-looking leg was a formidable four-toed talon. His own red cape billowed up behind him and momentarily blocked Astride the Wind's vision. The talon scraped against the human's golden armor with a thin shriek that made the fine feathers along Astride the Wind's spine fluff.
The human dodged backward a step, though, so was unable to take advantage of Astride the Wind's ill-considered, failed attack.
Under the clouds, brothers, Astride the Wind sent as he slid his wings through the air and drew himself back up-just in time to see the hairy-handed human whip his black blade at his neck.
Astride the Wind spanked it away with his scimitar and grabbed the flying boat's thick-walled gunwale with one talon, lifting himself up and out of the way of the human's follow-on attack. One of the magical images passed through him and drew itself up as well. The human's sword connected with the image's scimitar. The resulting clang made the savvy human squint with suspicion.
A flash of green and brown drew Astride the Wind's attention sharply upward. Borne on the Drafts passed close over his head and flew fast away. Looking back down, Astride the Wind sent his scimitar fast and hard in an overhand chop at the hairy-handed human's unprotected head. The two images followed, and the human made a startlingly effective attempt at blocking all three of them. The result was that he actually dodged two of the triple chops-including Astride the Wind's very real and very deadly strike. The human slid his sword up the second image's blade and found the weak space under the image's left wing. The image popped out of existence, eliciting a frustrated grimace from the human soldier.
Two of the other soldiers stepped up, their heavy-booted footsteps sending resounding thumps through the dense wood of the flying boat. Astride the Wind turned and flapped his wings furiously at his sides. The remaining magical image did the same, of course, and the result was three startled, confused human soldiers. Unfortunately the confusion didn't last long-at least for two of them. The human with the scar on his cheek danced forward and pushed the tip of his wide black sword into the image's abdomen. The phantasm disappeared, leaving Astride the Wind alone, standing on the gunwale with his wings outstretched behind him.
The human with the hairy hands came on strong and fast, and Astride the Wind parried one attack after another until the human's blade finally found a way in, slashing the kenku across the chest. The cut wasn't deep, but blood and feathers flew, and Astride the Wind cawed in pain.
Astride the Wind's cry turned into a more complex vocalization as he kicked out with the talon that wasn't still locked onto the gunwale. He spun to the right and kicked at the man with the hairy hand. The human dodged back, and the kenku's claws pinked harmlessly off his gold armor. The man with the scar on his face tried to take advantage of Astride the Wind's failed kick and attempted to cut the kenku's wing off. Astride the Wind tucked his wing in and down quickly, sending the man with the scar on his cheek off-balance.
Astride the Wind brought his scimitar around fast into the stumbling human with the scar on his cheek. At the same time he kicked his free talon back up into the face of the recovering man with the hairy hands. The kenku took hold of the hairy-handed soldier's face as the scimitar bit deeply into the throat of the man with the scar on his cheek. Blood flew from the scarred man, and Astride the Wind released the power of the spell he'd cast. The man with the hairy hands kicked impotently, and there was the smell of burning flesh. The man's black hair stood up on end as if he were fluffing his plume in some sort of dying ritual.
Both of the humans fell to the deck, dead. One pumped his blood in ever-decreasing gouts onto the old wood of the deck. The man with the hairy hands shivered and tensed, his face black, and his eyes rolled back white.
Astride the Wind saw the man with the copper ring- the man who'd killed Atop the Sky and Suspended in Air with magic fire-pulling another stone from his belt. The human was stepping backward and was pressed against the rail farther along the boat and on the other side. The human's legs touched the solid rail. The copper ring glinted in the sunlight, and Astride the Wind twitched. The man brought the stone up, and Astride the Wind tensed to spring but felt confident he'd be blown to bits, burned, frozen, or disintegrated before he could cut diagonally across the boat. The human's mouth drew up in an unreadable expression, then his eyes rolled back in his head and his eyelids flittered closed. The soldier slumped back, sitting on the rail for half a second before he flipped back and over the rail.
Astride the Wind opened his mouth in surprise and looked back. The other kenku were riding the currents forty yards or more from the boat. Astride the Wind made eye contact with Whirling on High, who had cast the spell.
My thanks, brother, Astride the Wind sent. Whirling on High's thoughts drifted silently across the distance to echo in Astride the Wind's head, Are you with us?
Without bothering to answer, Astride the Wind folded his wings tight against his body-the soldier with crooked teeth swiped at him with his black sword, but missed-and let himself tip over off the side of the boat. The man with the copper ring, still sound asleep, was spinning to his death thousands of feet below.
Astride the Wind fell after him but not very far. He closed his eyes just long enough to will himself invisible, and he faded from the sight of others. It was something he'd been able to do for a while. It had just come to him- come naturally-one day.
Astride the Wind flew fast toward his brothers, zigzagging tightly in case one of the soldiers had another one of those dangerous stones. The other four kenku were already flying fast and in a wide formation toward the distant mountains. Astride the Wind let himself be seen again just as he slid into the head of the formation. There were only two soldiers still alive of the six. Under normal circumstances, two humans who'd seen four of their friends killed would flee or surrender. Astride the Wind knew, though, that what set his people against these humans in the first place was an old and heartfelt hatred. These humans would not flee, and they would not surrender. Astride the Wind was confident that these soldiers would follow them.
Ahead were the low mountains, dry and brown. The Soaring Heights Clan were from the Turnback Mountains, higher than the dry crags ahead of them. They had spent centuries avoiding contact with humans and hunting in the nearby Frozen Forest. Now the old enemy was back – Netherese soldiers in a flying boat.
Astride the Wind looked back and saw the two soldiers turn their boat. The vessel came about, and they followed the kenku. Astride the Wind sent out a roaring call of challenge that faded into a satisfied, avian laugh.
Amidst the Blue was beginning to understand the human language. He'd been with his new friend Kaeralonn for a year and in that time had brought dozens of kenku to Shade Enclave – the massive flying city of the impressive archwizards. Kaeralonn was his friend and had taught him much, but there were things that gave the proud kenku pause.
They were back in the cage room again. Amidst the Blue had been there four times over the past few months. He was there simply to watch, which was all he did. The first time he'd been brought there Amidst the Blue was unable to understand what he was seeing. The second time he was nervous, and Kaeralonn had to speak to him in soothing tones to help calm him down. The third time he started to understand what Kaeralonn was doing. The fourth time he felt… offended… confused… unhappy.
"They can just fly out through the ceiling," the old man said, waving a hand at the cage with the open roof. Kaeralonn shrugged and said, "They'll try." The old man was visiting and Amidst the Blue understood that Kaeralonn was concerned about the stranger's opinion. Amidst the Blue had never seen his trusted human friend so concerned about the opinion of another. "You devised this… protocol yourself, then?" the old man asked. Amidst the Blue could feel his suspicion and doubt.
Kaeralonn shrugged and said, "There is some precedence in the literature, but it's best when modified where appropriate to the subjects."
Amidst the Blue wasn't sure what the humans were talking about. Spoken language was still uncomfortable for him, and some of the words they were using were too complex for the kenku to understand.
Kaeralonn waved to a young assistant who pulled a lever that opened a steel door in the wall of the cage. Suspicious and twitching, four naked kenku passed through the doorway and into the cage. The door slammed shut behind them, startling them, and they scattered to the corners of the cage. One looked up almost immediately and saw the hole in the ceiling. Amidst the Blue thought the kenku prisoner would soar through the opening and out into the free air, but he'd seen the process happen too many times. Though he knew it pleased Kaeralonn when the kenku responded to his teaching, Amidst the Blue was secretly disappointed when the kenku cowered in the corner. "They'll stay in the cage?" the old man asked. "They've all tried to fly out at one time or another," Kaeralonn explained. "Every time one tries it all four are subjected to low-level lightning magic they find most unpleasant. Eventually they stop trying to get through." "How long does that expensive and bothersome process go on?" the old man asked, rubbing his chin and looking at the trapped kenku in a way that made Amidst the Blue feel bad, despite the fact that this was Kaeralonn's friend.
Kaeralonn shrugged. "Some are more persistent than others, but I think this group is ready to move on," he said, then turned to the assistant. "Send in the new subject."
The assistant nodded and opened a second steel doorway in the cage. A young male kenku burst through the opening with a defiant shriek that made Amidst the Blue's heart leap in response. The strong young kenku grabbed the bars of the cage with both talons and used his wings to shake the bars violently. The cage held, and eventually the vital young male looked up. When he saw the opening in the roof, the young kenku leaped into the air -and all four of the other kenku dived on him. Talons tore and wings buffeted, and soon the young male was overwhelmed, held down firmly to the floor by shrieking, terrified kenku. Amidst the Blue could hear the mind-screams of the attacking kenku-a cacophony of single words lacking the complexity and subtlety of Kaeralonn's human tongue.
Pain.
Stop.
No.
Pain.
"Extraordinary," the old man said.
Kaeralonn smiled and said, "They learn slowly, but they learn."
The old man ran a hand through the wispy remnants of his white hair and said, "But you had the lightning ready just in case."
Kaeralonn laughed. "No," he replied. "No need. Not now. They'll be their own jailers now."
The old man nodded, and Amidst the Blue began to silently weep.
Astride the Wind's laugh was still hanging in the high air when he turned back to look at the flying boat. There were only two soldiers left alive, the one with crooked teeth and the other with sketches of gray in his black hair. They were following quickly. Keep them on our tails, brothers, Astride the Wind told the other four surviving kenku, but not too close.
Ahead of them, deep gray clouds roiled over the jagged tops of the rugged mountains-fertile fields for Astride the Wind's purposes. The soldiers were following them there, and though they'd suffered losses, Astride the Wind had reason to be optimistic. All that was left was for the Enemy to appear. Astride the Wind was sure he would. He had to.
The fog that appeared before them in a supernatural burst of billowing yellow-green set Astride the Wind's feathers on edge. It smelled of poison and foul magic. Astride the Wind tipped the leading edges of his wings down and drew his taloned feet in tightly. His head dipped and the rest of his body followed in a tight, fast dive. He missed the front of the conjured fogbank and twisted in the air so he could see it pass above him. Borne on the Drafts and Embracing the Clouds swerved past it, smart and agile enough to keep even the tips of their wings from cutting the mist. Whirling on High and Above it All were nowhere to be seen. Embracing the Clouds shrieked an audible warning.
Where are they? Astride the Wind asked the minds of his comrades.
They couldn't turn in time to-Borne on the Drafts began then stopped when Embracing the Clouds shrieked again.
Whirling on High and Above it All, proud kenku warriors both, fell from the bottom of the cloud trailing sickly mist and shriveling feathers. Even from a distance Astride the Wind knew they were dead and knew his instincts were correct when he'd avoided the strange fog.
Steel yourselves, brothers, Astride the Wind sent.
The reply was a feeling without words, Borne on the Drafts and Embracing the Clouds would fly with him to destroy the enemy. Astride the Wind never thought otherwise.
Astride the Wind pulled up past the back end of the cloud, facing the flying boat. A breath caught in his throat when he saw the third man there. He was tall and lithe, young but not youthful, wrapped in the confining robes of human mages. His hands were clasped in front of him and his eyes blazed with a commanding light. His face was a mask of jagged scars. The two soldiers were turned to face him and Astride the Wind could see the newcomer's mouth moving. He was giving them orders and they were listening intently. This new human was the Enemy, the slaver, the general.
Jurneille.
He is come, brothers, Astride the Wind told the other kenku. To the mountains. To the heavy sky.
Borne on the Drafts and Embracing the Clouds beat their wings furiously as they passed the slowly sinking cloud of yellow-green poison and tore off in the direction of the mountains. Astride the Wind hung on a thermal and chattered a series of words passed from chief to chief. Bolts of blue-green energy burst from his chest and flashed through the sky faster than the fastest swift. Their path took them unerringly toward the hated enemy.
The human looked up from his soldiers and fixed his eyes on the onrushing missiles.
See them coming, slaver? Astride the Wind thought. The last thing your eyes will The archwizard held out a hand and the bolts of energy, which in Astride the Wind's experience had never failed to hit their mark, veered off and passed only a few inches from the man's blowing robes. The curve of their deflected path brought the missiles slamming into the face of the soldier with the gray in his hair. The soldier's head exploded in a burst of light and his body fell limply onto the deck of the flying boat.
Astride the Wind screamed in frustration and turned back to join Borne on the Drafts and Embracing the Clouds, the mountains now looming close ahead.
Well done, Chief, a voice echoed in Astride the Wind's head.
It couldn't be the human, Astride the Wind thought. But it is, was the man's response. Enemy! Astride the Wind raged back, not turning to look at the man.
The man sent a laugh into Astride the Wind's mind that tickled the kenku's throat.
Your father taught you well, Chief, the man persisted, as his father taught him, and his father taught him, back along the lines of your flea-speck generations to when I taught your savage ancestor the glory of the Weave.
In the name of what your father's father's father did to my people, Shade, Astride the Wind sent, I will send you back to the hell you've been It was me, Chief, the man interrupted. I live now as I lived then. For every spell you cast, for ever sorcery you inherit, I have a thousand more at my command. Only a savage like yourself, a low thing, would think it difficult to live a thousand years, or two thousand, or three.
Astride the Wind beat his wings rapidly to press farther on, his eyes glued to the prize ahead. If what this man claimed was true, his victory would be all the sweeter.
Do you not remember me, kenku? The man sent. Astride the Wind swallowed in a dry throat and saw in his mind's eye the paintings on the wall of the High Cave, the home of his people. The paintings were as old as the Soaring Heights Clan, and told the story of the city on the floating mountain, the soldiers in their flying boats, the misery of servitude, and the disappearance of the hated city just before its neighbors were thrown to the unforgiving ground by the hand of a dying goddess. They remembered. They all remembered. Ahead the blackening air above the ragged mountains beckoned. Astride the Wind flew faster, and Borne on the Drafts and Embracing the Clouds were alongside him.
You are certain, Astride the Wind? Borne on the Drafts asked, a wave of uncertainty accompanying the thought. Astride the Wind did his best to transfer a sense of purpose and confidence, but he couldn't feel if Borne on the Drafts took it all in or not. We are our only hope, he added.
Borne on the Drafts's shiver sent a tremble through the air. Whirling on High was his older brother, born in the same mother's nest three years before. And Whirling on High was still spiraling, inert, to a dismal, lonely death on the desert sands below.
Astride the Wind felt a wave of heat pass up his back and he dropped a couple feet to let whatever it was pass. There was a flash of orange light in front of him-an oblong bolt of fire as long as his forearm had rocketed over him. He glanced back and saw several more arcing toward he and his comrades from the outstretched hands of the Enemy. A bolt of flame narrowly missed Embracing the Clouds and another passed within a handspan of Astride the Wind. Borne on the Drafts cawed when one caught the hem of his tunic and singed it, nearly setting the garment ablaze.
He means to burn us! Borne on the Drafts sent, the thought edged with panic.
I mean to get your attention, hatchling, the man replied, the alien voice like stagnant water in Astride the Wind's mind. It has been a long time, but there is much to do now, and Shade Enclave requires the efforts of all those who serve her now or served her then. You are recalled. Blood boiled in Astride the Wind's feathered head. You ask us to fly into your chains merely because you wish It? And I thought your hateful arrogance mere legend.
The kenku heard the Enemy laugh in both his mind and ears.
I offer you the opportunity to participate in the refounding of the greatest empire this world has ever known. If that's arrogance, then so be it.
Astride the Wind, Borne on the Drafts sent, the thought jittery and unsure, are you certain? If what you said is true, then…
Speak it, hatchling, Kaeralonn prodded. Astride the Wind realized that he and Borne on the Drafts had been circling, the boat gaining on them rapidly. He glanced at Embracing the Clouds, now circling himself some fifty yards or more closer to the roiling, gray mountain air.
The mountains, brothers, Embracing the Clouds urged. Come with us, Borne on the Drafts, Astride the Wind sent. This human would own you. He has nothing to offer us but misery. Come.
But he made us… Borne on the Drafts replied, the young kenku's eyes fixed on the rapidly approaching boat. He gave us what we…
Astride the Wind looked back at Borne on the Drafts as he came around the far end of the circle he was making in the air. The boat was moving with a purpose toward Borne on the Drafts, who twisted in the air and brought his own gentle arc closer to the vessel. Kaeralonn smiled through his scars with a toothy, feral grin. With a curve of one wing, Astride the Wind broke his gentle circle and dived toward Borne on the Drafts, racing the flying boat to his confused, frightened, overwhelmed clanmate. Kaeralonn reached out a hand to Borne on the Drafts, who was passing slowly down toward the boat, his wings ballooned out at his sides to slow his descent. Astride the Wind tucked his wings in tight and reached out with his free left hand to grab for Borne on the Drafts's rustling tunic.
The soldier with the crooked teeth leaned far over the rail of the boat, holding his black sword out in front of him. Astride the Wind, too intent on grabbing Borne on the Drafts out of the way of the Enemy, flew dead into the blade. The sword bit deeply into Astride the Wind's side, but he managed to spin in the air so that the fine edge clicked off a rib.
The maneuver saved his life but made it impossible to grab Borne on the Drafts. Astride the Wind let himself fall a few feet, trailing a spray of blood and looking up. The boat eased past the slowly descending Borne on the Drafts, and the archwizard's fingers brushed the side of the young kenku's beak.
No! Astride the Wind screamed into the minds of friend and foe alike, but there was nothing he could do.
Borne on the Drafts's body stiffened at the touch and the light went out of his eyes. Like his brother, Borne on the Drafts began to fall, stiff and lifeless, to the dry ground below.
Kaeralonn made that hideous human sound they called a laugh and looked down at Astride the Wind. All I want is you this time, Chief, descendant of Amidst the Blue.
No! Astride the Wind screamed again. He shot both wings out to grab the air and turned away from the sight of Borne on the Drafts's falling corpse. With strength born of anger and revulsion, he beat his wings furiously against the uncompromising air and soared to meet the circling, impatient Embracing the Clouds.
We're alone, Embracing the Clouds, the kenku sent to his last comrade. The time has come to finish this.
Embracing the Clouds gave a ragged squawk of agreement and flew fast toward the mountains, Astride the Wind lagging behind.
Fly, Chief, the hated Enemy called. There's nowhere you can go where I can't chase you, no lifetime you can resist that I can't wait out. You will come to me as your ancestor did, and you'll deliver the rest of your people as he did, and you will teach them to serve me as he taught them to do. It's your destiny to serve as it's my destiny to command-in the name of Netheril, in the name of Shade, in the name of common sense.
Astride the Wind's beak clamped shut, his feathers ruffled, and a wave of hot blood flooded through his tingling body. His vision narrowed to a focused point, and he flew faster than he'd ever flown before.
No, brother! Embracing the Clouds called from behind him. This way!
Astride the Wind ignored him. Instead of following his own instructions, his own plan to lead the human to the heavy, energy-rich air above the mountains, he shot at the boat like an arrow and smashed into the side. The flying vessel tipped violently and the impact sent a wave of pain burning through the kenku's injured side. Blood flowed and bright stars exploded in his vision.
The last remaining Netherese soldier fell from the boat but managed to grab the side. His face twisted in a red, sweating grimace, he hung there, his life depending solely on the strength of his left hand. The headless corpse of his comrade-in-arms tumbled over the side and spun madly, trailing blood as it fell.
Astride the Wind recovered quickly from the impact and though the pain in his side was still intense, he managed to get his wings back onto the air. He caught a fast rising thermal at the edge of the mountain range and rode it upward. Behind him, the Enemy snarled through a string of nonsensical words. Astride the Wind honestly couldn't tell the difference between an incantation and the human's normal speech, so he braced himself for anything. He smelled a faint whiff of sulfur and before he took the time to make a conscious decision, he tucked and dived out of the way.
The world exploded in heat and roiling red-orange fire in a rapidly-expanding sphere above him. Singed but not blistered, Astride the Wind swooped out of the way even as the fire burned itself out into a single puff of black smoke that fouled the air.
Astride the Wind looked back at the boat and saw the soldier with the crooked teeth get his right hand onto the edge of the still teetering boat. The soldier's sword was safely in its scabbard at his belt. The man's face was more relaxed, confident that he had avoided a mile-long fall to his death.
An arrow came from behind Astride the Wind and above his head and slammed into the side of the boat. Splinters shot into the soldier's face and he gasped. The edge of the boat broke off and the soldier seemed to hang in the still air an inch off the side of the flying boat. Then he screamed as he fell, his arms twirling and his body spinning.
Astride the Wind looked up and back at Embracing the Clouds, who was banking back toward the mountains holding his longbow in his left hand.
Well shot, brother, Astride the Wind sent.
I serve the clan, was Embracing the Clouds's reply. The mountains? The heavy air?
Astride the Wind flew fast toward his clanmate, glancing back to see an obviously irritated, scowling arch-wizard in the flying boat, giving chase.
The mountains, yes, Astride the Wind responded. The heavy air.
Amidst the Blue twitched under the ministering hands of the human while Kaeralonn paced angrily across the aviary. Behind him, the clear sky sparkled with stars that moved as one as the floating city gently turned. Warmth spread from the human's hands and Amidst the Blue twitched again when the now familiar nettling itch of the priestly healing magic closed his oozing wounds.
There were more than you told us there would be, Amidst the Blue sent to the pacing human.
Kaeralonn stopped pacing and spun on him angrily. "That's what I sent you to determine, you pea-brained fool. You killed as many of your own men as the enemy did. Need I remind you again of the cost to train you feathered savages, to keep you and equip you?"
Amidst the Blue looked away, his feathers ruffling. He had no answer. He'd been sent to lead a flight of his brother kenku against a small flotilla of flying boats set into the sky by a neighboring enclave. The battle had gone badly from the start. The enchanted maidensthigh melons they'd been given to drop on the boats from above instead exploded in the hands of a good dozen kenku- blasting them apart in a blaze of green-white flame. Only two actually managed to land on a boat, neither working the way Kaeralonn had planned. All they did was illuminate the invisible shields with which the enemy mages had encircled their boats. Arrows both enchanted and mundane ripped more kenku apart, and the small spells of the kenku and their weapons and talons took some toll on the enemy, but in the end it was Amidst the Blue who broke off and retreated, with only a quarter of the force he'd flown out with. Kaeralonn had reason to be displeased, but so did Amidst the Blue.
"Silence?" Kaeralonn asked with a sneer. "You have nothing to say for yourself?"
What is there to say, General? Amidst the Blue answered.
"I am finished here," the priest muttered to Kaeralonn, who waved him off dismissively. "Your slaves are well cared for, General."
Kaeralonn stepped closer to the priest and grabbed his arm with a tight, commanding grip. "Hold your tongue, priest," Kaeralonn said through tight lips, "and get out." The priest looked offended but left quickly. Kaeralonn went back to his angry pacing and Amidst the Blue was left to ponder the priest's words. Slaves.
He had heard the word many tunes in the last two years. He had heard it uttered by his own people-kenku whom Amidst the Blue had brought to Shade Enclave himself, brought into the service of Kaeralonn. Amidst the Blue had been confused, baffled by his brothers' inability to see the warmth and friendship in Kaeralonn or the value in service to his cause. The other kenku regarded Kaeralonn with fear and suspicion, even hatred-but why? Amidst the Blue was beginning to understand.
He sat up on the cold metal table and looked next to him at the young kenku, Along the Thermals, who was lying next to him, bandaged and writhing in pain. Their eyes met and Amidst the Blue could feel the emotions of the young kenku, wrapped in a psychic package of pain and pleading.
You're the only one, Along the Thermals sent.
The only one? Amidst the Blue asked, a tear coming unbidden to his bruised eye.
You brought us here, the young kenku replied, and only you can take us out. Resist him. Break our bonds, Amidst the Blue, and we will follow you to "Silence!" Kaeralonn shouted just as a flickering, jagged string of bunding blue-white luminescence leaped from the tips of his fingers and smashed into Along the Thermals hard enough to lift the young kenku off the table and pound him into the mudbrick wall. The wall cracked and the kenku screamed, twitching madly in the hold of the vertical lightning. The bolt was gone in less than the space of a heartbeat, but its path was burned onto Amidst the Blue's vision. Along the Thermals lay dead and smoking, a melting black ruin on the scorched floor.
Amidst the Blue felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to see Kaeralonn smiling at him in a condescending, twisted, evil way. "Don't listen to these slaves, my friend, they're just-"
Kaeralonn went down hard from Amidst the Blue's kick. The human grabbed at his midsection and tried to breathe in but couldn't.
You, Amidst the Blue dropped into the gasping human's mind, are not my friend.
Kaeralonn reached up with his right hand, his fingers moving through the traces of a spell and he found his voice in time to utter only the first arcane syllable before Amidst the Blue grabbed his face with one sharp-taloned foot. I'm no longer your slave.
The kenku ripped down and tore into the silky flesh of the general's face. Blood flew everywhere and the other kenku-nearly a hundred of them lying around the open room in various states of disrepair and despair-stood up and took notice.
"Stop!" the human gasped, his face a bloody ruin, his hands pressed against his cheeks to hold the flesh on.
Amidst the Blue drew his sword and raised it over the head of the archwizard. You have taught us well, Kaeralonn, but you have taught us too much.
As the blade came down fast and hard at the human's neck, Kaeralonn pulled something from inside his mouth-a tooth, Amidst the Blue saw-and when the sword came down past where his neck should have been, the human was gone.
Amidst the Blue let himself laugh. There will be a time, slaver. We will not forget.
With that Amidst the Blue led his people to freedom.
The jagged brown mountains loomed before them. The sky directly above seethed with potential energy and Astride the Wind and Embracing the Clouds found it difficult to maintain altitude. Astride the Wind's side burned and his head ached, but still he fought on.
Where are you going? Kaeralonn asked the kenku's reeling mind. Leading me back to your nest, in hopes that your clanmates will overwhelm me? You're as foolish and as vain as Amidst the Blue.
Astride the Wind ignored him. Instead, he thought to Embracing the Clouds, This is it. It ends here.
Astride the Wind fluffed his wings, bringing himself up short-and his wings were pressed hard against his sides by some heavy, outside force. He was covered in a mass of white silk like a spider's web, but the web had appeared out of nowhere, in the air all around him. The source of it was obvious, even before Kaeralonn's gloating statement, Wrapped like the gift you are, thrall.
Astride the Wind squawked in defiance and began to fall. Unable to spread his wings, he couldn't fly. He could twist his body enough to control his spin, though, and he managed to see what Kaeralonn was doing. The flying boat was moving fast on a course obviously designed to bring it under Astride the Wind. Kaeralonn had immobilized him so he could drop like a bundle into the open boat.
Arrows whistled through the air from a circling Embracing the Clouds. Kaeralonn didn't even bother to hold up a hand. The arrows-which should have lodged deep in the man's chest-whirled around him and down like water caught in a drain. Embracing the Clouds cawed in frustration, though they both had always known this enemy would be harder to kill than that.
Astride the Wind slammed onto his back on the wooden deck of the flying boat and his vision spun from the impact. Above him were the deep black clouds, below two thirds of a mile of open air then the stony foothills. Astride the Wind struggled against the web, but it held his wings and arms tightly to his sides. Kaeralonn looked down at him and said something in his vile human speech that Astride the Wind couldn't understand.
The bound kenku managed to sit up in the gently rocking boat, and he could see Embracing the Clouds wheeling in the distance against the backdrop of the barren mountains. Embracing the Clouds's bow was around his shoulders and a dagger was in his right hand. His wings arced and he turned to fly fast at the boat.
No, brother, Astride the Wind sent to him. Keep your distance.
Embracing the Clouds whirled around in the air and started back the way he'd come without a moment's hesitation. The human had the audacity to laugh.
Astride the Wind ignored them both, only barely feeling the boat lift and turn in the direction of Embracing the Clouds's flight. The human meant to give chase.
Astride the Wind felt the energy building within him. The human, for all his great power, was still dependant on spells. Spells required hands, a tongue, and sometimes items of focus or power. What Astride the Wind had drawn the hated human here to do required none of those things. It was a natural progression from the seed of power planted in the ancient kenku by Kaeralonn himself, as shortsighted as he was long-lived.
The kenku's reverie was deep, but not so deep that he failed to hear Kaeralonn begin the chanting cadence of a spell-from this close so obviously different from his normal monotone, mumbling speech. Astride the Wind's legs were still free, though not entirely. He could, and did, kick out and up just enough to jostle Kaeralonn's elbow, knock him just enough toward the edge of the boat to startle him-and in the process ruin the spell.
The archwizard spun on the restrained kenku, his scarred face blazing with anger.
Know, the archwizard screamed into Astride the Wind's mind, when you're beaten, slave!
The human reached down and grabbed Astride the Wind's shoulder roughly. The human wore a ring on that hand, a ring that started to burn when it touched Astride the Wind's feathers. Kaeralonn was obviously immune to the heat, but Astride the Wind was being burned painfully. He couldn't help but call out a single pained shriek.
Astride the Wind… Embracing the Clouds sent, concern making the thought spiky and urgent.
Go, brother, Astride the Wind replied. Tell them what happened here.
Indeed, "brother," Kaeralonn interceded. Tell them all that the master has returned and their service is required once more. Your clanmate-or what's left of him-will be waiting for you on Shade Enclave.
No, Kaeralonn, Astride the Wind replied. When Amidst the Blue took your face and your slaves from you, he remembered everything. When that ragged band of kenku flew from your hated aerie and found a home in the high caves far away, they painted his memories and his warning… and his wishes for the future, on the walls. He told us the manner of the death of the slaver, should the day come that he or his kin returned.
The burning subsided and the archwizard smiled in a condescending, unimpressed way. How lovely for you all.
The manner of your death was decreed by your first slave, Kaeralonn. You will share the fate of the martyr, Along the Thermals.
Along the…? Kaeralonn responded, confused. Astride the Wind closed his eyes, the power inside him linked to the heart of the clouds. He could feel Kaeralonn's hand come off his shoulder. The first half of the first syllable of a spell certainly designed to get him away whispered off the tip of the human's lip-and the sky exploded in blinding light.
The lightning bolt held all the fury of the heavy mountain clouds. It slammed into the boat and through Kaeralonn with force enough to blast the archwizard into a spray of flaming gobbets of sizzling flesh. The wood of the boat shattered, exploded from within. Astride the Wind's body tensed and he could feel small bones break in his hands, his jaw, his talons. The web boiled away, taking rows of feathers with it, and Astride the Wind screamed at the pain of his unprotected flesh burning.
He tumbled madly away, laughing through the pain and loss, knowing that he'd taken the slaver with him. The hands that grabbed him grabbed him hard and a flood of emotions flowed into his mind from Embracing the Clouds. Astride the Wind opened his eyes and found that he could only see out of one of them, but he could see his clanmate.
It is done, highest of brothers, Embracing the Clouds told him, his arms gently circling Astride the Wind's burned, limp form. The clan awaits.
Astride the Wind could feel Embracing the Clouds's wings carry them both higher, turning to the west and home.
The Fallen Lands
Murray J.D. Leeder
19 Ches, the Year of Wild Magic
I remember sitting in the class of my mentor, the wizard Maligo of Mistledale. Retired from his adventures to the clergy of Azuth, he occasionally defended the Dale from its enemies but mostly was content to live quietly and teach a new generation of mages. He would die several years later of a miscast spell during the Time of Troubles, a hard blow to me. I learned almost all I know about magic from him. In this particular class, I took it upon myself to ask a naughty question:
"If Mystra is a goddess of good, why does she allow evil people to use magic?"
The other children around me tittered that I asked such a question, but not Maligo. He was a man of infinite patience.
"What do you children think?" he asked.
"It is not for Mystra to deny magic to anyone," answered another mageling, the son of one of the Council of Six and certainly my archnemesis of the moment. Despite his best attempts, he never became nearly as close to Maligo as I did. "She teaches us wisdom instead," he explained, "and if we do not heed her wisdom, if we use her power for destructive means, she is not to blame."
This was the usual answer to that question. It wasn't the first time I'd heard it, nor the last. I had to hear that answer many times before it started to sound reasonable…
I woke up to the sun stabbing me in the eye. Assessing my situation as best I could, I found I was wrapped in some kind of animal fur and naked underneath. The chill air on my face kept me awake. I tried and failed to sit up, so badly was I aching, though I knew my wounds had been healed.
Wounds. Where did I get them? The orcs. I remembered the orcs. They attacked us at night. Hundreds of them, far more than I had seen at one time, moved toward us in waves. Many were riding flightless avians, like ugly featherless ostriches. My spells slew many, but they kept coming. These orcs looked unusual. In their eyes, shining in the torchlight, I did not see the manic bloodlust typical of their kind. Instead their eyes were glassed over, faraway.
I remembered Neril slipping between the orcs, slashing at all sides with his great broadsword and cleaving them by the dozens. Mystra! There was a moment when they were around him on all sides, separating him from the rest of us. That was the last I saw of him.
"The others," I croaked, my throat parched. "The others."
“Did you hear that?" said someone with a deep male voice. "He speaks our language!"
"Are you sure?" somebody else said.
"Please… the others." I was regaining my faculties, and I attempted a complete sentence: "Are the others all right?"
A man stepped over me. My eyes widened as I stared up at him. His head eclipsed the sun, so I couldn't make out his features clearly. He was tall, probably a head above me, and in the Dalelands I was considered a tall man. His hair was long and black, and he was clad in the pelt of a wolf. A barbarian.
Yes! I remembered the barbarians. They rushed out of the night like ghosts and joined the fray, their spears and axes and hammers sailing across the battlefield. Just before I passed out, a warhammer shattered the skull of the orc with its sword to my throat. It likely saved my life. Now, a similar hammer was in the hands of the man standing above me.
"Do not move, Civilized. Stay still, or you will taste Uthgardt steel. How did you come to speak our language?"
I heard Common, but his lips moved in his native tongue.
"I don't," I said.
I ran my weak hand up to my chest and confirmed that I was still wearing the amulet. I pulled it out from under the fur. It glowed serenely, and gave off a certain amount of warmth, something I was glad for in these northern winters.
This makes it possible for me," I explained.
The amulet was a gift from my mentor, many years ago. It translated my language into that of the listener and his language to mine. It had served the Blazing Band well over the years, even though it had limitations. The barbarian's use of "civilized," for example, was probably the best translation it could manage of a concept not present in Common.
"I knew we should have taken it away from him, Thluna. It's magic!"
"I knew it was magic, Gar," answered the barbarian above me. "That's why I didn't touch it. I was afraid it might poison me."
"It is not a weapon. It's not a danger to you or anyone," I said. "Tell me, who else from my company survived the battle?"
"No one," he said.
My heart sank, though I wasn't surprised at his answer. I reviewed them all in my mind. I had known Neril the longest, since we were children. The two of us formed the Blazing Men together in Mistledale-it wasn't until we took on our first female member that we amended the name-but somehow I felt saddest for our youngest member, dear young Shalinda. She had joined us in Sundabar barely a month before. She was just a northern farm girl, eager to see the world and with a minor aptitude for the longbow gained from shooting wolves. It was her first battle that killed her, and I doubt she was able to slay even a single orc before they reached her.
Sundabar. That's where we were when we heard the news. The Lords' Alliance was dispatching troops-even the Blackstaff was rumored to be on the move. Neril suggested we take an unusual route-east of the High Forest-to Evereska, one that would get us there quickly while avoiding major roads, which might be compromised. We were lucky to get through the Nether Mountains before the blizzards began.
"Ask him if he's a mage. Ask him if this is a magic book."
I forced myself to sit up and saw the other barbarian, an equally brutish-looking fellow. He had my spellbook, my one possession of true power, my one defense, lying closed in front of him, with my quarterstaff and robes beside it. My mind was empty of spells. I could not fight my way out if I wanted to.
I recalled the advice a seasoned adventurer once gave us. We met him in a tavern in Neverwinter. He said, "If you ever want to commit suicide easily, tell an Uthgardt you're a mage."
But I suspected they had a still lower opinion of liars.
"I am a mage," I confessed. "My name is Arklow of Ashabenford."
I turned my eyes to the barbarian above me. As he moved his head out from behind the sun, I realized that he was very young; probably barely fifteen winters. His scars told me that at this young age he had seen more combat than I had in my thirty. In his eyes, I saw an odd mix of revulsion and something else. Curiosity?
"A mage? We've saved a mage, Thluna," said the other barbarian. "Sungar will skin us for this. He won't be happy that the shaman healed him before some of our own."
"He was the most badly wounded, and he fought fiercely against the orcs," replied Thluna, "even if he is a mage."
I filled in the appropriate adage- -the enemy of my enemy is not my enemy-but I detected a strange undercurrent to Thluna's voice that made me suspect there was more to it than that.
"Arklow of Ashabenford, I am Thluna, son of Haagravan, of the Thunderbeast tribe. That is Garstak."
Thunderbeast. I'd never heard of that tribe before, and I was happy for that since the most famous tribes were generally those who raided civilized settlements. Somehow, though, the name made something click in my mind. There were mountains visible in the distance, and I knew they were among the northernmost of the Greypeaks. I turned and looked behind me, and I saw an expanse of dry, dead earth stretch off to the horizon. There was some shifting snow but not much. The area seemed almost devoid of weather. I knew the name of the place we were cutting through to get to Evereska. It was a dismal, little-visited corner of Faerun civilized men called the Fallen Lands.
Once I was ready to walk again, Thluna and Garstak let me dress. They did not return my spellbook or staff, and for the moment I didn't ask for them. They led me through the Thunderbeast camp, a hodgepodge of portable dwellings of animal skins, filled with a selection of stocky barbarians, all male and mostly wounded in some way or another, and all looking at me with fear and contempt. They took me before their chieftain, Sungar
Wolfkiller.
A fiercely bearded man, probably younger than me but looking decades older, Sungar was slighter than many of the Uthgardt but still an imposing figure. He had a huge gash across his cheek, fresh from the battle. Apparently the tribe's shaman had yet to get around to healing his wounds. He clutched a huge battle-axe in a single hand, a weapon so heavy I expected few men could even lift it. The forgery looked almost dwarven, but in a human's size. I wondered where it came from. The chieftain thanked Thluna and asked them to leave us alone in his tent.
"Mage," he addressed me. "We Uthgardt despise your magic. It is a terribly distasteful thing to talk with you through that magic device of yours." He pointed at my amulet.
"I understand that," I said. "I thank you and your tribe for saving my life. I owe you everything. I owe you enough to leave your company immediately.''
"Normally, that would be the best you could hope for, but…" His eyes drifted to the ground. "Circumstances are not normal.
"We are far from the rest of our people and farther still from the bones of the beast that watches over our tribe. We set out into this dead region to battle the orcs. Our tribe generally embarks on such a campaign every two or three winters as a test of our mettle. This is Thluna's first time and my seventh. I believe I have seen almost everything of orcs a man may encounter. Thousands have fallen to my axe, but I have never seen anything like the orcs we battled last night.
"Orcs are cowardly beasts. When the tide of the battle is turned against them, some of them will retreat. This is the case, always, but these orcs fought to the last. I lost many warriors to their spears and swords, and not one orc fled the battle.
"None of us have ever known orcs to mass in such numbers. This dead region in particular is noted for its constant feuds and rivalries, orc tribe against orc tribe. Never have they been so united.
"Finally, some of my men have observed, and I concur, that these orcs did not look like orcs. Orcs are disgusting, drooling creatures. In their eyes there is nothing but hatred and evil, but these orcs had nothing of that. Their eyes were distant. It was as if their minds were not theirs. My experience has no explanation for this. Perhaps yours does."
Sungar stared me in the eye. I took a deep breath, and told him what I knew.
"My company was passing through this region, which we call the Fallen Lands, on the way to Evereska. It is an elf settlement to the south. We received word in Sundabar…" I paused, wondering if I should explain either elves or Sundabar, but I decided against it, "… that something had happened near there-an eruption from the underground of an unusual type of monster, the phaerimm."
"Phaerimm?"
"I don't know much about them. They were more legend than reality for most of us. They're thought to live beneath Anauroch… the desert to the east." Sungar nodded in understanding. "They're said to be intelligent, wicked and powerful, and excellent magicians. Some say they even subsist on magic itself. The arrival of such monsters could have devastating consequences for us all. We heard that many forces of good were proceeding to Evereska to counter this invasion and decided to head there ourselves.
"It's also known that the phaerimm are masters at enslaving other races to their will, even highly intelligent creatures like dragons and beholders. If their object is one of simple destruction, it does not surprise me that they send their servants where they cannot go themselves. If they can control the mind of a dragon, it should be no trick to bend the will of an orc." Or a barbarian, I thought, or a mage. Sungar shook his head in disbelief. "Uthgar protect us. These phaerimm… they can be killed?"
"I'm sure they can, but even the strongest wizards in the world fear the phaerimm. I am no match for them, I am certain of that, and neither are your men. Our only hope is that none of them are here in the Fallen Lands; that instead, it is one of their servants who is enslaving these orcs."
"But the orcs are dead. We killed them." "Were they all the orcs in the Fallen Lands? All the other monsters besides? Maybe they were just an exploratory force. There could be another army out there, probably even larger. What would you do if some of your men were slaughtered, and you were in a position to strike back? How would you react?"
"I would seek revenge." Sungar leaned pensively on his battle-axe. "What do you recommend we do, mage?"
"We could move north. I could rejoin civilization; you could rejoin your tribe, that is, if the phaerimm's forces do not intercept us on the way. They could make us then-slaves, just like those orcs." I paused to let my words sink in. "Or we could-"
"We will move south and confront this army before it expects us. If we perish, we will perish defending our tribe. Come with us, Arklow of Ashabenford. We have seen your valor in battle and know you to be a worthy warrior. I promise no Uthgardt warrior will molest you if you ride as one of us."
My staff and spellbook were returned to me, and as soon as all the Uthgardt were properly healed by the shaman, they were ready to mobilize again. Only Thluna's friend Garstak did not join us but was instead sent back north to warn the tribe. The Uthgardt buried their dead in the dirt of the Fallen Lands and a few of them helped me dig graves for the Blazing Band. I had thoughts of recovering some of their magical items, perhaps the enchanted dagger from the thief Jarok, but with the Uthgardt watching I decided otherwise. Barely a trace was left of the encampment by the time we left.
I was provided with a horse, its rider killed by the orcs. It was a far less domesticated animal than most of the horses I had ridden, but I think I impressed the Uthgardt by handling it as well as I did. The Uthgardt were not horse barbarians like the far-off Nars and Tuigan, and clearly had come only recently to the art of equestrianism. My father was one of the Riders of Mistledale, and he had taught me well. There was something perversely amusing about the situation. Two tendays before, I was wintering in Sundabar and would never have expected to find all my friends and companions dead, and myself riding into the depths of the Fallen Lands with a barbarian tribe to battle the phaerimm.
My mind frequently drifted back to poor Shalinda. How irresponsible we were for taking the young woman, barely more than a child, into such danger. She should have stayed in Sundabar; she should have stayed a farmer. If she had, she'd still be alive.
The Blazing Band had accomplished many glorious things. It deserved better than to be massacred by orcs in some godsforsaken corner of Faerun. Or did it? When Neril had come to us with the news that phaerimm were assaulting Evereska, we all agreed to proceed there immediately. Why? Was it selfless concern for the elves of Evereska? Or was it just another opportunity for glory? Maybe even a chance to fight next to Khelben Arunsun himself?
The farther we went into the Fallen Lands, the more barren the place became. A vast expanse of dirt and cracked earth-no wonder all sensible men avoided it. Only magic could leave a place so infertile. I understood it was once a Netherese survivor state. Perhaps that's why the Uthgardt regarded it with such suspicion. Physically desolate as it was, though, it teemed with magic. I could feel it in the air, just as I could sense the absence of the Weave the instant I stepped into the dead magic area in Tantras. There I developed a throbbing headache, feeling my separation from the Weave and the glory of Mystra, but here I felt the opposite, a heady feeling verging on euphoria. I didn't doubt that the phaerimm would feel very much at home in this place.
Thluna rode his horse up next to mine. He was wearing a silver war helmet and clutching a warhammer. Of all the Uthgardt I had met, he was the only one who went out his way for my company, and I was glad for it. Some of the others looked as if they'd quickly put an axe to my head if it weren't for Sungar's instructions. I was worried that some of them thought I might try to corrupt Thluna's young mind with my civilized philosophies, but they didn't express this as far as I saw. To their credit, they trusted their dogma to keep him on what they defined as the right path.
"Do you know about the Blue Bears?" he asked me.
"The Blue Bear tribe? A little."
"My father pried this helmet off the body of one of their warriors, whom he killed with his bare hands. Of all the degenerate Uthgardt tribes, the Blue Bears are the worst."
I was happy to hear that. The helmet was marked on one side with an emblem of Everlund, and I was a trifle concerned about how he'd got it.
"I understood the Blue Bears are extinct now. The tribe crumbled after Hellgate Keep was destroyed."
By a group of magic-wielding "civilizeds," I silently added.
Thluna nodded. "This is true, so far as we have seen. We passed through their territory a tenday ago and saw nothing of them. It is said that when they learned their bitch chieftain Tanta was not human at all, but some foul fiend of the Hells, they were too twisted to even care." He turned his eyes to me. "Is that what we will be like if these phaerimm enslave us?"
"I don't know," I answered truthfully.
"Any of us would rather fight to the death than to allow that to happen to us or to happen to the rest of our tribe."
"You'd even rather fight beside a mage." When he didn't knock me off my horse as I suspected he might, I thought I would press my luck farther. "What is your people's objection to magic? You have priestly magic."
"Priestly? Our shaman's spells are a gift from Uthgar.Your magic is not the same."
He was right, in a sense. Clerical magic did not come from the Weave like my spells.
"Magic isn't just a tool of destruction," I said. "It can be helpful, beneficial. This amulet is a good example. Without it, we couldn't be talking to each other like this."
"Were it not for your magic object, we would have to learn to communicate on our own level. We'd be forced to accomplish something. Instead, the amulet does it for us. Magic does not make your life better, only easier."
"Magic is an Art. It's a gift of Mystra."
"Mystra," said Thluna. "We are aware of this goddess, though we do not think of her often. When we do, it is of a trickster who lures men with offers of tremendous power, power without restrictions. These powers grow and grow and eventually become impossible to control. She is a miner of men and tribes alike."
My anger rose, but I knew this was Thluna's way of getting me back for what I had said a moment ago. Things were settled between us, so I didn't dare to say what we thought of his god.
It was later that day that one of the Uthgardt pointed out a plume of smoke rising to the sky in the distance.
"Could be orcs," said Sungar. "But there are so few trees. Where are they getting the wood for a fire?"
He had a point. Orcs ate raw meat but preferred it cooked. "It's probably magical fire," I reasoned. "A gift from their new masters."
One of the older barbarians chimed in with his advice. "We should attack now, while there's still light. In darkness they will have the advantage."
"I'd like to know what we're up against first," said Sungar.
"I have a spell for that."
Some of them began to object, but Sungar silenced them with a glance.
"I’ll need silence for a minute or two," I said and crouched on the ground, facing the direction of the smoke.
I cast my spell and felt my consciousness propelled over the fields of the Fallen Lands with increasing speed. There was a large plain ahead of us, featureless but for a small ruin rising maybe eight feet above, like the tip of something mostly buried under the ground. But for that, there was little cover in any direction. Surrounding the ruin was an impressive force made up mostly of orcs, with a few stray bugbears and gnolls in the mix, probably acquired somewhere between there and Evereska. A lot of them were tending to their mounts, those ugly bipedal birds, and some were cooking meat over a series of magic bonfires. Still, they looked like they were ready to fight at a moment's notice. I estimated at least ten of them for every one of the barbarians.
My mind slipped between a set of orcs and continued toward the ruin, barely more than a few cracked walls and broken columns. A few huge and bulky masses were standing nearby like statues, and on the ruin itself was a long, thin serpentine body, a dark blue-purple in color, ending with a human face that was buried in the belly of its meal, a dead orc.
How do we know this civilized is not warning our enemies?
He is luring us into a trap!
The voices shot through my mind and sent me hurling back to my body so hard that I fell backward.
"Silence!" shouted Sungar at the offending Uthgardt, who slunk away in submission.
Sungar was a strong ruler but smart enough to know that some of the ill-tempered barbarians would not tolerate my presence much longer. Barbarians lived for battle. It was the only pleasure in their harsh lives, and battle was the only thing that would protect me. These Uthgardt would much rather fight beside me than ride with me.
"It's all right," I said, pulling myself to my feet. "I saw enough. There are maybe four or five hundred orcs in the army, and a few other humanoids as well, but I did not see any phaerimm. We can be relieved at that. They're being led by a dark naga."
"A dark what?"
"A naga. They're snakelike beings who hoard magic items and knowledge. They're born collaborators. This one probably works for the phaerimm in exchange for new spells, including the mind control spells that are keeping that army in line. Nagas have poison stingers on the end of their tails, and they bite. They also have powers of telepathy and can read your thoughts if you get too close to them. They're dangerous foes."
"Have you ever fought one before?" asked one of the Uthgardt.
"No," I admitted, "but I did fight something similar-a water naga-back home. I've read accounts from those who've fought others. The naga's being guarded by two umber hulks. They're large, underground monsters, These I have fought before. They can be deadly in close quarters but are slow and awkward out in the open. Never meet their eyes. They have powers of confusion. I bet the naga brought them with it from the Underdark as bodyguards. It's nice to know it can make such a mistake."
"These monsters can be killed?" Sungar asked, clutching his axe.
"I think so." The barbarians shouted in approval. "I said the naga's spells were controlling the minds of the orcs. I can't be certain, but that may mean that if the naga died, the control would end. If the orc tribes in the Fallen Lands are as divisive as I've heard, then that army must contain a lot of enemies. We can capitalize on the confusion. After all, we can't kill four hundred orcs, but two hundred orcs can kill two hundred orcs."
Craftiness in strategy was not a skill much admired by barbarians as a rule, but I think the Uthgardt realized that their usual direct approach would not be successful here. I fetched my staff from the back of my horse and drew in the dry dirt a rough overhead sketch of the army as I had seen it. Soon we had formulated a battle plan.
"None of us will leave the field before the battle is won," said Sungar as the sun was just about to set and our campaign was about to begin, "or none of us will leave it at all."
The sentiment frightened me, but I could not improve upon its eloquence.
Sungar, myself, and a dozen others separated from the rest and circled south and to the west, keeping out of the army's view. As there was no cover close to the battlefield, we had to move quite a distance. After a few tense minutes' wait, we moved on the orcs. The sound of weapons clashing was audible from the battlefield. Dimly we could see the mounted figures of the others beset by throngs of orcs, dodging their spears and arrows, and could hear war cries mix with the clanking of orcish armor.
“There." I pointed out the ruins where I had seen the naga
It seemed our plan was working. The defenses along the flank had thinned as the others drew more orcs forward. We charged. As I looked back at the Uthgardt, horses galloping, weapons held high, their long black hair flying in the breeze, I felt an instinctive terror of my allies. That's what made barbarians the potent force they were, why they were feared across the North. In truth most of them were probably less skilled as fighters than many I'd fought beside or against in my life, but as a spectacle they had no equal-but I knew their fearsome visage would have little effect on these enspelled orcs.
Some of the orcs noticed us almost immediately and started moving in our direction on foot or mounted, but on the whole they continued engaging the others. They did not count on my presence, but they would learn of it soon enough. At this point I offered one discreet prayer to Mystra, and another to Torm or Tempus or Uthgar, or whatever god would help us win the battle.
Sungar used his mighty axe to knock the first blank-faced orc to reach us off its avian as he rode past it, while I prepared my first spell. I had searched my spellbook for something that would impress on the Uthgardt that magic need not be destructive. Perhaps something with weather control, a mighty wind to blow the orcs away from our path, but I went back to one of the most common offensive spells in the Realms, which has no match when it comes to removing larger numbers of enemies and quickly. I had rarely cast it from a horse before, let alone one charging at its top speed, but I managed to summon a large fireball and send the orange-red sphere sailing high through the air. Silhouetted against the darkening sky, it was a thing of tremendous beauty. I even think I heard some of the Uthgardt around me gasp. It landed dead ahead of us in a dense group of orcs, tearing through them with waves of flame. Cries of pain drowned out all other noise.
A spear caught the flank of the horse of the barbarian riding beside me. He went tumbling to the ground, and I hoped he managed to stand before the orcs rushed over to slit his exposed throat, but I couldn't turn back to look. Sungar rode up beside me, and together we led the charge toward the ruin growing larger in the distance. Most orcs instinctively dodged the feet of our horses, and I sent a few magic missiles whistling across the plain to clear those who didn't. Soon a very definite path between us and the ruin formed.
As we passed through the scorched spot where my fireball had landed I could see the two umber hulks loom ahead of us, but I could not see the naga.
A purple tail snaked out of the lines of orcs ahead of me and swung at me. Its stinger came so close to me I could smell its poison. My reflexes were faster than my spells, and I pulled my staff from behind me, bashing the naga's tail as hard as I could. It immediately slipped away, back between the orcs and vanished from my sight.
"Where did it go?" yelled Sungar.
The point where it attacked me was now some distance behind us. We both looked backward just in time to see the naga leap out of the fray onto one of the Uthgardt following us. It caught him by surprise, sinking its fangs into the side of his head. It flexed its long, thin body backward, pulling him from horse and sending him flying backward onto the orcs' waiting blades. I fired a magic missile and struck the naga in its side. With lightning speed, it retracted once again into the safety of the ranks of orcs.
The lines of orcs around Sungar and me were far too close together for us to turn around and confront the naga at this speed. We looked forward again and found we were nearing the ruin where the two umber hulks stood waiting for us. Sungar jumped from his horse just in time for it to run straight into the huge, outstretched arms of an umber hulk. It grasped at the horse's head, crushing it instantly, but the momentum hurled the unsteady creature backward and off its feet while badly damaging its claws.
The other hulk tried to pull me off my horse, but I dodged, rode a small circle around the ruin, and came back at it, letting a flame arrow fly directly at its ugly face.
My spell met its mark, but the creature was unfazed and reached out for me again. I leaped off my horse and landed hard on my back, swearing. My staff went flying off somewhere, and the hulk's huge mandibles were closing in on me.
Sungar's battle-axe impacted the hulk's scaly hide, eliciting a tremendous moan of pain from the beast. The creature turned to face its attacker.
I shouted, "Avoid its eyes," as Sungar struck again. The orcs were keeping their distance. Normally they would have swarmed us, but the naga's spells and the presence of the umber hulks kept them at bay.
No sooner had I pulled myself to my feet than I felt the umber hulk's arms close around my middle. The monster was badly injured in its collision with the horse, but its hug was crushing enough even in its wounded state. Without my hands free, I couldn't cast my spells and I felt my breath start to fail, my ribs ready to crack.
I heard a loud impact just above my head and the hulk's grasp loosened. I wormed my way free and quickly whirled about, ready to fire another magic missile at the monster's foul heart, but I didn't have to. It fell on its own, and the ground shook as its huge mass landed. An Uthgardt throwing axe was embedded in the back of its skull, likely thrown by someone from the other, larger force, at last making some headway in its push for the ruin.
I turned in time to see Sungar's axe finish off the other hulk, slicing it through its thick belly. Almost immediately, the orcs surrounding us stopped being spectators and charged. Sungar and I retreated up into the ruin, a more defensible location since the broken pillars and ancient walls provided protection from some sides. 1 slipped into a corner to preserve the few spells I had left, while Sungar held the entrance with his axe.
"Why does the naga not show itself?" asked Sungar. "It's a coward."
"It wants to survive," I said, "but it also wants to win. It will not disappoint its phaerimm masters. It can read our minds and knows our-"
The wall behind me collapsed. I barely kept my balance enough to stay standing. I turned around and saw the naga coiled ahead of me, hissing at me with its fanged mouth. The orcs backed away once again.
"Something's wrong," I mumbled to myself as I prepared another magic missile.
I launched the spell-bolt at the monster's face, but it never impacted. Instead it bounced off the air surrounding the naga and flew back at me, striking me in the chest. I went flying backward, agony radiating through my torso to all parts of my body. I screamed and fell hard onto the stone of the ruin. Sungar rushed over to my aid, while the naga licked its lips in amusement.
"What has it done?" the chieftain asked me.
"It's wrapped itself in some kind of magical field," I answered, teeth gritting in time with my throbbing pain. "It turns magic back on its wielder."
"That's no match for Uthgardt steel!" Sungar shouted and ran forward, swinging his mighty battle-axe and letting out a loud war cry. The naga tried to dodge, but the battle-axe caught it in the neck. The field around it flickered, and I saw the axe energized with a red burst of energy shooting down to its wielder. Sungar and the naga both writhed in pain, and both seemed on the verge of collapse. The naga desperately swung around its tail, but Sungar, the agony obvious in his every move, sliced through its flank with his axe, sending the stinger flying off into the crowd of orcs. Sungar collapsed from the pain, letting the axe fly away. The naga came about and prepared to rip his throat out with its fangs. I watched helplessly.
A rain of Uthgardt spears, hammers, and throwing axes flew at the naga's thin, serpentine length, a few of them striking their mark exactly. The creature writhed in pain and let out a sharp scream that could have shattered glass. The Uthgardt at last penetrated the row of orcs behind us, and I felt arms strain to lift me from the ground onto the back of a horse. It was Thluna.
"You saved a mage," I said weakly.
"The second time I've done that," he answered.
I saw one of the other barbarians pull Sungar from the ground and bury a warhammer into the naga's ugly face, killing the monster at last.
Thluna brought his horse around and started charging away from the battlefield. I turned my eyes to the orcs and saw that it was happening just as I predicted. When orc after orc realized that it was armed and standing beside a member of a rival tribe, its instinct was not to ask questions. By the time we were clear of the area, orc-on-orc fights were breaking out like a string of Shou firecrackers.
Only fourteen of us left the battle, about a third of those who entered it. Sungar was the most badly wounded and took up most of the shaman's spells, so the rest of us were left to heal on our own. We set up camp nearby. Food was running scarce, the Fallen Lands offering little in the way of vegetation or wildlife. Whatever the orcs usually ate, it was likely consumed by the naga's army, so several of the most able-bodied Uthgardt set off for the Greypeak Mountains to the west to hunt.
Thluna, myself, and a few of the others went back to the battlefield to recover the honored dead from among the piles upon piles of orc corpses. Surely there were some survivors of the battle, but so few that the Uthgardt considered this among the most glorious victories in their tribe's history, one about which great songs would be sung. I doubted, somehow, that Arklow the Civilized Mage would get a verse.
I inspected the ruin and found it was even more badly damaged than before. However, I did notice for the first time that the wall that the naga had brought down was marked with a single star etched into the stone; an ancient symbol of Mystra. Perhaps the ruin was once a piece of her temple, part of some ancient city. A new feeling rose in me, a quite blissful peace. I smiled, and I felt privately certain that someone divine had taken measures to ensure our victory.
"Here it is!" one of the barbarians shouted, and we all rushed over to see.
He found Sungar’s great axe, lying beneath a dead orc.
"Wonderful," said Thluna. "We can present it to the chieftain when he awakens."
I asked Thluna about the axe, and he explained that it was ancient, going back many generations among the chieftains of the Thunderbeast tribe. No one could remember where it came from or when it was forged.
The hunting party returned with game and plenty of firewood just in time for Sungar to awaken. I wasn't there at the time, but I heard that his first words were, "Was the battle won?"
"Yes," he was assured, "the battle was won with Uthgardt steel."
A feast was held as soon as the chieftain was well enough, a final celebration before the tribe would go back north, back home. For my valor in battle I was allowed to take part, and I was gratified that even the gruffest of the barbarians accepted my presence. All attended the feast in their frequently bloodstained armor, fresh from battle.
Sungar offered a prayer. "We thank Uthgar for the victory he has given us, and in Uthgar's name we ask that we may be strong in battle against our enemies. May we resist the unholy temptations of civilization, of magic, and may we keep the North pure, always."
That night, as the festivities continued, my mind started wandering and I gazed intensely at Sungar's huge battle-axe. I remembered how it hurt Sungar when he swung it at the dark naga, just as my magic missile came back at me, and in a flash I understood why.
I should not have done what I did next. I'm not entirely sure why I did it. Maybe it was an act of spite. I cast a spell, one that would show the aura of enchanted items, and the axe started glowing a light blue. All around us, too, some of the barbarians' weapons, armor, and gear glowed. There was silence, and all eyes turned on me.
"It's magic, Sungar," I said. "Your battle-axe is enchanted, a magical weapon. That's why it hurt you when you struck the naga. You may not approve of magic, tat whoever forged that axe certainly did."
"What have you done, mage?" threatened Sungar. "Nothing. I've done nothing. I've changed nothing. I've merely revealed what was always there. You have always used magic. You just didn't realize it. Don't you see, chieftain? That battle was not the first time magic saved your tribe. It probably has hundreds of times before."
Sungar's face gradually turned from anger to resignation. "You have done us a service, mage. We know what needs to be done."
He stood, taking his axe in hand. He walked away from the camp, raised it above his head, and with impossible strength, hurled it far away onto the barren earth of the Fallen Lands.
One by one, the others followed suit. This is an image that will never leave me. They took their swords, axes, spears, hammers, their helmets and their armor, anything that radiated magic, and threw them all away, Soon, a veritable treasure trove of magical items lay in the dirt. Thluna was among the last to go up. He flashed a sad but nevertheless quite determined glance at me before removing his father's helmet and hurling it to join the rest.
I never shared another word with Sungar, but the next morning, Thluna gave me a horse and escorted me to the edge of the High Gap. From there, I could travel on down the banks of the Delimbiyr River to Loudwater, if such a place existed any longer. Perhaps there I could join another adventuring company. Perhaps I would end up at Evereska after all.
"Our people have a story," Thluna told me. "It is that this region you call the Fallen Lands was once a kingdom of magicians who lived in shining cities. They grew in power till they no longer did anything for themselves. Instead, they would have magic do it for them. They were proud and thought themselves capable of anything. Then one day, the well that they drew their magic from went dry. Their civilization crumbled overnight, and those who survived were set upon by orcs and other foul creatures. All that was once their shining cities has vanished beneath the dirt.
"I cannot tell you if that story is true, mage, but I do know this: Uthgar commands us to resist civilization wherever we find it. Civilization breeds leisure and decadence and magic, all of which seem like strengths but will eventually prove weaknesses. We Uthgardt will outlive all civilization. All civilizeds will eventually become like us."
I sat in silence for a long time, pondering what he had told me, and what I had done. I wanted to tell him everything I knew about Netheril and about the creation of Anauroch, that possibly his ancestors, and very likely mine as well, were survivors of a civilization dead from magic.
Somehow I said nothing.
As I rode away from Thluna, I felt my spellbook under my robes. For a brief moment, I wondered if I would ever take it out again.
Oh, Lady Mystra! Command me. How could you grant us a gift so destructive, a gift we so rarely use properly? For Thluna was right. It is magic that might some day turn all of Faerun into the Fallen Lands.
When Shadows Come Seeking A Throne
Ed Greenwood
1 Kythorn, the Year of Wild Magic
A hundred tiny stars flashed and sparkled, their reflections crawling silently along bright-polished silver all around the room.
The Queen of Cormyr set down her tallglass, plucked aside the dark shimmerweave cover even before the Lady Laspeera could ready a royal spellshield, leaned forward, and asked gently, "Yes, Mreen? Are you well?"
The Lady Lord of Arabel looked haggard in the depths of the crystal ball. The dark, ragged line of a recent sword-cut across her cheek was all Queen Filfaeril and the senior war wizard needed to see to know the truth.
Myrmeen Lhal shrugged, smiled, and replied simply, "Highness, I live."
Myrmeen was still in full armor, and they could see the large, well-worn hilt of her warsword where it lay on the table within easy reach.
Filfaeril shook her head at the grim jest. "Not good enough, Mreen-and lay aside my titles. It's me, lass, Fee. Your old friend, remember?"
"Highness," the Lady Lord of Arabel said stiffly, "I perceive that you're not alone."
It was Laspeera's turn to sigh. "Myrmeen," she said with just a hint of weariness, "it's just the two of us. Put your boots up on the table, fill your goblet, and tell us: how fares Arabel?"
There was a muffled thud as two mud-caked boot heels crashed into their field of view, daintily crossing at the ankles, and swiftly-moving gold flashed back candlelight as a man-sized goblet was plucked up from out of sight beneath a table edge.
"Very well," Myrmeen said flatly, saluting them both with the drink in her hand. "As you command."
The Queen of Cormyr chuckled in the same soft, deep way her husband had so often done. The Lady Lord of Arabel almost shivered at the sound. Azoun was dead and buried, yet any moment she expected him to stride around the corner, laughter in his eyes, and "Mreen," Filfaeril said softly, as if she could read minds, "I miss him too. More than anyone, though I know full well how much I shared him. For his sake, I go on, day after day, to keep Cormyr strong. How fares Arabel?" "My Queen, I'm so sorr-Fee." The Lady Lord of Arabel slapped the table in anger at herself, took a quid sip-no, a warrior's gulp-of wine, and said crisply, "The city's retaken. Steady patrols remounted, Crown law restored, we're done fixing roads and bridges, and most of your troops are now out among the crofters, with barn-raisings well underway and folk lifting their voices in thanks for your generosity. Now the real rebuilding can begin."
Filfaeril smiled, and Laspeera sat back, nodding in satisfaction. "Ah, Mreen, it's such a pleasure to talk with someone who thinks, sees, and speaks directly. You've no idea… these courtiers…"
"Oh, yes, I do," Myrmeen Lhal replied fervently. "Were it not for the peril their recklessness and treasonous ambitions would bring down upon us, with the Stone-lands so close and this new dark magic outdoing the Zhents, I'd press you to agree to my old pet plan."
It was Laspeera's turn to chuckle. "Clap all our courtiers in armor and ship them out to you, to work their hands dirty and face war-fear and hear a few harsh orders? Don't think we haven't been tempted."
"So do it," the commander of Arabel said. "If I make loyal and useful men out of half a dozen courtiers and die in the doing, that's six replacements for one down-and a lesson that might just cow the rest into keeping mute and out of the way, lest they be Volunteered' to follow."
"And lose Arabel again?" Filfaeril asked gently. "How many good men would pay the price of winning it back even one more time?"
Myrmeen nodded, took a long drink from her goblet, and said, "Right enough, your-Fee. Gods damn, Filfaeril, but I just can't call у-"
"Oh, yes, you can," Filfaeril said, sudden iron in her voice. "Courtiers down here call me 'the Whore of Ice' behind my back, just loud enough to make sure I hear, and I was 'Lonelybed Longtresses' for years to throw Azoun's amours in my face, and I'll be flayed on the altars of Loviatar before one of my few true friends can't call me by my own пате."
"Don't let the lords who linger at Court hear you use that expression," Laspeera said with another chuckle. "So few ideas fall into their heads as it is."
Filfaeril rolled her eyes. "So true. I've tried dropping choice phrases where their spies can overhear, to start them thinking, and all they do is wonder what I meant-aloud and over drink after drink, until they get the words all wrong and twist what they thought I meant all around-and I have to watch Lous fight down the urge to strangle them barehanded, one more time."
It was Myrmeen's turn to chuckle. "Doth the Steel Regent's temper grow… more tempered?"
The queen sighed. "Yes, more credit to her, yet being away from the saddle and the sword and her young lords to fence with smiling lies every day… I can see it building in her. Someone, someday soon, is going to say one wrong word or do something small and only slightly offensive-and the storm inside Lous is going to break." "It won't be the only thing in the realm to break that day, I doubt not," the commander of Arabel agreed. "But I fear I waste too much of your time, Fee. You should know some other things, of events up here." The queen nodded and smiled.
"Speak."
"Sightings of terrified Zhents fleeing out of the Stonelands," Myrmeen replied. "Oh, yes; hard to believe, but I saw some myself. They've apparently been babbling about great magical battles, therein, between mighty wizards and horrible flying beasts."
A royal eyebrow lifted. "Apparently?"
"So the jailers say, and they're good ones. I’ll make tune tomorrow to question the lone live captive we have." Laspeera had been watching the Lady Lord of Arabel intently through the crystal.
"That was your better news," she said quietly. "Now tell us the rest."
Myrmeen held up one scarred, long-fingered hand. "Just one thing, gods be thanked for small mercies. Our patrols have scoured the east."
"And?" The queen's voice was as gentle as if she'd been soothing a crying child.
"Tilverton is gone," Myrmeen said bluntly. "Truly, utterly gone."
"Destroyed," Filfaeril murmured. It was not a question. The Lady Lord of Arabel nodded sadly back at her through the scrying-glass, as the queen sighed, threw back her head, and added evenly, "Thank you, Mreen. It's good to hear truth, and not…"
"Courtiers' honeyed words," Laspeera said quietly. "Our thanks, Myrmeen. Get some sleep."
The Lady Lord of Arabel gave them a wry smile and a derisive grunt together. This was my sleep, ladies. Gods keep you well, and Cormyr better." She raised her goblet in salute, swung her legs back down to the floor, took up her sword-and the crystal went dark.
"Gods keep you, Mreen," the queen said quietly, staring at it. "One of the few true blades we can trust. Oh, they are so few…"
"Lady Queen," Laspeera said crisply, "we can only wallow in despair when the needs of the realm permit us time for such indulgences."
Filfaeril's head snapped around, her eyes blazed up into flames, and she gave the senior war wizard a twisted smile.
The queen bowed her head, and murmured, "Right you are, Laspeera. Command me."
"My Queen!" Laspeera said, truly shocked.
Filfaeril rolled her eyes and said, "Well then, good Lady, what now is your advice?"
"Alusair must be informed," Laspeera said, nodding at the crystal. "As must the Mage Royal, so she can best order the War Wizards to proceed."
The Queen of Cormyr lifted both her eyebrows. "You've forgotten how to give orders?"
The senior war wizard sighed. "She was Vangy's choice, and we can't expect her to stand strong and loyal when next our need is greatest, if we don't let her so much as give a simple command here and there. I don't want to be Court Wizard, High-Fee. I never have. And what's better, Caladnei doesn't either."
The Queen nodded.
"The reluctant serve the best." Laspeera nodded at the old maxim instead of making face or sticking out her tongue, as she might have done at another time and in another mood. She merely added in thin, tired tones, There's still a ghazneth out there, and I don't think any of us are hungry, just now, for any more magical tumult in our back pastures."
Filfaeril nodded again, and rose in a shifting of silk
"I'll tell Alaphondar as much as he needs to know." Laspeera smiled. "Leaving Lous for me? Thank you."
"You're welcome," the Queen of Cormyr replied sweetly. She swept out of the room, in the space of an instant somehow becoming every inch the grand dowager оnce more.
Laspeera gave the serene royal back a crooked smile, and turned in another direction to go out a darker door.
Offices breed, somehow. The huge, interconnected fortress of the Royal Court now sprawled larger than the palace itself, and almost entirely shielded-or cut rather-the seat of the Obarskyrs from most of the prod city of Suzail.
Yet, gargantuan though it was, courtiers bred faster They spilled out its great arched doors, across the court yard between, and over into the palace itself. Two of them, dandy-cloaks swirling brightly around them, stood by a shimmering tapestry-a lambent turquoise scene of crawling blue dragons that Laspeera had always liked. They were obviously waiting for her, so Laspeera strode on toward them, not letting them see the slightest hesitation in her step.
On their faces were the easy smirks of men who airily considered themselves masters of the realm, and for a moment, as she bore down on them, the senior war wizard hated them enough to turn them into mice-or ashes under her boots.
How dare they sidle into the private chambers of the royal family to warm themselves closer to the flame of power than their fellows, to whom they'd pretend that they enjoyed the personal confidences of the Obarskyrs. At what time had they lost their fear of guards, or for that matter, of swift-striding war wizards?
"Good Lady-" one of them began, as he moved to block her path, his smile almost a sneer.
"My lords," Laspeera interrupted, not slowing or moving aside, "have you personal business with the queen? Or are you merely lost?"
"Ha ha," the courtier replied, in the eager, empty mirth that by its tone announces that its utterer is about to say something important that should-nay, must-be heeded. "Lady Laspeera," the other courtier said firmly, stepping directly into her way, "it was actually you we came to see. It's a matter of some urgency and delicacy… ah… involving authority over magic."
Laspeera called on the power of the ring that adorned the hand she kept low and behind her-and marched straight into him.
Her shield, unseen and noticeable only as a faint, high singing sound, thrust the man back, startling him into momentary silence. The tall, slender woman in the dark gown was reputedly a powerful mage, yes, but he must weigh almost twice what she did, and how by all the gods "Yes," the laughing courtier's voice sprang into the uneasy moment of his fellow's stumbling retreat, "you see, we need to see the Royal Mage."
"I fear you have the wrong realm, gentlesirs," Laspeera told them over her shoulder, as she strode on down the passage. "In Cormyr we have a Court Wizard who is also our Royal Magician, also known as the 'Mage Royal.' We have no 'Royal Mage.'"
"Oh, come, come," the laughing courtier demurred. "Lady, you know well to whom we refer!"
Laspeera swung around, a warning in her eyes, and replied, "Yes, as it happens, I do-and am therefore puzzled as to why you've come to me. The Mage Royal grants audiences to all at times well known to you, and more private appointments with her may be made through the clerks of the court. Their offices lie considerably to the south of here."
She leveled a pointing finger through a handy window at the impressive bulk of the Royal Court, then turned on her heel, and strode on.
"Lady!" the mirthful courtier protested, with a derisive little laugh. "We're not children! We-"
"-have gotten lost to the extent of wandering across a wide courtyard into the wrong building for some other reason, lords? Excessive drink, perhaps?" a new voice said smoothly, as its owner stepped out of a doorway to block their pursuit. He was a Ready Sword of the Palace Guard, and he was not alone.
In the space of a swiftly-drawn breath the two courtiers found themselves ringed by unsmiling Purple Dragons. Guardsmen, in fact, who held weapons half-drawn and looked like they had never in all their long, weather-beaten lives known how to smile.
Laspeera allowed herself a satisfied grin at the alacrity of the response to the song of her rising shield, which would have been very loud in that guardroom, but kept it inside. Her face was its usual pleasant mask as she swept past another courtier-a son of the Helmstone noble family, this one, with rather more right to be on this floor of the palace-even before he could look up from the servant he was snarling threats of dismissal at, and cry hastily, "Lady! Lady Wizard!"
Laspeera neither replied nor slowed, and so-of course-he came hopping along in her wake.
"Lady Laspeera, I must speak with you!"
Not letting her sigh reach her tone of voice, she asked, "Must you, Lord?"
"Well, ah, yes, actually."
Laspeera turned a corner without slowing. "Then do so," she replied calmly.
"Here? In the middle of a hallway?"
"Why not, Lord? Do you find hallways somehow… tainted?"
"No, no, you misunderstand me, lady. Why, I almost fear you do so deliberately. I-it's just that the matter I must speak with you about is, ahem, regarding, ah, future actions of some delicacy involving the Lady Caladnei, and-"
"Lord Helmstone," the senior war wizard replied, "I fear discussing a marriage proposal with anyone other than the lady you wish to become attached to is less than prudent-as is considering anything at all of the sort without first acquiring the approval of your rather formidable father."
"Wha-marriage? To such as her? Lady, you wound me deeply-"
"No, Lord, not yet," Laspeera murmured, passing through an archway and rounding another corner. "Not yet."
The younger Lord Helmstone was bustling after her, still sputtering in outrage. "Lady, I protest! Nobles of the realm are not to be trifled with, not even by-"
Laspeera spun around so swiftly that he was forced to snatch at a voluptuous statuette on a pedestal to slow himself, lest he crash into her. Seeing what rondure he'd laid his hand on, he snatched his fingers away in cringing haste.
Her voice was low and calm when she spoke, but it drained the high color entirely from his face nonetheless.
"Young men of even less prudence than manners? I say again, Lord Helmstone: before you open your mouth again in the palace, seek the wise counsel of your father." The War Wizard turned on her heel, stepped through the next archway-and discovered that it was her turn to come to a swift halt.
"He did," a deep voice said, in tones as challenging as a sword-thrust, "and is now doing exactly what I bade him to. He is attempting, in his own way, admittedly less direct than it could be, to tell you a plain truth. Lady Laspeera, you we know and accept, though some among us mistrust a secretive woman-and a commoner, at that-holding so much power. You have demonstrated your loyalty to the Crown time and time again. You we would accept as Mage Royal, but not another mysterious woman-another commoner worming her way into office over us-not this motherless Caladnei. I but seek to warn you of the general mood. King Azoun is gone, lady, and our tolerance for the excesses of those he's left behind wanes-it does indeed. We won't take much more of this." "King Azoun the fifth is alive and well, I assure you," she replied. "And who, my most gracious Lord of Helm-stone, is 'we'?"
Laspeera's voice was a razor-sharp dagger of ice, but the elder Lord Helmstone did not flinch. A scuffling sound behind Laspeera told her that his son had, but her shield was still up around her. If sudden ambition-or "patriotism"-should move him to fell a hated war wizard to in some small way cleanse the realm, her back was not unprotected.
"The heads of most of the noble houses of Cormyr, Lady Laspeera," Helmstone said quietly. "The flower of the realm. The swords and coins upon whose support the Dragon Throne stands-or falls."
"And if I was to loudly denounce this treason, Lord?" "Lady, as King Azoun-the fourth-himself said to us all, 'tis not treason to seek what is best for the kingdom." Helmstone regarded her gravely, and murmured in tones that barely reached her ears. "You should now be Mage Royal, Lady-not some uplands upstart."
"Do you know so clearly, my lord, what's best for Cormyr?" Laspeera asked him softly, her voice still icy. "Better than does the wizard Vangerdahast, perchance?"
Helmstone shook his head. "I have no love for the old wizard, Lady, but with him at least I knew what I was mistrusting." He drew back, and waved his hand in a gesture that was clearly a signal to his son to depart, swiftly and upon the instant. "I see our time here is wasted. You too must be mind-mazed by the spells of the new witch."
Laspeera shook her head, almost as amazed as she was pretending to be. "Do you misunderstand what wizards do that much?"
Helmstone's response, as he drew aside a hanging to step through a door he should not have known was there, was a growl of menace.
"Our beloved Forest Kingdom is falling on dark days, indeed," he said, "if the last withered branches of the decadent Obarskyrs are now cozened by scheming witches. Steps must be taken."
A startled servant stood blinking in the revealed doorway, a tray of decanters in her hands. With a snarl of anger the noble let the hanging fall right in her face, whirled, and strode past Laspeera, back down the passage in his son's footsteps.
Timidly the hanging was lifted aside. Laspeera gave the servant a wordless, "I don't know about these nobles, either," shrug and swept on in search of the Steel Regent. The short route to where Alusair would be seemed to have grown very long.
Passing a certain doorway, she gave the face regarding her from its shadowed depths a discreet nod and strode on without speaking.
Out of that way, in the senior war wizard's wake, stepped a man whose answering nod was even more subtle. Glarasteer Rhauligan, dealer in turret tops and spires, strolled nonchalantly after the storming noble, humming a popular song of the streets as he went.
Far down the corridor, Laspeera stiffened as she recognized it-and, slowly and ruefully, let a real smile touch her lips. The name of that tune was Wizards, Kings, and Doom, We All Rush to Seek the Tomb. Indeed.
The noble faces staring down into the pit were pale and sweating. It's one tiling to sneer at terror-tales heard in youth, deeming them sheer lies spun by the weak-minded. It's quite another to see them come to life and writhing in pain below you-wounded, yes, but so large and mighty in magic and so terrifyingly near.
Netheriloursonce. Heed, humans. Greatevil returned shadows shadowmen darkwizards, city of Shade now back. In desertofourdevising. Will reachout seizebetter-lands-this one! Soon, plotting evennow! Storm back from exilehidingcravenstealth to seize whatrightfullyy-ours togreat acclaimproperrank bards'esteem Weak women on throne ignorant willdither willbetoolate youCormyr's only hope YOUher salvation!
The hissing mind-voice fell silent, but its echoes still thundered in their heads, and it was only with difficulty that Halvundrar Cormaeril managed to speak, his voice thick, slow, and awkward.
"What… must we do?"
Keepsecretkeepsilent heedmy words!
The voice slowed, mind-speaking each word carefully and firmly, as an angry father might deliver a warning of great importance to a child.
Royal Magician must be slain. First get from her key to Iltharl's Vault. Very powerful magic therein. Take it, cleanse your fair land, and set someone suitable on the throne. Yourselves, for instance. Soon it will be time to strike. Very soon.
In their minds appeared a sudden, vivid image-of a long-barreled key, its silver plate tarnished with age, its wards large and fluted, its handle worked into a dragon's head, jaws agape.
Darkness descended like a curtain, and their minds were their own again. They could see nothing of the pit and the ridiculous-looking, trumpet-shaped bulk shuddering in it, clawed arms and stinger moving restlessly.
Maerlyn Bleth shivered. So that was a phaerimm.
His mind whirled the image of the key they must seize from the Mage Royal in front of him and took it away again.
A flying city of shadow wizards come back from ancient Netheril. All the Realms endangered, Cormyr the closest prize… it was using them, that thing down in the pit, using them like the brainless cattle it so obviously and scornfully believed them to be. When the time was right, its spells would lash out or it would stab at their very minds.
But plots are easily spoken and harder in the doing. Mistakes inevitable-oh, hadn't the gods taught far too many Cormyrean nobles that. Mighty magic is always a weapon worth having-and if Cormyr was doomed, after all these centuries, at least the House of Obarskyr could be driven down in richly-deserved slaughter first, every last screaming woman of it, those sneers wiped off their faces as they saw the nobles they and their forebears had so wronged working revenge upon them at last.
He was grinning like a wolf, Maerlyn knew. Teeth flashed in the dim light around him as they hastened out of the cavern together. Every last one of his fellow conspirators was grinning savagely too.
Ah, but it would be good to see the Obarskyrs get theirs at last.
The Steel Regent struck again, grunting with the effort, and Caladnei reeled. Every blow of Alusair's onslaught was like a hammer in her head, and the Mage Royal was fast acquiring a blinding headache.
Both women were drenched and staggering as they circled each other, cotton tunics plastered to their curves and errant hairs escaping sodden headscarves. Gods, but the princess was as fast as a striking snake!
Her wooden practice blade swept around again, and this time Caladnei dodged away to avoid parrying, stumbling in her weariness.
Her own sword was an edgeless bar of force, maintained by her will alone, and Alusair thrust past her guard, their blades binding, and Caladnei shouted in pain.
"No," the Steel Regent snarled, as the Mage Royal gasped and held up a hand in a gesture of surrender, "don't give up on me now! A murderous noble won't stay his steel because you wave to him that you're winded."
They were circling each other again, both caked with the sand of the practice-floor where they'd clinched, kicked, and tumbled earlier in their bout. Shamra the Healer stood watching them carefully, ready to step in if either woman lost her temper and went too far, or took a wound through a slip at the wrong instant.
"I did not… seek this office," the Mage Royal snarled between gasps. "I didn't want this title… these duties…"
The Steel Regent's grin was as wry as it was fierce.
"I've heard those very same words before, echoing back at me from my own bedchamber mirror."
Her blade skirled and thrust. Caladnei shouted again at the pain in her head-and a wooden blade slid home to touch her just under her breasts, thudding painfully up and in, at her heart. She put a hand on Alusair's weapon and bent over to catch her breath, reflecting ruefully that she wasn't half the swordmaster the princess was.
"Did you die gloriously?"
The calm question made both of the panting, sweating women look up. The voice belonged to Laspeera, and she never disturbed them at practice unless matters were urgent or of the utmost importance.
Caladnei waved away the question with a smile as she struggled for breath.
Alusair handed her sword to the healer, strode up out of the sand, and asked, "What news, Lasp?"
The senior war wizard reported the news from Arabel and her encounters with various murmuring critics of the Mage Royal on the way to them, as the two women did off their tunics and headscarves, washed with mint-water, toweled down, and put on fresh tunics.
Shamra was holding out a hair-ribbon to Caladnei as Laspeera recounted the words of the elder Lord Helm-stone, her mimicry of his tone as exact as her recall of his utterances.
The Mage Royal frowned, stiffened, and snapped, "Later, ladies!"
The place where Caladnei had been standing was suddenly empty. Shamra was holding out a ribbon to emptiness. She blinked once, and calmly turned and put the ribbon back on the side table from which she'd taken it. Alusair and Laspeera were exchanging raised-eyebrow looks.
"One of her telltales went off," the war wizard murmured. "I wonder what disaster's unfolding now?"
The princess sighed as she made for the door, binding back her hair as she went.
"I miss Vangerdahast," she said. "He never told you anything either, but he had this sneering, testy way of doing it that somehow reassured you that he had everything under control. I miss that feeling."
Laspeera's smile, as they went out of the practice hall together, was thin. "You're not the only one. Nor am I. The nobles were never so restless under Vangy's eye."
Behind them, the healer smiled. Out of habit she turned to make sure nothing vital had been forgotten, and struck Alusair's wooden sword against the door post. It was still slick with sweat, and slipped from her fingers-but it never clattered to the floor.
Just for an instant, Shamra's hand blurred into something dark and very like a tentacle, that plucked the blade from the air and reshaped itself once more into the healer's fine-fingered hand.
She was alone, Laspeera's back just disappearing through an archway.
Hefting the wooden sword in her hand, the healer let her smile broaden. Not so wide as to show fangs or seem strange-but as eager and deadly as the sudden glitter in the eyes above it.
Soon it would be time to move at last… very soon. With magic enough, she could hold the throne if she took it. And taking it would be so easy. Wring the neck of a babe, and catch Alusair alone and treat her to the same fate before word spread of little Azoun's doom… and slay Filfaeril, take her shape, and play the sorrowful queen waiting to be wooed by the right noble.
It would not be such a bad thing, to rule a kingdom as fair as this one, if she could keep all these idiots from shattering it around her.
"What can I say, good my Lord, to convince you to join us?"
The elder Lord Helmstone was angry-gods above, couldn't the man see this was the right thing to do? He wasn't a dullard, after all.
"Nothing that comes to my mind," Lord Everran Summertree replied, in a voice that was sharp with disapproval. "Cormyr can ill afford-Helmstone, we can ill afford-another war right now, with so many dead and their crops implanted, and Sembians eager to snap up land in return for just enough coin to see starving crofters warm and fed through the coming winter. Our realm needs peace to rebuild, not another petty squabble over whose shoulders carry this or that title, or even whose backside warms the Dragon Throne!"
Lord Helmstone sighed-the angry gust of a man exasperated by obstinate idiocy. He drew a slow, simmering breath, threw his chin forward like a weapon, and growled, The time will come, Summertree, when you see sense. I only hope 'twill not be too late. In the end you'll find you simply must turn against these witches and foolish women who now misrule us, and so sully the bright memory of Azoun and Cormyr's greatness-before it ebbs entire!"
Out on the balcony-or rather, just beneath it, where he was clinging by his fingertips-Glarasteer Rhauligan rolled his eyes. Did all of these nobles learn their bombast at the same school? Or did the Lord of Traitors answer their prayers by filling their minds with the same grand speeches of self-righteous "for the good of the realm I do this" blurf?
"If you truly cared for the good of Cormyr," Lord Summertree replied coldly, "You'd court Alusair and set your son to wooing the Mage Royal-and win or lose their charms, you'd gain yourself ample opportunity to fill their ears with the policies and stances you think the realm should adopt."
"Take that spitfire to wife? Harness my son to a commoner?"
"Oh, stop squeaking, my lord. Barely two centuries have your kin held nobility-and right now you scarcely seem suited to it. We were all commoners, once. As for taming princesses-think of it as better sport than sticking your lances through stags and a few scrawny boar. Twould keep you busy, at least, and-"
"And out of your regard? That much I can do, my lord! Good day to you!" Lord Helmstone's parting wish was delivered at a roar as he whirled and stormed out, back-handing a wine-bearing manservant out of his way so fiercely that one of Summertree's best decanters clanged off the passage wall.
Its owner waved the servant away with a reassuring smile, firmly closed the door, set its lock bar in place, and strode to his desk.
Lord Summertree was not in a writing mood at this moment, it seemed. He went around behind his chair, kept going-and with surprising speed for a man so muscular and of graying years-snatched aside the tapestry that concealed the door to his cloak closet. His sword was half drawn as he stared into the wide eyes of the still-sweating Mage Royal.
He asked pleasantly, "I trust you heard everything you wanted to. Have you a good reason to give me why I shouldn't just run you through with this good blade right now-as I would any sneak-thief?"
Caladnei cleared her throat. "Are you not afraid of my Art?"
Summertree smiled back at her wryly. "Shouldn't you be afraid of mine?"
The larger of the two ornate rings on his left hand winked, and a singing, glowing aura appeared around the noble. He stepped back and drew his sword. In silence they both watched a radiance that matched Summertree's shield awaken in his blade, and start to silently race along its bright, sharp edges.
"No," the Mage Royal said flatly, tossing her head. "I know you stand loyal for the Crown-and so I have nothing to fear."
Summertree raised an eyebrow. "I know not where you stand," he replied gently, lifting his sword so that its tip was a whisker away from the cotton cloaking her breast, "so I think you do."
The blade lifted, to menace her throat. "Who is Caladnei, really?" the noble asked, his voice almost a purr. "How do any of us know if Vangerdahast really chose you-or if he did, what he intends for our fair realm? Who's he truly loyal to, and whom do you serve? I ask again: why shouldn't I just run you through now, as many of the hotheads among we who bear titles desire me to do?"
Steel flashed as Glarasteer Rhauligan stepped into the room. "Because, my Lord Summertree," he said firmly, "to do so would be the act of a traitor-a man I would be forced to cut down, even in his own manor, for so cruel a murder and deliberate treason against the Crown."
Everran Summertree was not accustomed to being surprised by the silent approaches of strangers-least of all in his own study, and with daggers poised in their hands to throw in his direction. If the old lord was astonished, Caladnei was even more so.
"Who are you?" they said, more or less together.
Glarasteer smiled an easy smile, and replied, "I think you really mean to ask me what I am or rather whom I serve. Well, then, I harp from time to time, and bear with me both a Purple Dragon ring graven with my name by Azoun IV himself, and a Crown commission from Vangerdahast."
Lord Summertree shook his head. "It seems my private chambers have become a popular wing of the court, this evening," he observed, spreading his hands to include both of his guests. "Will you join me in wine?"
Two heads shook in unison, politely declining. The man who'd stepped in from the balcony raised his other hand from behind him, and Lord Summertree watched the light of his favorite lamps gleam along the edge of a very sharp long sword. As he wondered for the first time if he might die this evening, there came a whirling of a different sort of light from closer at hand-and the Mage Royal vanished.
The two men looked at each other-and both shrugged. "A pleasant evening to you, Lord," Glarasteer said softly, ere he took two swift steps and vaulted over the balcony rail into the gathering dusk.
"A bit late for that, don't you think?" Lord Summertree murmured, after a moment of standing alone with his sword raised against no foe.
Setting it carefully on the desk, he went to a sideboard, poured himself a goblet of a favorite wine with hands that shook not at all, and strolled thoughtfully out onto the balcony to watch what bards liked to call "the soft summer stars coming out."
The tentacle that slapped around his eyes and mouth, and broke his neck with a quick, brutal jerk before snatching the noble's shuddering, spasming body back out of sight, was accompanied by a calm, slightly husky, feminine murmur.
"Far too late, my Lord Summertree, but not too late for you to have a change of heart and go to join the conspirators."
For just a moment, as it flexed a pair of tentacles and casually tossed the large, limp body up onto the manor roof for the crows to rend, the shape that had spoken resembled Shamra the Healer. The moment was gone, and it dwindled and thickened, taking on the burly bulk of the much-respected, childless bachelor noble. Barefoot it padded to the robing rooms to choose clothes, plucking up the fallen goblet as it went.
When it set off across the study toward the door and its lock bar a few breaths later, it moved with utter confidence, and a fair approximation of Lord Summertree's stride.
At least she had this one dusty chamber, spell-shielded by Lord Vangerdahast to keep everyone else out, as a refuge.
Right now, Caladnei of the Raging Headache sorely – and that was a mild word for what she felt – needed it.
She clutched at her temples as her head rang and rolled, softly cursing all of the grasping nobles that Cormyr seemed so richly over-endowed with. Gods damn and blast them all!
Even here in the palace, they circled like vultures around Azoun's tomb, eyeing the throne. She didn't want any of this, Royal Magician and Court Wizard and Lady Master of the War Wizards – and all the other barbed, honeyed words at court.
The Forest Kingdom was a beautiful place, and it felt like home – it was home – but why couldn't she just take over an old, ramshackle upcountry house in the woods and be left alone there to work magic?
Every month it surged in her more strongly. Just plain Caladnei could do wondrous things, she knew, if she could take the time to try steering her sorcery thus and so, observe, and try again, unleashing magic that was truly Art, not these dry inscriptions the wizards so loved.
Yet all around her in the gloom were the spells Vangerdahast had left her. Shelves after shelves of fat, mysterious-looking books and pigeonholes of yellowing scrolls. Hundreds of both. Dusty tomes and cryptic symbols and crabbed inscriptions, the things book-wizards loved, true-but to read even one of them awakened things in her, stirred her sorcery to eager life, and left her able to do more… even if it had nothing to do with the written spell. She'd never have been allowed access to such treasures if Lord Vangerdahast hadn't named her his successor.
"Why, take this scroll, here," she murmured aloud, knuckling her head against the pain. She'd found it yesterday, in a cobwebbed corner that didn't look as if it had been disturbed since the palace was built… whenever that was. A translation-by Baerauble himself!-of Names of Power. Words bound into enchantments woven into the Weave in ancient Netheril itself. To utter one of them would summon a Netherese archwizard to you, to render a single act of aid. Doubtless most of those words would bring only a cloud of tomb-dust and perhaps a few crumbling bones, now, but still… think of it! Magic spun when there was no Cormyr and dragons ruled most of the realms of today. Carefully stored here-forgotten, yes, but guarded as the treasures they were-for someone, long centuries later, to find them.
Someone called Caladnei, a wandering adventurer and spellcaster-for-hire. A commoner, a nobody… one топ lowborn wench put in office over us.
The Mage Royal sighed, and let her eye run down the list of Names of Power, wondering if similar intrigues had beset their long-ago owners. Probably, if Netheril was anything like Cormyr or Halruaa.
Brathchacelent. Cathalegaunt. Tarane. Who had they been?
Caladnei sighed. That was the sort of thing she wanted to know, not which blustering noble wanted her horsewhipped and hanged this morning.
Gods, but she might just welcome that about now! The Mage Royal put her head down on a reading desk and moaned, wondering how to master her Art to quell headaches.
Eyes shone like pale moons in the gloom, over the wet scarves that kept them from sneezing in the thick, cob-webbed dust. This secret passage had been forgotten even by the Obarskyrs, just as the phaerimm had said. Maerlyn Bleth looked up sharply as he sensed, more than saw, a blade drawn. Halvundrar Cormaeril gave him a silent glare over it, and jerked his head sharply, pointing at its tip-which slowly, and ever so faintly, began to glow.
Maerlyn stared at it, and by its softly growing light saw the wooden swivel-catch next to it-one of three around the edges of a door or panel that Cormaeril was now patiently tracing. Halvundrar's hand closed on one, and he pointed with his blade at another.
Maerlyn reached for it, but one of the others-Ilryn Merendil; Maerlyn could just make out the line of his short, upcurled beard-was there already, leaving Maerlyn to take the next. Klasker Goldsword and Aldeth Dracohorn squeezed past, their own swords grating out with a sound that was startlingly loud among all the gentle breathing. It earned them a fierce glare from Cormaeril, and he was gesturing again at the catches.
Together, with slow care, they turned, freeing the dry, crumbling wood from where it had rested for perhaps a century, and the panel shifted under their fingers. At a nod from Cormaeril-and who'd named him lord of their little band, anyway?-Maerlyn pulled gently on the catch in his hand, using it as a handle, with Merendil at his side.
The panel came away easily, spilling light into their passage-light tinted crimson by the tapestry in front of them. From beyond it, as they set the panel carefully aside, they could hear female voices. Two: the princess, and the Mage Royal, discussing possible traitors at Court, and what to do about them.
Maerlyn saw Cormaeril grin savagely at the irony, and met it with a mirthless smile of his own. He freed the weighted cloak from his belt and shook it out ready in his hand. The cloak would be his own contribution to the plans of the phaerimm. It would go over the Caladnei wench's head as quickly as he could get it there, to keep her from blasting them with magic before they could get their blades into her. Risky, yes, but he'd far rather be skirmishing with a young, untried Mage Royal than crossing blades with the Steel Princess!
Halvundrar Cormaeril ducked his head, brought his blade up over his shoulder, and burst forward in furious silence-and they were all pounding forward into the light, waiting for the screaming to start.
Seeking screams that did not come.
Glarasteer's hands trembled as he set down the call-crystal he'd just shattered. "If I'm wrong," he muttered, "I'll take the blame."
"If you're wrong, good Rhauligan," the Queen of Cormyr said firmly, "I'll take the blame. Lord Vangerdahast still owes me much, and-"
There was a flash of purple and white flame from the far side of the bed. Silhouetted against it, they saw Laspeera and the four trusted Highknights writhing in agony. Writhing-and falling.
Then the light was gone, and in the searing afterglow fitful lightning crackled over the sleeping infant King. Laspeera's spell-shield was collapsing.
"Lasp!" Filfaeril snapped as she glided forward, snatching a dagger out of her bosom with a speed that made Glarasteer blink. "Lasp! Speak to те!
Only silence answered her-for the triumphant, merciless laughter that was suddenly rolling all around them sounded only in their heads.
So disgustingly easy thisbestpulinghumanscando? Notworthytorule evenenoughgroundfor theirowngraves hardly worthmytrouble die thenweakhumandross!
Fire was lashing them, inside their heads, and Filfaeril’s scream was a high, unearthly stabbing at Rhauligan's ears. Purple-white fire blossomed again, around the royal bed, and by its light he saw the queen, dagger fallen, trying to claw out her own eyes.
Then his own hands were coming up at his face, sharp steel still clutched in them-and he threw himself sideways, knocking Filfaeril onto the bed with his hip, driving on to roll away from her soft limbs and into a hard, bruising meeting with the floor. His arms were trembling as he fought against the phaerimm's dominance- gods, but it was strong!-and there was a sudden roar and flare of golden light so bright the chamber seemed filled with the sun.
The vice tightening around their minds was gone.
Glarasteer blinked. Across the chamber, something clawed and bestial was thrashing as it died, a last smoldering agony that framed the grim smile of a bearded, robed, rumple-haired man with a very familiar face.
"Vangerdahast!" half a dozen throats gasped as one.
"You summoned, and I came," the wizard growled, as he stepped over what was left of the phaerimm with spell-smoke still rising from his hands. "Bah! Why should Elminster get all the fun?"
Glarasteer Rhauligan looked back at the shards of the call-crystal, then over at the crisped and riven remains of the phaerimm. Drawing a deep, shuddering breath, he put down his Sword. He'd sworn to defend the lives of the Obarskyrs with his own, so long as he could still draw breath, and for the first time since he'd taken up vigil over the king's bed, he began to hope that he just might live to see another morning come to Cormyr.
The pride of Cormyr's exiled nobility were halfway across The Chamber of Frostfire Candles, with the Steel Regent and the Mage Royal both whirling to meet them, beautiful eyes flashing with anger and something else- eagerness?-when the tapestries on the other side of the room boiled, and a nightmare of black tentacles burst forth, snaking around the princess.
Alusair's sword was already drawn. She spun around with a speed that made Maerlyn Bleth gulp, hacked twice, and smoking ichor spattered to the ghost rothe rugs, followed by a thrashing, severed tentacle.
Maerlyn swerved and charged at the Mage Royal, shaking out the cloak as he ran, just in time to bring it up in front of his face as Caladnei snarled something, and the world exploded in a hissing roar of ice.
Cormaeril shouted in pain and fell back, sheathed in sparkling frost, Goldsword toppled without a sound, and Dracohorn staggered once and became still, stiff and white and staring. Maerlyn flinched back from the searing cold, gasping out a curse, and There was a sickening wet splintering sound from his left, and the princess sobbed. It was a sound Maerlyn had never thought to hear; he couldn't help but turn and look.
A dark, rippling figure that had a gloating human face but nothing else human about it leaned toward Alusair, its front a forest of writhing tentacles. One of them flailed in shredded uselessness, another wore the regent's sword like a high lady's hatpin as it coiled and whipped in pain-and the rest were tightening around the struggling princess herself.
Gods! This couldn't be the phaerimm, surely, so what was it?
Alusair was snarling, more anger than fear on her face, but one of her arms dangled uselessly, shattered somewhere below the elbow. The other was plying a dagger as fast as she could, keeping those deadly coils from her throat, but a dozen snakelike arms were already tightening around her, and she was being bent back like a straining bow.
In a moment, Maerlyn knew, he would hear Alusair's spine make the same sound that her arm had.
"Caladnei!" the princess cried. "Aid! Aid, unless you want to be regent, too!"
Tightening tentacles slapping around her breast, she had breath left only for a scream of rage and pain.
Gods, yes, Caladnei! He was supposed to be Maerlyn whirled back toward the Mage Royal, bringing the cloak up again-but Caladnei, her eyes two dark flames of fury, was rising from a hastily-clawed-open drawer with a wand in her hand, shouting something.
A beam of flame scorched across the room so swiftly that the air made a sound like parchment being torn- and the black, glistening shape exploded in a rain of gore and tangled tentacles, flinging the Steel Regent over a couch and away.
There would be time to make sure of her later. His task remained clear before him. Maerlyn flung the useless cloak aside with a snarl and snatched out his blade-in time to see Ilryn Merendil, a soft smile on his face, slash aside Caladnei's vainly-warding hand with a vicious sword cut, and bring his slim, bright steel around in an elegant thrust that plunged right through the Mage Royal's midriff-to emerge, glistening, from her back.
Her eyes widened in astonishment and agony, Maerlyn Bleth grew a smile of his own as he stepped forward in a perfect thrust and made his own hole in yielding flesh, crossing his blade over Merendil's to come out the witch's side and pin her arm.
Caladnei reeled, and her eyes found his-eyes awash in pain and sadness and regret. Trembling lips drooled blood, and gasped, "Throne."
The word seemed to rush away across the room, echoing as if across vast distances-and to roar back into a thunderclap that shook the Chamber of Frostfire Candles. There was someone else in the room-a man Maerlyn had never seen before. He was tall and very thin, wore robes of strange cut and dark but shimmering hue, and his skin was the color of smoke. His eyes seemed almost milky-white as he glanced at the dying woman and at Maerlyn and Merendil. Almost lazily he raised one hand. and it seemed to the astonished noble that shadows clung to it, somehow; shadows that shouldn't have been there, in all this lamplight.
The man smiled a cold, unlovely smile, and something bright blue and bubbling sprang out of his empty palm, washing over Cormaeril and Merendil and-Maerlyn himself!
The youngest son of House Bleth felt a moment of intense cold, and a burning that rose savagely to choke him-and as the world slowly went dark and he stared at the exposed bones of his own sword arm, Maerlyn felt nothing at all.
Done. The mind-voice was calm and triumphant and somehow sneering, Caladnei thought, through the red claws of agony, as the wizard of shadows watched her sag back against a couch with two swords through her. She struggled to reach out a hand to him, and he calmly watched her efforts, smiled that cruel smile, waved a hand, and was gone as if he had never been.
Despairing, Caladnei let the pain take her, shuddering around the swords whose sharp points would not let her lie back against the splendid upholstery and rest.
So this is what it feels like to die…
There was noise, fast approaching, an uneven running that ended in a skidding crash into one end of the couch. Spitting blood as the world darkened around her, the Mage Royal felt no pain from that jarring-nothing more than the raging wall of agony that was bearing down, crushing her.
Silver flashed in front of her nose, and soothing fire passed her lips.
"Caladnei!" a voice hissed.
The Mage Royal struggled to focus, to see the face of the princess. Alusair dashed a second healing potion down her throat-gods, but it felt good-and set one booted foot against Caladnei's breast and pulled.
Coming out, the blade tugged the Mage Royal half upright, and if she'd thought she'd tasted pain before, she knew better now. Steel rang and clattered far down the room-Alusair must have just flung the blade away over her shoulder-and without pause the princess bent forward and snatched out the second sword.
Someone very near was shrieking in agony, a raw and horrible sound, and as Caladnei writhed and shuddered on the couch, biting her lips and tongue uncontrollably, she very much feared that it was her.
The pain-creased face of the princess was in front of hers again.
"Hold on, Mage," Alusair was snarling, as Caladnei shrank back from the light and noise and pain, drifting down toward the dark.
"You're one of us now," the princess roared, "and Cormyr needs you! Don't you die on me! I so much wanted to gallivant around and have adventures while my father ruled over a placid realm of ever-richer farmers and nobles so adrip with gems that they tossed handfuls of them to their servants… but somehow I'm not surprised that the gods had other ideas. If there's to be a Cormyr tomorrow-without Vangerdahast-I need you. Cormyr needs you! Damn you, Caladnei!"
Strong fingers shook Caladnei like a rag doll, but it аll seemed so far away.
Alusair whirled away from the Mage Royal's body and sprinted across the room, shouting at the pains that stabbed through her legs and ribs and shattered arm with each step, until she reached a statuette crowning a mantelpiece-a sculpted likeness of a Purple Dragon.
"Blast you, Vangerdahast," she sobbed, snatching it from its perch and wincing her way back down the room, "this had better not have been one of your sly lies!"
With trembling fingers she snatched one of the enchanted rings off the hand at the end of her broken arm-on her knees and gasping with pain by the time she got it off-and thrust it into one of her open wounds, tearing at her flesh until oozing blood ran freely again.
Tucking the statuette into the crook of her good arm, the Steel Princess reached up to hold the ring in her wound, reeled to her feet, and lowered herself as gently as she could atop Caladnei's limp body. They were going to slide off this bloody couch together, if she didn't.
Grimly Alusair fumbled the purple dragon-one of three in all Faerun, if Vangy had told her truth-into her good hand, raised herself awkwardly with her broken arm grinding into her dying friend, and the ring held there in her own gore, and smashed the statuette against the back of the couch with all the strength she had left. It took two sobbing blows before the thing broke. Weeping, Alusair brought the jagged fragment still in her hand around-and stabbed herself with it, right into the ring. It had been trailing blue fire. So the old wizard hadn't lied, and this just might Blue flames burst through her, like fire and ice, cooling and soothing. The pain was gone!
Alusair shuddered as cleansing power raced through her, and-and-gods, Caladnei! Swiftly, ere it ebbed!
She fell forward again and kissed whatever bare skin she could find-Caladnei's left cheek, as it happened, just beneath one staring eye-and held herself rigid to be sure their contact did not end. With tantalizing slowness, almost lazily, the healing magic stole out of her, washed back into her, and rippled into the Mage Royal and stayed there.
The body beneath hers jumped, spasming and moaning gently and trying to rise. Alusair held her down, clawing at the carved back of the couch to hold herself in place as Caladnei sobbed, shuddered, and gasped, "Princess? Alusair?"
The Steel Regent smiled then and let go her grasp to start the slow slide toward the floor.
Tingling, all pain wondrously banished, Caladnei lifted her head to look around, through swimming eyes- as Glarasteer Rhauligan stepped smilingly into the room with his drawn sword raised and ready, and Laspeera looking over one shoulder, and Vangerdahast peering over the other.
Behind them was Queen Filfaeril with the infant king in her arms and the sage Alaphondar at her side-and there seemed to be an inadvertent contest between the infant Azoun and the patrician sage as to who could look the most dazed and just-awakened.
Rhauligan shook his head as he slid his sword back into its sheath and went to help them. He was still two steps away when the Steel Princess bumped down onto the floor.
"I know," he remarked, reaching down a hand to help her up, "there're some folk who'd look upon this touching scene and draw quite the wrong conclusions, but…"
Alusair gave him a level look, and said crisply, "It's a good thing for уоu, sir, that Vangerdahast, my father, and Elminster all carefully took the time to separately and in the utmost secrecy explain to me just who you are. It's kept you alive these past few months, when certain folk very strongly urged you be rendered dead."
As she spoke, blue flames of healing magic swirled from between her lips.
Weakly, from the couch, Caladnei muttered, "So I was mistaken. Not one of my larger mistakes, I'm afraid."
She looked up at Vangerdahast apologetically. "Are you still sure you made the right choice? I knew nothing about these nobles, and-and that tentacled thing."
Her predecessor smiled, shook his head, and said, "The Blood of Malaug are everywhere these days, it seems, and Cormyr is always entertaining noble traitors and exiles who think regicide will win them back their estates and titles with a sword stroke. You'll get used to them." – Caladnei sat up and said almost pleadingly, "I failed the Crown! I didn-"
Vangerdahast snorted. "Nay, nay, lass-don't think to get out of being Mage Royal that easily! The mistakes are all yours to make now. I'm not watching over you all, ready to appear in a puff of spellsmoke to save your various shapely behinds whenever you stumble."
He turned slowly on his heel, to favor everyone in the room with his stern gaze, and added, "Consider this a lucky chance that I was passing through. Cormyr is yours now. With the passing of Azoun, my duty was done, and I've so little time left to cram all my neglected tasks and whims and unfinished business into. Farewell!"
Amid a vain chorus of protests, he smiled again, wiggled his ringers playfully at the child king, and vanished.
Filfaeril broke the little silence that followed with a sigh, and turned to Caladnei and asked, "How do wizards do that? I've always wanted to just begone into thin air, too-usually when particularly obnoxious nobles were approaching. Twould be very handy-"
It was not considered polite to interrupt the Queen of Cormyr, but Caladnei was suddenly lost in a flood of giggles-mirth that begat laughter from others, a rising chorus of guffaws through which the Mage Royal only dimly heard Glarasteer Rhauligan remark in gloomy tones, "She has a flaw after all, our Royal Magician: she giggles."
In a room that swirled with shadows, Tarane of Shade stood watching the scene in the Chamber of Frostfire Candles through a whorl of scrying magic.
"Well, well," he said, smiling faintly. "An interesting place to rule, to be sure. Let it mature awhile, to grow strong and prosperous again first. Waiting for the right moment is one thing I know very well how to do."
He picked up a ring that had until recently adorned the hand of Maerlyn Bleth from a flaring, flute-topped pedestal table beside him.. Turning it so that its half-aroused enchantments-magic the young fool had been utterly unaware he was carrying-made it flash in the backwash of the scrying spell, the Shadovar added with a smile, "Unlike so many of the fair flowering of Cormyr's proud noble houses. Or the last Obarskyrs and their handful of loyal servants, for that matter."
King Shadow
Richard Lee Byers
11 Kythorn, the Year of Wild Magic
The old knight and his squire hobbled their weary destriers through the charred and shattered gate. They walked the rubble-choked streets of the murdered city, where even a fresh horse would likely lose its footing.
At first Kevin felt numb and sick. The short, sandy-haired youth had yearned his whole life to ride to war, had felt feverish with excitement on the long, difficult ride from Kirinwood to Tilverton. But he had never imagined war's aftermath: broken buildings and broken bodies reeking of burning, evil magic, and rot, the stink perceptible despite the drizzling rain.
Gradually, though, pure stupid horror lost its grip on the squire, and he regarded his master, only to discover a new cause for dismay.
Before forsaking martial endeavors to run the family farm and make fern-and-mint wine, Sir Ajandor Surehand had seen other scenes of carnage nearly as grim as this. Yet he trudged along without a word, his thin, wrinkled face with its drooping white mustache ashen, his gray eyes lost and empty beneath his shaggy brows.
Kevin was appalled. He had always thought the gaunt old knight indomitable, but apparently the loss of an only child could overwhelm anyone.
"Sir," he said, picking his way around a spill of field-stone, "you know, it may not be possible to find him."
If Ajandor heard, he gave no sign.
"There are so many dead people," Kevin continued, "some disfigured by fire and the like. Others no doubt lie inside the collapsed buildings."
"Is that what you think?" snapped Ajandor, who had never before spoken harshly to Kevin in all their years together. That my son was cowering indoors when he died?"
"No! I'm sure he died fighting the enemy."
"Then shut up."
As Kevin wondered what to say next, a gray form sprang up from the ground, where it had apparently been lying flat as a sheet of parchment. A pair of vague limbs outstretched, it pounced at Kevin.
The squire tried to dodge and draw his sword at the same time. He managed neither. The dark thing slammed into him and bore him down to the ground. Raking claws shredded his mantle and surcoat and ripped at the hauberk beneath.
Something flashed. The creature leaped away, and Kevin saw Ajandor standing over him with Gray Dancer, his sword of gleaming mithral silver, in his hand. The knight had used it to drive the phantom back.
Kevin scrambled to his feet and yanked out his own blade, a plain steel one, devoid of pedigree and with only the simplest of enchantments. The humans and the creature stood and regarded one another.
Kevin could see that the shadow resembled an enormous cat, though perhaps that was only one of many possible forms, for its murky substance seemed to flow and shift from moment to moment. The refugees whom he and Ajandor had encountered on the road had warned them of such shadow creatures, phantoms apparently engendered by the same wizardry that had destroyed Tilverton and the army assembling inside its walls.
Evidently hoping to flank the apparition, Ajandor edged to the left. Kevin moved to the right. The cat sprang at him, its entire head opening like an oyster to become nothing more than a set of jaws.
Sidestepping to throw off the shadow's aim, Kevin cut at its shoulder. Though he had felt the phantom's weight and strength, his sword swept through it as if it were made of smoke. That should have been good, but he knew it wasn't. Some supernatural beings were all but impervious to mundane weapons, and this was apparently one of them.
The phantom clawed at him, and he jumped back. Ajandor rushed in and drove his point into the shadow's flank.
The creature spun, reared on its hind legs like a bear, and raked at Ajandor with talons grown long as daggers. Scarcely giving an inch of ground, the knight met the shadow's attack with savage stop cuts. At least his blade seemed to be biting something solid, though whether it was doing the phantom any real harm was impossible to say.
Kevin could tell that his master was trying to get inside the shadow's reach for another stroke to the head or torso, where, perhaps, some vital organs resided, but the creature was holding him back. For his part, the squire couldn't hurt the phantom, but perhaps he could distract it. Yelling at the top of his lungs, he charged and beat at it.
The shadow whirled, loomed above him like a mountain about to give birth to an avalanche, then it jerked, and the point of Gray Dancer popped out of its belly. Ajandor had seized his opportunity to bury the mithral weapon in its back. The cat toppled, and Kevin scrambled aside to keep it from dropping on top of him.
Panting, his heart pounding, the squire was content to stand clear and hope that the shadow wouldn't get up again, but Ajandor was not. Seemingly contemptuous of the cat's flailing limbs, he kept on attacking. The shadow stopped moving and still he hacked at it, until the body abruptly melted away to nothing.
Only then did Ajandor turn to Kevin. The knight's eyes had gone from dull and dazed to fierce and hard.
"Are you all right?" Kevin asked. The collar of his tattered cloak chose that moment to tear completely apart, dumping the garment around his boots.
"Yes." Ajandor inspected his blade of "true silver," only to find that, except for drops of rainwater, it didn't need cleaning. The phantom hadn't possessed any blood to foul it. "Let's move on."
"Move on? After a fight, if it's practical, a warrior always rests and recovers his strength. You taught me that."
"Don't throw my own words back in my face."
"I'm just saying… look, further wandering may be a bad idea. We've just seen that the survivors told us the truth. Tilverton is haunted. We should-"
Ajandor turned away, his patched, faded war cloak swinging, and headed up the street. Kevin mouthed a silent curse, snatched up his ruined mantle, threw it around his shoulders like a beggar's rag, and hurried after him.
They prowled until darkness began to envelop the city, creeping up on them as stealthily as the shadow cat, or so it seemed to Kevin. With the sun hidden behind the perpetual gray cloud cover, he had seen no hint of its setting.
"We should get back to the horses," he said, "and make camp for the night."
Ajandor shook his head. "I want to walk."
The mounts need care, assuming that some horror hasn't killed them already."
"You can tend them. It is part of your duties, is it not?"
"Yes. Still, what's the point of searching for Pelethen"- Ajandor flinched almost imperceptibly at his son's name-"in the dark? You could march right past his body and never notice."
"I still feel like wandering."
"But the shadows will be more active in the dark, for that's the way of shadows, and without a single light burning anywhere about the streets, you'll never see them coming. They'll kill you before you can even lift your sword!"
Ajandor frowned, considering. At length he said, "1 wouldn't want to fall without striking a blow. That would make a poor end to the tale of my line. We'll return to the Cormyr Gate."
On the way back, they passed one of the sets of stairs that climbed to the Old Town, a precinct built on high ground. Famed for its picturesque beauty, it was likely as ruinous as the rest of the city. Partway up the steps was an Altar of Shields, unmarred by the devastation that prevailed on every side. To Kevin, it almost seemed a mockery, as if Helm, god of guardians and protectors, had preserved his own little shrine while permitting the rest of the city to perish.
The squire's mood soured still further when they reached the gate. Redwind, Ajandor's charger, lay dead. No shadow had come to rend the faithful animal. Rather his heart had given out and small wonder. At the knight's insistence, the two riders had pushed their mounts unmercifully once they heard about the destruction of Tilverton, even though, from a coldly practical perspective, they no longer had any reason to hurry at all.
Ajandor gazed down at the horse that had borne him for the past ten years, an animal that, Kevin believed, he had loved.
"Poor old fellow," murmured the knight.
"It's too bad," Kevin said.
Ajandor turned away from the fallen steed. "The animal got me here. I suppose that's all that matters."
"Until we want to ride away."
Ajandor didn't reply.
"Well," said Kevin after a pause, "after I see to my horse, we'll want a fire and our supper."
"Do as you like." Ajandor walked back to the east end of the stone tunnel that was the gate, where the rain created a sort of shimmering, pattering curtain and stood staring out as night swallowed the city.
By the time Kevin finished preparing a meal of fried ham, crumbly yellow corn cakes, and dried apples, the vista beyond the gate had gone utterly black. He tried not to think of what might be lurking unseen just a few feet away. A faint cry came from the opposite direction, out in the countryside, making him jump. Some of the refugees hadn't fled very far from Tilverton, and perhaps shadow creatures were ranging outside the broken walls as well.
At the sound, Ajandor glanced over his shoulder then turned away once more.
"Supper's ready," Kevin called.
His master didn't answer.
For a second, annoyed, the youth was tempted to let it go at that. The gods knew, he was hungry enough to eat both portions himself. He rose from the fire and carried the two tin plates to the end of the gate.
"Here," he said, thrusting one dish forward.
Thus prompted, Ajandor accepted it. He took a token nibble of corn cake then stooped to set the plate on the ground.
"No!" Kevin said. "Sir, you need more than that, or you'll get sick."
"I'm not hungry."
Kevin took a deep breath, screwing up his courage. He had never hesitated to speak his mind to the kindly mentor who had taken him in after his own parents drowned in a boating accident, but this taciturn stranger daunted him a little.
"Sir, I think I know what's in your mind. We couldn't have gotten here any faster."
"That's a convenient way to think."
"It's the truth. We left home the same day the herald brought us word of the call to arms, and we had to ride from one corner of Cormyr to the opposite one, slogging down muddy roads and fording swollen rivers." That, of course, was why the kingdom of Cormyr and its allies were going to war. A city of wizards was tampering with the weather, producing constant rain that ruined crops, birthed floods, and made travel a nightmare. "Despite it all, we did arrive before the date specified in the princess's decree."
"But not in time to fight."
"Obviously, no one anticipated that the shades would lay siege to Tilverton before our forces could march on them. Anyway, do you think we could have changed the outcome if we had been here? Do you think you could have saved your son?"
Ajandor sneered. "You're glad you were let off, aren't you? Glad you weren't obliged to die in the service of the Crown."
Kevin groped for a suitable answer. Nothing sprang to mind.
"Get away from me, coward. Leave me to mourn in peace."
The squire obeyed then found that suddenly he, too, had no appetite.
He took the first watch as was customary and his duty, even though Ajandor did not avail himself of the opportunity to rest. Afterwards, the youth found it so difficult to sleep that he almost felt that he shouldn't have bothered, either. The occasional anguished cry from beyond the walls kept jarring him awake.
At daybreak, or what passed for it beneath the perpetual overcast, the two men-at-arms headed back into the streets. It was raining harder, but the stink of the bloated dead seemed worse than ever. At first it churned Kevin's stomach. Eventually, though, he forgot about it, when he noticed something about his master's demeanor.
When they'd first entered what remained of Tilverton, Ajandor had paid particular attention to any dead warriors clad in the wine-colored surcoats of the Purple Dragons, the company of knights to which Pelethen had belonged. Now he paid little heed to any of the pathetic corpses sprawled on every side. Instead, he scrutinized doorways, windows, and rooftops, low walls and the mouths of alleyways, a wagon with two dead mules slumped in the traces-everywhere a foe could lie in wait.
That, Kevin reckoned, was only prudent, but when Ajandor caught a glimpse of a shadow crouching over the burnt corpse of a mother with a blackened, shriveled infant in her arms, his response wasn't prudent at all.
"Ho!" bellowed the knight, throwing back his cloak and taking hold of Gray Dancer. "Shadow! Come and fight!"
The murky form rose from the corpses-had it been eating their decaying flesh?-and Kevin saw that it was shaped more or less like a man. It glided forward through the rain, and four more shadows slipped from the ashy ruins of a bakery to fall in behind it.
"Sir!" said Kevin. "There are too many."
"Not for me," Ajandor replied.
Gray Dancer hissed from its scabbard, the mithral blade luminous even on this dreary, rainy morning. The thin man strode forward.
"My sword might not even hurt them!" Kevin called after him.
Ajandor didn't bother to reply, nor did he falter in his advance. Kevin cast away his hindering rag of a mantle, drew his own quite possibly useless weapon, and trotted to catch up with the knight.
As they closed to fighting distance, the phantoms spread out to encircle their human foes. Resolved to prevent that, Kevin pivoted and cut at the one on the left.
The impact felt as if his blade were shearing through cloth, not sinking into flesh, but at least there was resistance. The shadow reeled back with a rent in the middle of its chest.
Kevin cried out in satisfaction-he was still afraid of the cursed apparitions, but at least this time he was fighting something he could damage-and the shadows responded with a piercing, silent shriek. It wasn't sound, but he could hear it inside his head. He flinched at the pain, and two of the phantoms sprang forward and clutched him by the wrists.
Their fingers were burning cold, but the chill was the least of it. Something, strength, or life itself, perhaps, drained out of Kevin and into his assailants. His vision blurred, and his knees buckled. Inside his mind, the shadows squealed in greed and triumph.
He tried to wrench his sword arm free, but the shadow maintained its hold. As Ajandor had taught him, he heaved up his leg and stamped, raking his boot along the ghostly creature's shin and smashing it down on its foot. It seemed to Kevin that with so much of his strength leeched away already, the stomp kick was a puny, fumbling effort. Still, perhaps startled, the shadow loosened its grip. The squire shoved that one away and turned to the other. It scrambled in even closer, wrapping its arms around his torso, making it impossible to bring the point or edge of his sword to bear. For a moment, weak, frozen, he couldn't think what to do, and Ajandor's lessons came back to him again. He bashed the shadow's head with the heavy steel egg of his weapon's pommel, and losing its hold, the shadow slumped to one knee.
Kevin swayed and stumbled backward. He desperately wanted a moment to collect himself, but the shadows didn't give it to him. Shrieking their psychic shriek, they rushed him.
Gripping his sword in both hands-otherwise, he might not have been able to swing it-the squire swept the weapon in a horizontal arc. The cut decapitated one shadow, and its body and tumbling head vanished. The other phantom nearly succeeded in darting in close enough to grapple, but backstepping frantically, Kevin kept enough space between them to use his blade. He plunged it into the shadow's heart, or the spot where a man would carry his heart, anyway, and it too melted away to nothing.
Gasping, shuddering, he looked about for other foes, just in time to see Ajandor dispatch what was apparently their last adversary. For a few seconds, the knight looked satisfied in a grim sort of way, but then restlessness or hunger crept back into his expression.
"Let's move on," he said.
"No!" Kevin said. "Not yet. This time, I must rest. Did none of the shadows get its hands on you?"
"No."
"Well, they did me, and…"
The world seemed to tilt on its axis, and he realized that if he didn't get off his feet, he was going to fall. He tottered to a horse trough overflowing with rain and sat down on the rim.
"Are you wounded?" Ajandor asked.
"Not exactly. Fm not bleeding. I think I just need a few minutes."
Ajandor's mouth tightened with impatience, and Kevin was sure that he meant to walk away and abandon him, weak and helpless, here in the midst of the haunted city.
Instead the knight said, "Very well."
They waited for a time, Ajandor standing, Kevin sitting, the only sounds the drumming of the rain and the creaking of some damaged building shifting toward collapse.
Finally, when the youth felt that mere talking wouldn't constitute an intolerable strain, he said, "I figured it out. You aren't just watching out for the shadows, you're hunting them."
"Correct."
"With Princess Alusair's army defeated, you have no way to strike a blow against the wizards who killed Pelethen, so you're taking it out on the spooks they left in their wake."
"It's a chivalrous act to purge the land of shadows, wouldn't you agree?"
In Ajandor's tone lurked an irony that mocked the entire notion of knightly duty, and never mind that he had always taught his squire that honor was everything.
"I suppose it should be done," the squire said. "Whatever you think, I'm not afraid to help, but is this a sensible way to go about it? According to your own lessons on tactics, we should have a company of men-at-arms sweeping Tilverton systematically, block by block. We should have priests and wizards to support them with their magic. We-"
"Perhaps," Ajandor replied, "but Fm not in the mood for that much company."
"That's mad! I understand-"
A shadow fell over them. Startled, Kevin looked upward.
Something huge was soaring over the wreckage of Tilverton, eclipsing the attenuated light sifting through the clouds. Was it a dragon? Kevin couldn't tell. He had never seen a wyrm, and in any case, the titan's form was as indistinct as that of the lesser shadows. All he could truly discern were tatters of darkness that reminded him equally of a bat's wings and a jellyfish's trolling tentacles. That, and a sense of awesome power and malevolence.
It suddenly occurred to Kevin that the giant shadow might look down and see them, and he cringed, but the thing passed on over the gapped wall encircling Old Town and disappeared.
"The king shadow," murmured Ajandor. "In the end, if I must, I'll come to you."
"Not without an army behind you," Kevin said, "and Vangerdahast, too." Then he remembered the rumor they'd heard along the road, that Cormyr's famous wizard had likely perished in the destruction of Tilverton with the rest of the defenders. "Well, some mage, anyway."
"Ready to go?"
He wasn't, but he was reluctant to irritate his master by asking for more time. He struggled to his feet, and they wandered on.
Ajandor took to shouting challenges whether any shadows were in view or not, and from his perspective if not his squire's, it paid off. Alone or in groups, sometimes vulnerable to common steel and sometimes not, the phantoms slunk out of their hiding places to fight.
Somehow Kevin survived half a dozen of these confrontations, until to his profound relief, it started to get dark, and Ajandor agreed to return to the shelter of the gate. Not that the squire had any particular reason to think that they were truly safe there, either, but at least they weren't actively looking for trouble.
After he prepared another supper and watched Ajandor set his portion aside largely uneaten, he said, "If you mean to continue hunting spooks, we could at least do it beyond the walls. The folk out in the countryside need protection."
"I imagine the shadows slip out of the city to seek their prey," said Ajandor, staring out at the night and the hissing rain, "but they all lair inside, where the stink of necromancy lies thick on the ground. Therefore, I'll be protecting the refugees just as effectively by killing the phantoms in here."
"The people may have other problems." Kevin shifted position, and his shoulder, bruised by a phantom's attack, gave him a twinge. "They may need a leader to sort them out."
"I told you, I don't feel like bothering with other people right now."
"I know they'd respect your grief. Each of them surely has griefs of his own."
"Grief," said Ajandor, as though the word were a paltry, inadequate thing. "Do you know why Pelethen joined the Purple Dragons?"
"Because you did the same thing in your youth. Sir, that does not make you responsible for his fate."
"It's funny. I was happy when Princess Alusair's summons came. To me, the war, with all its perils, was simply a fine excuse for a reunion with my boy."
"I know how much you wanted to see him."
"I wanted to give him this." Ajandor drew Gray Dancer an inch out of its scabbard then shoved it down again. The guard clicked against the mouth of the sheath. "As my father gave it to me. As we have handed it down in our family for four hundred years. What am I supposed to do with it now?"
"Use it to defend the weak, as you have always done."
Ajandor chuckled an ugly little chuckle. "As I have always done. And here at the end, what do I have to show for it?"
"Sir," said Kevin, "with all respect, you've lost much but not everything. Kirinwood is full of folk who love you. Mistress Waterthorn. Old Nobby. Galen Oakfriend." He could have added himself to the list, except that it would make him feel like a whining child.
"I suppose it ought to shame me," replied Ajandor, "but I just don't seem to care, not anymore. My heart is empty."
"I don't believe that," Kevin replied. "At the moment, all you feel is pain, but when it loosens its grip a little, the gentler emotions will return."
"You're prattling."
Kevin felt his cheeks flush. "Sir, I just don't want to watch you commit suicide, and that's the true objective of our shadow hunt, isn't it? It's a miracle the creatures haven't slain the both of us already."
"If you're afraid, then leave. I release you from my service." Ajandor turned away.
That night, Kevin did indeed consider saddling his horse and trotting away back down the highway called the Moonsea Ride, but he couldn't quite bring himself to do it. There had to be a way to snap Ajandor out of his trance of despair!
After considerable pondering, the squire thought of one ploy that might serve. He was certain-well, reasonably so-that deep down in his heart, Ajandor still did care for all the same folk he'd cherished a tenday ago. If so, then perhaps a threat to one of those dear ones would bring the affection to the surface and restore the old man's perspective. It would show him that his son's death, tragic as it was, hadn't crushed all the meaning out of his life.
Though the scheme did have one drawback: Kevin himself would have to play the role of friend in distress.
All the other candidates were back in Kirinwood.
A nasty voice inside the squire's head whispered that his notion would never work, because Ajandor actually didn't care about him. Hadn't his brusqueness the past few days made that clear? In times past, Ajandor had been kind to his foster child but had really only cherished his son by blood.
No, Kevin insisted to himself, it wasn't so. He could conjure up a thousand memories that proved Ajandor's love for him, and that meant he could make his scheme work. He'd slip away, his foster father would chase after him, and in the end, everything would be all right.
As the night wore on, weariness at last overtook Ajandor. He sat down with his back against the wall, and, gradually, his head drooped until his chin rested on his breast. A soft buzzing issued from his mouth.
Moving quietly, Kevin rose, unlaced one of the saddlebags, and took out a stick of chalk, which Ajandor had packed to sketch out battle plans, duty rosters, and the like. Wincing at the faint scratching sound, the squire scrawled a message on the wall: