The Ruins of Ascalin The Mournland B arrakas 25, 999 YK Where’s a griffon when you need one?” Thorn muttered. It was the first time she’d ridden a hippogriff, and it was proving to be a difficult experience. The beast balked at the unfamiliar sensation of Thorn on its back. Luckily the beast had been trained to follow the movements of the flight leader, and rough as it was, all Thorn really had to do was hold on. And with Drix on his own hippogriff and the flight leader well out of earshot, she finally had the chance to have the conversation she’d been waiting for.
She drew Steel, holding tightly to the stirrup horn with her free hand. “I think we’ve got a few things to talk about.”
What did you have in mind?
“I still think this idea that the Mourning was caused by stabbing Drix is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”
I’ve never disagreed with that. However, it may very well be the source of the malady affecting the Silver Tree itself. The levels of necrotic energy around the Tree were far higher than anywhere else we’ve been in the Mournland. As deadly as the region is, there is a sickness in that place. Curses are real. Even if they are deluded to think that they destroyed Cyre, they may well have sealed their own fate.
“In which case, saving them and leaving them in Breland’s debt may be the best outcome.”
Yes, even if only one has agreed to negotiate, it’s still a worthwhile outcome. Of course, if you could acquire the stone in Drix’s chest yourself, you know Breland could use immortal soldiers.
“And that’s my real question,” Thorn said. “The shards in my back. Why do they believe that they are fey treasures?”
Why do you believe that they aren’t?
“You told me they weren’t magical!”
They do not radiate an aura of magical energy. That’s a far cry from saying they aren’t magical.
“So you think they’re shielded.”
It’s the most logical explanation. “The Quiet Stone,” they called it. What if its power is to conceal? I know that you’re trained to resist divinations, but your talent for it has always been remarkable. I’ve never been able to detect the aura of any item in your possession. Even now, I know your inventory-your gloves, bracers, shiftweave, pack-but I can’t read the auras of any of it.
“So let’s pretend that is indeed the case, that there’s a magic stone in my back and I’ve never known about it. How is that possible?”
The shards were already there when I was assigned to work with you. I was told it was an accident during the mission at Far Passage.
“That’s right. We were sent to sabotage an arcane core. There were hundreds of dragonshards bound to the core-I was struck by a score of them. Our fey friends said one of these stones was stolen by a dragon. How’d they end up in the hands of an Aundairian arcanist? And how does it just happen to be the stone that hits me?”
It does seem rather unlikely. I fail to see any more logical alternative, however.
“I wish I did. None of this makes sense.”
I’m more concerned about Essen Cadrel. If we are to believe what he said, it sounds as though this eladrin had been impersonating him for an extended period of time… since he first reappeared following the Mourning and took his position in Oargev’s retinue.
“It would explain how Oargev’s childhood jester developed the skill to be a spymaster,” Thorn said.
To what end? This Shan Doresh seems focused on vengeance against the other eladrin. So why infiltrate the Cyran court? And if he accomplished that so easily… Do they have agents in other nations?
“You’re right,” Thorn said. “Something doesn’t add up. Keep thinking about it. That’s our destination up ahead. Stay alert. Strange auras, the slightest fluctuation in mystical energy… if you sense anything, you tell me.”
Understood.
The hippogriffs dropped down toward Ascalin. Thorn blinked, squinting down at the streets below. There were people on the streets, and the cold-fire lanterns were still burning. She could see a crowd gathered around a street performer, a man performing tricks with trained animals. After the lonely desolation of Seaside and the slow rot of the Silver Tree, it seemed impossibly mundane. She could see farmers selling their wares in the small market square, a group of children playing circle games, a procession leaving the temple of the Sovereign Host. For a moment she smiled. Then she realized something was terribly wrong.
No one was moving.
The children were frozen in their game. The spectators were raising their arms to cheer for the performing, but there were no cries of joy, no laughter, no applause. It was a moment frozen in time. And there was something else. Where the cold-fire lanterns spread their light, Thorn could see that the city was gleaming. It seemed as though the city were covered with a thin layer of ice, for all that it was too warm for anything to freeze. But she could see the light reflecting off every surface and even off the people standing around the lampposts.
Thorn held Steel out as the hippogriff swooped toward the ground. “Impressions?”
None at this distance, he replied. Strong necrotic resonance, the same energies I’ve felt across the Mournland. Not especially powerful, though-nothing compared to the darkness around the Silver Tree.
The hooves of the hippogriffs left craters in the ground when they landed, cracks spreading out from the point of impact like fine spiderwebs. It wasn’t ice after all; it was glass. Thorn slid out of the saddle, carefully testing the surface. Not as bad as slick ice, she thought. But certainly treacherous footing. They’d come down in a wide avenue, and there were a few people standing on the edge of the road. Whether it was a function of the glass or an effect of the Mourning, they were perfectly preserved. Each spectator was covered in a layer of glass an inch thick, the surface smooth and clear.
There’s nothing magical about the glass itself, Steel told her. And no signs of burns of the flesh, as you’d expect if molten glass fell from the sky. I’m guessing that they suffocated.
“It must have happened within moments,” Thorn said. “Look at their expressions. No fear, not even surprise. It was over before they even knew what was happening.”
Drix dismounted, handing the reins of his hippogriff to the eladrin flight master. “Eerie, isn’t it?”
“You knew about this?”
Drix nodded. “I spent some time wandering after I left the Silver Tree, after it all happened. I just… Ascalin was on the route my father traveled. I’d survived. I hoped I might find him here.”
Thorn looked at the child trapped in glass. “And did you?”
Drix shook his head. “No. Not here. Not in Kethelfeld or Greenbarrow or any of the others. I walked the old path, and I never found him.” His eyes were distant for a moment, lost in the past.
“You just wandered across the Mournland by yourself? How did you survive?”
He smiled faintly, running a finger over his hidden crystal heart. “It’s easy to survive when you can’t die. I don’t eat. I don’t sleep. I’ve had my bones crushed and flesh burnt and far worse than that. It never lasts… bones mend the moment they break, clothes turn to ash but the flesh remains.”
“And you’re not afraid to give that up? To let them take the stone away?” Thorn was honestly curious.
“I want it to end,” he said. “I want to sleep again. I want an end to the pain. And this…” He gestured at the frozen city. “If this is somehow tied to me, if I can restore the land, any price would be worth that.”
“Do you really believe that? Do you think it’s that easy?”
“None of this makes sense,” he said. “Look around you. What could cause this? I know the idea that restoring my heart could somehow heal the land… it’s ridiculous. But this is a mad world, and if it’s possible, I won’t let that chance slip away.”
“You came here for a reason, and you waste time we do not have.” The flight master was one of Lord Syraen’s guards, and he shared his lord’s icy demeanor. “You, maimed one, you know where you need to go?”
Drix nodded. “I know the way to the Orien enclave. It’s not far.”
“I will wait here for a time, to ensure that you have accomplished your task. Then I will depart with my beasts.”
“Then lead the way, Drix,” Thorn said. She saw a rat crouched in an alley, frozen in glass yet still watching. “We may be heading toward a fortress of nightmares, but I’ll be just as happy to leave this place behind.”
They passed a cutpurse, frozen in the moment of his theft. A beggar with his hand held out, eyes pleading behind the glass. Finally they reached the enclave. It was located on the largest plaza in the little town, along with outposts of a few other dragonmarked houses. A gnome stood outside the Sivis message station, hand outstretched.
Something was wrong.
It took her a moment to make sense of it; then she realized. The gnome’s hand wasn’t encased in glass. She saw that there were others around the plaza and shards of glass scattered around the ground.
She paused by a dwarf dressed in the robes of a Kundarak banker. Glass still covered much of his body. His face was frozen behind its translucent mask. But the glass around his waist was cracked and broken away, and fragments were scattered all around him.
“Someone chiseled this away,” she said. “His belt’s been cut… to remove his pouch, I’m guessing. He’s missing a finger too.” The wound was jagged and rough, but there were no bloodstains, and the flesh was still fresh; it seemed that the glass wasn’t the only thing that prevented decomposition. “Looters.”
It made sense. They weren’t far from the Valenar border. And if there was anything truly worth stealing in that place, it would be in the coffers of the dragonmarked. Glancing around the plaza, she could see that a number of doors and windows had been forced open, glass shattered so the salvagers could get into buildings. The Orien house was among them. The unicorn seal of the house was carved on the door, but it had been scarred and cracked when the looters forced their way into the building.
“I suppose we should be grateful,” she said. “I left my glass-smashing tools in my other gloves.”
Drix paused fifteen feet from the entrance, staring. “I suppose,” he said. “But… where’s the sentry?”
“What sentry?”
“I passed through this plaza before. There was a guard at the Orien gate. Trapped in glass like the rest. Now there’s nothing there. Why would someone take his body?”
“I don’t think they did. Not all of it, at least.” Thorn approached the gate cautiously. Large slabs of glass were heaped around the doorway, refuse from the efforts to force the door. She carefully shifted a few pieces aside, revealing the shadow seen through the glass. A leather boot, still trapped in the glass, with a good part of a leg still in it. The body had been snapped with sheer brute force; it was the work of a sledgehammer or maul. She picked up a smaller shard and tossed it to Drix. “Take a look-links of chain mail in the glass. I think our looters were searching for keys or other ways to bypass security. They just shattered the body with a maul and picked out what they needed. As for the missing pieces, perhaps there’s predators we haven’t seen. We should certainly be prepared for anything. Can you sense anything unusual?”
“Unusual? Not really.”
It wasn’t Drix she’d been talking to. I believe you are correct. There are still residual traces of energies on the doorway… an old ward, broken when it was, well, broken. They likely hoped to find a key charm on the guard, and perhaps they did.
“Anything else?” Thorn said.
“Nothing you haven’t already figured out,” Drix said. “You’re very clever.”
Isn’t that sweet? Steel said. I’m sensing active auras within the building. Nothing specific, especially at this distance, but I’d be careful.
“Let me go in first. Stay back until I say it’s safe.” She made her way gingerly across the broken glass and slid Steel’s point inside the doorframe.
There’s no glass inside the building, he reported. The cold-fire lanterns are still burning. There are bodies, perfectly preserved, but I see no signs of life. Minor auras-the lanterns, environmental cooling charms-nothing threatening.
Thorn stepped through the door, setting her back against the wall as soon as she was inside. “Whatever happened to these people, it must have been off-peak hours,” she said. There were only four bodies in the lobby. A clerk lay slumped across the reception desk, a slip of paper still clutched in her hand and a few copper crowns scattered across the desk. A man had fallen to the floor before her, a package under his arm, ready to send by Orien courier. And there was a courier, coming out of the main hallway. All three were dead, though without a mark on them.
She leaned out the door and gestured to Drix. “Come in but stay behind me. I don’t think we’ll find anything alive in here. What are we looking for?”
“The main circle chamber. It shouldn’t be hard to find.”
House Orien bore the mark of passage, and transportation was their trade. The greatest minds of the house had developed many tools to channel the power of their dragonmark, from the saddle that lent speed to a mount to the lightning rail coaches that had become a vital part of the economic infrastructure of Khorvaire. Their most wondrous power was teleportation. Most Orien enclaves contained teleportation circles, and when the proper ritual was performed, goods or people could be transported from one circle to another in the blink of an eye. It was a far more efficient form of travel than the lightning rail or the Lyrandar airships, but the ritual that linked the circles was expensive, and it could be performed by only an Orien heir with a potent dragonmark. Thorn didn’t know how Drix planned to activate the circle without the mark, but it had been his idea, so she assumed he had a plan.
While she’d never been to that enclave, it was a place of business, and teleportation, a service offered. Signs on the walls pointed the way to different parts of the outpost, and it took only a moment to find the path to the teleportation circle.
“I’m the first around every corner,” she whispered to Drix. “You peer around and don’t follow until you see my signal. Do you understand?”
He shrugged. “I suppose. What are you worried about? Everyone’s dead and they wouldn’t have wards on the main chamber, would they?”
“We’re not taking any chances.” The fact of the matter was that the bodies had her on edge. They were too pristine, too clean; she couldn’t help but wait for one of them to stand up or for a hand to tighten around her ankle. She’d fought undead in the past; she still remembered the Koralat case in Karrnath, the madman’s manor filled with the walking corpses of his servants and kin, her own partner reaching for her throat with no sign of recognition in his glazed eyes. Perhaps the people of Ascalin were truly dead. And perhaps they weren’t.
She held Steel to the edge of the passage, tracing a cross on his hilt.
More bodies, he told her. I’m not sensing any wards. It appears to be safe.
“We’ll see.” She slipped around the corner. Something crunched under her foot, and she knelt down to examine it. It was a shard of glass, as long as her finger, loose on the floor. The looters must have brought it in with them, she thought. There were a few other chips scattered around. The air was still, the hall was silent. There was something… a smell, faint but unmistakable: blood.
The source of the scent was up and around the next corner. She moved cautiously, avoiding the scattered shards of glass and making no sound as she slipped across the hallway. The scent grew stronger as she drew closer to the corner. Drix ventured into the hallway behind her, his little crossbow in his hand. Thorn indicated that he should hold his position and slid Steel around the edge of the wall.
Four bodies, Steel told her. Messy business… blood on the walls and the floor. No one living. I can sense a few enchanted weapons, other minor magical auras… animated rope, pack of holding, Irian tears.
“Orien colors?” she whispered.
No uniforms. Dark clothing, painted armor, but no obvious insignia.
Sounds more like looters than guards, she thought. So what killed them?
The other bodies they’d found had been perfectly pristine. The victims might have simply fallen asleep. As such, the carnage Thorn found in the hallway was a shock.
“Messy business indeed,” she murmured.
Blood was spattered all over the walls and pooled around each of the corpses. There was an elf woman in dark chain mail, a short bow still clutched in her hand; a muscular half-orc; a human with a wand in his hand and two more tucked into his belt, and a vest covered with pockets that likely held components for spells and rituals. The last body, a dwarf in a long, leather coat, his beard soaked with blood, caught Thorn’s eye. She noticed the dragonmark on his forehead and the scarring around it. It was the Mark of Warding, and the branding was something she’d heard of but never actually seen. A dragonmark heir expelled from a house was called an excoriate; in the distant past, the houses had actually cut the mark from the flesh of the victim. That practice had been abandoned before the rise of Galifar, but she’d heard that there were branches of some houses that still engaged in ritual scarring or branding for excoriates whose crimes against the house were especially severe. The Mark of Warding was used to craft mystical wards, locks, and alarms. But a gifted heir could learn to use the mark to shatter wards or open locks, and Thorn guessed that’s exactly what the dwarf had done.
Something’s very wrong, Steel said. Their weapons are out, but they aren’t in fighting postures. The wounds… dozens of small wounds.
“What’s that?” Thorn whispered. Something glittered in the neck of the elf: a shard of glass.
A memory rose in her mind. Far Passage. A man falling into a wall of whirling dragonshards. The shards of glass scattered across the hallway suggested an explosion. She studied the area, searching for any signs of danger, any hint of magic or a mundane trap. There was nothing, just blood, glass, and the bodies of the hapless explorers.
She prodded one of the shards of glass on the floor with Steel. There was blood on its edge.
If you’re searching for magical resonance, I don’t sense anything new.
Thorn examined the closest body, the elf woman. From a distance, she’d noticed the glass in her neck; upon closer inspection, she could see that there were other bits of glass buried in her skin, even fragments caught in the links of her chain mail.
Drix stuck his head around the corner. “Can I come in yet?”
Thorn sighed. “Stay there for now, Drix. I think that’s the chamber at the end of the hall. You can follow once I’m there.”
He nodded. “Where’d all the glass come from?”
I suppose if you spend months in the Mournland, an inexplicable pile of broken glass is more unusual than four dead bodies, Steel said.
“I don’t know,” Thorn said. “Just be careful.”
Thorn took a step back, whispering a word of power. Mystical energy surged through her, and she ran forward and leaped up and over the carnage, the power of the spell carrying her farther than muscle alone could manage. It was an easy jump, and she landed on her feet. She paused to examine the hall ahead, searching for any hints of mystical or mundane security, and found nothing.
Then there was a tinkling sound behind her, almost musical. Thorn’s sharp senses warned her of what lay behind her, even as she turned to see with her eyes.
The shards of glass were rising up from the corpses. Fragments of glass floated in the air, spinning and whirling. It was a storm, focused around a central core, and she could see that there were pieces of a fifth body within it-a hand, a head, the rest hidden by the glass. The Orien guard. The man missing from the front gate.
I hate the undead, she thought.
The storm of glass filled the hall, the shards slashing into the corpses scattered across the floor. It flowed slowly toward Thorn. She threw Steel at the heart of the storm, and he flew straight and true, and if the glass wraith even noticed the attack, it gave no sign of it. An instant later Steel was back in her hand. “Any ideas?” she said.
Certainly… send for an exorcist. There’s nothing solid in there to attack. Smashing every shard to powder might render it harmless, but that would be a challenging task.
“You think so?” The storm moved slowly, and Thorn inched back, keeping space between herself and the razor wind. “Could we push through it?” Thorn said, raising Steel.
Not if you want to stay alive, Steel said. You couldn’t possibly survive the passage. The circle chamber is just ahead, and if it follows the typical Orien model, it will have a strong door. Get inside. Seal the portal.
“I think you’re forgetting someone,” Thorn said.
You’re not going to get Drix through.
“We can’t leave without him,” Thorn pointed out, backing slowly away from the whirling glass. “Unless you know how to activate an Orien circle.”
I know that it can’t be done while you’re dead.
Sovereigns and Six, Thorn thought. The glass storm had pressed her almost all the way to the teleportation chamber. There was no more time to think, and none of her tools or spells would affect the spirit.
Even as the thought passed through her mind, she saw a figure silhouetted in the glass. A cry of pain filled the hallway-Drix’s voice. A moment later he stumbled out of the razor cloud. Dozens of slivers of glass were embedded in his skin, and blood was beginning to soak into his rough-spun clothes. A six-inch shard was projecting from his neck, and for a moment Thorn was back at Far Passage, seeing her partner shredded by the whirling dragonshards. Drix should have been dead on his feet. And Thorn could see that he was in agony, barely able to stand.
Thorn caught him as he fell, her strength surging with her anger. She threw the tinker over her shoulder and spun around. The teleportation chamber was just at the end of the hallway, and she sprinted as fast as she could, barely feeling Drix’s weight. The storm was close behind her, and an outlying shard grazed her neck as Thorn launched herself forward. One step… three… ten…
She let Drix fall to the ground as soon as she entered the room. Turning, she threw her full weight against the heavy door, pushing with everything she had. It had been five years since anyone had breached the chamber, and the hinges were stiff from disuse. Thorn strained against the heavy, wooden door, and slowly it began to shift. The storm had just reached the arch as Thorn drove the gate home. A handful of slivers slipped by as Thorn pressed the gate against the frame. As soon as the door was sealed and barred, the glass fell to the ground; whatever magic had brought it to life couldn’t reach through the heavy gate.
She could hear the storm raging outside, tearing into the wooden surface of the door. Seconds passed and it was as fierce as ever; clearly the spirit’s wrath wasn’t about to subside. Thorn held Steel up. “How much time do we have?”
That depends how large of a hole it needs to make in the door in order to squeeze through, Steel told her. Perhaps ten minutes before there’s a breach.
There was a ragged gasp from behind her. Drix’s eyes were open, and she knelt down next to him. It was a ghastly sight. The storm had struck from every side, and his flesh was studded with shards of bloody glass. Something else caught her eye-a pale glow coming from beneath his shirt, by his left breast. A faint radiance pulsed with a steady beat.
It was the crystal heart, keeping him alive.
“Can you hear me?” she said.
He nodded slowly and pushed himself up with one hand. He opened his mouth, and the ragged gasp came out again. Reaching up, he closed his fingers around a shard buried in the side of the neck, pulling out a piece of glass the size of a knife blade. As soon as the glass was free, the wound sealed up. He opened his mouth and closed it again, running his hand along his neck.
“The circle,” he said. “Help me reach it.”
Thorn helped Drix stand and supported him as they made their way across the chamber. The circle, a ring of mystical symbols nearly fifteen feet across, filled the center of the room. They’d been carved into the wooden surface of the floor then filled with some sort of metal that gleamed like quicksilver in the cold-fire light. Maps covered the walls of the chamber. Khorvaire was spread across three walls, with the familiar landmarks of Breland to the left, Cyre straight ahead, and the coastline of the eastern shore to the right. Sparkling points of cold fire gleamed on the map, and Thorn recognized many of them as the locations of the greatest cities of the land-Sharn, Passage, Fairhaven, Flamekeep, Korth. There were at least a hundred points of light spread across the map, and all too few in the Lhazaar Principalities, where they were supposed to be headed.
“There,” he said. There was a podium in the back corner of the room with a mosaic of polished dragonshards set into the top. One large Siberys shard was set into the center of the podium, and as soon as they were close enough, Drix reached out for it. He leaned against the column as he wrapped his hand around the crystal sphere and closed his eyes.
There was a chill in the air, and Thorn could feel a charge building, the pressure of a rising storm. Then the circle burst into life, cold flames licking across the quicksilver runes. The points on the map flickered, flaring up one at a time then fading again.
“Are those the other gates?” Thorn said.
“Yes,” Drix murmured. “This… is a conduit for the power of the dragonmark. The links… are here.”
“You don’t have the dragonmark,” Thorn said. The scraping of glass against the door was growing louder, and her thoughts raced as she tried to come up with another idea to keep them alive. There was no furniture whatsoever in the room, nothing that she could use to reinforce the door.
“No. But I have power. It’s like… a lock pick. You need to feel the shape of the lock, to let the energy flow into the pattern it’s searching for.”
“We don’t have much time, Drix. Can you do this?”
The glow from Drix’s crystal heart was brighter, the pulse speeding up. “It’s not right. It’s not… what I expected.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can feel them. I can feel the circles. The map. And something else. Another layer. Hidden.”
“That’s fascinating,” she said. “And perhaps you’ll have a chance to investigate it when we don’t have an angry spirit carving its way through the door. Can you get us to Tantamar?”
“Closer,” he said. His eyes were closed and sweat ran down his face, mixed with blood from his wounds. “Closer. I can feel it. Pull away the shroud. Yes…”
“We don’t have time, Drix!” Thorn shouted. “Get this thing working and-”
She broke off as new sparks spread across the walls. They were darker, points of crimson light. Some were clustered close around the original gates; there were two additional gates in Wroat, and Sharn was a burning knot of lights. Others were off on their own, scattered in the wilds.
Secret gates? Thorn thought. House Orien has a network hidden from the public eye?
Any other time Thorn would have been desperate to study the map, to make a note of every location. But the sound of glass scraping against wood was growing ever louder.
She held Steel in front of her. “Study these points. Remember what you can.” Her attention was focused on the east coast, the great expanse of the Whitepine Forest. “There! Drix, you’re right. South of Tantamar, near Mutiny Harbor. Can you isolate that gate?”
“Trying,” Drix said through clenched teeth. The sparks flared up, one at a time, coming ever closer to the gate they needed. Even as the focal point drifted east, there was a splintering sound and a few fragments of wood fell to the floor.
“Flame!” Thorn swore. “If you can’t isolate it, then get us to Tantamar.”
“One more moment…”
“We don’t have another moment! Get us as close as you can, but do it now!”
Another chunk of wood struck the floor. A shard of glass fell through and shattered against the ground. As Thorn’s spirits fell, Drix cried out. The crystal heart pulsed with a brilliant radiance, a beacon of light even beneath Drix’s torn clothes. The glittering flames shrouding the teleportation ring rose up toward the ceiling, a curtain of cold fire. Drix staggered away from the podium, and Thorn caught him before he fell.
“Now,” he cried. “It won’t last long.”
Lifting him up in her arms, Thorn dived into the light. She heard the door shattering, the storm flowing into the room. Then it all fell away. For a moment she was tumbling through space, vertigo surrounding her, then gravity and reality seized her and forced her back to the world. Her mind reeled, senses rebelling at the sudden change in her surroundings. The disorientation passed in a moment, as her new surroundings became clear. There were maps on the walls around them, a gleaming circle carved into the floor. But walls and floor were stone instead of wood, brilliant white marble that seemed to harness the light from the cold-fire lanterns. The chamber was smaller. And there was a woman standing right in front of them… with a wand leveled at Thorn’s head.
“You’ve got exactly five words to save your life,” she said.