Vishna's eyes widened. "You did not know this?"
"Andris didn't tell me-at least, not in so many words." Finally Matteo understood what Andris meant when he warned that he seemed destined to betray those around him. For months, he had been laboring under the heavy weight of his perceived fate.
Matteo stared at the wizard as if into a dark mirror, but he felt no kinship with the man he had once loved. Vishna's blood might be his. Vishna's choices were not.
"There is enormous peace in confessing this story and in acknowledging, if just between the two of us, that you are my son. A sad chapter is closed, and we can begin anew."
The selfishness of that statement floored Matteo nearly as thoroughly as the man's admitted cowardice. He stepped back, avoiding the wizard's offered embrace.
"Once we spoke of the Cabal," he said. "You denied that it existed."
A turmoil of indecision filled Vishna's eyes. "Perhaps the descendants of three old friends can set things aright. Perhaps I can yet leave a legacy of honor. I will tell you what I know."
Suddenly he began to change. The years flooded back, and the robust middle-aged warrior was once again the aging wizard Matteo had long known. But the process did not stop. More years sped by, and the spare flesh on the old wizard's bones withered. His eyes turned to fevered black pools in a face gone papery thin and gray as death. Before Matteo could move, Vishna fell to the ground, his frail body contorting in the final throes of a death long cheated.
"A lichnee," Matteo breathed, recognizing the grading transformation of living man to undead wizard. "Goddess avert, you are becoming a lich!"
"No!"
The single word rattled out in a whisper, but it held a world of horror. This clearly was not Vishna's intent! Somehow, his fate was being imposed-a sentence of living death in payment for a final act of courage. According to everything Matteo knew of magic, this should have been impossible.
He swept the dying man up in his arms and ran toward the college, shouting for assistance. Curious students flowed from their dwellings, then shot off with typical jordaini obedience to fetch their masters.
The wizards who answered the summons could do no more than Matteo to stop the mysterious process. Finally, they shook their heads and stepped away, as they might to avoid a leper.
Vishna reached out a palsied hand toward Matteo's dagger.
The jordain hesitated, understanding what the wizard had in mind. Matteo had been taught that life was sacred, but better a quick death than the slipping away of the soul and the slow-creeping madness that overtook undead wizards. He pulled his dagger and curved his father's frail fingers around the hilt of the jordaini blade.
To Matteo's surprise, Vishna lifted the blade to his hair and sliced off a thin gray lock. This he handed to Matteo. He struggled to form words.
"Basel," he croaked. "Three. Legacy."
Matteo nodded reassuringly as he deciphered this message. Obviously Basel had contacted Vishna, his old sword-master and successor, to enlist his help in Matteo's search for an ancestor's talisman. Legacy was also clear enough, for Vishna had agreed that destroying the Cabal would be a means to atone for his mistakes. But three?
The jordain's eyes widened as he made the connection. Three wizards had formed the crimson star, and Vishna had suggested that three descendants were needed to undo this grim legacy. Akhlaur, Vishna, and Zalathorm. Andris, Matteo, and-
Goddess above! This had been a day for revelations, but none stunned Matteo more than the notion of "Princess Tzigone!"
Vishna made a feeble gesture with his free hand, indicating that he wanted Matteo to leave. Their eyes clung for a moment, and then Vishna laboriously moved the blade to his throat. His unspoken plea was clear: he did not want his son to see him die by his own hand.
With deep reluctance, Matteo rose to honor the old man's last wish. As he strode quickly away, he glanced down at the lock of hair clenched in his hand. It was no longer thin and gray, but a deep, lustrous chestnut.
Back at Akhlaur's tower, the necromancer and the elf watched as a pair of skeletal servants stirred a bubbling kettle. Unspeakably foul steam rose as the remains of several ghouls boiled down to sludge. A half dozen vials stood on a nearby table, ready to receive the finished potion. On the far side of the room, several of Akhlaur's water-fleshed servants struggled to control a chained wyvern. Three of them clung to the beast's thrashing tail, while a fourth darted about with a vial to catch drops of poison dripping from the barbed tip. From time to time, one of the undead servants was pierced by a wing rib or a flailing talon, and the fluids surrounding the old bones drained away like wine from a broken barrel. Still more undead servants busied themselves with mops, cleaning the stone floor of their comrades' remains.
Kiva observed all this with a calm face and well-hidden revulsion. The tower and the forest beyond were filled with the clatter of undead servants. Kelemvor, the human's Lord of the Dead, probably had livelier company than this!
Suddenly an aura of flickering, blue-green faerie fire surrounded Akhlaur. A speculative smile touched the necromancer's thin lips. He dug into his voluminous sleeve and produced a tiny, ebony box. The glowing aura grew brighter and more condensed as it focused upon the box, then began to shrink as if it were slipping inside the little cube.
"A spell cast long ago is finally bearing fruit," Akhlaur announced with great satisfaction. He began the rhythmic, atonal chant of a spell of summoning.
"He is creating a lich," Kiva murmured with a mixture of horror and relief. She had seen Akhlaur prepare this phylactery many years ago and feared he had prepared it for his own transformation!
She held her breath as she waited to see what unfortunate wizard would come to the necromancer's call. An ancient man, little more than skin-wrapped bone clad in too-large jordaini garments, began to take shape on the stone floor. With a start, Kiva recognized the ruins of the wizard who had freed her from this very tower some two centuries past-and who had done her bidding for nearly twenty years.
At last the soft radiance faded into the cube, and the elderly wizard lay in seeming death.
"Remember the last time Vishna entered this tower?" she warned. "He was a powerful wizard. He will be a formidable lich."
Akhlaur brushed aside her concerns. "When Vishna revives in his new form, he will be completely under my control," he declared. He smiled horribly. "Together, we will pay a call on our old friend Zalathorm."
The king sat quietly in a lofty tower chamber, watching his long-beloved wife with despairing eyes. He had lost Beatrix before, and so great was his joy in their reunion that he failed to question too closely the circumstances of her return. That haunted him now, though he was not certain what he might do differently, if given the chance to return to that point in time.
Beatrix sat with her hands folded in her white-satin lap, her vacant, painted eyes gazing at the window. Zalathorm wondered what she saw. Despite all his powers of divination, he had never been able to see beyond the veil that separated them. Magic he could not dispel clouded his queen's mind. The crimson star, the Cabal of whispered legend, protected itself and its creators with veils of secrecy or even madness.
It was the sort of "protection" Zalathorm would not wish upon his worst enemy. Not that he needed to-his worst enemy survived by the power of the same artifact that sustained Zalathorm's own life, his reign.
Perhaps because his thoughts lingered on the artifact, Zalathorm felt a surge of familiar power running through him like a sudden fever. Protective magic burned through his senses, as well as a desperate struggle for healing. There came the wrenching snap of a life bound to him, cut suddenly and brutally free.
"Vishna," he murmured, sensing his old friend's death. "How is this possible?"
Beatrix turned an incurious gaze upon him. The king stooped to kiss her pale cheek and hurried away. He quickly resumed his magical disguise and, as a brown-skinned youth, descended into the dungeon to consult the Cabal.
For a long time he stood silent before the crimson star, studying the glowing facets for an explanation of what had befallen his friend. Finally he dropped to one knee and quieted his sorrowing thoughts.
"The heart of Halruaa seeks counsel," he murmured. "Tell me, is Vishna among you?"
The only response was profound silence. He received no sense of his life-long friend from the crystal.
"So Vishna is truly dead," Zalathorm said quietly, wondering why he could not quite accept that truth. It seemed to him that something of the wizard lingered-perhaps nothing more than an echo of their collective magic, but something.
He turned back to the crystal, for another question demanded answers. Ambassadors from Mulhorand had yielded up the name of the wizard whose spells had shielded the recent invasion from view. Unfortunately, it seemed that nothing remained of Ameer Tukephremo but his name. The wizard had died in the invasion, his body lost, and his home and possessions destroyed by fire. Nothing remained that would aid Halruaan wizards in divination.
Zalathorm found that far too convenient for credulity.
Nevertheless, he projected a mental image of the man's face and a description of the cloaking spell that had shielded the invasion. If there was, as he expected, Halruaan magic mingled in that casting, the elven sages would detect it. After all, Halruaan magic descended from ancient Netheril, whose earliest mages were taught by elves. Despite the enhancements-some would say corruption and abominations-that Netherese wizards added to his magic, the roots of their tradition were decidedly elven.
His suspicions were quickly confirmed. The elven sages recognized the touch of Halruaan magic but could not identify the caster.
Zalathorm considered this puzzle as he made his way through the labyrinth to the exit and back to his palace. When divination would not serve, there were other ways to smoke out treachery.
Logic was foremost among them. Who was in a position to act, and who stood to gain? His thoughts drifted to Procopio Septus, who seemed exceptionally well versed in the magic of the eastern lands.
As the king neared his private rooms, he noted the small, white flag tucked into a bracket mounted near the door. Though a diviner of Zalathorm's power could easily sense the presence of most living beings, the jordaini's magic resistance made them difficult to perceive. It was custom and courtesy for a jordain to give notice of his presence.
Matteo was back already from the Nath. Zalathorm quickened his pace.