by Lisa Smedman
Q’arlynd pointed at a spot across the room from Eldrinn. “Stand over there, Baltak,” he said. “You’re blocking my view of the chitine.”
“Whatever you say, Q’arlynd,” Baltak answered with a half-chuckle. He snapped his fingers in front of Zarifar’s nose, startling the geometer mage. “Come on, Zarifar. You heard him. Move!”
As the pair took their places, Eldrinn set his spellbook on the table beside him and rose from his seat. He closed the door and sealed it with a sprinkle of gold dust and a spoken word. The experimentation chamber had been magically screened to prevent scrying. Even so, Q’arlynd had taken additional precautions.
He gestured for Eldrinn to bring him the wooden box that lay on the table. With its crude decorations and sloppy construction, it looked like something an orc might have banged together. Yet only the correct combination of touches to its sides would open it. Inside it was the kiira, nested in a lining of ensorcelled chameleon skin. Any wizard scrying the box would perceive its contents to be a commonplace magical item that only the most unschooled novice would covet. Certainly unworthy of opening.
At Q’arlynd’s touch, the puzzle box sprang open, revealing the kiira. He hid his smile at Eldrinn’s slight intake of breath. The boy was always awed by the sight of the magical crystal, no matter how many times he saw it. Zarifar seemed oblivious to the magical treasure, but Baltak moved closer to stare down at the lorestone as if it were a delicious morsel waiting to be devoured. Piri kept his distance, eyeing the kiira with equal parts curiosity and caution.
Baltak reached for the kiira. Q’arlynd jerked the box aside. “Eldrinn will do it, this time.”
Baltak’s feathers lifted slightly from his scalp, but he otherwise hid his irritation well. “As you say,” he rumbled.
Carefully, Eldrinn lifted the kiira from the box. Q’arlynd had never allowed him to touch the lorestone before; he’d been worried that it might trigger memories. But given their imminent departure, that was a risk Q’arlynd was willing to take. If the boy did remember something, it might even prove helpful.
He watched Eldrinn closely, but the boy’s expression didn’t change.
“Press it to the chitine’s forehead,” Q’arlynd instructed. “But not until my signal. I want to make certain I’m deep inside its mind before we begin.”
Eldrinn nodded. He walked to the chitine and stood, the lorestone carefully cupped in his hands.
Q’arlynd raised his hand. “Link your minds with mine.”
One by one, the other wizards activated their rings. Faerie fire sparked from their foreheads, the varied hues blending as they drifted through the room. Q’arlynd felt Baltak shoulder into his mind like a bear. A heartbeat later, Eldrinn stepped in. Piri lightly touched Q’arlynd’s mind with his own, hesitated, then slid in partway. Zarifar drifted in last. His mind traced an imaginary pattern between the bodies of the five wizards, a complex spiral of overlapping ovals.
Q’arlynd closed his eyes and thrust his awareness deep into the chitine’s mind. For several moments, the creature’s rage held him at bay. Then he pushed past it. Viewed through its multifaceted eyes, Q’arlynd and the other wizards appeared as looming giants—a multitude of them.
Q’arlynd flicked his raised hand: the word now in silent speech.
Through the chitine’s eyes, he saw Eldrinn reach forward. He saw—and felt—the kiira briefly touch the chitine’s forehead, but then the lorestone fell away. Q’arlynd’s eyes opened just in time for him to see the precious crystal clatter to the floor. Eldrinn scrambled to recover it, a horrified expression on his face. Q’arlynd felt Piri tense and heard Baltak’s derisive snort and his mental sneer—fumblehands—overlaid by the chitine’s cackle of wild laughter.
Q’arlynd choked the laughter off by mentally slamming the creature’s jaw shut. That, at least, he could control.
Eldrinn rose, the kiira in his hands. “It’s not broken,” he said in a relieved voice. He glanced at the chitine. “It’s the greasy skin. The kiira wouldn’t stick to the chitine’s …” Suddenly, his eyes grew as distant as Zarifar’s. “Grease,” he said slowly. “On its head.” One hand drifted up to touch his own forehead.
Q’arlynd broke his mental connection with the other wizards. He knew that look: Eldrinn was struggling to remember the events that had transpired on the High Moor. Q’arlynd let a hand drift behind his back, where the preliminary motions of his spell wouldn’t be seen by the others.
“What is it, Eldrinn?” he asked softly.
An intense frown creased Eldrinn’s forehead. “It’s … I feel as if …” Then he gave a frustrated grimace. “I can’t remember.”
Q’arlynd watched him a moment more, decided the boy wasn’t lying, and let his spell dissipate. He plucked the kiira from Eldrinn’s hand and gestured at the chair in the corner. “Sit down, Eldrinn,” he suggested. “You don’t look well.”
Eldrinn nodded. He sat down, picked up his spellbook, and began leafing through it, as if hoping to find the answer there.
Baltak frowned at Q’arlynd. “What just happened?”
“The feeblemind spell,” Q’arlynd explained smoothly. He was embarrassing Eldrinn, but it couldn’t be helped. The others needed an explanation. “Eldrinn sometimes has … relapses. I was worried it might impair our concentration, but he’s over it, now. We’ll start again.”
Baltak glared at Eldrinn, who was refusing to look up from his spellbook. “Maybe Eldrinn shouldn’t be—”
Q’arlynd pressed the kiira into Baltak’s hands. “Your hands are steadier. You do it.”
Baltak grinned. He strode over to the chitine, pulled a cloth from his pocket, and used it to wipe away the oily film that covered the creature’s forehead. “Problem solved,” he said, tossing the cloth aside. He held up the kiira. “Let’s do it.”
“On my signal,” Q’arlynd reminded them, lifting his hand. He waited while the others linked minds with him, and forced his way into the chitine’s thoughts once more. At his signal, Baltak pressed the crystal to the creature’s forehead—hard enough to hurt it—and stepped back.
A rush of images tumbled into Q’arlynd’s mind, and through it, into the minds of the four wizards linked with him. The towers of a surface city. A brown-skinned face. A portion of a complex hand gesture. A stone door. A series of pages that flew through the chitine’s mind as if they were blown by a howling storm, faster and fasterandfasterand …
Intense pain flared in Q’arlynd’s temples as he was forcibly ejected from the chitine’s mind. In the same instant he heard the clatter of chains. The chitine hung from its manacles, dead. A thin gray powder trickled out of its nostrils and drifted to the floor: the contents of its skull, instantly seared to ash.
Baltak shook his head. “Mother’s blood. That hurt”
Eldrinn blinked rapidly, spellbook forgotten in his lap. Zarifar shivered. Piri pressed his back tightly to the wall and whispered a protective spell.
Q’arlynd’s jaw clenched in frustration. The chitine was dead—just like the last test subject. He strode over to it and yanked the slave ring from its limp finger.
“Well?” he asked the others. “Did any of you manage to read those pages?”
Eldrinn and Piri shook their heads.
Baltak shrugged. “They went by too fast for me.”
Zarifar fluttered his hands as if trying to recapture the pattern he’d seen. “Like … cave moths. Left … right …”
Eldrinn repeated the gesture they’d just seen, crossing the middle two fingers of his right hand and whipping his extended thumb in a tight circle. Q’arlynd watched expectantly. The boy had read a number of arcane texts, perhaps he recognized the spell it belonged to.
“Well?”
Eldrinn’s hand fell. “Sorry. I’ve no idea what it means.”
Q’arlynd gave a tight, frustrated nod.
“Those towers … were they in Talthalaran?” Baltak asked.
“They might have been,” Q’arlynd said. “But that’s
not going to help us much. The city was blasted down to its foundations.”
“Maybe we should search the ruins,” Baltak said. “Perhaps there’s another kiira in—”
“There isn’t,” Q’arlynd snapped. “But you’re welcome to go look for yourself, if you like.”
That shut Baltak up.
“That door,” Zarifar said. “There were …” His voice trailed off. As usual, he didn’t complete his thought. His forefinger traced a line through the air. “Patterns.”
Q’arlynd sighed in frustration. This wasn’t getting them anywhere.
“The door …” Eldrinn said softly. “I …”
Q’arlynd turned. The distant look was back in Eldrinn’s eyes again. “Did you recognize it, Eldrinn? Have you seen it before?”
Eldrinn’s eyes cleared. He jumped out of his chair and paced across the room. “I wish I knew!” As he passed the chitine, he halted and wrinkled his nose. “What’s that smell?”
“Death,” Q’arlynd answered. The chitine had voided its bowels when it died, and the room stank. He felt sorry for the creature, vicious little brute though it was. He reminded himself of the necessity of its sacrifice. At least the death he’d given it had been swift—quicker than it would have suffered at the hands of hunters or one of Lolth’s priestesses.
“What’s next?” Baltak asked. “Buy another slave and try again?”
Q’arlynd shook his head. “That will have to wait. Eldrinn and I will be departing soon. We’ll be away for … a while.”
Eldrinn nodded. “Father’s orders. A trade mission to Sschindylryn, on behalf of the college.”
Baltak nodded at the kiira. “But that’s staying here, right? The rest of us can carry on, while you’re gone.”
“No,” Q’arlynd replied. “In the College of Ancient Arcana, we work together. Or not at all.”
Baltak shrugged but his eyes clung greedily to the kiira. “Fine. We wait until you get back.”
Q’arlynd felt frustration build inside him. We can’t wait! he wanted to shout. By then it might be too late! Yet he could hardly tell the others that. Only Eldrinn knew the extent of the looming crisis. He and Q’arlynd had been careful to keep it from the others, even when they were linked mind to mind. The boy wasn’t stupid; if word got out that the College of Divination was teetering on the brink, someone just might be willing to give it an extra nudge.
Eldrinn stared at the dead chitine. “We’re wasting our time with these lesser races. We need to try it on a drow instead.”
“Good idea!” Baltak cried. “What about a battle-captive—someone no one really cares about?”
“What about the body?” Piri whispered from the back of the room. He pointed at Zarifar, who had wandered over to the chitine and was busy scuffing the toe of his boot through the ash at the chitine’s feet, drawing in it. “Anyone who sees the corpse is going to wonder which spell burned its brains out so precisely.”
“We’ll disintegrate the body,” Baltak said. “Or use quicklime.”
“You’re overlooking something,” Q’arlynd said. “If the experiment succeeded, the battle-captive would learn the contents of the kiira at the same time we did—including, perhaps, a spell that might allow him to escape.” He stared at the others. “We don’t want to share our lorestone with anyone else just yet, do we?”
“I suppose you’re right,” Baltak grudgingly admitted.
“You completely missed my point,” Eldrinn said.
Q’arlynd turned to him.
“I wasn’t talking about battle-captives—I was talking about me. I could wear the kiira.”
Q’arlynd’s response was immediate. “No.”
“It won’t kill me. I know it. I have a … feeling about it. It’s almost like …” Eldrinn stared at the lorestone. “A divination, or … something.”
“Feeling or not,” Q’arlynd said, “my answer is still no. It’s too risky.”
Eldrinn stood, fists on hips. “Why won’t you let me try it, Q’arlynd? Are you worried that Father will find out?”
Q’arlynd nearly laughed. Eldrinn had, unwittingly, put his finger precisely on the problem. Q’arlynd already knew the lorestone wouldn’t kill the boy. He had a pretty clear picture of what must have happened, that night on the High Moor. Eldrinn had run off when the monster had attacked the soldier he’d taken along as a bodyguard. Knowing that his own spells were too limited to deal with the monster, Eldrinn must have turned in desperation to the kiira and been unable to handle it. For some reason the lorestone hadn’t blasted his brain to ash—Q’arlynd was still trying to figure that part out—but it had left the boy a feeblewit.
If Eldrinn tried the kiira a second time and was once again reduced to a drooling shell, Q’arlynd would be forced to explain how it had happened. Master Seldszar wasn’t stupid; he’d guess that something other than the “magical predators” of the High Moor had scrambled the boy’s mind, the first time around. He’d leave no mind unsifted until he found out what had really happened. The moment he learned of the kiira he’d claim it for his college, justifying its seizure as compensation for the coin it had cost him to cure the boy. Not once, but twice. And the foundation stone upon which Q’arlynd hoped to build his school would be gone.
“Well,” Eldrinn prompted. “Is it Father you’re worried about?”
Q’arlynd sighed. “Father” was a term he’d never get used to. It was a word borrowed from the surface elves; the drow of Ched Nasad never had a use for it. Descent was, and always had been, through the female line. The idea of a consort claiming children as his own was ludicrous.
“My answer is still no,” Q’arlynd said. He pointed at the dead chitine. “I won’t let you be reduced to that.”
“I won’t be,” Eldrinn protested. “I’ve got an idea. A foolproof idea.” Grinning, he pulled the silver clip from his hair and held it up for the others to see. “This is a contingency clip,” he told them.
“What’s that?” Baltak asked.
Eldrinn smiled. “Something our college’s crafters created. It holds whatever spell is cast into it until a condition of the caster’s choosing comes to pass, then releases it. The spell has to be one that affects the caster directly, and it can only be a lesser dweomer, but the spell I have in mind is perfect. I got the idea from the chitine.”
“Go on,” Q’arlynd said, intrigued despite himself.
“I’ll cast a tightly targeted spell into the clip and make the actions of the kiira the contingency. The instant the lorestone tries to kill me, grease will appear on my forehead. The crystal won’t be able to stick. It will slide off—just like it did from the chitine.”
Q’arlynd nodded to himself. So that was what had happened. Now he understood the greasy smudge he’d seen on Eldrinn’s forehead when he’d found the boy on the High Moor. It explained why Eldrinn had survived his first attempt to use the lorestone. A bit sad, really, that the boy could never be told this.
He realized that Eldrinn was still waiting for his reply. “Using the contingency clip is a clever idea …”
Eldrinn grinned.
“… but I won’t allow you to risk yourself.”
The grin disappeared. “It will work,” Eldrinn said fervently. “I know it.”
Q’arlynd stared down at the kiira. “I’m sure it will.”
Zarifar was still playing with the ash, but Baltak and Piri watched Q’arlynd intently.
“It’s Eldrinn’s life,” Baltak rumbled. “If he wants to—”
“No,” Q’arlynd said. The words slipped out of his mouth before he could stop them. “I’ll do it.”
Eldrinn’s mouth opened in surprise.
“Your contingency clip,” Q’arlynd asked him. “It’s something any wizard can use, right?”
Eldrinn was about to lie—Q’arlynd could see it in his eye—but then reluctantly nodded. “As long as you’re wearing it, yes.”
“Even if it’s you who casts the spell into the clip?”
Anoth
er grudging nod.
“Good,” Q’arlynd said. “Do it, but make the contingency that will trigger the spell a little broader. Instead of something that will ‘kill’ me, word it so that anything that might ‘damage’ me will trigger the spell. Is that clear?”
Eldrinn nodded.
In another moment, all was ready. The contingency clip had been ensorcelled and clipped to Q’arlynd’s hair. The kiira was in his hands. All that remained was to press it to his forehead.
Q’arlynd hesitated. Did he dare?
Of course he did. He must. It would be just like free-falling from a ledge. Whatever happened, the contingency clip would pull him up in time. Already his blood pounded in anticipation of the mental jump.
He motioned Eldrinn and the others away from the chair, then sat down. Slowly, he lifted the kiira to eye level. All of the others stared at him, even Zarifar. “Link with me,” he told them.
They did.
Q’arlynd paused to give a mental nod to the others. Baltak stood braced and steady on his wide feet, Zarifar closed his eyes and once again imagined a pattern drawn between them. Piri hovered near the door, seemingly ready to bolt through it. Eldrinn nodded vigorously, as if to assure Q’arlynd that it was, really, all right.
Wherever the kiira took Q’arlynd, they were ready to come along.
“Wish me luck.” Q’arlynd pressed the kiira to his forehead.
Eldrinn’s eyes sparkled. “Good—”
Q’arlynd shivered. Cold. He felt cold. His legs trembled.
He put out a hand to steady himself and touched stone. He glanced up and saw that he was standing in front of a massive stone door. The carvings on it looked familiar, but he couldn’t quite figure out why. He knew he’d seen the door somewhere before, but …
Where in the Abyss was he?
Below ground, somewhere in the Underdark. Somewhere he didn’t recognize at all. A corridor stretched away behind him, its walls illuminated with the faintest shimmer of Faerzress, and dead-ended at the door. There was a musty smell in the air, and dust on the floor. And footprints—a lot of footprints. And tools. Picks, pry bars, and—Q’arlynd jumped back in alarm when he saw it—a stonefire bomb, like the ones that had laid waste to Ched Nasad. The bomb was spent, though, its magical fire long since spilled. There was a deep, charred hole in the stone just to the right of the door. Q’arlynd peered into it and saw that the door was thicker than the hole the stonefire had burned.