by Ed Greenwood
“Yes sir,” one handsome youth replied rather sullenly, amid the general tumult of scraping chairs, billowing cloaks, and hurrying bodies. Muttering, Tabarast turned to the hearth, to rake the coals out into a glittering bed and put another log on the fire. Beldrune glanced up at the smoke hanging and curling under the rafters—when things warmed up, that chimney would profit from a spell or two to blast it clean and hollow it out a trifle wider—then clasped his hands behind him and watched the class leave, just to make sure no demonstration daggers or spell notes accidentally fell into the sleeves, scrips, boots, or shirt fronts of students’ clothing. As usual, Maglast was one of the last to depart. Beldrune met his gaze with a firm and knowing smile that sent the flushing youth hastily doorward, and only then became aware that a man who’d sat quietly in the back of the class with the air of someone whose thoughts are elsewhere—despite the gold piece he’d paid to be sitting there—was coming slowly forward. A first timer; perhaps he had some questions.
Beldrune asked politely, “Yes? And how may we help you, sir?”
The man had unkempt pale brown hair and washed-out brown eyes in a pleasantly forgettable face. His clothing was that of a down-at-heels merchant; dirty tunic and bulging-pocketed overtunic over patched and well-worn breeches and good but worn boots.
“I must find a man,” he said in a very quiet voice, stepping calmly past Beldrune to where Tabarast was bending over the hearth, “and I’m willing to pay handsomely to be guided to him.”
Beldrune stared at the man’s back for a moment. “I think you misunderstand our talents, sir. We’re not …” His voice trailed off as he saw what was being drawn in the hearth ashes.
The nondescript man had plucked up a kindling stick from beside the fire and was drawing a harp between the horns of a crescent moon, surrounded by four stars.
The man turned his head to make sure that both of the elderly mages had seen his design, then hastily raked ashes across it until his design was obliterated.
Beldrune and Tabarast exchanged looks, eyebrows raised and excitement tugging at the corners of their jaws. Tabarast leaned forward until his forehead almost touched Beldrune’s and murmured, “A Harper. Elminster had a hand in founding them, you know.”
“I do know, you dolt—I’m the one keeps his ears open for news, remember?” Beldrune replied a trifle testily, and turned to the Harper. “So who do you want us to find for you, anyway?”
“A wizard by the name of Elminster. Yes, our founder; that Elminster.”
The pupils, had any returned to spy on the hearth with the same attention they’d paid to the windows, would at that moment have witnessed their two elderly, severe tutors squealing like excited children, hopping and shuffling in front of the fire as they clapped their hands in eagerness, then gabbling acceptances without any reference to fees or payments to the down-at-heels merchant, who was calmly returning the stick to where he’d found it in the center of the happy tumult.
Beldrune and Tabarast ran right into each other in their first eager rushes toward cupboards, laughed and clawed each other out of the way with equal enthusiasm, then rushed around snatching up whatever they thought might come in remotely useful on an Elminster hunt.
The worn-looking Harper leaned back against the wall with a smile growing on his face as the heap of “essentials” rapidly grew toward the rafters.
“What befell, Bresmer?” The High Duke’s voice didn’t hold much hope or eagerness; he wasn’t expecting good news.
His seneschal gave him none. “Gone, sir, as near as we can tell. One dead horse, seen floating by fishermen. They took Ghaerlin out to see it; he was a horse tamer before he took service with you, lord. He said its eyes were staring and its hooves and legs all bloodied; he thinks it galloped right down the cliff, riderless, fleeing in fear. The boat guard report that the Banner didn’t light the signal beacon or raise their pennant … I think they’re all dead, lord.”
Horostos nodded, hardly seeing the wineglass he was rolling between his fingers. “Have we found anyone else willing to take us on? Any word from Marskyn?”
Bresmer shook his head. “He thinks everyone in Westgate has heard all about the slayings—and so does Eltravar in Reth.”
“Raise what we’re offering,” the High Duke said slowly. “Double the blood price.”
“I’ve already done that, lord,” the seneschal murmured. “Eltravar did that on his own, and I thought it prudent to confirm his offers with your ducal seal. Marskyn has being using the new offer for a tenday now … it’s the doubled fee all of these mercenaries are refusing.”
The High Duke grunted. “Well, we’re seeing the measure of their spirit, at least, to know who not to hire when we’ve need in future.”
“Or their prudence, lord,” Bresmer said carefully. “Or their prudence.”
Horostos looked up sharply, met his seneschal’s eyes, then let his gaze fall again without saying anything. He brought his wineglass down to the table so hard it shattered into shards between his fingers, and snapped, “Well, we’ve got to do something! We don’t even know what it is, and it’ll be having whole villages next! I—”
“It already has, lord,” Bresmer murmured. “Ayken’s Stump, sometime last tenday.”
“The woodcutters?” Horostos threw back his head and sighed at the ceiling. “I won’t have a land to rule if this goes on much longer,” he told it sadly. “The Slayer will be gnawing at the gates of this castle, with nothing left outside but the bones of the dead.”
The ceiling, fully as wise as its long years, deigned not to answer.
Horostos brought his gaze back down to meet the eyes of his expressionless, carefully quiet seneschal, and asked, “Is there any hope? Anyone we can call on, before you and I up shields and ride out those gates together?”
“I did have a visit from one outlander, lord,” Bresmer told the richly braided rug at his feet. “He said to tell you that the Harpers had taken an interest in this matter, lord, and they would report to you before the end of the season—if you could be found. I took that as a hint to tarry here until at least then, lord.”
“Gods blast it, Bresmer! Sit like a babe trembling in a corner while my people look to me and say, ‘There goes a coward, not a ruler’? Sit doing nothing while these mysterious wandering harpists murmur to me what’s befalling in my land, and to stay out of it? Sit watching money flow out of the vault and men die still clutching it, while crops rot in the fields with no farmers left alive to tend them, or harvest them so we won’t starve come winter? What would you have me do?”
“It’s not my place to demand anything of you, lord,” the seneschal said quietly. “You weep for your people and your land, and that is more than most rulers ever think to do. If you choose to ride out against the Slayer come morning, I’ll ride with you … but I hope you’ll give shelter to those who want to flee the forest, lord, and bide here, until a Harper comes riding in our gates to at least tell us what is destroying our land before we go up against it.”
The High Duke stared at the shards of the wineglass in his lap and the blood running down his fingers, and sighed. “My thanks, Bresmer, for speaking sense to me. I’ll tarry and be called a coward … and pray to Malar to call off this Slayer and spare my people.” He rose, brushing glass aside impatiently, and acquired the ghost of a grin as he asked, “Any more advice, seneschal?”
“Aye, one thing more,” Bresmer murmured. “Be careful where you do your hunting, lord.”
A chill, chiming mist dived between two curving, moss-covered phandars, and slid snakelike through a rent in a crumbling wall. It made of itself a brief whirlwind in the chamber beyond, and became the shifting, semisolid outline of a woman once more.
She glanced around the ruined chamber, sighed, and threw herself down on the shabby lounge to think, tugging at hair that was little more than smoke as she reclined on one elbow and considered future victories.
“He must not see me,” she mused aloud, “until he comes here a
nd finds the runes himself. I must seem … linked to them, an attractive captive he must free, and solve some mystery about; not just how I came to be here, but who I am.”
A slow smile grew across her face.
“Yes. Yes, I like that.”
She whirled around and up into the air in a blurred whirlwind, to float gently down and stand facing the full-length, peeling mirror. Tall enough, yes … She turned this way and that, subtly altering her appearance to look more exotic and attractive—waist in, hips out, a little tilt to the nose, eyes larger …
“Yes,” she told the glass at last, satisfaction in her voice. “A little better than Saeraede Lyonora was in life … and yet—no less deadly.”
She drifted toward one of the row of wardrobes, made long, slender legs solid enough to walk; it had been a long time since she’d strutted across a dance floor, to say nothing of flouncing or mincing.
The wardrobe squealed as it opened, a damp door dropping away from the frame. Saeraede frowned and went to the next wardrobe where she’d put garments seized recently from wagons—and victims—on the road … when there had still been wagons.
Her smile became catlike at that thought, as she made her hands just solid enough to hold cloth, wincing at the empty feeling it caused within her. To become solid drained her so much.
As swiftly as she dared, she raked through the gowns, selecting three that most caught her eye, and draped them over the lounge. Rising up through the first, she became momentarily solid all over—and gasped at the cold emptiness that coiled within her. “Mustn’t do this … for long,” she gasped aloud, her breath hissing out to cloud the mirror. “Dare not use … too much, but these must fit.…”
The blue ruffles of the first gown were flattened and wrinkled from their visit to the wardrobe; the black one, with its daring slits all over, looked better but would tear and fall apart most easily. The last gown was red, and far more modest, but she liked the quality it shouted, with the gem-highlighted crawling dragons on its hips.
Her strength was failing fast. Gods, she needed to drain lives soon, or … With almost feverish speed she shifted her shape to fill out the three gowns most attractively, fixed their varying requirements in her mind, and thankfully collapsed into a whirlwind again, dumping the red gown to the ground in a puddle.
As mist she drifted over it, solidifying just her fingertips to carry it back to the wardrobe and hang it carefully away.
As she returned for the other two garments, an observer would have noticed that her twinkling lights had grown dim, and her mist was tattered and smaller than it had been.
By the time the wardrobe door closed behind the last gown, Saeraede had noticed that she was a little dimmer now. She sighed but couldn’t resist coalescing back to womanly form for one last, critical look at herself in the mirror.
“You’ll have to do, I suppose … and another thing, Saeraede,” she chided herself. “Stop talking to yourself. You’re lonely, yes, but not completely melt-witted.”
“Try over there,” a hoarse male voice said then, in what was probably intended to be a whisper. It was coming from the forest beyond the ruin, through one of the gaps in the walls. “I’m sure I saw a woman yonder, in a red gown.…”
The ghostly woman froze, head held high, then smiled wolfishly and collapsed into winking lights and mist once more.
“How thoughtful,” she murmured to the mirror, her voice faint and yet echoing. “Just when I need them most.”
Her laughter arose, as a merry tinkling. “I never thought I’d be around to see it, but adventurers are becoming almost … predictable.”
She plunged out through a hole in the wall like a hungry eel. Seconds later, a hoarse scream rang out. It was still echoing back off the crumbling walls when there was another.
Fifteen
A DARK FLAME RISING
And a dark flame shall rise, and scatter all before it, igniting red war, wild magic, and slaughter. Just another quiet interlude before the fresh perils of next month …
Caldrahan Mhelymbryn, Sage of Matters Holy
from A Tashlutan Traveler’s Day-Thoughts
published in The Year of Moonfall
Dread Brother Darlakhan.
It had a ring to it. It would go well with the branding and the whip scars that crisscrossed his forearms. He’d worked hard with a paste of blood and urine and black temple face paint to turn those scars into dark, permanent, raised ridges. His eagerness to take branding in the temple rituals had not gone unnoticed.
The wind off the Shaar was hot and dry this night, and he’d been looking forward to a quiet evening of prostrate prayer on the cold stone of the cellar floor—but the adeptress he’d paid to flog him first had come to him with a harshly whispered mission instead: by Dread Sister Klalaera’s command, he was to immediately bear this platter of food and wine to the innermost chambers of the House of Holy Night.
“I’m excited for you, Dread Brother,” she’d whispered in his ear, before she’d given him the customary slap across the face. Kneeling, he’d clawed at her ankles with even more than the usual enthusiasm, his heart pounding with his own excitement.
He’d thought the cruel Overmistress of the Acolytes had been eyeing him rather closely for the last tenday or so; was this his chance at last?
When he was alone, he hastened to fix the mantle of shards around him, tucking it up firmly between his thighs so as to make it draw blood before his first step, instead of walking with infinite care to avoid its wounds, as most did. Then he took up the platter, held it high, and made a silent prayer to the all-seeing goddess.
Oh, holy Shar, forgive my presumption, but I would serve you as the dark night wind, the barbed black blade, your scourge and trusted hand, not merely as a temple puppet at Klalaera’s whims.
“Shar,” he breathed aloud, in case anyone was spying from behind panels and thought he’d been quailing or daydreaming instead of praying. He raised and lowered the platter in salute and set off briskly through the dimly torchlit halls of the temple. The smooth, black marble was cold under his bare feet, and his limbs tingled where threads of blood trickled down.
He walked straight and tall, never looking back at the naked novices crawling along in his wake, licking up his blood where it fell, and gave no sign he’d heard grunts and sobs and muffled screams behind the doors he passed, as the ambitious clergy of the House made their own pain sacrifices to Holy Shar.
He heard the rumble of the lone drum long before he reached the Inner Portal, and his excitement grew to an almost unbearable singing within him. A High Ritual, unannounced and unexpected, and he was to be part of it.
Dread Brother Darlakhan. Oh, yes. A measure of power at last. He was on his way to greatness.
Darlakhan rounded the last pillar and strode to the archway where the two priestesses crossed their razor-sharp black blades before him, then drew them back across his chest with the most delicate of strokes as he held the platter high out of the way. They turned toward him this night, and Darlakhan stopped, trembling, to receive their ultimate accolade: they let him watch as they shook his blood from the points of their swords into cupped palms, and brought it to their mouths.
He whispered, “As Shar wills,” to them, making of his tone a thanks, then strode on down the last passage to the Inner Portal, the drumbeat growing louder before him.
He was surprised to find the Portal itself unguarded. A black curtain adorned with the Dark Disk hung in the customarily empty Portal Arch. Darlakhan slowed for a moment, wondering what to do, then decided he must follow the procedure all acolytes were trained in, as if nothing was occurring out of the ordinary.
He paused at the Portal, swept his elbows out to make the shards slash at him one last time—and to keep them out of the way as he knelt—and went to his knees, extending the platter at the full stretch of his arms and touching his forehead to the cold marble of the threshold.
Swift hands snatched the platter away, and others beheaded him with a
single keen stroke.
A long, sleek arm snatched up the blood-gargling head by its hair. An oiled body stretched and thrust Darlakhan’s head into a brazier, ignoring the flames that raced back down oiled flesh. “The last,” that someone murmured, pain making the voice tight.
“Then know peace, Dread Sister,” someone else said, touching her with the black Quenching Rod that drank all fire. The drum rolled one last time and fell silent, a long-nailed hand made a gesture, and black flames roared up out of a dozen braziers with a collective crackle and snarl.
Each brazier in the circle held a blackening, severed head. Each tongue of dark flame rose up in a twisting, flowing column to feed a dark sphere overhead.
The Sacred Chamber of Shar, the most holy room in the House of Holy Night, was crowded indeed. All of the cruel and powerful upper priestesses of Shar were gathered here in their black and purple, beneath the sphere of roiling shadows. All of them streamed blood from open wounds, all of their eyes were bright with excitement, and all of their attention was now fixed on the sphere that loomed so large above their heads, as tall as six men.
Something swam into view briefly, within the sphere: a human arm, slender and feminine, white skinned and clawing vainly at nothing. Then an elbow was seen, and suddenly, the head and shoulders of a feebly struggling human female swam into view. All that could be seen of her was bare, and she was thrashing about in the fire, seemingly blind. Despair was written large across her face, the eyes dark, staring pools, the mouth open in an endless, soundless scream.
There was a murmur of puzzlement and surprise from among the gathered priestesses—and the tallest among them, resplendent in her horned black headdress and her mantle of deepest purple, stepped forward and brought the long lash in her hand down with brutal force across the bare back of a man kneeling under the sphere. Sweat flew in all directions; he was drenched and gleaming.