Plague of Spells as-1

by Bruce R Cordell

  But the phantom voice had a point.

  Unless he discovered the strength necessary… well, death would claim him. So why not try again? One more hard effort, he told himself. After that, he could rest, hopefully enough to lift the exhaustion that hung on his limbs and eyelids like ballast.

  He endured another fit of coughing that threatened to scrape his lungs right out of his chest.

  What was it the elders of Xiang Temple taught?

  "The usefulness of a cup is its emptiness," he whispered.

  Nothing could help him now but his own force of will. Anything was possible, or nothing.

  He prepared for a final effort.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Year of the Secret (1396 DR) Leaving New Sarshel, Impiltur

  Waves flashed past the prow. The water moved independently of the ship, giving the illusion the craft moved more swiftly than its true speed. The vessel was four days and four nights out of New Sarshel's port. The sky was cloudless, and stars in the millions studded the heavens, a plethora of riches hinting at distances and ages vast beyond comprehension.

  An elaborate figurehead hung on the pirate ship's stem, below the bowsprit. The figurehead was a half painted, half sculpted woman with shimmering green scales in place of clothing. She leered into the night, her eyes unnaturally brilliant. The figurehead gave the ship her name, the Green Siren.

  The Green Siren did not fly its true privateer colors; it still ran under the flag of Marhana Shipping.

  A tall man cloaked in what seemed darkness stood at the ship's prow, above and slightly behind the figurehead. The edges of his cloak flapped in the wind, echoing the movements of the much larger sail luffing and snapping above.

  The man withdrew a small, dull tin from his cloak. The tin contained death. A long, slow death, popularly conceptualized as a one-way trip down an imaginary road. A crimson road, red like the eyes of those who used what was inside the tin.

  The man's eyes were not red, but he was most certainly a traveler. He owed his lack of symptoms to his pact with the Lord of Bats.

  It had seemed like a good deal at the time, reflected Japheth.

  He carefully removed the tin's lid. Inside lay nestled his supply of traveler's dust: tiny roseate crystals, each slightly larger than a grain of sea salt.

  Shielding the contents from the wind with his forearm, he plucked forth a crystal.

  Japheth tilted his head back and, with practiced grace, dropped the grain into his left eye. "Lord of Bats, protect me," he whispered.

  Japheth learned of the entity called the Lord of Bats when he was an acolyte librarian working the back stacks of the many-towered library of Candlekeep. In the confusion and turmoil following the Spellplague, and later, the Keeper of Tome's mysterious disappearance, the magical wards that protected the sensitive and dangerous scrolls and tomes from casual perusal in Candlekeep failed for some time.

  The aftermath of Mystra's murder also marked the period Japheth put his first tentative foot on the crimson road.

  Back then, no one yet realized that, once addicted to traveler's dust, an early death was inescapable for the user, regardless of whether it was quick or prolonged.

  The grain on his eye was dissolving. The flapping sail and the stars beyond began to blur and waver. Japheth blinked. Anticipation was part of the experience.

  The essence of the liberated dust reached his blood and his mind, penetrating to his soul. The constraints of rules and preconceptions deserted his consciousness, leaving behind a red-hazed vista of breathtaking clarity.

  Japheth felt transfigured, alive, and potent. Nothing else was like this feeling. It was bottled perfection, the crystallized blood of divinity itself, perhaps. While striding the crimson road, all sorrows sank beyond recall, while all joys were raised like blazing stars.

  When Japheth began taking traveler's dust as an acolyte a decade earlier, his initial forays on the crimson road produced similar bliss.

  At first.

  It was under the compulsion of traveler's dust that Japheth dared the forbidden stacks, even while the rest of the staff defended the library-fortress from refugees swarming the Coast Way. In the wake of the Year of Blue Fire, chaos ruled Faerыn.

  Not that Japheth had cared about consequences or chaos while in the grip of his newfound drug. The lucidity that accompanied a walk on the crimson road blinded him to things that customarily would have captured his entire interest.

  Japheth recalled how, as a drugged acolyte, he had sauntered past wonders: a heavy book made of copper foil stamped with arcane sigils, bound between thin covers of beaten silver; a book bound between sheets of yellowish iron, whose indecipherable title alternately burned with fire and sparked with electricity; and a libram bound between two metallic angel wings, from which glorious voices issued.

  No, under the influence of dust, he had passed by these glamorous wonders to the chamber's far corner, shadowed and dank. There he plucked a small, brownish tome from behind a larger book that pulsed with ominous power. To his dust-tuned senses, the small brown folio glimmered with a haunting, soon-to-be-realized significance.

  The book's plain face was stamped in fading dye with the words, Fey Pacts of Ancient Days.

  Young Japheth quickly retreated to his cell and closed himself away from his fellows. By then, the refugee surge had been beaten back, but the Keeper of Tomes needed finding. Japheth didn't care if he ever saw the Keeper of Tomes again. He wanted to be left alone with his traveler's dust and the tome he'd stolen from the forbidden stacks.

  Within the book he found strange names and properties of primitive earth spirits, ancient and strong. Once, claimed the hoary tome, the beings attached to these names were worshiped as gods. Sadly, remonstrated the crumbling text, Faerыn had largely forgotten these ancient Powers.

  The names in the pilfered tome called to him. And so he read, day in and day out. All would have been bliss, but for a change in his trips on the crimson road.

  Japheth was approaching the "first bend," as the transition later came to be called, of his journey. In other words, the traveler's dust brought him less joy with each use, but his body's desire for the substance only increased.

  It was around this time that traveler's dust was suddenly recognized as being a slow poison, not "distilled joy" as certain Amnan suppliers had successfully and lucratively marketed it. Amn had weathered the Spellplague better than most, and in its aftermath, Amn's merchants were already making a profit among refugee populations and untouched kingdoms alike.

  Some cities banned the sale of dust, and its users, easily marked by their eyes, were shuffled off to secure cells where they could reach their journeys' end in peace, if allowed to keep their supply of dust. When their dust was confiscated, as usually happened out of misplaced morality, the resultant death was an awful thing to behold. Deprived walkers invariably became violent, first toward others, then to themselves.

  All these things Japheth heard whispered beyond his door by the other acolytes. They knew the dust had him. They saw how his eyes slowly filled with crazed lines of blood. They witnessed how his hands shook so badly at times he could scarcely restack borrowed tomes. They remembered how he had boasted of being a traveler on the newly discovered crimson road.

  Young Japheth-despaired. He decided to end his life with what dignity he could muster. He decided to take all the traveler's dust he possessed in one gluttonous mass. He would dash to the end of the road with the speed of a racing hound.

  The suicidal acolyte's vision burned as he poured twenty or more grains in each eye. He was catapulted out upon a scarlet plain and saw for the first time a literal road.

  And he saw its awful terminus.

  A shouted hail pulled Japheth from his reverie. A man approached along the unlit starboard side of the Green Siren.

  Japheth didn't need light to recognize the swaggering figure of Captain Thoster. The captain sported a prodigious hat, a gold-trimmed coat that swept the ship's deck and a slender, str
aight sword in a silver sheath.

  With the sensitivity to magic lent him by the partial dose of dust still sparking through his blood, Japheth saw a translucent, greenish glimmer to the captain's skin, as if just below its surface, a scale-like contour yearned for release. The captain liked to joke about his "unclean parentage." Perhaps it was no joke.

  Thoster closed the distance between them, apparently as comfortable in the dark as Japheth. Another hallmark of the, man's tainted blood, the warlock supposed.

  "Any more sightings of your pretty little 'ghost girl'?" asked Thoster.

  Japheth gave a curt shake of his head. "Sure you ain't imagined her, bucko?" "I am certain, Captain."

  "Hmmph," snorted Thoster, pulling out a pipe and miniature coal urri from the pocket of his great coat. "I never saw her," he said, as if that was indictment enough of Japheth's claim.

  "She manifested once in Behroun's office, and a second time a few days ago, as we boarded. She was standing where I stand now. I told you all this."

  "Sure you ain't prone to imagining what just ain't there?"

  "I have an… acquired sensitivity… to things seen and unseen. She is real."

  The captain reserved comment as he skillfully lit his pipe with a cherry red ember.

  "And she might be dangerous," added Japheth, though he had to admit he hadn't sensed any malevolence in the ghostly image. Mainly, he wanted to draw a reaction from the cocky pirate.

  Thoster admonished, "Well, don't go spooking my hands. The tars stand up well enough to most anything the sea throw their way, be it a Cormyrean merchantman or sea devils. But they got an out a proportion fear of ghosts and spirits of the dead." He shrugged and puffed. The glint in his eye belied his easy words. He was telling Japheth to keep quiet about the topic, or else.

  The warlock replied, "I am on this ship as Behroun's agent. I don't much care what your crew thinks or fears. If I feel something endangers the mission, I will eliminate that threat. No matter its source."

  "Easy, son. All I'm asking is you restrict ghost talk to me or my first mate, Nyrotha."

  "I'm not a fool."

  Another puff of smoke drifted into the night air, then, "Some say all who walk the crimson road are fools."

  Japheth felt a flush warm his face. How had he come to this, that the words of a pirate could shame him? He said, "Behroun warned you would attempt to bait me, Thoster. For your own sake, hope you do not succeed in rousing my ire."

  "Oh, ho!" laughed the captain. "Think I already have!"

  Japheth turned away to look past the ship's prow and the open sea that reflected a million glittering stars. He could feel Thoster's amused regard on his back.

  "Come, my friend, don't be so sour! We've both knocked around the dingy corners of this bad old world, haven't we? Who don't have their vices, eh? If you knew half what I pollute myself with, you'd wonder how I rise each day from my cot!" Thoster loosed a hearty laugh.

  Japheth said to the night, "I have witnessed the wholesale reaping of thousands who walked, screaming, to the end of the crimson road. I beheld the terror of the gnashing teeth that rim that final abyss, the maw of a demonic god-beast. Those before me walked onward, shrieking in mortal terror for their immortal souls. They marched off the edge. They were sucked down into that awful darkness and were consumed. Snuffed out forever."

  The warlock turned back to Thoster and asked, "Have you ever seen anything like that, Captain, in this 'bad old world'?"

  The captain was silent for a moment. Japheth decided he'd managed to push the old salt back on his heel.

  Thoster asked, "How's it you still live? Behroun told me you've walked the road for a decade or more. You should've perished years ago, ain't that right?"

  It was Japheth's turn to laugh. "The fey spirits I commune with provide me with more than the words to curse the heart, still beating, from the chest of an enemy."

  Thoster frowned, his easy manner finally dissipating. The captain recognized Japheth's veiled threat. He began, "Listen, if you-"

  An ululating scream interrupted Thoster's response. The yell of pain and terror resounded. Another cry followed. "Ghost! A ghost is killing Dorian!"

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The Year of the Secret (1396 DR) Green Siren on the Sea of Fallen Stars

  Heaps of black stone lay tumbled in plank silos in the moist confines of the ship's hold. A brownish fungus had a good start across the slick piles, an indication that the heavy ballast hadn't seen much rotation in recent months.

  Begrimed barrels, filled with liquid barely more palatable than seawater, stood two high along the starboard wall under reams of white sailcloth folded on top. Along the hold's port wall, coils of thick hawser hung. Rope was like ship's blood. It could be used for hundreds of tasks, from lashing men and equipment to the deck during storm seas, to repairing sail lines during hot becalmed days when nothing else could be done. Also, rope was useful for punishment. Keelhauling wasn't unknown on the Green Siren for crew members who defied the captain and his hulking first mate, Nyrotha.

  Smaller kegs were stored under lock and key behind an iron portcullis, whose rusty expanse covered the port wall. Harsh fumes proclaimed their rum-filled contents to any who drew near.

  A shelf next to the portcullis was stuffed with sheathed swords, spears, hanging crossbows, and a few well-polished shields.

  The ceiling was composed of well-fitted planks, except for a wide, square opening directly above, which pierced the ship from the top deck, to mid deck, to hold, to the orlop deck. A rope ladder of rough hawser ran up the side of the opening, connecting all four decks.

  Beneath the opening, a sailor lay on the stained, planked floor of the hold.

  The sailor quivered and bucked as if possessed, and froth formed at the corners of his mouth. The veins that crisscrossed the exposed flesh of his face, arms, calves, and bare feet flamed scarlet with pain.

  Anusha Marhana looked down at the thrashing, barefoot man, a hand to her mouth.

  All she had done was touch him!

  A dark-haired woman with a scar disfiguring the left side of her face perched half-way down the ladder leading into the hold. Terror robbed the woman of the strength to move up or down. Her ability to scream, however, was unhampered. The scarred woman's mouth was wide with a howl of dread, and her eyes seemed locked at something she saw near her writhing companion.

  The scarred woman looked not at Anusha, but at one of the half-silvered shields that hung from the ship's weapon depot. Anusha followed the direction of the woman's terrified vision, into the face of the mirror-like shield… and something looked back at Anusha. A humanoid silhouette of purest black, outlined in erratic white and blue flashes. She recognized the silhouette as her own.

  The first time Anusha had dream-stepped, she hadn't realized it.

  She had awakened from what seemed merely an unusually detailed dream. During the dream she'd seen her half brother, Behroun, and the mysterious warlock plotting. True, upon "waking," her mind was almost ready to accept the first wild explanation that occurred to her, that she'd somehow stepped beyond her body and spied on events in the outside world as she slept… but she backed away from that explanation quickly enough. She managed to convince herself the experience was mere fancy, born of unsettled sleep.

  She was able to hold on to that conviction for all of half a day.

  The morning after her first dream, Behroun had summoned her to his office to warn her that enemies of Marhana were sending assassins into the manor. Shadow assassins that burned with a corona of azure fire.

  Anusha realized Behroun was describing the very event she had dreamed! How was that possible-had she sleepwalked? No, she'd ghosted through solid objects without effort. It must have been a dream after all, but a dream dreamt beyond the confines of her own head!

  Dazed with the insight, she sat dumbly as Behroun recounted his discovery of the assassin.

  Nor did she contradict her half brother as he went on to explain how fortunate it wa
s that his agent, Japheth, had been present to drive off the specter. Anusha remembered it was her terror of the darkness hiding under the warlock's cloak that proved impetus enough to awaken her physical body.

  Behroun explained he had arranged for Anusha to summer beyond the walls of New Sarshel, where she would be safe from those who wished her ill. He described how getting her out of the city would allow him to concentrate fully on discovering which jealous noble house wished to destroy the soon-to-be-noble House of Marhana.

  Anusha rushed back to her suite to pack, cold fear prickling across her body. But it wasn't the thought of assassins that scared her.

  Behroun and Japheth had seen her! She had dreamed them, but they saw her, even though they had been awake.

  Anusha was again convinced that the dream of the night before had been more than simple fancy. Something of it had been real.

  A giddiness brought on by visceral fear stifled her wild packing. She stood frozen amidst a flurry of expensive clothes strewn on the floor and across her bed.

  What was happening to her?

  Behroun talked of assassins. Had some demonic creature lured her spirit beyond the confines of her body in order to steal it away? It had failed to find her this time, but would she be so lucky again? Would every foray into sleep be a cat-and-mouse game between her and some unseen soul stealer?

  Then again, she had seen no evidence of such a creature. To fabricate the existence of a soul stealer to explain her too lucid dream based only on Behroun's talk of enemies of House Marhana was premature.

  Especially because her half brother's belief in a potent rival stalking the family was based on his glimpse of her!

  Anusha clenched her hands, and then loosed them, one muscle at a time. She willed the muscles in her forearms to go slack, then the muscles in her shoulders and neck. She even imagined tiny muscles in her face and scalp drooping into utter relaxation. Her breathing slowed, as did her heart's frantic pace. She tried to push herself beyond the reach of a panic that could not answer her questions or explain what had happened.