Fraeni exhaled on a curse and made the sharp, slashing hand gesture reserved for those Rashemi who flouted the cardinal laws of the land. When she caught Zofia’s incredulous stare, she said defensively, “The boy is mad! It is death to wield a witch whip!”
“Yes, he is mad,” Zofia agreed, “and yes, it is death—and may the Three be praised for it!”
By now other berserkers had broken through, dodging their way past Tuigan swords and stampeding horses. Fyodor continued on his suicidal path, lashing at the invaders, tearing them from their mounts and urging the horses into panicked flight.
Once unhorsed, the invaders could do little against Rashemen’s battle-mad defenders. The fangs of Rashemen drove them away from the magic-dead circle, deeper into the valley. The witch whips awaited them there. They joined in deadly song with Fyodor’s whip, lashing the Tuigan toward Imiltur and the army that awaited them there.
When it was over, Zofia dismissed the witches to go among the wounded, to find and help those who might yet be saved. It was grim and dangerous work, separating the wounded from the dead, and the dead from the undead. Nor would they work alone: The skies were already black with ravens, and the hungry cries of wolves rose from the darkening shadows of the Ashenwood.
Zofia quickly slipped into a witch’s trance, sliding into the gray overworld that linked the living and the spirit realms. She reached out to the Sisters guarding the Watchtowers of Ashane. They must know what was coming their way.
She quickly touched the minds of the first Guardian, the witch who stood at the portal to the overworld, and conveyed without words what needed to be said. When the tower had been warned, she moved to the next and to the next. At the third tower, no entranced witch guarded the portal. Instead Zofia encountered a chaos of displaced spirits—
And a burst of power that threw her across the room.
The gray world exploded in a white burst of pain, and there was only darkness.
Zofia didn’t hear the warriors come in, couldn’t have said who had the effrontery to pour a swig of jhuild down her throat. She came to herself choking and sputtering, and her first words were a few choice phrases she’d learned in her days in the warriors’ lodge.
A thin but still-strong hand captured hers and hauled her to her feet. “Save it for the Tuigan, Zofia.”
She focused on the face of the aging huhrong then glanced at the white-faced youth who stood a pace to the side and two behind. Her gaze returned to the huhrong’s face.
“We have won another battle, Hyarmon Hussilthar. Perhaps we should all have another drink.”
“The time to celebrate has not yet come,” the huhrong said coldly. “Young Fyodor broke ranks and should be dealt with accordingly.”
Zofia let out a derisive laugh. “Broke ranks? Has your eyesight so faltered, Hyarmon, that you mistake our berserkers for Cormyr’s Purple Dragons? The men of Rashemen do not march into battle like ants.”
The old man’s face mottled. “Wolves attack with more discipline and order!
“And with less ferocity,” she countered. She nodded toward Fyodor. “That young warrior turned the battle. You know it.”
“That young warrior is dangerous, and you know it. He is not his own master. What man in control of his wits would lay hands upon a witch whip?”
The Iron Lord reached over his shoulder and drew a long, dark weapon from the baldric slung there. This he threw onto the floor. It landed on the stone floor with a deep ringing clatter, like the bass-voiced bells that tolled a warrior’s death.
“I will not deny that young Fyodor did his duty,” the huhrong said in more tempered tones. “Now I must do mine, and you, yours.”
It was the law of the land, born of stern necessity, and Zofia had no argument against his demand. She gave a curt nod that was both agreement and dismissal. The Iron Lord inclined his head and strode from the room.
She stooped to pick up the weapon. With both hands she held it at arm’s length, sighting down the blade. It was straight and true, as well made as any weapon of Rashemen. It was also heavy—even in the strength of her girlhood, she could not have held it so for more than a moment. Such swords were nearly impossible to wield in battle except in the throes of berserker frenzy. It had no edge. It was a bludgeon, not a cutting weapon. A berserker raging out of control was a danger to himself as well as others, and it was the greatest dishonor for any Rashemi to die by his own hand, his own sword.
She turned to the young man and saw the bleak acceptance in his eyes. Before she could speak, a dark cloud of magic shimmered in the far side of the tower room, then took silent, solid form. The bodies of three of Rashemen’s witches—the women whose death had nearly been Zofia’s—had returned to the nearest fastness.
Zofia dropped the black sword and hurried to her fallen sisters. Her mind refused to catalogue all their injuries, acknowledging only that they had been horribly slain. Two of them still wore the black masks that witches donned when traveling and sometimes when spell casting. The third witch wore her mask tied to her belt. Her face was untouched by her violent death, and it appeared young, fair, and very familiar. It was the face that Zofia had seen when as a girl she had looked into a clear pool or a silvered glass.
Her heart breaking, Zofia dropped to her knees and untied the mask. The woman’s face changed to the aging face of Zhanna, her twinborn sister. Zofia gently smoothed aside a strand of gray hair and whispered a prayer to speed her sister’s spirit on its way.
A lifetime of duty pushed aside this new pain. With steady fingers Zofia tied the mask to her own belt. Later she would call Fraeni to her, give her the mask, and send her to hold the Watchtower. Zhanna was one of the most powerful witches in the land, and she had been the guardian of many treasures. In addition to the Mask of Danigar, she had been entrusted with an ebony wish-staff and the task of ferreting out the ancient power hidden in the Windwalker amulet.
A deep foreboding filled Zofia, and she slid one hand beneath the high collar of his sister’s robes, her fingers seeking the chain. It was gone—taken by the wizards who had slain her sister.
Gone, too, was her sister’s dream. According to the old tales, in the Windwalker lay the power to bind and to break, to heal and destroy. Zhanna had been certain that it had a role to play in the restoration of Rashemen’s magic.
The burden of grief was suddenly too heavy for Zofia’s shoulders. The tower room spun and blurred, and her own spirit strained at its life-tether in a yearning to follow its twinborn self. “Grandmother?”
The tentative question, voiced in a deep, resonant bass, jarred Zofia back to herself. She rose to her feet in a single smooth movement, schooled her face to a mask of calm majesty, and turned to face Fyodor.
The young warrior was pale and haggard, weaving on his feet. It was a marvel he could stand at all. The sickness that fell over Rashemen’s warriors after a berserker rage could be as devastating in its own way as the killing frenzy.
Pride and grief mingled in the old witch’s heart as she beheld her kinsman for the last time. Fyodor was his father’s son—a strong man, a fine warrior. Young as he was, there had been talk about making him leader of his own fang. With a heavy heart, she took up the dull black sword, holding it so it lay flat across her two hands.
“You have brought honor to Rashemen,” the witch said softly. She marveled that she was able to speak the ritual words without wavering. Even so, she had to swallow hard before she could speak the last words. “In honor go to your last battle.”
He took the weapon from her, accepting without hesitation his sentence of death. An honorable death, yes, but death all the same. Zofia lifted one hand to give the blessing bestowed upon the dead and dying, but try as she might, she could not form the ritual gesture.
For a long moment the old witch and the young warrior stood in frozen tableau, then Zofia’s hand dropped heavily to her side.
She had had too much of death.
The bag that held her augury stones shifted, as
if the ancient bones within stirred of their own accord. She reached in, drew out a handful of the engraved stones, and cast them to the floor.
They landed in a precise circle around the young man. Instantly he was surrounded with translucent, rapidly shifting images, too many and too fleeting for Zofia to perceive. The one that seized her attention was a raven with golden eyes, wearing about its neck an ancient amulet, a rune-carved dagger of dull, weathered gold.
“The Windwalker,” she said aloud, and heard the power that filled her words like strong winds passing through winter trees—the power of Sight. “You will find the Windwalker. She will bind and break, heal and destroy. You will bring her to Rashemen, and she will bring you home.”
The images around Fyodor faded, and the witch’s summoned power receded like a departing storm.
“The Windwalker,” Zofia repeated in her own voice, responding to the puzzlement on her grandson’s face. “It is an ancient artifact of our people. You must find it and return it to me.”
The warrior responded with a bleak smile. He lifted the black weapon, gripped the blade and drew his hand along it, then showed her his unmarked palm.
“I have been declared nydeshka, a blunt sword. By Rashemaar law, I am a dead man.”
“That excuses you from obeying the Othlor?” she demanded tartly. “If I say you will go, you will go.”
Fyodor’s lips thinned. “I accept our customs and tradition. Any berserker who cannot control his rage has earned death,” he said evenly, “but what dishonorable thing have I done, Grandmother, that you condemn me to exile?”
“Consider it darjemma, then,” she said, naming the journey all Rashemaar youth took in early adulthood.
“No youth has gone on darjemma since the Tuigan invaded. Would you have me abandon Rashemen while she is under attack?”
“Have I not said so?”
He acknowledged the command with a nod. For a long moment, however, he waged a silent battle against pride.
“I am willing to die,” he said at last, speaking his plea with quiet dignity, “but let me die at home. Do not condemn my spirit to walk lands it cannot know, like the fallen Tuigan.”
That startled her, for she thought none but witches perceived these unquiet exiles. “You can see these ghosts?”
He hesitated. “Sometimes, yes. From the corner of my eye. When I look straight upon them, they are not there, and when I speak to them, they do not answer.”
These words described with distressing accuracy the situation with the spirits, as well. So Fyodor had the Sight, Zofia noted. That was no great wonder, seeing that men of their clan were counted among the vremyonni—the Old Ones, the rare magically gifted males who crafted weapons of magic and fashioned new spells. Zofia considered telling Fyodor of the state of Rashemen’s magic but decided that he had burdens enough to bear.
“I will enchant your weapon so that the blade will cut, but only those who are not of Rashemen,” she said. “So armed, you have as good a chance as any man of completing your task and returning to Rashemen with honor.”
“And if I fall?”
“I will send a Moon Hunter to find you and bring you home,” she suggested. “I promise you, by the word of an Othlor witch and by the power of Mother Rashemen, that whatever comes of your quest, your bones will rest beneath the skies of your homeland. Will that content you?”
Despite his situation, Fyodor’s winter-blue eyes brightened with the wonder of those whose deepest joy was the hearing and telling of tales. “Moon Hunters truly exist? I had thought them to be legends! Do you truly know such a creature?”
“Have I not said so?”
He pondered this marvel for a moment, then he let out a long breath and shoved one hand through his dark hair. The smile he gave her was wry and far too old for his years.
“These are strange times, indeed! A blunt sword is sent on a witch’s quest, and a Moon Hunter stalks a dead man. What is this about, Grandmother? Truly about?”
“I cannot tell you,” she said with total honesty.
His regarded her for a long moment. “With all respect, Zofia Othlor,” he said softly, “it seems to me that the reason you cannot tell me is that you do not know the answer.”
Oh yes, he saw too much, this son of her blood and her spirit.
“Find the Windwalker,” she repeated. “With it you will find your destiny and perhaps that of all Rashemen.”
REPRISE
UNCONQUERED FOES
Skullport, DR 1361
In many a Waterdeep tavern, ballads are sung of an ancient city doomed by the evil of its inhabitants. According to the song, the city was swallowed by rock and sea, and the gods raised a vast headstone to mark its grave.
Most of the revelers who join in drunken refrain have no idea they are drinking in the shadow of this “headstone,” which is in fact Mount Waterdeep. Few realize that the city of Skullport lies directly beneath them and that it is far from dead.
Skullport’s streets and shanties sprawl untidily through a series of enormous stone caverns, and networks of tunnels delve throughout the northlands and under the sea itself.
In a remote corner of one of these warrens, a dark figure floated along the ceiling of a narrow stone passage. His drow magic kept him aloft, well above the magical wards and alarms that would betray his approach. He pulled himself from one jagged handhold to the next, moving carefully toward the moment that had filled his dreams since the day he’d first met Liriel Baenre.
Gorlist, the warrior son of the wizard Nisstyre and second in command of the mercenary band Dragon’s Hoard, struggled to tune out the alluring clash of weapons echoing through nearby stone corridors as drow fought drow. The enemy whose death he desired above all others would not be among the sword-wielding priestesses of Eilistraee.
A warning heat began to kindle in the drow’s left cheek. He slapped a hand over the dragon-shaped tattoo emblazoned there with magical ink—a talisman that warned of nearby dragons and indicated with faint, colored light the creature’s kind and nature. No telltale glow spilled through his fingers. There was a dragon ahead, but it was a deepdragon, a creature of darkness.
The drow scowled. Of course that would be Pharx, for what deepdragon would allow an interloper so close to its lair? Pharx was a powerful ally. Any battle the dragon joined would be short and decisive. Victory was important, of course, but Gorlist had his own vengeance to consider.
With an impatient flick of his ebony fingers, Gorlist dispelled the levitation magic holding him aloft. He swooped toward the tunnel floor like a descending raven and hit the stone floor at a run. The time for secrecy and stealth was past.
Gorlist raced toward his father’s hidden sanctum, leaving in his wake blinding explosions of magical lights and alarms that keened like vengeful banshees. The wall ahead shifted, and a ten-foot, two-headed ettin broke away from the stone. The monster rose up before him, blocking the passage with menacing bulk and a spiked club. Gorlist ran through the utterly convincing illusion as easily as a pixie might flit through a rainbow.
The tunnel traced a curve, then ended abruptly in solid stone. Gorlist sped around the tight turn and hurled himself at the wall, leaping high into the air and snapping both feet out in a powerful double kick. The “stone” gave way, and he crashed through the hidden door.
Wood shattered, and spellbooks tumbled to the floor as the concealing bookshelf gave way. Gorlist rolled quickly and came up in a crouch, a long dagger in each hand. With a swift, practiced glance he took in the small battlefield.
His father’s study was empty.
It was also a disaster. Cracks slithered up the stone walls. Artwork hung askew or lay broken on the mosaic floor, which had buckled and heaved until it was little more than a pile of rubble. Part of the ceiling had given way, and chunks of it lay in heaps against one wall. Dust still rose from the recent stonefall, and water released from some tiny, hidden stream overhead dripped steadily onto the rubble.
Gorlist nodded, u
nderstanding what had happened. As he’d anticipated, Liriel Baenre had come to reclaim the magical artifact Nisstyre had taken from her. The wizard had responded with a tiny, conjured quake—a canny move on Nisstyre’s part. There were few things the people of the Underdark feared more than a stonefall tremor. There no better way to send the troublesome wench scurrying out into the open—to a place that offered Nisstyre every possible advantage.
Bloodlust sang in the warrior’s veins as he picked his way through the ruined chamber and sprinted down a tunnel leading to the dragon’s hoard cavern. Pharx would be there, ready to protect his treasure. Surely this was the battlefield Nisstyre would choose!
Gorlist was nearly there when a shriek of terrible anguish seared through the air. Without slowing his pace, he seized the flying folds of his cape and drew the magical garment around him in a shield of invisibility.
He burst onto a walkway encircling the vast cavern, squinting into the bright torchlight—or so it seemed to his sensitive drow eyes—that filled the hoard room with flickering shadows. Pharx’s lair was dominated by an enormous heap of gold and gems. The hoard glittered in the light of several smoking torches thrust into wall brackets. The object of Gorlist’s deepest hatred climbed this pile, moving with a dancer’s grace over the shifting treasure.
Liriel no longer looked the part of a pampered Menzoberranzan noble. The erstwhile drow princess was clad in simple black leathers, and the sword on her hip was serviceable at best. Her elaborate braids had been undone, and thick wavy hair tumbled down her back like a wild, whitewater stream. Gorlist could not see her face, but it was emblazoned in his mind: the patrician tilt of her small, stubborn chin, the catlike amber hue of her scornful gaze. For a moment Gorlist could see nothing but Liriel, and his thoughts held nothing but hatred.
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