The wizard sighed. "There is one. He will bear no children, and I am glad for it. It's better that the bloodline ends with me."
The enormity of this revelation rocked Matteo back on his heels. Vishna had known that his own blood flowed through Benn's veins, and yet he had allowed the peasant to take Matteo's place at the purification rite. Perhaps he had even arranged this travesty!
"Yet you must have married," Matteo said coldly. "A strange choice for a man determined to end his own line."
"A life as long as mine grows lonely," the wizard replied, "but I did not act entirely without responsibility. Twenty-two years ago, I married a wizard whose bloodline suggested she could bear a natural jordain. Do you know that term?"
"A child born with jordaini potential without the intervention of potions."
"Yes. There are risks, which I assume you also know, but this course seemed safe enough. In fact my wife's pregnancy was uneventful. Childbirth is never easy-you know that perhaps one birthing in three results in death to either babe or mother."
"Yes."
"This is especially true when great magic is involved, and one of the reasons why wizard bloodlines are so carefully regulated. My wife's mind shattered under the strain of childbirth."
Vishna fell silent for a long moment. "The parentage of any jordaini child is not known to the order, but I determined that I would know my son."
"So you supported the falsehood that your wife and babe died in childbed and came to the Jordaini College."
"About that time, Basel Indoulur decided to leave. His story is not mine to tell."
"I know it already. His daughter was stillborn, as jordaini females usually are."
Vishna's eyebrows rose. "Basel has confided in you. That simplifies my tale. The short of it is that his position became open. As a jordaini master, I could keep close watch on my son."
The wizard stopped suddenly and reached out to clasp Matteo's shoulders. "Before I continue, you must swear you will do nothing that might bring harm to the elf woman Kiva."
"Most people believe that Kiva died when the floodgate closed," Matteo said, choosing his words carefully. "Have you reason to think otherwise?"
The wizard shook his head impatiently. "Alive or dead matters not. I cannot continue this story unless you swear."
Reluctantly, Matteo did so. He would have to trust the gods and the laws of Halruaa to deal with Kiva as she deserved.
"Kiva was one of the prisoners in Akhlaur's tower. I freed her from a cage. She was a tiny thing, little more than a child and incredibly ill-used. I did not recognize her when we met years later, but she remembered me."
Matteo began to understand. "You tried to atone for the wrongs done to her by your former friend and partner."
"Guilt is a powerful thing," the wizard said with deep regret. "I swore by wizard-word oath to help her destroy the residual evils left behind by Akhlaur's reign. That seemed not only harmless but worthy. By the time I realized Kiva was not the helpless victim she purported to be, I was constrained by my oath and Kiva's magic from working against her."
"So you had to require a similar oath from me before continuing. Otherwise, even telling this story could be construed as a betrayal."
"Yes." The wizard sighed. "I view many of my actions without pride. My most egregious error was helping Kiva recruit jordaini students. I learned too late that she had a special grudge against the jordaini order."
Matteo could not trust himself to speak. This man, his own father, had betrayed his jordaini brothers.
"Although trapped by my vows," Vishna continued, "I tried to do as little harm as possible. When I intercepted Andris's thesis about the Kilmaruu Paradox, I realized he had an excellent chance of undoing the mess Akhlaur had left in the Kilmaruu Swamp. So I presented Andris to Kiva as an extremely talented battlemaster, one ideally suited to cleaning up after Akhlaur. I didn't think Kiva could hurt Andris."
"Why not?" demanded Matteo.
"I was stunned by Andris's 'death' and realized how wrong I'd been about Kiva," went on Vishna, as if he hadn't heard the jordain's question. "I was deeply relieved to learn of Andris's survival, but I felt responsible for what happened to him in the battle of Akhlaur's Swamp. Because I owed Andris some small measure of truth, I put before him books that would explain why Kiva did what she did."
"These books-can you say more of this without breaking your oaths?"
The wizard shook his head. "I would not speak of them even if I could. The knowledge in those books turned Andris to Kiva's side."
"No. He might have descended from Kiva's line, but it seems to me that choice is more powerful than heredity."
"You and Andris, good men both, are proof of that," Vishna said, punctuating his comment with a sad smile. "You are the son of a coward and he the seventh-generation descendant of a mad elf woman and the monster who was once my friend."
Yet another bolt of shock tore through Matteo. "Andris is a descendant not just of Kiva but also of Akhlaur?"
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 suc
cessor, 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.
The young jordain rose when the king entered the room and sank into a deep bow. "My lord, I have much to report."
No preamble, none of the niceties of Halruaan protocol. Zalathorm nodded with approval. "Get on with it."
"The laraken has returned. My jordaini brothers and I battled it in the Nath. All would have died, but the monster was magically removed from battle. This suggests that Kiva may have returned from the Plane of Water, and possibly Akhlaur as well. The necromancer's spellbook contains a spell of dehyd
ration similar to that cast against the Mulhorandi invaders."
"The spell was Akhlaur's," the king agreed. "There is no doubt in my mind. His tower has been raised-I've sensed a disturbance in the magic that hid it from treasure seekers."
The jordain smiled faintly. "Lord Basel said this report would be unnecessary."
"Basel?"
"Lord Basel met us in the Nath and put his skyship at my disposal."
"Good thinking. From now on you shall have your own ship. Have the steward see to it. What more?"
"I’m going after Tzigone. Lord Basel has found a spell that should serve. Its casting requires a lock of hair from one of my ancestors. I spoke with my father."
"Ah." Zalathorm looked at him keenly. "This saddened you."
"Deeply. I knew the man all my life. He was one of my jordaini masters. He taught me all I know of battle magic and watched over me from my earliest years. Yet I knew him as my father only on the day his life ended."
The king looked startled. "Vishna! Of course you're Vishna's son-now that I look for it, the resemblance is plain. I felt his death. Tell me why it coincided with your meeting."
Zalathorm listened as the jordain related Vishna's story. "A lich transformation. So that is why I sensed his essence still lingering. It's trapped somewhere, changing and gathering strength, awaiting a return to Vishna's body. Gods above!" he shouted, slamming one fist against the wall, "how could Akhlaur do this to a man he once called friend?"
"I fear he is not finished with Vishna," Matteo said quietly. When the king sent him a quizzical glance, the jordain added, "Akhlaur is a necromancer."
"Necromancers can command the undead," Zalathorm said in despairing tones. "As long as Akhlaur lives, Vishna will never be allowed to die."
Chapter Fifteen
Matteo stood at the base of the fairy mound into which Tzigone had disappeared. Basel Indoulur's skyship hovered overhead, but the wizard and Andris had come down into the Nath with him. Basel stood ready to cast the spell, a magehound's jeweled wand in his hand and an uncharacteristically grim expression on his round face.
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