Keith Francis Strohm

by Keith Francis Strohm

  Gripping the Staff of the Red Tree, she summoned light. At first it did little to pierce the veil of ebon dark­ness that hung over the alcove, but the voice of the staff swelled and the light grew in power. The darkness tore like thin vellum. When at last she could see what lay in the alcove, Marissa nearly cried out in horror.

  An emaciated, wizened old man hung spread-eagled in the air by four obsidian chains. A writhing tendril of pure energy penetrated his skull, right between rheum-glazed eyes. The captive stared at her, pain obviously etched in every line of his face; his breath came in great ragged gasps. At once, Marissa knew that this was the vremyonni, the Rashemi wizard that Yulda had kid­napped. The wychlaran thought that Yulda had merely taken the wizard to glean vremyonni secrets. She knew now that the truth was much worse than that. Whatever spell had forged this unholy bond, it was sucking away at the wizard's power and feeding it to Yulda.

  She reached out in an attempt to help free the enslaved wizard—and snatched her hand back in pain as it touched a wall of energy. Her fingertips still tingled with the force of the spell. Marissa tested the wall with elemental fire and the fury of winter itself, pouring forth her god's power in an attempt to shatter the defensive wall. The druid knew that breaking whatever bond joined the vremyonni and the hathran was the key to defeating Yulda.

  "It . . . it's no use," the ancient wizard gasped as Marissa struck the magical wall with the full force of the Staff of the Red Tree. "The spell is wrapped in both of our power."

  Marissa shook her head in denial. "Then how I can I free you?" she asked and felt desperation rise in her voice.

  The wizard coughed and sputtered for a moment before answering. "Only my death can free me now."

  "No," she nearly shouted, "there must be another way!" Destroying the telthor had been horrific enough; she would not kill another part of this wild land. Not if she could help it.

  The vremyonni shook his head. "There is—" he started to say then gasped in pain as the arcane conduit drew more power from him. "There is no other way, my child. I knew that the wychlaran would not abandon me. Now you must end this, and quickly."

  "How—?" was all that she asked before the wizard's gentle smile silenced her.

  "You know how," the vremyonni said. "The power was given to you by the Red Tree, but only you can make this choice. Decide quickly, my child, for Yulda merely plays with your friends. If she wanted, she could destroy them with a single spell."

  As if to prove the wizard's words, Marissa heard Taenaran let out a shriek of agony. She turned to see the half-elf caught in a beam of pure darkness that emanated from Yulda's empty eye socket. His flesh began to bubble and boil, as if liquefying right off of his bones. The druid's heart felt as if it were being ripped from her body. With a single cry of Taenaran's name, Marissa had made her choice.

  * * * *

  Taen ducked beneath another swipe of the vrock's claw and rammed the point of his sword deep into its side until it grated on bone. Spinning swiftly, he wrenched his blade free, splattering the black-robed witch with gore and effluvia. The demon bellowed and leaped forward, borne slightly aloft by the strength of its wings. Three more claws slashed downward at the half-elf. Without missing a beat, he rolled beneath one, dived to the right of another, and caught the third on his blade. He moved as effortlessly as he had that fateful day in the alu'dala, flowing like water, rain­ing blows down upon the vrock, and when he could get close enough, the witch herself. Abandoning himself to the powerful rhythms of the Song, he felt freer than he ever had before.

  So much so that when the Song shifted beneath him, he did not resist it but followed its strains. It grew louder, more powerful—began to pull at him, yet still he flowed with it. When the crone sent pulsating green bolts of energy flying from her fingers, Taen leaped into the air, drawing his arms to his chest and spinning so that two of the missiles flew by either side of him. The third he caught on the tip of his sword, and the fourth he took square in the chest, but even that brief moment of sear­ing pain did not slow him down.

  Taen stood before the decrepit hag, sword poised to strike. The Song crescendoed around him; he could feel its need, its hunger drawing him down into its depths. It called to him—asked of him the only thing of any worth he had to give: his life. For just a moment, he hesi­tated. For just a moment, he resisted its pull, struggled against it the way a drowning man struggles against an implacable tide.

  In that moment, the crone struck.

  Power lashed out from the wreck of her eye, a beam of pure nothingness that caught Taen full in the torso. He screamed as the dark energy of the beam struck him. Agony coursed through his body—his very spirit was afire and every inch of his skin bubbled and boiled. In an instant, the vengeful cadence of the Song was stilled. Caught in the unquenchable power of the witch's eye, unable to move, Taen caught sight of Marissa in his rapidly dimming vision. The druid held aloft the Staff of the Red Tree in her remaining hand, and in that moment, the half-elf knew with utter certainty what she was about to do.

  He summoned the last bit of strength remaining and screamed, "Marissa... no!"

  * * * *

  Anger and desperation melted away from Marissa, replaced by a calm certainty. Choices bring their own comforts with them, she knew, and thanked Rillifane for the one she experienced now. There was so much that she had wanted to say, wanted to share with Taenaran, so much of this land she had wanted to explore, yet it was love—love of the broken half-elf and the rugged land they had traveled across—that had solidified her choice.

  A single tear of regret, for words not spoken and feel­ings not shared, spilled down her cheek as she raised the Staff of the Red Tree above her head. She sent one last prayer to Rillifane that he would guard and guide Taenaran and her friends, before she brought the staff down hard upon a sharp stalagmite—

  And everything became light.

  * * * *

  The concussive force of the blast knocked Taen to the ground, tossing him like a paper doll in a raging storm. He lay there stunned for a few moments as his sight cleared. Desperately he cast around for some sign that Marissa had survived the explosion. The alcove where she had stood lay buried beneath layers of thick stone and rubble.

  She was gone again.

  He had failed Marissa once more—just like he had on the bridge. If he hadn't hesitated at the last moment, Marissa would still be alive. Despair and self-hatred rose up in him, like old friends who had departed for a long journey and returned. They accused him, called him a wretched failure and a murderer, demanded that he run away and hide in the darkness of his inadequacy.

  This time, however, Taen didn't listen.

  Though the faces of Talaedra and Marissa, frozen in dying, swept across his vision, the half-elf refused to despair. Both women may indeed have loved him far more than he deserved, but they both saw within him the person that he could become. He would honor them and spend the remainder of his life becoming that person. It did not spare him his grief—that cut like a vorpal blade through his heart—but it was a clean wound, without rancor or disease.

  He would have wept, but a vision of the withered crone stumbling to her feet drove all sadness from him.

  "Did... did you think you could defeat me?" she spat, blood-matted hair tossed wildly around her head. "I am beyond your power even now."

  Taen pushed himself painfully to his feet, though the crone's spell had wounded him badly. Suppurated flesh tore from his skin and arms as he rose, grasping his father's sword. He concentrated for a moment, held the sword aloft—and suddenly the Song sprang to life, as deep and resonant as it had in the moments before the witch's foul spell had struck.

  Borovazk and Roberc stood to his left, hacking at what remained of the vrock, who had collapsed beneath the Staff of the Red Tree's final blast. There, in the flickering torchlight, in a mountain cavern locked away from the rest of the world, Taen stood with his sword raised—beyond anger, beyond grief, beyond any emotion that had distracted hi
m throughout the long years of his half-elf life—and he Sang. Slowly, painfully, he opened himself totally to the Song. If it desired his whole life, then he would offer it gladly, as Marissa had done for him and the lives of his friends. Without another thought, the half-elf surrendered, fell down a hole so dark and deep it might well have gone on forever. There was nothing in that hole—no thought, no sense of self—only thick, unrelenting darkness.

  When he emerged, it was as if he had fallen into another universe. Power flared around him and through him, lived in each measure of the Song's flow—which was also each beat of his own heart. There was no "Taen" separate from the Song and no part of the Song that was not somehow a part of him. His father's blade sensed the change as well, for it burned with an intense argent light, filling the cavern with its own power.

  "You are finished!" Taen shouted at the chanting witch. "By the will of the wychlaran and the blood of my father, it is over."

  The half-elf raised his sword and moved to attack.

  He gathered his arcane power, but rather than cast a formulaic spell as he had done for most of his life, Taen channeled that energy, used it to speed his limbs. The world slowed around him as he gathered speed.

  The crone backed away slightly to her left and shouted, "Die, you fool!" as she brought her ruined eye to bear upon him. A black beam of power shot out once again, but this time Taen leaped to the side, avoiding it. A section of the cavern floor sizzled and popped for a moment before completely disintegrating before his eyes.

  Another beam lanced out at him, but this time Taen tumbled behind a long-toothed stalagmite that took the brunt of the attack. Without hesitation, the half-elf sent arcane energy surging through his sword; bolts of force leaped from the blade's tip to strike the crone. She shrieked and fell backward, turning as if to run toward the back of the cave.

  Taking advantage of his newfound speed, Taen ran to the side, intercepting the haggard witch before she could reach the circle of light that had just opened in the floor behind him. Her one good eye widened in disbelief. She raised a skeletal hand toward the half-elf and spit forth the words to another spell.

  Taen didn't wait for her to finish. "For Cormanthor,'' he cried in Elvish before leaping through the air, "and for Marissa!" Like a living spear, he hurtled toward the witch and, focusing all of his energy, drove his sword deep into the crone's empty eye socket. The witch wailed in agony as the blade bit true, knocking both of them to the ground. Black power erupted from the wound, cascading around both of them, spinning and twirling like a mini whirlwind. Taen could feel the energy burn­ing at his already battered body, but he did not let go of the sword that impaled the now-dead crone. His agony intensified as the ebon power covered him completely.

  The walls of the cavern faded, until everything, at last, was darkness.

  Epilogue

  The Year of Rogue Dragons

  (1373 DR)

  Taenaran stood silently in the sunlight.

  All around him, the vale teemed with life. The full-throated song of wild birds filled the air, while the undergrowth stirred with the patter of tiny furred feet. A small breeze blew across the wooded vale, redolent with the rich scents of summer. The drone of bees, their bodies bloated with pollen and tossed by the wind, rose up from the lush vernal landscape.

  Taenaran might as well have stood in a bare stone room, devoid of windows or doors. He felt the touch of the sun—its warm fingers sliding across his skin—distantly, as if in a memory or some long-ago dream of summer. He took in the heady fragrance of the wind without regard to its vintage, each breath mechanically drawing it into his lungs. Deep inside, he wished nothing less than to break that machine, to still its implacable, torturous rhythm.

  Grief had hollowed him out, made of his heart a tomb—full of dust and shadow and a longing so deep it reached to the very marrow of his bones. Marissa was dead, yet the half-elf no longer felt anger or bitterness over his weakness, the brokenness that had caused her to die. He had become a true bladesinger now, a master of his father's art—his own art. The red-hilted blade given him by Aelrindel hung comfortably at his side. In the storm-wrought demesne of an evil witch, Taenaran had finally become true forged, made whole for the first time in his life.

  At what cost?

  Behind him, he could hear Roberc's dour mutter­ing and the answering rumble of Borovazk's voice. Taenaran's two companions had remained with him during the long months spent in the witches' care, and they had followed him here, offering their strength and friendship for the final leagues of his journey. In truth, the bladesinger remembered little of the aftermath of their battle with the witch. His memory of those final moments lay in ruins. From what Borovazk and Roberc had told him during time spent resting by the hearthside, Yulda's own power had consumed her in those last moments, burning away her body—and the half-elf's flesh would have followed had Borovazk not pulled him free.

  The two had tried to awaken him, plying him with healing potions, salves, and other unguents, but to no avail. He was, according to Roberc, deader than a Cormyrean soldier after a tenday's furlough." They had resigned themselves to braving the mountains in winter when a contingent of witches had appeared in the cave. The breaking of the Staff of the Red Tree had caught their attention, and Yulda's death had shattered the arcane barriers surrounding her demesne. Within moments, the witches had teleported the wounded and tired group back to the Urlingwood.

  Despite the severity of his injuries, Taenaran had begun to heal under the watchful eye of the hathran assigned to watch over him. In the days and tendays that had followed, physical pain receded, leaving only the emotional scars of his loss. Even so, Taenaran had known that Borovazk and Roberc were grieving as well, and when the numbing emptiness rose up within him, the bladesinger took to the deer paths and hidden trails crisscrossing the Urlingwood, not wishing to inflict his own grief upon his companions.

  Tendays had turned into months as winter vented its fury upon the land and the first bright moments of spring burst forth from the snow-covered earth. Still, Taenaran had stayed within the thickly forested Urling, not really sure what held him there, and Borovazk and the halfling remained with him. They drank and diced, hunted and fought as friends will, but by some unspoken agreement they stayed by Taenaran's side.

  Finally, as the snow cover began to melt in earnest, Mahara, leader of the wychlaran, had approached Tae­naran with the two fragments of wood that were all that remained of the Staff of the Red Tree.

  "Please pardon my interruption," she had said softly. "You and your companions are welcome to remain in the Urlingwood for as long as you like. It is the least of the kindnesses we can offer you. Deep though I know your grief to be," she had continued, "I was wondering if you would do us one last favor?"

  There was little Taenaran could have said at that moment, so conflicted was his heart. Instead, he had simply nodded his head.

  "We are humbled once again by your kindness," Mahara had replied and had reached forward, offer­ing the burned wooden fragments to Taenaran. He had reached out gingerly, as if the splintered ends would blister his fingers. He had tried not to think of Marissa as he held the ends in his hands.

  "These fragments must be returned to the Red Tree," the witch had continued. "Normally one of the hathran would make the journey. However," Mahara had paused for just a moment, "the telthor have asked specifically for you to return the remains of the staff."

  So Taenaran now stood in the center of the Red Vale, with the elemental tree looming ahead of him—pushed once again on a quest not of his choosing. He drew in a deep breath then sighed it out before turning to his companions.

  "Well, my friends," he said, "thank you for making this journey with me, but I would ask that you let me carry the fragments to the Red Tree by myself."

  The half-elf could see Roberc's frown deepen. Both the grizzled halfling and the hulking Rashemi ranger exchanged a look, but both ultimately nodded their agreement.

  "Well, you are pretty
damn close to the end of the journey, so I suppose we can let you go," the halfling began with a throaty chuckle. "Not even you could mess this up, Taen!"

  The chuckle became a hearty laugh as Borovazk slapped the bladesinger's back with a meaty hand. Despite the grief and sadness of the past few months, Taenaran felt a smile begin to creep upon his face.

  "I'll shout if I get into any trouble," he replied good naturedly then set off down the path.

  Mirth and good humor vanished quickly as he drew nearer to the Red Tree. Its ancient profile interrupted the broad swath of piercing blue sky and warm spring sunlight, brooding over the surrounding landscape like some elemental giant. Taenaran could feel its power emanating from each branch and leaf tip, a deep strength that flowed from its ancient roots, tapping into a magic deeper than any he had ever experienced. It was as if the mystical Red Tree were somehow more "real" than anything else around it—including him.

  Long, thick branches blew softly in the wind, envel­oping him in its vernal embrace as he walked beneath the Red Tree's cool shadows. A surge of anger crested through him, and it was all he could do to keep the memory of Marissa kneeling beneath the Red Tree from overwhelming him. Taenaran hated this land, loathed every mile of its rugged landscape, for what it had taken away from him, yet he also loved Rashemen fiercely, with a strength that nearly stole his breath away. This land and its people had given him something he had never hoped to receive—himself.

  Tears ran down his face as he knelt finally beneath the boughs of the Red Tree and laid the remains of the Staff of the Red Tree against its ancient, splitting trunk. A stiff wind blew up, sending broad leaves fluttering at its touch. Taenaran felt for a moment as if he were surrounded by giant serpents.

  "There," he said through clenched teeth. "I have done my gods-damned duty."