by Tim Waggoner
“Do you think everyone in the city heard it?” Asenka asked.
“I don’t know,” Diran admitted. “The voice called for me, so perhaps only those in my vicinity were affected.” He didn’t want to imagine the kind of power the owner of such a mental voice might wield if everyone in Perhata had heard the message.
“What do we do?” Ghaji asked. “Stand or run?”
“Stand,” Diran said. “I told the voice that I was waiting at the docks. Besides, I’m not sure there’s anywhere we could run even if we wanted to.”
“Good,” Ghaji said. “I’m too damned tired to run anyway.”
Diran turned to Asenka, but before he could speak, she said, “Don’t tell me this isn’t my fight, Diran Bastiaan. I command the Sea Scorpions, and this is my city. That makes it my fight.”
Diran smiled. “It seems as if our mysterious psion isn’t the only one who can read minds.”
“We should move away from Tresslar and Hinto,” Ghaji said. “Neither is capable of fighting at the moment.”
Diran hated to leave the two alone—Tresslar still unconscious and Hinto held tight in the grip of his fear—but they couldn’t draw danger to them, either.
“Very well, let’s—”
Return what you have stolen, thief!
The words lanced through Diran’s brain like white-hot spearpoints, and he heard someone cry out in pain. He wasn’t surprised when he realized it was him. Through eyes blurred with tears, he saw a large figure striding across the dock toward them. Man-shaped it was, made of stone and wood, the surface of its body encrusted with colorful crystal shards of varying sizes that pulsed with barely constrained energy. A warforged, Diran thought, but like none he had ever seen before.
Standing on shore, watching as the warforged advanced, were three other figures. Diran didn’t recognize either the orc or the lean, graceful man clad in black leather, but the third figure was known to him, as familiar to Diran as his own face. Swaddled in a thick fur cloak against the cold, grinning like a shark about to sink its teeth into its next meal, stood Aldarik Cathmore.
Before Diran had time to fully register Cathmore’s presence, a three-fingered hand made of stone closed around his throat, and he felt himself being lifted into the air. The warforged’s pinpoint eyes smoldered with fury as he slowly tightened his grip on Diran’s neck, and when next he spoke, its voice issued from its stone mouth.
“Return what you have taken, thief … or die!”
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
Can we have a third choice?”
Ghaji swung his flaming axe at the crook of the warforged’s arm. During the Last War, he’d fought many of the living constructs, and he knew that they were most vulnerable at their darkwood joints, and though the darkwood was spelled to be fire-resistant on the surface, once that surface was broken, the wood underneath burned as easily as any other.
The axe blade bit into the joint of the warforged’s arm with a loud chuk! and held fast. The warforged’s head swiveled as he turned to look at Ghaji, but before the construct could react further, the half-orc hauled back on his weapon with all his strength, attempting to unbalance the warforged and break his grip on Diran. Given that the constructs were formed primarily of stone and metal, warforged were heavy and not easily moved, but Ghaji was determined to save his friend and gave it all he had. The half-orc’s arm and shoulder muscles blazed with pain, but he refused to let up.
The warforged, which up to this point had been immovable as a statue, began to lean toward Ghaji, and the half-orc gave one last mighty pull, shouting with the effort. It felt as if his arm muscles were going to rip free of their bones, but the warforged stumbled, and the hand clutching Diran around the neck sprung open.
The black-clad priest fell to the dock and gasped for air. Ghaji feared that his friend’s throat had been crushed, but while he wanted to rush to Diran’s side and tend to him, Ghaji knew he couldn’t. The warforged would remain off-balance for only a second or two. Besides, Diran himself was best equipped to heal whatever injuries he might’ve sustained.
Ghaji’s axe was still partially embedded in the warforged’s arm, and he needed to pry the weapon loose to resume his attack, but before he could do so, the construct trained his pinpoint eyes of flickering energy on Ghaji, and the crystal shards affixed to his head—already pulsing with energy—shone more brightly. Ghaji felt himself rising into the air as if he was being lifted by powerful hands. He still had hold of his axe, and the blade slid free from the warforged’s arm with unexpected ease. Ghaji looked down at himself, but he could see nothing visible that was holding him aloft.
The construct’s eyes glowed like tiny twin suns, and Ghaji flew high up into the air and out over the sea.
Asenka watched as an unseen force lifted Ghaji into the air then hurled him far from the dock. The half-orc soared at least a hundred feet upward before starting to descend. From that height, hitting the water would be like slamming full force into a brick wall. If he hit the sea at the wrong angle …
Before she could see if Ghaji entered the water safely, a much closer splashing sound drew Asenka’s attention back to the warforged. Thanks to Ghaji’s axe-strike, flames engulfed the construct’s arm, but now a stream of water rose forth from the sea to arc through the air and splash onto the flames, dousing them. Asenka knew that warforged wizards existed, though she had never encountered any, and she wondered if this construct was one. The warforged’s actions didn’t seem like magic though. He used no materials or tools, conducted no rituals, spoke no magic words … As near as she could tell this warforged simply willed something to happen, and it did. Disrupt a magic-user’s concentration, interrupt his rite, make him mispronounce his mystical phrases, take away or damage his artifacts of power, and you could fight him, but Asenka had no idea how to even begin to counter such power as the warforged possessed. But she knew who might.
Asenka hurried over to Diran. The priest had risen to a sitting position, eyes closed, hand gently pressed to his bruised throat. As she watched, the blue-black color faded as the skin on his neck regained its normal hue, and his windburned cheeks and chapped lips—the result of his standing at the prow of the Zephyr for so long—healed as well. She offered her hand, Diran took it, and she helped him to his feet.
“Are you hurt?” she asked.
Diran rubbed his throat. “Not now. What of Ghaji?” Asenka gazed seaward, but she saw no sign of the half-orc. “I don’t know.”
Diran’s eyes narrowed in an expression that she was coming to recognize as one of controlled anger. “Stay with Tresslar and Hinto. I’m going to try and draw the warforged away from here.”
The crystalline-studded construct had finished extinguishing the flames, but now he stood swaying from side to side, staring off into the distance as if stunned or confused.
Asenka grabbed his arm. “Wait!”
She pointed and Diran turned to see a squad of Sea Scorpions approaching at full speed from the shore end of the dock, a dozen men and women, all with weapons drawn and ready.
“Order them to back off!” Diran said. “There’s no way they can hope to stand against a creature this powerful!”
Intellectually, Asenka knew he was right. Emotionally, she was proud of the people in her command. They were the best warriors Perhata had to offer, the best in the entire Gulf of Ingjald, and she was reluctant to admit there was any threat they couldn’t handle.
As if Diran’s words had brought him back to reality, the warforged turned to face the oncoming warriors. He seemed to study them for a moment before raising his right arm and stretching his three-fingered hand toward them. At first nothing happened, but then the wooden planks of the dock began to shudder beneath the Sea Scorpions’ feet, and the wood exploded upward as a vast geyser of water erupted into the air. Men and women shouted as they were flung about like so many rag dolls. Most tumbled through the air to splash into the water on either side of the dock, but a few landed on unbroken wood
in front of or behind the newly created gap. They hit hard, and the sound of snapping bones was accompanied by their screams of pain.
“Warforged!” Diran shouted.
The construct hesitated a moment before turning back around to face Diran and Asenka.
“I’m the one you want, not those warriors. Forget them. Whatever your problem is, it lies with me, so let us settle it—just the two of us.”
The warforged stared at Diran, his expression—like that of all his kind—unreadable. The crystals covering his stone and metal body flickered on and off in a strangely tentative manner that to Asenka indicated indecision.
“Very well,” the warforged replied in a hollow, emotionless voice, then it started walking toward them.
Cathmore, Chagai, and Galharath stood on the shore, watching as their newfound friend went about his work.
“Our test seems to be going rather well, don’t you think?” Cathmore said.
Chagai hrumpfed. “Looks to me like he’s just wasting time. If the creature is so powerful, he should’ve killed the priest by now.”
“Be patient,” Cathmore said. “After all, this is Solus’s first battle. I’m sure he’ll improve with experience.”
Galharath didn’t bother to respond to either of his companions’ observations. He was too busy maintaining his mental link with Solus and monitoring the psi-forged. Solus was indeed powerful, but as Cathmore had said, the psi-forged lacked experience at applying his abilities to specific tasks. He had no concept of how much strength he possessed, and if it wasn’t for Galharath helping to stabilize Solus’s powers, the psi-forged could well destroy both the docks and the wharf, killing everyone in the vicinity—including Cathmore, Chagai, and himself. While Galharath didn’t care all that much about preserving the lives of his companions, he preferred to retain his own corporeal existence.
Galharath had an additional concern about Solus. Now that the psi-forged had come in contact with Bastiaan, the deception that Galharath had created about him being an evil priest who had stolen Solus’s memories was in danger of being revealed. Galharath had hoped that Solus would slay Bastiaan on sight, but that hadn’t happened. The longer the priest remained alive, the greater the chance that Solus might probe his mind. If that occurred, Solus would learn the truth and slip free from Galharath’s control, and if that happened, there was no telling how he would react.
Galharath had to do something and do it fast. The question was what.
A smile crossed the kalashtar’s face. He’d thought of a solution as simple as it was elegant. Hopefully, it would also prove deadly for the priest.
With a small portion of his consciousness that wasn’t involved in monitoring Solus, Galharath formed a tendril of psionic energy and reached out to Diran Bastiaan’s mind.
As Solus approached the man in black, he felt confused and uncertain. This was Diran Bastiaan, the monster who had stolen his memories, yet the human walked toward Solus with his arms held out to his sides, open palms displayed to show he carried no weapons. Solus might have little experience of the world beyond the walls of Mount Luster, but he knew enough to realize Bastiaan might be attempting to deceive him by pretending to be friendly. There was something else about the man that confused Solus. He sensed no ill intent on the man’s part, felt no waves of negative emotion radiating from the man. He sensed only concern for others—the woman standing behind him, the small trembling one lying on the dock, the older human lying unconscious nearby, the half-orc that Solus had sent flying through the air, the men and women who’d been injured when Solus had caused the dock beneath their feet to explode. Bastiaan feared for their safety, all of them, without sparing a thought for himself. This was a monster? This was the villain he was supposed to destroy?
Solus halted, stopped by a new thought: Perhaps Diran Bastiaan wasn’t the deceiver … perhaps Galharath was.
Before Solus went any further, he needed to speak with Galharath and clear this up, but as the psi-forged began to turn around, intending to walk back to shore and question the psionic artificer, Diran Bastiaan laughed. Surprised, Solus turned around to face the dark priest.
The laughter emerging from Bastiaan’s throat was brittle and harsh, with a mocking edge to it. It was the laughter of a man who had nothing but the most profound contempt for the person he was facing … the laughter of a fiend delighted to behold the weakness of the victim standing before him.
Solus might not have his full memories to draw upon, but he recalled one thing very well: Rage.
He concentrated, reached into Bastiaan’s mind, and commanded the monster’s heart to stop.
Bastiaan’s eyes flew wide and his laughter choked off. His features contorted into a grimace of pain, but his eyes held only surprise and disbelief. His body went limp, and he collapsed to the dock like a toy abandoned by a bored child.
The woman cried out in despair and ran to kneel at Bastiaan’s side. She slapped his face lightly, and when he didn’t respond, she struck him harder.
“Diran! Wake up! Damn you, wake up!” Solus was more confused then ever now, for in the instant when he’d stopped Bastiaan’s heart, his mind had touched that of the priest, and he’d sensed that Diran wasn’t laughing of his own volition. Something—or someone—had been forcing him, but why?
Before Solus could consider this strange development further, the small man—who a moment ago had been lying on the deck shivering as if in the grip of intense cold—stepped between the psi-forged and the priest’s body.
The little man drew a long knife from the sash around his waist and brandished it at Solus, the blade quivering in his hand.
“Guh-get away from hu-hu-him!”
Solus regarded the little man curiously. “You are smaller than I, and you have no special abilities that I can detect. You are not especially skilled with weaponry, you wield no magic, nor do you possess any powers of the mind. You cannot stand against me, and you are consumed by fear, yet there you stand, guarding Diran Bastiaan though it might well mean your own death. Why?”
The small man was so terrified, he had to struggle to force out an answer to Solus’s question. “Buh-because Diran’s my friend.”
Solus probed the small man’s surface thoughts and found no deception, only fierce affection and loyalty to the priest. If Diran Bastiaan truly was the monster Galharath had made him out to be, how could the priest have inspired such deep feelings of friendship in this small man, feelings so strong that he had fought to overcome his paralyzing fear to protect Diran, even at the cost of his own life?
Solus realized that he had made a terrible mistake. He reached into Diran’s mind which, while in the process of dying wasn’t quite dead yet, and reactivated the priest’s heart. Diran’s eyes flew open and his body spasmed as he drew in a deep, gasping breath.
Satisfied that the priest would live, Solus turned to regard the trio watching him from shore. He fixed his gaze upon Galharath and sent a simple thought to the kalashtar.
You lied.
Galharath smiled. So I did.
The psionic artificer furrowed his brow, and Solus felt a wave of energy surging toward him. He attempted to erect a mental barrier to defend himself, but he was inexperienced at psionic combat, and Galharath’s attack broke apart into a dozen different streams of energy that snaked around Solus’s barrier with ease. The streams coalesced as the psychic energy streaked toward the small green crystal that Galharath had embedded in the psi-forged’s forehead. Solus felt the crystal grow hot as energy suffused it, then the shard exploded, taking a good chunk of the psi-forged’s head with it, and Solus knew no more.
Diran came to with his head in Asenka’s lap. She gazed down at him, smiling with relief as a single tear slid down her cheek.
“For a moment there …” She trailed off, leaving her thought incomplete.
Diran frowned. He knew something had happened, but he wasn’t quite sure what. He’d been having a dream in which a silver flame burned bright and warm in the darknes
s, a flame that called to him in a soundless voice to come toward it … to come home. It had been such a pleasant dream that he was almost sorry he’d awakened.
He felt weak as a kitten, and when he tried to sit up, he needed Asenka’s help. He looked around, trying to remember what had happened before he’d lost consciousness. He saw Hinto grinning at him, and behind the halfling stood a warforged whose body was covered by colorful crystalline shards. For some reason, Diran thought the shards should be glowing, but no light came from them now. The warforged’s back was to him, and he stood with his arms held out in front of his face, as if trying to ward off some sort of attack. The construct stood motionless, and Diran had the impression that at the moment he contained no more life than a statue. He didn’t think the warforged was dead, but why he should have that impression, he wasn’t sure.
He turned to look seaward and saw Tresslar rise to a sitting position farther down the dock. The artificer grimaced and rubbed his temples. Diran had a vague memory of healing Tresslar, but he couldn’t recall the specific injury that the man had suffered. Whatever it had been, it appeared the artificer would be all right, and for that Diran was grateful. Another memory came back to him then, an image of three men standing on the shore, watching as … as the warforged attacked.
Diran’s full memory returned to him in a sudden rush, and he looked at the shore where Aldarik Cathmore had been standing, alongside an orc and a lean man Diran took to be a kalashtar, but no one stood there now. Cathmore was gone.
A splashing sound to his right drew Diran’s attention, and he turned to see Ghaji haul himself out of the water and onto the dock.
“Sorry it took me so long to get back, but I dropped my axe, and the damn thing sank to the bottom.” The half-orc looked around. “So … what did I miss?”