Blackstaff

by Steven E. Schend

  The three elves manifested briefly in Tsarra’s kiira-library, and each kissed her, leaving her with their silent sendings:

  You have awakened us to our purpose and our pleasure.

  Know you always shall have the gratitude of the cor’selu’maraar’Miyeritaari.

  May your sacrifices be few and your rewards many.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Feast of the Moon, the Year of

  Lightning Storms (1374 DR)

  The Chosen of the First Circle, having found the grand mages for the greater Working, harnessed their wills and sent the energy of the pyre out in a wide pulse to link their minds, wills, and hearts to those of the Second Circle. Those who claimed bracers from the sharn stood in the Second Circle. The bracers added their hands and strength to the working, focusing its energies to their highest purpose. The silver flames crackled across the plains and hit every member of the circle simultaneously. The fires held at that circle for a time, as the wielders intuited what they needed to do.

  The Central Caster sparks the flame. The First Circle lights the pyre. The Second Circle uses that flame to restore warmth and light.

  Once that message was received, the twelve of the Second Circle blasted the fires into the heath, scoring the ground among them for the city soon-to-rise.

  Four hundred strides separated Tlanchass across the circle from Mentor and the others. She wept openly, knowing that she stood for her fallen love as a student of the Seven Wizards of Myth Drannor. She worked the magic in his name, though her long-bound tears flowed freely due to the embrace and condolences of Mentor Wintercloak. She also bristled at working with corrupt and evil people, but Mentor reminded her they all shared a purpose and a need to be there, even if all was not shared with them.

  Tlanchass returned to her normal gold dragon form as the fires engulfed the Second Circle. She felt the mind-touch of the eleven other souls within the circle—the dragons Essioanawrath and the Argentalon, Jhesiyra Kestellharp, High Mage Orjalun, Mentor Wintercloak, Darcassan, Shalantha Omberdawn, Syndra Wands, Ualair the Silent, Maskar Wands, and Rhymallos. They all raised their bracer-clad limbs in unison, but Syndra Wands raised both her ghostly arms. Isylmyth’s Bracer gleamed on her other arm and the two bracers glimmered in sympathetic magic. Each created a massive stream of magical energy, and all twelve blasted away the soil and rock. The energies penetrated the High Moor and traveled away from the Second Circle in magical manifestations of ground fires, unicorns, giant ants, bulettes, or even small dragons that scored the heath with golden claws and fire.

  From their actions, the dirt released its poisons and the magic of the Killing Storms. To some, the fell magic looked like greasy fog, to others virulent plagues of flies, and still others saw nishruu of a slate-gray color. All of this magic they released and directed back toward the center of the working. Tlanchass did as the magic directed her. Her energies and her illusory drakes cultivated health back into the blasted heath she had ever known as the High Moor. She only hoped the strength of her comrades would last, engulfed as they all were in the miasmic fog that killed the people of Miyeritar.

  Tsarra marveled at the linking of the minds and perceptions of nineteen souls. She wondered just how much she could handle as three souls in one body. She had already gained much knowledge and power by taking up the mantle of Blackstaff. Still, she ached to fully understand the magic around her. The three grand mages cast another spell of their own above the Chosen—a high magic working within their own ritual. Tsarra tried to focus on what they did, but she went deaf and blind.

  A chorus of voices sent to her, These are Arts you cannot know. Mystra’s fires may keep you safe from the akhelben’s working, but to espy on high magic would destroy you utterly. You shall feel its touch soon, child, which shall be gift enow.

  Tsarra sat back, deflated. Khelben’s working still sang all around her, but she prayed she could find a way to stave off what he deemed inevitable. It was then she heard the murmuring in Elvish, “Assemble … Assemble … Assemble …”

  She tried to isolate the voice, but it circled the library. Each orbit, its call pulsed through the kiira: “Assemble … Assemble … Assemble …”

  Tsarra followed the whisper around the room, and she spotted the selu’kiira floating about her own brow in the mirror. Within a moment of that realization, another selu’kiira arrived in a nimbus of red brilliance, and it too took up both the sending chant and an orbit around Tsarra’s own gem. Tsarra stared at the two gems orbiting her own kiira, fascinated.

  It was nearly highsun, but the sky remained storm-wrapped. Mentor coughed violently, much to his surprise. The bracer and the magic he controlled teased nutrients from the Weave and into the soil around him. The clouds and gray detritus of the life-poisons rose more swiftly, and the gray-green hue of the heath slowly became healthy soil for the first time in twelve thousand years.

  Unfortunately, the poisons took their tolls on the casters within it, and Mentor found blood on his sleeve when he wiped his mouth and nose.

  So be it, if that is our cost, he thought to himself.

  He sensed that the toxins surrounding them weakened some fellow casters. Maskar, Jhesiyra, Orjalun, and Ualair nearly succumbed, faltering and lying prone but still manipulating magic as the masters they were. All had reserves of power that defied age and infirmity, but the work sorely taxed their abilities to fight off death.

  Despite that, Mentor marveled at how well the plan had come together, that working he and his six comrades had inherited back in the Incanistaeum. Much had been rumored about the Seven Wizards of Myth Drannor, but their greatest secret had lain unguessed for centuries. Mentor was proud of his former student, the proud non-elf of elf’s blood who had made quite a few names for himself since the Wintercloak had called him “Nameless.” They had inherited the secret from others, who had carried it before them. The seven had believed they guarded the secrets of Uvaeren. It took Khelben to piece it all together and show even his own teachers that secrets within secrets provide a fertile loam in which much magic and mystery can grow. Unfortunately, the deeper they all dug and tilled the soil, the more virulent the venoms they unleashed into the storms.

  Mentor and the eleven others of the Second Circle moved into the second stage of their working. They took their cues from Syndra Wands, who taught them the magic within Isyllmyth’s Bracer. They all cast simultaneous spells, and they became pillars of lightning and flame. The twelve pillars struck the clouds overhead, energies crackling in the ominous clouds. More lightning bolts erupted swiftly from the full-fledged Killing Storm, scoring the earth for miles around. Each strike left silvery flames in its wake, and the Second Circle also released its contained fires, allowing the High Moor to become awash in silver brushfires. They sent their glad tidings, best wishes, and magical thoughts with the fires, which merged with the others and built as the ground flames surged slowly across the heath.

  Inside the pillars, the twelve sighed in relief as the magic kept them safe from the poisons that threatened their lives. Each soul hoped such cures might be forthcoming for those who might fall into the Killing Storm’s path before they could tame it.

  Ualair lived up to his name, keeping even his mind partially silent from the link among the Second Circle. He sensed what most others could not—the building of high magic at the center of the working. He knew the costs that would be asked of them soon, and he prepared to pay them without a second’s thought.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Feast of the Moon, the Year of

  Lightning Storms (1374 DR)

  Sandrew the Wise still could hardly believe his eyes and ears. All around him, the ground steamed and smoked, unleashing belches of olive-green smoke and ground fog. At various times, lightning bolts scored the ground and set it alight, though there was little heat from the flames.

  Sandrew had been praying for understanding of the previous day’s encounters with Khelben when light filled his private chapel. Oghma’s glowing sc
roll appeared before him, its fore-edge shaped like a stairwell. Without hesitation, Sandrew answered the call of the Lorebinder and stepped boldly onto the scroll. Within him, Oghma left a simple message: You are called. Be my hands to mold old magic and lore into a new future.

  Sandrew continued his ascent and found himself joined on the stairs by Shaynara Tullaster of Candlekeep and Loremaster Cadathlyn of the House of Many Tomes, two other high-ranking priests among the Binder’s faithful. Once all three greeted each other, they reached the end of their journey.

  Sandrew the Wise stepped onto the High Moor from the curving menhirs of Malavar’s Grasp. Foremost among the people before him were the Blackstaff—restored and whole, though oddly wearing the green gem he had given his apprentice—and Raegar Stoneblade. Soon after, Sandrew accepted a golden circlet and donned it, fervently wishing his friend could accompany him. When he arrived atop a small rise, he looked around to find Raegar and the black tressym—which resembled Khelben, strangely—clambering or flying up the hill toward him.

  “Good to have you near, Raegar,” Sandrew called. “Oghma wishes witnesses to this historic event.”

  As he spoke, a lightning bolt struck the ground very near the three of them. An explosion of choking, poisonous smoke engulfed Raegar and the tressym, knocking them down. Sandrew slid down the gravel embankment and pulled them away from a vent of noxious gas. Neither seemed to be breathing and both had a sickly olive pallor to them, their eyes a blackish-green.

  “Lorebinder, allow these beings to learn more yet. Do not close their books. Erase their names from the scrolls of the dying.” Sandrew prayed earnestly, pouring healing energies into both of them at once.

  Their eyes returned to normal, as did their skin, and both revived, only to spend their waking moments vomiting black and green bile from their lungs and throats. Nameless thanked Sandrew by rubbing his head into his palm, while Raegar clapped his hands on the priest’s shoulders in thanks.

  “I don’t know if I’m worthy of this much of the Binder’s attentions and energies within one tenday, sir.” Raegar demurred, but Sandrew dismissed that notion by responding, “You may yet find your service increasing in the church, young Stoneblade.”

  The trio climbed back atop the hillock, only to find the landscape around them filling with the horrid stench and deadly gases. All around, poisons cloaked the High Moor as the Killing Storms rose from slumber.

  “I thought we had it bad, but it looks worse at the center there.” Raegar pointed at Malavar’s Grasp, over a mile away and only visible as a tall pillar of flame and lightning brighter than the other flames and lightning bolts around it.

  The Second Circle had just become twelve pillars of lightning, and their storm ignited the ground scrub near them. They saw the gold flames of the Second Circle engulf the areas and grow outward, like a wildfire across the hills.

  “I hope Tsarra’s all right in there,” Raegar muttered.

  Nameless trilled in agreement, with just enough doubt to make the rogue worry.

  Sandrew said, “His hand is in this, as well as other gods, and we may have some amendments to the Coda soon, Lorebinder willing.”

  Nameless swooped near one of the small silver ground fires and landed. He sniffed at them, purred curiously then leaped into the flames. Raegar and Sandrew leaped forward too late to stop him, and he barreled into them, his fur wreathed in fire. Despite Raegar’s efforts to keep him at bay, the tressym batted both men with his wings. He tagged Raegar’s head and the small of his back, leaving small silver flames burning on the man. As Nameless batted at Sandrew’s robes as well, the flames coalesced into an aura of light flames around Raegar and eventually Sandrew. The priest gasped as the fire partly brought him into the links among the central circles.

  “It’s all right, Raegar. The golden fires unleash the poisons, while the silver fires protect us from them. The toxins are drawn to the center.” Sandrew spoke aloud, as he doubted Raegar could hear the magical voices without his circlet. “They make of the lich a forbidden binding—a repository for all things foul, vile, and corrupted.” Sandrew marveled at the ideas and thoughts in his head, shared from those already in the working. “Just as we might have once bound a corrupt man in with his own lies or books of evil intent and set it afire … The Frostrune will be forced to take on the blight that was the Killing Storm and the venoms it left behind.”

  “Fascinating, but what am I supposed to do?” Raegar asked, while Nameless enjoyed setting small bushes aflame and fanning the flames yet higher with his wings. “Or him, for that matter?”

  “I think your role here is to bear witness,” Sandrew replied. “It’s too early for me to say. When the full flames reach us, I should know more. The circlet lets me communicate with the score and three others of the Third Circle. They know through us of the healing silver fires.”

  It took just under two bells’ time by Raegar’s guess before the flames had reached Sandrew and his fellows of the Third Circle. As the flames roared over and past them, the circlets they all bore linked them mind to mind and shared with them the visions and intents of the core Circles.

  The Central Caster sparks the flame. The First Circle lights the pyre. The Second Circle uses that flame to restore warmth and light. The Third Circle uses the flame to awaken understanding.

  Sandrew found himself more fully linked in mind with others, sensing they stood in a vast circle around Malavar’s Grasp. All steeled themselves to be worthy of the work and the Art, and all of them heard the words when they rang in their ears.

  Your knowledge educates the restored. What you know shall help all within the risen land discover a world they long left behind. Share with us your wisdom, and learn ye will so much more in the process. Children we all are before the Weave, but share with the Weave and we shall be siblings all.

  For unknown hours every member of the Third Circle stood, their circlets glowing white with magic.

  From the surrounding flames, Raegar got a reassuring feeling that all was working as planned and that the flames were restoring the moor to its original state, pumping life across the High Moor and burning off the venoms long dormant in it. He had never been exposed to so much magic before, but he barely felt a thing. In fact, he realized that the pounding headaches teleporting usually gave him were gone. He even watched as an old scar across his knuckles began to fade.

  Nameless settled to the ground. He purred and moved his head as if Tsarra were there stroking his neck. Raegar couldn’t understand him, but the tressym certainly sounded happy.

  Yaereene stood alone and ill at ease atop a tall spindle of rock. In a deep trench below and around her were a large number of sharn that hewed away at the rock. Miles to the west, she saw the plumes of energy rising into the sky—the central casting.

  “So I am to be of the Fourth Circles … what shall our tasks be?”

  Behind her was the vast Highstar Lake, a sight she’d not seen in over a century. She clutched the gold seal given to her by Khelben as she looked at the golden ring on her finger. She knew this was a ring for an acolyte of Windsong Tower in fabled Myth Drannor. Were the secrets in play once held by that fabled school of magic? Her reverie ended as three others glinted into view around her, forming a circle.

  The chalk-pale Nain Keenwhistler she knew, and she nodded at him, raising an eyebrow at the blackstaff he carried. Of course she recognized her cousin Kroloth Ilbaereth, who bore her family’s dead moonblade at his right hip, and her adolescent maiden niece Ynshael Ilbaereth, whose talents for magic outstripped her own.

  “So this is how it is to be—each family and its sacrifice standing with an agent and a seal of the Blackstaff’s making? All this in a minor circle leagues away from the center? I smell deception,” Kroloth grumbled.

  Nain, his voice never more than a loud whisper, replied, “You sense it from yourself, young Ilbaereth. Would you trust this if Malchor Harpell stood here rather than me?”

  “I would,” Kroloth said, “for he is
a friend of Neverwinter’s elves. He and I have spilt blood together and shared honors. I trust him, yet I know not you. I am here as honor demands and at my cousin’s request. You shall pay for that slight, pallid—”

  Yaereene interrupted him. “No he shall not, Kroloth. He plays a role just as we do, and he too has reason to mistrust the Blackstaff. Yet there he stands, ready as called. Tel’quessir dare do no less.” As she spoke, light sparks rose between the seal she carried and the rings on everyone’s fingers.

  “Place the seal at the center of our stone pedestal here, osu’nys,” Ynshael said. “I think I see the pattern that is to come, both from my studies and from the ring … and this.” She stooped and picked up a rusted and shattered sword, its pommel gone as was much of the blade’s point. It too crackled with energy due to the proximity with the rings.

  “Are you sure we’re not supposed to wait for those fires to reach us?” Nain asked. “Khelben’s workings tend to be rather stingy where it comes to bending the rules.”

  The three elves all said simultaneously, “Magic happens in its own time, and it is never anything but the right time.”

  They smiled, and Yaereene placed the thick gold seal on the ground. A light shimmer made each of their rings glow and chime, sending shivers down everyone’s spines. Ideas lit inside their eyes, and they relaxed into their individual work.