What was left of the beast fell, minced and bloody meat now. It was followed, with a slowly growing roar, by a rush of dust, rocks, and rubble.
When the shaking ended and the echoes faded, dust hung thick in the antechamber. The passage was closed by rubble. Noph rolled stiffly off the pile, looking grimly at the fire-blackened flesh below his wrists. He'd be a match for Entreri, now, but missing two hands instead of one.
There was much coughing. Miltiades and Aleena rose, and after some grunting moments, the dwarf Rings and the moon-faced sharper Belgin followed.
The latter squinted at Noph. "A long shot, youngling, but a gamble that paid off." His was the voice that had implored Noph through the doorway.
Noph did not reply. Bloodied and battered, he slumped beside the lantern. In its light, his figure seemed sculpted in gold.
"Noph?" growled Miltiades, coughing. "I should have known you'd be alive to rescue us like this."
Piergeiron's quarters were far from the dark and dusty grave of the ogre. Bright and filled with a sea breeze, looking out at the clear blue air above Waterdeep, the chambers seemed as high as golden griffons and white stacks of cloud. Outside one set of tall windows, the Sea of Swords glimmered with morning sunlight. Past another sprawled Waterdeep in all its splendor, roofs of red and green tiles glowing like rubies and emeralds in the sun.
The company, too, was an improvement on headless ogres. Noph and the four who'd stumbled through the door had been bathed, bandaged, and healed. Noph's new hands tingled from time to time; he'd been restored by the same priest who'd given Entreri his arm back.
The palace healers had given the heroes loose white robes, similar to those of Piergeiron. They all looked like monks, or devout priests, fitting in this place of white marble and silver trim. Only Khelben wore black. That, too, seemed right. He was black thunder to Piergeiron's white lightning.
Now both listened to a silver paladin. "-Unwise in the extreme, I'd say, for a young man charged with guarding the dungeon to open it to attack from Undermountain."
"Yes, Miltiades," the Blackstaff soothed patiently. While the others hovered in an uncertain circle around the Open Lord's sickbed, Khelben lurked by one of the windows, his attention on a bronze kettle perched in a quietly hissing brazier. "Yet if he hadn't, you'd all be dead now, correct?"
The warrior seemed irritated. "Better we die than let ogres into the palace to kill the Open Lord."
"I've been dead before," Piergeiron noted wryly. He drew in a deep breath of tea-scented air. "I'll be dead again, too."
"Better that none but an ogre die," Khelben added. His deft hands slipped into a window seat and drew forth teacups. "Noph made a decision. An heroic decision, and in the end the right one."
Belgin nodded agreement. "Sometimes you've got to place your bets and roll the dice."
Miltiades steamed, a human counterpart to Khelben's kettle. "That wall of rubble won't keep them back for long. The security of the palace-"
"Is being taken care of," snapped Khelben. "Have the courtesy not to pillory the man who saved your life."
"Enough," Piergeiron said wearily. "I called for a report, not an argument."
Miltiades visibly caught hold of his temper. "Yes," he said. "Well, the company of paladins was necessarily parted in the dungeons of King Aetheric III. Half our folk, my comrade Kern among them, remained behind to heal young Kastonoph and to seek out and destroy the bloodforge. I understand they succeeded in the former, but not the latter."
Khelben was suddenly at the paladin's side, a cup of tea steaming in his grasp. "And did you succeed in your task, to rescue Eidola? Tea?"
Flustered, Miltiades took the cup. "Yes, thank you. I mean, no, we didn't. But we found out… the rescue was not… that is-"
Sipping from his own cup, Piergeiron said gently, "Take a moment. Gather your thoughts."
Miltiades took one swallow and set his cup aside. "I led the group seeking Eidola. We pursued her from the dungeon beneath the palace of Aetheric III, even, as I'm told by Kastonoph, as the squid lord struggled in his death throes."
The young man nodded confirmation, brushing the crumbs of a biscuit from his lips.
"He's also told me you know of your bride's true nature. Is this correct?" Miltiades asked stiffly.
Piergeiron winced. "Tell me again, so all is out in the open."
"Well, this comes as no surprise to the Lord Mage or your daughter," Miltiades said heavily. "Your supposed bride was in truth a greater doppelganger, an agent of the Unseen who aimed to rule Waterdeep not only from your bed, but through your mind. She'd been created, I know not how, in the image of your dead wife, Shaleen, and empowered, through subtle magics, to take hold of your mind. I am not surprised her abduction sent you into a coma, so powerful was her hold on you. I'm only surprised it didn't kill you."
"It did kill me," Piergeiron corrected. "I descended into death to follow her… to bring her back." He set down his teacup, gaze suddenly distant. "She was no illusion. I pursued someone real, powerful, brilliant and true. The presence I found there flung me out of death, back into life. That was no doppelganger."
"Ah, yes," Miltiades replied. "In any case, Eidola was among the most powerful weapons of the Unseen, a creature meant to spread their influence throughout Faerun. There must be others such as her about."
"In fact, through your efforts and my own, their ranks have been thinned in the past month," Khelben noted. "Aleena and I have been doing more than brewing tea."
Miltiades gave the Lord Mage a dark look. "I'd like to know why you two waited so long. Aleena told me you both knew the truth about Eidola before the wedding. Why didn't you stop her then?"
"She was a fine piece of work," Khelben replied. "Dangerous, yes, but less so than those who created her. If we'd destroyed Eidola, her creators would have made another creature to infiltrate the palace, and done a better job of it. We needed her alive to trace her makers, which I've done." There was unmistakable finality in his voice.
The Lord Mage set down his teacup and added, "Until then I'd fitted her with a girdle of righteousness, binding her actions."
"I-ahem-am the one who removed the belt in the mage-king's dungeon," Noph volunteered, redness creeping up his neck. "I thought it was a… that is, she implied… er, I still thought she was a woman of honor, you see, and what more ignominious torment is there for such a one as… well, a chastity belt?"
Eyebrows lifted around the room. Hiding a smile, Khelben came to Noph's rescue. "Another decision that turned out to be right. By removing the belt, you revealed at last what Eidola really was and almost lost your life demonstrating it. The belt had served its purpose by then; once Eidola was abducted, I hired an assassin to track her down in the Utter East and kill her. The best such blade in all Faerun."
"Too bad he failed," Miltiades said disdainfully.
Khelben shrugged. "No matter; he's dead. And where he failed, you succeeded. You ended up killing the woman you were sworn to rescue."
"Yes," Miltiades replied, despite himself. Scowling, he reached into a bag at his belt, and drew forth the slender hand of a woman, severed mid-forearm. It was rigid, bleached of all color, and clutched a gigantic diamond.
Sudden stillness governed the room. Miltiades bore the hand to the Open Lord's bedside. "Eidola is well and truly dead. I brought this back as proof. We've not been able, by means muscular or magical, to tear the gem from her grasp. The gem holds her soul. Fearing the Unseen might use it to create Eidola again, we bring it to you for Khelben to deal with."
Vapor from Piergeiron's teacup spun lazily around the lord as he gently took Eidola's hand in his own. For a moment, gazing at the thing, he seemed to see the grasping octopodal tree of his dream.
"You say what she was, and I believe you. Her mind spell nearly killed me, and yet…" He turned the grisly trophy over and over in his grasp. "I cannot shake the sense that what I met in the world of the dead was no false lady… no malicious trickery."
The c
hange in his face was so subtle that no one there could have ascribed it to a shifting crease or a widening pupil. But all of them felt the silent agony underlying it. Piergeiron drew in a long, shuddering breath, and said, "To me, she was not a monster. To the people of Waterdeep, she was none other than my bride. She's gone, so what does it matter what she really was? To me, to the people, let her remain a vision of good."
Miltiades gazed down at his boots, clearly shocked and not knowing what to say. Rings and Belgin stood in respectful silence. Aleena looked at Khelben, back beside his kettle. Noph's eyes met the Open Lord's, and in the young hero's gaze dawned understanding and admiration.
"Hold," Khelben said gently. "Before this gem-bearing hand can be laid to rest, the soul within must be dispersed. I anticipated the truth of this diamond. There's only one sort of gem a doppelganger would cling to so strongly."
He took the severed hand from Piergeiron and held it up, his eyes glinting back its reflected light. "Now that we've all had at least a sip of the tea I brewed-a pleasant drink and protection against soul possession-it should be safe to discover just what Eidola might have to say for herself."
The company fell back to give the wizard room. A wide-eyed Miltiades lifted his now-cool cup and downed it to the dregs.
Khelben's hand began an intricate dance in the air about the jewel. Purple and green mists trailed his fingers with each arcane gesture. Then dark and menacing words came from his lips. Mists swirled around the stone. The incantation sounded again by itself, the words seeming to echo with the vicious barbed edges of ancient evils brought into the light of a new day.
Up from the mists swirled a cloud of smoke that shivered, rippled, and became a feminine face, eyes closed, high cheekbones almost too beautiful.
"Shaleen!" Piergeiron gasped in sudden hope.
The vision's eyes opened. Her pupils were vermilion slits, glowing with hatred. "All you wanted was me, Piergeiron. All I wanted was all you had. We could have done very well for each other."
"Begone, vile beast!" Khelben growled. "Let only the memory of your outward virtue remain!"
In the moment before Eidola's soul dissipated forever into the bright morning breeze, her humanity melted away. A gray-skinned, dull-eyed, wholly inhuman something stared hatefully at them all.
J. Robert King Ed Greenwood
The Diamond
Interlude
Musing and Madness
I'm no longer dead, but on some level I must be mad.
Mad with loss, first for my Shaleen, and now for my Eidola. It's the privilege, perhaps the responsibility, of survivors, especially mad survivors, to remember the dead always, to reassemble them not out of trivial facts but eternal verities.
If we must all die-and we must, of that I'm sure-at least let what remains of us in the hearts and hopes and dreams of friends be what was best and brightest. Death can have the rest.
Perhaps I am mad, Miltiades, but let me mourn. Perhaps I am heroic, Noph, but do not overindulge me. Perhaps I am both mad and heroic, for what are humans but those who know they'll die and go on living, madly heroic? Whatever I am does not matter. Whatever she was does not matter. Judge if you wish and come to your own conclusions, Water deep. I ask one thing only…
Mourn with me.
Chapter 5
Having Met the Open Lord on Two Previous Occasions, Death Drops by for One Last Visit, Delivers a Housewarming Gift, and Heads Off to Other Engagements
Khelben watched from his all-too-accustomed spot in the balcony of the renovated chapel. There were solemn acolytes, of course, and glauren and all groaning their way through yet another dirge. This rendition of the funeral march, the third in one week, at last captured the true spirit of the music. Ponderous. Torpid. Grating. Bilious. Not merely lifeless but verging on putrific.
Khelben wouldn't have attended, but he had to support his luckless friend Piergeiron in his time of greatest need. He was also on hand to prevent Lasker Nesher from using the chance to grandstand. He would not have come, save that he knew what would inevitably follow.
The rest of Waterdeep had turned out eagerly, almost hungrily. To them, this was the funeral of a princess. Already, gossip had piled tale upon idle tale, building Eidola up into tragic proportions. Folk who had never seen, let alone met, her fell upon each others' shoulders in sobbing grief. More had been spent on flowers in two days than had been spent on shipbuilding in the past two years. The chapel was a veritable garden of white and green, all destined tomorrow to be as dead as the woman they were meant for.
Piergeiron had been right. After all the confusion of the last month, the people needed to mourn, wanted to mourn. So did the Open Lord. Even Khelben felt reluctantly moved by the common sorrow, the grand whelming of heart-pouring loss.
Into the midst of solemn flowers and weeping witnesses came the once-dead Open Lord. Mighty in bright-polished armor, Piergeiron moved with slow reverence up the aisle, bearing a discreetly folded silken cloth that held the hand of his mortal bride.
In the quivering light of the chandeliers, he looked old, wan, and utterly alone. He moved in time to the death march, dignifying its overwrought strains with his patient stride. Khelben suddenly saw how acutely important this was to Piergeiron. He straightened in his seat.
The Open Lord's demeanor had the same effect on the rest of the congregation. He moved slowly forward, a tiny boat drifting past waves that could easily swamp or overturn it. Eyes turned first to the bundle the man held, and then to his face, and last to the floor.
After a last agonized refrain of the dirge, the Open Lord reached Shaleen's gold and glass casket. The music ended, echoing into silence. Not a breath stirred the air. The white-robed priest of Ao waited, eulogy in hand.
No one coughed. No one could be heard to breathe. Piergeiron stood a long while gazing down at the magically restored body of his first love, Shaleen. Her casket had been moved to the center of the funeral dais. Atop it rested a small case of gold and glass, fashioned in the same style as the larger box. This case lay open.
With great reverence, Piergeiron laid the bundle gently into the case. He drew back the silk and arranged it carefully around the hand and the diamond it clutched. Then, with a sigh, he fitted the glass cover down atop the case and turned the lock screws at the corners.
He lifted watery eyes to the priest of Ao, who inhaled deeply to begin his eulogy.
Then it happened. The diamond, bright already between the elegant fingers of Lady Eidola, grew brighter still. It was as though the facets within it were being aligned to focus the light they reflected. Folk gasped as the radiance built swiftly to a lantern-bright blaze. Eidola's fingers, suddenly scaly and black against the glorious gem, caught fire and flared away to ash. Then the silk ignited in a flash that was almost unnoticeable beside the brilliant glow of the gem.
Piergeiron could do nothing but stand in dumbfounded astonishment, gazing at the starlike stone. Then he fell back, faint, into arms clad in black wool. The Blackstaff was behind him, having made his usual descent from the balcony. The mage was whispering into Piergeiron's ear: "… no need to fear. I'd suspected as much. Why would Eidola have a soul-stone at all, unless it contained the very creature upon whom she was modeled? Eidola is gone forever, but another soul is emerging…"
The fire was so hot now that it was melting the gold base of the small casket.
"… used this soul-gem to create Eidola. This, now, isn't her soul, but that of the woman after whom she was fashioned…"
Gold drops rained down from the case into the casket of Shaleen, forming a hot puddle between her feet.
"… they did it again. Yon candle sconces on the casket must be forged from the candlesticks that brought the bloodforge warriors here. They must've melted them down again-trust Waterdhaviansand made the coffer for the hand from some of it. It's a conduit for the soul in the gem. The soul has sensed its own body"
The gem tumbled through the hole it had melted, falling into the puddle of liquid met
al. There, it flared so bright that even Khelben fell back, dragging Piergeiron with him. Shaleen's casket became opaquely brilliant. All assembled Waterdeep winced away from it. Then just as suddenly the casket went black.
Piergeiron pulled free of the Lord Mage and stumbled to the foot of the coffin. He saw hands moving, pressing against the inside of the glass.
"Shaken!"
His heartfelt shout shattered the shocked silence, and a thousand throats took up the name in a thunderous chorus. The one they called on clawed at the inside of her coffin just as her husband had done before.
"Right," Khelben called calmly, reminding all who heard it that he'd been through this before. "Crafters, bring your pry bars and augers! Priests: prayers and gauze." He turned to smile at a mop-haired man-giant. "And, yes, Madieron, see if you can't lay hands on a plow horse somewhere."
In the ensuing bustle and excited roar, Piergeiron spun away from the coffin. His eyes were sharp again and piercing. The fog was gone from him. He sought one man: a certain silver paladin with a penchant for hidebound heroism and a hammer as large as all outdoors.
"Miltiades!" Piergeiron cried, reaching the man he sought and clapping him on one ornamental epaulet, "how's about I have a look at your hammer?"
The paladin gaped at him, bewildered. "What?"
"Come now, Miltiades, don't be stingy," Piergeiron roared. "The lads and lasses of three continents are talking about this golden hammer you wield. It's not as though I'd dent it."
Blinking, as stiff as always, Miltiades blurted, "Well, of course not. It's not as if… I mean to say, if you can't be trusted… er, that is-" He unslung the mighty weapon. "Here."
"Thanks," said Piergeiron, his old humor sparkling in his eyes.
He strode back through the carnival of crafters and clergy and gawkers, crowded eight deep around the casket where his wife struggled. His very presence cleared a path.
Knees against the still-warm gold, Piergeiron hoisted the great sledge over his head and cried out, "If ever there was Justice, in the name of Tyr-!"
The Diamond tddts-9 Page 6