The young priest closed his eyes and clenched his fist around the medallion. His lips moved as he murmured a prayer for divine guidance.
His answer came suddenly, with a cruel force that slammed Dag Zoreth onto his knees, and into the past. “The hymn,” he muttered though a rictus-grin of pain. “Cyric must have heard the hymn.” Then the thought was gone, swept away by more than twenty fleeing years.
Dag Zoreth was a child again, kneeling not in a new-growth forest, but in the darkest corner of a smoke-filled cottage. His small, skinny arms clutched a butter churn, and his black eyes were wide with terror as the bar on the door splintered and gave way. Three men strode in, their eyes burning with something that both repelled and fascinated the shrinking child.
One of them backhanded Dag’s mother, who had leaped forward to defend her children with the only weapon that came to hand—a long-handled iron skillet. The ridiculous weapon fell from her hand and clattered to the hearth. Again the man struck out, and his mother’s head snapped back. She went down hard, striking the hearthstone with an audible crack. Blood bloomed like an obscene crimson flower against her too-pale face. But somehow she found the strength to haul herself up, to dart past the man who strode purposefully toward the wide cradle at the far side of the room. There lay Dag’s twin sisters, shrieking with fear and rage and flailing the smoky air with their tiny pink fists. His mother threw herself across the cradle, scooping both little girls into her arms and shielding them with her own body as she cried out in prayer to Tyr.
The man drew a sword and swung it up high. Mercifully, the churn obscured Dag’s view and he never actually saw the blow fall, but he knew what the sudden silence meant. In the rough, angry exchange that followed the sword’s fall, Dag read his own fate.
He shrank back, flattening himself into the indentation his impish little sister had carved into the thick wattle-and-daub wall. It was a hiding place for her “treasures”—smooth or shiny rocks, a bluebird feather, and whatever other small wonders she discovered around the village. Dag fervently wished that his sister had dug deeper, turning her trove into an escape door. He held his breath and willed himself to disappear into the crevice, the smoke, and the shadows.
The men searched the cottage, tossing over the chests and beds in their haste to find the boy before they were overcome by smoke from the smoldering thatch roof. They did not move the churn, probably because there was no apparent place behind it for a child to hide. Finally they gave up the search, concluding that Dag had bolted as his sister had done.
She had left the cottage well before the fire had started. Ever curious, she had gone to investigate the noise caused by the approaching raiders, evading their mother’s frantically grasping hands and wriggling through the one small window left unshuttered. Her old night tunic had caught and torn on the shutter hook. Instinctively she’d clapped her hand to the little crimson birthmark on her bare hip—no doubt a defensive gesture honed by Dag’s frequent teasing. Then she was gone, the soles of her small feet flashing as she spilled headfirst out of the window. Dag wondered, briefly, what had become of her.
Dag waited until the men had left his home, then he slipped out of his cubby and crept over to the side window. He left his mother and his baby sisters behind without a glance, all the while hating himself for his cowardice. Though he was but a child, he was the son of a great paladin. He should have fought. He should have found a way to save his family.
His thin fingers shook as he tugged at the latch holding the shutters closed. For a few terrible moments he feared that he would not be able to open the window, that he would be forced to choose between dying in the smoldering building, or walking out into the arms of the men who had come to steal him away. Terror lent him strength, and he tore at the latch until his fingers bled.
The metal bar gave way suddenly. The shutters swung outward, and Dag all but tumbled over the low sill and into the herb garden that framed the side of the house. He lay where he fell, crouching low amid the fragrant plants until he was certain that his precipitous move hadn’t drawn attention. After a few moments, he cautiously lifted his head and darted a wide-eyed look over the clearing.
What he saw was like something from the lowest layers of the Abyss, horrors that no son of Tyr’s holy warrior should ever have had to endure.
Mounted raiders circled the village, swords raised to cut down any who might try to escape. The thunder of their horses’ hooves echoed through a hellish chorus of voices: the shouts of the raiders, the screams of the dying, the terrible keening grief of those who were yet alive. Above it all was the roar and hiss of the hungry fires. Most of the village houses burned freely, and bright flames leaped and danced against the blackness of the night sky.
Nearby a roof timber crashed to the ground, sending an explosion of sparks into the smoke-filled clearing. The sudden light illuminated still more horrors. Crumpled, blood-sodden bodies lay about the ground, looking more like slaughtered geese than the people Dag had known from his first breath. Surely that couldn’t be Jerenith the trapper over there, gutted like a deer, his own bloody knife lying at his feet. The young woman draped limply over the stone circle of the village well, inexplicably naked and nearly black and purple with soot and terrible bruises, could not be pretty Peg Yarlsdotter. Wasn’t it just this morning that she’d given Dag a honey cake, and kindly assured him that his father would return to the village before first snow?
A familiar voice, raised in a familiar cry, seized the boy’s attention. A wave of relief and joy swept through him. His father, the bravest and most fearsome Knight of Tyr in all the land, had returned at last! The child’s terror melted, and with it disappeared the pain of long days spent watching for his father’s horse, envying the boys whose fathers stayed in the village to tend less exalted tasks.
Suddenly brave, Dag leaped up from the herb garden and prepared to race to his father’s side. There could be no better or safer place in all of Faerûn than on the broad back of a paladin’s war-horse, shielded by his father’s strong sword arm and implacable faith.
He ran three steps before he realized his mistake. The voice was not his father’s after all, but that of Byorn, his older brother. His brother was fighting, as his father would have fought. As he, Dag, should have fought.
Not yet fourteen, not quite accounted a man, Byorn had the courage to pick up a sword and face down the men who rode into his village with cold steel and burning torches. And his voice, when he called out to Tyr for strength and justice, held the promise of matching his father’s deep, ringing tones.
Hero worship battled with terror in Dag’s dark eyes as he watched his brother flail about with a blood-streaked weapon. It was plain even to Dag that Byorn lacked skill and strength, but the youth fought with a fervor that kept two grown swordsmen at bay, and left neither unscathed. A third man sprawled on his back nearby, his head lolling to one side on a throat torn open, and his eyes still wide with the surprising knowledge that Death could wear a beardless face.
No wonder it was Byorn who wore the family ring, thought Dag with more admiration than envy. Their father had given Byorn the ring not only because he was the oldest of the five children, but because he was the most worthy.
The ring.
Once again, Dag’s fear retreated, this time before the grim fire of purpose. He was not quite seven, but he sensed in his bones and his blood the importance of that ring. He believed he would have done so even if he had never heard the fireside stories of the great Samular, a noble Knight of Tyr and his own distant ancestor. The ring must be kept safe, even if the children of Samular could not. By now, Dag understood with cold certainty that there would be no safety, no rescue, for any of them.
He crept around the back of the house and into the cover provided by the remnants of a neighbor’s summer garden. On his hands and knees, he scuttled between long rows of withering vines toward the place where his brother stood and fought like a true son of Samular’s blood. He was almost in the clear when B
yorn slipped and fell. He heard the raider’s shout of triumph and saw the killing stroke descend.
With a sharp, painful gasp, Dag dragged in a lungful of smoky air to fuel a scream of rage and horror and protest. All that emerged from his lips was a strangled whimper. Nevertheless, he kept moving steadily forward until he reached Byorn’s side.
His brother lay still, horribly still, in a silent patch of blood-soaked ground. None of the raiders paid Byorn any heed now that he was no longer putting up a fight. They’d left the boy at once and turned their attention to ransacking the few remaining buildings. Dag understood: they were searching for the descendants of Samular. That was the only treasure this tiny, hidden village had to offer. He had heard the men in his own house, berating the soldier who had killed two valuable infant girls with a stroke meant only for their mother. Byorn’s death must also have been a mistake. The men had come for children, and to Dag’s adoring eyes, Byorn was already a man grown. With a sword in his hand and a battle-prayer to Tyr on his lips, Byorn must have fooled the raiders, as well.
Dag took his brother’s limp hand in his. He tugged at the family ring, all the while fearing that Byorn’s fist would clench to protect and keep, even in death, what was rightfully his. But valiant Byorn was truly gone, leaving the battle in the hands of his younger brother—a boy of nimble mind, to be sure, but cursed with a body too thin and frail to ever bear the burden and glory of Tyr’s service.
But if a quick mind was all he had, he would use it as well as any warrior his weapon. A simple resolve, perhaps, but it struck Dag with the weight and force of prophecy. For just an instant, the forgotten years rose up before him. Dag understood what he had only sensed the first time he’d lived through the raid: this moment’s insight would shape and define his life. Then, suddenly, the years receded, the adult was gone. But resolve calmed the child, focused him.
Again Dag tugged at the ring. Finally it came free from Byorn’s finger. Dag’s first thought was to bolt into the woods with it, but he knew instinctively that such sudden and obvious movement would draw attention to him. He could not outrun the men and their horses. He dared not keep the ring with him, for he would surely be captured sooner or later. What, then, was he to do with it?
The answer came to him in the form of a single, crimson leaf. It floated down, drifting as gently as a newly freed soul, and came to rest on Byorn’s torn jerkin. Dag swallowed hard at the sight of the terrible wound, and he jerked his gaze upward, in the direction from which the leaf had come.
There was a knot in the tree. A small one, but sufficient to his purpose. Dag slowly rose to his feet, hardly daring to breathe.
“There’s another one! And he’s got the look of the paladin about him, too!”
It took Dag a moment to realize that the man was talking about him. Once, long ago—just yesterday, just this morning, less than an hour ago!—he would have been thrilled to his soul by any comparison to his famous father. Now all the raider’s words inspired was a terrible, burning rage.
His mother and two of his little sisters were dead. Byorn was dead, and Dag had been left alone to finish a task that should never have fallen to any of them. His father should have been here. But he wasn’t. He wasn’t. What good could there be in any man if he was never there, not even when his own children were in grave danger?
Dag heard the crescendo of running feet behind him. Inspiration came like a jagged lightning flash, and he acted on it at once. He flung himself at the tree and thrust the ring into the knot hole. He did not move away, but clung to the tree as if it were his mother. Terrified sobs shook through him, though his eyes were dry and his fear now completely overshadowed by cunning.
Let the men think him a foolish child, mindless with grief and terror. Their opinion would not alter his fate. They would take him away, but at least the ring would be safe.
The ring.
Dag Zoreth slammed back into the present, as suddenly as if he had been jolted awake from a nightmare involving a long, terrifying fall.
Every muscle in his body screamed with pain, but he hardly noticed the physical agony over the fresh torture of remembered grief. Several dazed moments passed before he realized that his hands were bleeding, his fine clothes muddy and torn. He must have moved through the village in concert with the Cyric-given dream, tearing at the gods-only-knew-what in his remembered attempt to dislodge the window shutter, crawling through the wild tangle that had once been a garden in a desperate struggle to reach his long-dead brother.
“I moved through the dream,” Dag murmured, suddenly understanding the practical implication of this. He raised his eyes, fully expecting to see a spring canopy of gold-green oak leaves overhead.
There was no oak tree, but the silvery leaves of a pair of aspens fluttered nervously in the quickening breeze.
A quickening breeze. Dag took a long breath and considered the subtle, acrid scent borne on the wind. Yes, it would rain soon, one of the quick, violent thunderstorms that he had so loved as a child. Even then, Dag had reveled in the power and drama of those storms, shrugging off any thought of the destruction that they all too often left behind.
A thunderstorm! Inspiration struck again, and Dag began to tear at the vines and brambles before him. In moments, he had uncovered a blasted, blackened stump. Shards of an ancient tree lay nearby, and weirdly shaped mushrooms grew from the black powder of rotted limbs. It was the very oak tree Dag sought, struck by lighting many years ago and burned nearly to the ground.
The ring was not easy to find amid the ruins of the tree. As Dag searched, the gathering storm swallowed the sun and deepened the shadows that shrouded the clearing. Dag’s horse whinnied nervously. The priest ignored these warnings. Rain began to pelt down as his searching hands raked through the debris, and soon the forest around him shuddered with the force and fury of the storm. Another man might not have found the ring at all, but it seemed to call out to Dag, urging him on.
He reached for a clump of mud and crushed it with his fingers. He felt something hard, and caught a glimpse of gold. Eagerly he reached for the small wineskin attached to his belt and poured the contents over the encrusted band—barely noticing the sting when the wine met his battered skin. He scrubbed the band clean on his ruined tunic and rose to his feet, his family treasure tightly clutched in one triumphant, bleeding fist.
Dag examined the ring by the light of another livid flash. Arcane marks scored the inside of the band. He had seen the marks once as a child and had assumed they were only a design. Now he could read the cryptic runes: When three unite in power and purpose, evil trembles.
Three, Dag mused. He knew of only two rings. As the pattern took shape in his mind, he began to understand why Malchior, his mentor, was suddenly so interested in Dag’s family history. It seemed likely to Dag that his childhood memories of the rings’ importance were based on more than legend. If Malchior was nosing about, there was real power to be had. Luckily the old priest knew nothing about the ring. Or perhaps he did; few high-ranking members of the Zhentarim were known for altruism. Surely Malchior did not go through the trouble of seeking out Dag’s lost past, and the location of his birth village, just to put his former acolyte’s mind at ease. Well, be that as it may, Malchior would not find him a docile tool, nor would power of any sort leave Dag’s hands without a bloody struggle.
Dag started to slip his family ring onto his index finger, as Byorn had once worn it.
Pain, quick and bright and fierce, lanced through him. Astonished, Dag jerked off the ring. He dashed his rain-soaked hair from his eyes and held the ring out at arm’s length, gazing at it with a mixture of puzzlement and reproach. He was a descendant of Samular—how could the ring turn on him?
The answer came swiftly, borne on a wave of fierce self-anger. He should have seen this coming. He should have known this would happen. The ring had probably been blessed, consecrated to some holy purpose in which he, Dag Zoreth, could have no part. Samular had been a paladin of Tyr; Dag Zoreth was a
strifeleader, a priest of Cyric.
On impulse, Dag took the medallion from around his neck, a silver starburst surrounding a tiny, carefully sculpted skull. He undid the clasp with fingers made slippery by mud and rain and his own blood, and then he slipped the ring onto the chain. He did up the clasp and put the medallion back in its proper place over his heart. The ring was hidden securely behind the symbol of Cyric.
Let Tyr—if indeed the god of justice condescended to observe someone such as Dag Zoreth—make of this what he willed.
Dag whistled for his horse and stiffly hauled himself up into the saddle. The return trip would have to be swift, for he could not wear the ring for much longer. It burned him now, even separated from his body by layers of purple and black garments and a light vest of fine elven mail. But there was another who would wear the ring for him, someone as innocent as he himself had been on that long-ago day, when an oak tree had wept crimson leaves over Byorn, the last worthy son of Tyr’s paladin.
Worthy or not, Dag fully intended to use the ring. After all, he was of Samular’s bloodline. He would reclaim his heritage—in his own way, and for his own purposes.
Two
There were other fortresses in the city of Waterdeep that were larger and more impressive, but Blackstaff Tower was without doubt the most secure and unusual fastness in the city.
Danilo Thann was a frequent visitor to the tower, and had been since Khelben Arunsun took him under his stern tutelage some twenty years earlier. Of late, it seemed to Danilo that the archmage’s summons were increasing in frequency, and that the demands he made upon his “nephew” and former student were growing by the day.
Thornhold Page 3