Yet eager as she was to be excused, Cera didn’t want Jhesrhi tormenting the ghoul in her place, especially if it wouldn’t bother Jhesrhi. The thought of the wizard feeling nothing as Gosnorn shrieked and thrashed, or perhaps if she even enjoying the dance of the flames, was disquieting.
“Thank you,” Cera said, “truly. But if it must be done, I’ll do it. Maybe divine magic will get it done faster.”
Sarshethrian leered. “Excellent. Then perhaps the fey can hold Gosnorn while we question him.” He likely didn’t want to be close to the ghoul while Cera evoked the Keeper’s light lest it sear him as well.
Jhesrhi spoke to the stag men in Elvish. They gingerly approached the pale demon in his haze of writhing, ragged shadow; gripped Gosnorn; wrestled him down on top of a sarcophagus; and held him spread-eagled.
Cera told herself she had to do what she was about to undertake for the sake of countless decent, living people, and had to do it too, to be reunited with Aoth. She silently asked the Keeper’s forgiveness, anyway then poised her mace over Gosnorn’s body.
“Please,” she said. “Just tell us. Spare yourself the pain.”
The undead messenger spit at her, but thick and brown in the wavering light of Jhesrhi’s fire, the spittle fell short.
“Do your worst, sunlady,” Gosnorn said, and sarcasm turned the title into a jibe. “By all means, do it to oblige one who’s more of a foe to your kind and your god than I’ll ever be.”
Cera took a breath, then reached out through what felt like an infinity of frigid darkness for the warmth and light of the Yellow Sun. It was difficult to draw down even a modest amount, but in this grim circumstance, maybe that was good. She didn’t want to unleash too much power at once and burn the prisoner to ash.
The spiky gilded head of the mace glowed from within, and even that was enough to make Gosnorn avert his face and close his sunken eyes. When she sent the magic blazing down at him, he howled and bucked, and the stag men nearly lost their grips on him. Mottled with spots of rot and mold, his skin smoked and charred.
He cursed and reviled her afterward, though, and for several flares after that, until his hide was riddled with black-edged holes, the air stank of burned flesh, and she felt too sick to her stomach and full of self-hatred to continue. Then she realized he’d finally stopped straining to break free of the stag men and spit sludge onto her vestments. Instead, he was simply shuddering.
“Now then,” Sarshethrian said as, his withered arm cradled to his chest, he approached the prisoner, “tell us all about it.”
Gosnorn hesitated. “Promise to set me free.”
The pale man gave Cera a crooked smile. “I thought you had him convinced, but I see I’m too impatient. Please, continue your ministrations.”
“No!” Gosnorn said. “I’ll tell! It’s Lod! I’m supposed to tell Uramar the prophet is coming to Rashemen!”
His single eye widening, Sarshethrian hesitated. For the first time since he’d accosted Cera and Jhesrhi, the fiend seemed genuinely surprised, if not astonished.
After a moment, he said, “You can’t mean across the ocean by ship and then overland. That would take forever. If he wanted to come, Lod too, would journey via the deathways.”
“Yes.”
“And that’s how I know you’re lying! He hasn’t entered my domain since the night I escaped his death trap. He’ll send fools like you to sneak and scurry through, run his errands, and perish when their luck runs out, but he’s too cowardly to come himself.”
Despite the agonies he’d undergone and the pain that surely lingered, Gosnorn managed another snarl. “He’s not a coward! He’s our champion! Our liberator!”
“What a sad misreading of history. But I don’t suppose it’s worth the time to rebut it. We should stick to the business at hand. Convince me that Lod is on his way. Otherwise, this lady will bring back the sunlight.”
The ghoul hesitated, then said, “He doesn’t tell me everything.”
Sarshethrian nodded. “I realize that.”
“Still, some of it’s not hard to figure out. Faerûn is a whole new continent for the Eminence to conquer, and the way I understand it, Rashemen is a special part of Faerûn. The fey are stronger there, and if we take control of the place and combine its magic with our own, we’ll have a mighty weapon.”
“In other words,” Jhesrhi said, “Lod has decided the mission there is so important that he ought to oversee it in person.” Consideration of a would-be conqueror’s strategy appeared to have focused her mind. Her speech was as quick and her manner as brusque as they’d been during the campaign to conquer Thesk.
Cera looked to Sarshethrian. “What do you think now?” she asked. “Does it sound any more plausible?”
The lord of the deathways cocked his head and stroked his chin in contemplation while his corona of ragged shadow whipped and coiled. At length, he said, “You know, I believe it does. Rashemen surely is important to Lod, and if I must be honest, his agents like Gosnorn slip through the deathways safely more often than not. I can imagine him deciding to run the risk.”
“So we ambush him,” Jhesrhi said.
Sarshethrian smiled. “My very thought.”
* * * * *
Stretched human skins decorated the walls of the game room, and someone had covered each with elegant calligraphy. Reading one, Aoth discovered the biography of a clerk who’d sought to embezzle funds from the quarrying business owned by a certain Red Wizard. The account was full of extravagant praise for the thief’s cleverness and audacity.
A second skin related the tale of a smith who’d maintained a secret shrine to Kossuth in his home. Here, the ironic expressions of admiration centered on the martyr’s piety and courageous determination to follow the faith of his forefathers.
Aoth too, offered to the Lord of Flames on occasion, and the mockery made him scowl. Then Orgurth, who was watching the door, murmured, “A wizard’s coming.”
Aoth turned, bowed, and kept his hooded head lowered thereafter. In Thay, a land where a fair number of folk bore a trace of inhuman blood, his luminous blue eyes were less noteworthy than in many another realm. Still, it was far from impossible that some observant and well-informed mage would recognize the notorious “traitor” Captain Fezim, especially if allowed a good look at his tattooed face.
The creature in the doorway was a shriveled mummy whose pungent cologne couldn’t quite mask the underlying smells of embalmer’s spice and dry rot. His frayed, stained wrappings made an odd contrast to the gaudiness of his bejeweled crimson robes.
“What are you doing?” the mummy asked, his voice an uninflected croak.
Aoth gestured with his spear to indicate the skins. “These are funny, Master.”
The dead mage cocked his head, and his neck creaked. “You can read the epitaphs?”
“I know enough words to understand the joke.”
“Hm.” The mummy turned and proceeded down the hallway.
Orgurth waited until he judged that the undead had shambled out of earshot. Then he whispered, “I take it the skins won’t help us.”
“No.”
“Then why waste time on them?”
“The writing could have been spells, like on a scroll. I couldn’t know until I checked. Now we can move on.”
When they did, their explorations proved as nerve-wracking and frustrating as before. They kept running into Red Wizards and their underlings. So far, everyone had either ignored them or given them a casual nod, but it might only take one busybody asking which particular mage they served to reveal they were intruders.
Meanwhile, they were often unable to search the most promising chambers. A well-stocked library was a case in point. Aoth was all but certain that if he only could spend sufficient time perusing the volumes on the shelves, he’d find a solution to his problem. But that was out of the question so long as a red-clad, shaven-headed man and woman were busy reading and scratching notes.
Another chamber, this one considerably s
maller than the library, contained a faceless mannequin standing on a pedestal. The figure wore faded vermillion garments that might once have belonged to some eminent Conjuror. A harness of crossed belts secured folded silvery, batlike wings to its back.
Wings. But only a single set. Not intending for Orgurth to notice, Aoth gave him a wry sidelong glance.
“What?” whispered the orc.
“Nothing. Come on.” He led the way out of the memorial and toward a staircase.
“Is this a good idea?” Orgurth murmured.
Aoth shrugged. “That depends on what you mean by ‘good.’ We’ve searched all the promising-looking parts of the ground floor that we can get at. But we can hope one of the Reds left magic that will help us in his room. If someone catches us rummaging around, though, we likely won’t be able to bluff our way out of it.”
“Maybe we should just grab a mage, put a blade to his throat, and force him to help us.”
Aoth smiled. “I thought of that. But not every wizard knows the secret of instantaneous travel. Otherwise, I’d know, and we wouldn’t be in this fix. So if we’re reduced to making that move, pray we guess correctly.”
He felt exposed climbing the stairs. But he’d previously noted various sorts of folk, not just Red Wizards, ascending them, and he and Orgurth did the same without anybody accosting them.
On the second floor as on the first, hallways lined with doors ran away from the central staircase in four directions. But unlike the ground floor, no one was in sight, and only a few pearly, fist-sized orbs in sconces glowed to relieve the gloom. As far as Aoth was concerned, both changes were improvements. The dimness was no hindrance to his fire-kissed eyes and shouldn’t bother an orc either. But it might keep a Red Wizard or servant from spotting the interlopers at a distance.
He picked a hallway at random, and he and Orgurth prowled along, testing doors. About half were locked, and some of the unlocked ones granted admittance to rooms that were manifestly vacant. But other open chambers contained signs of occupancy such as trunks; rumpled bedclothes; or a naked, unconscious slave sprawled on the floor with puckered fang marks on her neck. Perhaps the wizards in residence were making the declaration that no thief would be foolish enough to pilfer from them.
Aoth hoped to prove them mistaken. But he left stray coins and baubles where they lay and noted with approval that Orgurth did the same, although the runaway slave did guzzle the last mouthfuls of wine from any dirty goblets he came across.
In one room, the searchers discovered a wooden sarcophagus inlaid with gold that looked ancient enough to date back to the days when the Mulhorandi had ruled Thay. Aoth’s truesight immediately spotted a hidden drawer built into the base.
He slid it out to reveal a book bound in musty-smelling purple leather. His pulse quickened, and he whispered a spell of comprehension and riffled through the pages.
Then he scowled. Because the volume was the grimoire he’d anticipated but didn’t contain the magic he needed. He dropped it back in the drawer and resisted an urge to slam the compartment shut.
“Don’t wizards usually carry all their really good magic on their persons?” Orgurth asked.
Aoth likewise reined in the impulse to answer sharply. “Sometimes. Not always. Don’t give up hope yet.”
They finished investigating the open rooms in that hallway and proceeded to the next. Midway down, they found ironbound double doors with the words KEEP OUT scratched on them in sloppy characters and a sigil made of linked triangles inscribed with more exactitude underneath. To Aoth’s eyes, the figure glimmered green with the power it held.
“Interesting,” he said. “Everything else in the house is as handsomely and carefully made as one would expect. But someone in a hurry both sealed and defaced this door, and no one since has seen fit either to breach the seal or even repair the damage to the finish. I wonder why.”
Orgurth grunted. “Break in and find out. At least it’ll make a change from ransacking bedchambers.”
Aoth recited his spell of opening. The glow of the ward didn’t so much as flicker, and when he pushed on the doors, they didn’t budge.
Footsteps thumped and voices echoed up the stairwell. When the folk ascending reached the second floor, they could easily glance down the hallway and see two figures lurking in front of a forbidden room where humble soldiers had no business.
The prudent course might be to hide and come back later. But Aoth suspected he might finally be on the brink of gaining access to something useful, and he was reluctant to turn away.
For after all, even hiding was no guarantee of safety. The chapterhouse was crawling with enemies who could stumble across him and Orgurth at any moment, no matter where they went to ground.
He jammed the point of his spear into the crack between the doors and, with a muttered word of command, charged the weapon with raw, destructive force. Then, using the spear like a pry bar, he threw his weight against the shaft.
Overwhelmed by the opposing power, the glow in the carved ward winked out of existence, and the doors lurched apart. Unfortunately, they did so with a cracking sound.
Aoth and Orgurth scrambled through, pulled the doors shut after them, and stood with weapons ready to attack anyone who followed them in. But nobody did, nor did Aoth detect voices raised in alarm. If the folk on the staircase had even heard the doors snap open, they must not have thought anything about it.
When he was satisfied such was the case, he turned to see what was behind him. His eyes widened.
Inlaid in the center of the floor was a detailed map of Faerûn surrounded by a complex circular design. Their maker had no doubt fashioned each precisely, but later on, the floor had rippled and flowed, stretching, bending, and breaking the shapes and lines.
By the looks of it, the distorting effect had originated in the center of the map and spread outward. It hadn’t quite reached the painted text on the left wall or the stained-glass window in the back one. Dull with night, the latter depicted a Red Wizard flying with the aid of silver wings.
“Do you know what we’re looking at?” Orgurth asked.
“I think so,” Aoth replied. “In its day, the discipline of conjuration encompassed shifting oneself through space, and the Conjurors who occupied this chapterhouse created a portal for the purpose. But when the Spellplague struck, Blue Fire must have erupted through this gate, as it did so many—I recognize the warping effect—and someone sealed the room for safety’s sake. Later, folk saw the hurried warning he scratched as a piece of history, and that’s why—”
“Why they left it. I understand. But are you saying we found what we need?”
“Maybe. The Blue Fire isn’t burning in here anymore, the system of battle magic I studied involves quite a bit of conjuration, and the instructions for using the gate are there on the wall. All those things are good.
“But I was never a Conjuror or privy to the craft secrets of any order of Red Wizardry,” Aoth continued. “Magic itself has changed since the time the portal was made, the geography of Faerûn has changed, and you can see for yourself how the Blue Fire damaged the design. Those things are bad.”
Orgurth grunted. “But you’re going to try to take us through, anyway.”
“It’s the best chance we’ve found so far. Keep watch.”
The triggering incantation seemed relatively straightforward. Unfortunately, the instructions for the mystic passes meant to accompany the recitation were vaguer, although it was possible a member of the Order of Conjuration wouldn’t have found them so.
Aoth made his best guess at what the author had intended to convey. He considered too, what embellishments he might add to reinforce the spell and so compensate for the damage to the design. Such improvisation added to the risk that translation might not just fail to work at all but go somehow horribly awry, but in his judgment, it was necessary.
When he felt ready, Aoth faced the portal. He thrust his spear at the ceiling and said, “The world is thought. I turn it in my mi
nd and bring the Fortress of the Half-Demon—”
Clinking and chiming, the stained-glass window climbed down from its frame. In the process, its component pieces shifted, turning it into a flat but roughly manlike shape by the time it reached the bumpy floor. It raised hands with the fingers aligned for cutting and slicing and, still tinkling, started forward.
Aoth had never encountered such a creation before but took it for some manner of golem. Presumably the Conjurors had stationed it here to keep intruders like him from using their precious portal, and one had to give a password or some such to keep it quiescent.
He wished he’d noticed it before. But in its previous shape, it had looked exactly like any ordinary stained-glass window, and perhaps because it had stood dormant for so long, it hadn’t had even a hint of power gleaming inside it. In the face of such perfect camouflage, even truesight sometimes failed.
Hoping to melt the oncoming construct without making too much noise, Aoth hurled a burst of fire from his spear point that made Orgurth cry out and jump away. The golem, however, advanced through the flare without even faltering. For the moment it lasted, the fire simply brought the colors of the figure’s component pieces to vivid, glittering life.
The golem raked with a spindly arm, and Aoth caught the stroke on his targe. The impact made a cracking noise, but to his disappointment, the claws didn’t break off.
Meanwhile, Orgurth circled behind the golem and swung his scimitar at its leg. That produced a similar glassy clashing sound but didn’t damage the guardian either.
Aoth blocked another slash of the figure’s talons and riposted with a jab to its torso. His spear popped a trapezoidal piece of crimson glass out of the matrix. But when he snatched the weapon back from the hole he’d made, the surrounding segments shifted to seal it, and the golem kept attacking as relentlessly as before.
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