Plague of Spells

by Bruce R Cordell

  He could just discern the symbol’s treelike outline, blurry like half-recalled faces of friends long absent. With single-minded deliberation, he compelled it to reveal its secrets.

  It revealed nothing.

  He was not impatient; he had nothing but time. He continued to observe the image. As they used to say in Xiang Temple, Raidon could stare the paint off the walls, if given the time.

  Gradually he noticed discolorations within the lines, smears of gray on black. The blurs became colors; then the colors became shapes. The lines of the symbol pulled away on all sides to become a window onto another place.

  Raidon saw a fog-shrouded tower on a small island. Dozens of scaled, fishlike humanoids burst from the water’s edge and stormed the tower. Behind them strode two watery crones who chanted obscenities.

  The creatures had an aberrant taint. Raidon wasn’t sure how he knew that, but he assumed the knowledge was communicated to him by the Sign. Though the creatures were not aberrations themselves, a portion of their spirit was pledged to something abominable.

  The fishfolk sought to overpower several defenders who held the tower. The tower denizens included a sea captain in ostentatious dress, accompanied by four humans in ship-scrounged finery; a woman in a body wrap the color of snow; a man with eyes like blood and a cloak so black it seemed more an aura than clothing; a striking young woman as hazy as a dream; and oddly enough, another scaled humanoid touched with the taint of aberration, who stood with the humans instead of its attacking kin.

  The young woman with the hazy outline gasped and disappeared before the attackers landed their first blow.

  The assault was fierce.

  The captain lost his hat in the initial offensive, but his clicking, whirring sword dispensed death each time its damp tip pierced an attacker’s scales. Two of the humans in ragged ship’s attire fell in the initial blitz.

  The cloaked man uttered what seemed more like a plea than a spell. A massive iron crown coalesced upon the head of one of the crones. The prongs atop writhed in metallic agony, and as if stricken mad, the afflicted hag began slaying her own allies. Fishfolk fell dead as her killing eyes raked them.

  The woman in white discharged fire and lightning into the invaders’ ranks. Her eyes danced, and she yelled with grim jubilation with every enemy she laid low. She destroyed the remaining crone with a blast of fire.

  To Raidon’s practiced eye, the attackers had woefully underestimated the depth and strength of the tower defenders. The fight was over.

  Yet it wasn’t over, not really. For Raidon perceived through the Sign-enabled scrying window that the attackers were pawns of something else, something that had not entered the fight. Lines of association ran like fishing lines away into the sea. The fishfolk and sea hags were mere fingers for an entity greater and more terrible. Something perhaps even aberrant, or at least something infected with madness most foul.

  What was it? He concentrated on the immaterial lines of connection, trying to follow them from the attackers back to their source. He was aware of Cynosure’s attention, sharing his conjured view through the Sign. He understood the construct silently aided him, allowing him to use the Sign in such an extraordinary fashion despite his lack of training in its multifarious functions. With the Sign now part of him, he needed to learn to use it consciously and without aid. But for now, he allowed the golem to guide his disembodied travel along the wispy tendrils across the water, flashing west over miles uncounted.

  In ten measured heartbeats, the Sign-generated scrying window framed a seamount surrounded by coral protruding from the sea. The small island appeared in the shape of a fat sickle moon from Raidon’s aerial vantage. A salt lagoon filled the open central portion of the island, and rounded, jumbled structures sprawled between dry land and soggy marsh.

  Even as the monk tried to identify the strange architecture, his viewpoint flashed into the murky depths. The sun’s yellow light turned green, and then, as the descent continued, blue. More of the strange, rounded structures he’d noted on top of the island were jumbled around a yawning cave at the seamount’s base. Humanoid figures swam among the drowned structures.

  “More fishfolk,” Raidon murmured.

  Cynosure’s voice replied, “They are named kuo-toa.”

  The viewpoint slowed as it approached the dark cave mouth. Disturbed silt hung in the water, making the cave’s already dim interior even more difficult to discern.

  Inside, something rested back from the opening on the rocky floor, its shape long and cigar-shaped for the most part, though it was thicker at one end. Striations ran in parallel lines along the thinner portion of the shape, but the bulblike thickening at the other end was smooth.

  The silt and lack of reflected light robbed the scene of meaning. Was the shape on the cave floor a natural jumble of drowned rocks? The lines of association the Sign followed terminated with the unmoving, contoured outcrop. The shape itself was not aberrant, but it contained something whose taint was like a bottomless pit.

  Suddenly, the great shape shifted.

  Raidon’s assumptions flipped. He readjusted his sense of scale and nearly lost his focus in surprise. The shape was no jumble of rocks; it was a colossal squid, one of incredible bulk!

  Two spots on each side of the bulk opened, revealing shield-sized eyes gleaming with awareness. It knew it was being observed. Its tapered end suddenly separated into a forest of suckered arms. It writhed, and a blanket of silt billowed to obscure all. But not before Raidon saw the true obscenity, clutched firmly in one tentacle.

  It was a black stone, roughly the size of a man’s head. To his Sign-enhanced sight, it seemed the stone was a vortex of aberration, sucking and drawing down all of the natural world to a nether space where utter abomination lurked.

  Pain seared Raidon’s temples, and he jerked his eyes wide.

  A breeze pushed the grass across the plain in soothing waves of green. Scents of growing things and clean earth were a welcome balm from the vision that still burned in Raidon’s memory: whipping tentacles, boring eyes, and a relic whose wrongness was so acute, it constantly tore at the world. And for all that, Raidon had the sense, perhaps imparted by the Sign on his chest, that the relic was perhaps only the tip of a much more horrific truth.

  “What did we just see?” Raidon asked the air.

  “A kraken. A great kraken named Gethshemeth. It holds an artifact somehow tied to Xxiphu itself. The stone it clutched, did you see it?”

  “Yes. Who were those people who fought the kraken’s puppets?”

  “A good question. Something for us to discover, but their identity is not vital to our interests.”

  Raidon said, “Very well. How is it the kraken came to possess such a relic?”

  “I do not know how such an object has been raised to the surface,” mused Cynosure. “Perhaps in the earth movements that followed the Spellplague … But that is mere speculation. Regardless of how it happened, a great kraken possesses a sliver of connection to Xxiphu.”

  “What does a sea squid, intelligent or not, want with such a thing? Power, I suppose, as all creatures seem to desire, as if control over others will somehow bring them greater satisfaction.”

  “You are likely correct,” said Cynosure with a note of appreciation in its voice. “The kraken’s mind surpasses even my own cognizance. But with an artifact of Xxiphu under its control, it will learn to channel more and more strength, and become a force not easily withstood. Its reach might swell past all the bounds of reason.”

  “Cynosure, you need not be coy. You want me to slay it before it attains its peak of power.”

  “That is advisable.”

  Raidon nodded, thinking back on the worst creatures he had eradicated in the name of the Sign in the years before the Spellplague. “Illithids are bad enough. Faerûn should not also have to face aberrant-infused kraken.”

  “You should know that another outcome is also possible, one even worse than an empowered kraken. If we do not take thi
s relic from the kraken soon, the connection it has to Xxiphu will grow broader and more certain. In a short time, the connection could be sufficient to raise the city whole. Then Toril shall really have something over which to weep.”

  Raidon repressed a shudder. He was suddenly and simultaneously cognizant that, with the scope of the situation before him, he hadn’t thought about Ailyn for a great span of daylight …

  The monk sighed, clenched his fists, and lost his focus. Of what real purpose was his life? He’d failed the one person who needed him. He’d outlived his own time and survived now only through a fluke of magic and circumstance. He didn’t deserve or much care if his own existence continued. He yearned for an end to his struggles, an end to his shame. On the heels of that insight, an idea followed.

  He said, “Once your capacity to move me is rejuvenated, transfer me directly into the kraken’s presence. It will be caught off guard. I will strike with all the art of Xiang Temple in my fist, and kill the kraken before it knows it is threatened. Its death convulsion will kill me, and if not, I will drown before I reach the surface. I do not fear such an outcome. I would welcome it.”

  Silence was Raidon’s response.

  “Did you hear, Cynosure?” demanded the man of the air, his voice infused with uncharacteristic volume. “Send me along now. Let me slay this kraken and be done with it all.”

  The sun was sinking into the west, and a coolness grew on the plain. Raidon spied a wolf in the valley below, sniffing along the track of some hoped-for twilight meal.

  Finally the voice replied, “I appreciate your fervor, Raidon Kane. Were I able to transfer you thus, assuming I could place you so close to the great kraken within its wards, which I cannot, perhaps you could kill Gethshemeth. But in killing it, and yourself, you would alert Xxiphu.”

  “Surely, I can slay Gethshemeth quickly enough,” returned the monk, though with less certitude. “I would have a few moments to catch it by surprise—”

  “It has held the relic too long. Even if I could put you in the right place at the right time, which I have just explained I cannot, killing the great kraken is not enough. We need to kill Gethshemeth and simultaneously sever its connection with the relic, and therefore, its connection to the Abolethic Sovereignty. Your Sign alone is insufficient to that task.”

  Raidon pulled his fingers across his close-cropped black hair, massaging away a germ of annoyance. The construct was becoming more long-winded and circumspect by the moment.

  “Then what, Cynosure? What can I do?”

  “You must discover the fate of the sentient sword, Angul. It alone, in your hands, can accomplish what must be done.”

  “Angul. Yes, a powerful blade. But was it not an item infused with its power by the Weave? With Mystra’s fall, how could it still function?”

  “You ask a penetrating question. A complex answer exists; the simple answer is that it simply does. Will that satisfy?”

  Raidon frowned. His emotions were as out of control as they’d ever been. If Cynosure were standing next to him just then, he would have struck the golem.

  Cynosure must have sensed something of the monk’s mood. It said, “I apologize. Listen, then. Many magical items such as swords, cloaks, boots, and especially relics and artifacts survived the Spellplague and still operate, though sometimes with altered abilities. A magical item’s abilities were scribed into these devices when they were created, so even though the Weave was used in their making, the Weave no longer plays any part in their continuing operation. Likewise, though a forge flame is used in the making of a sword, if that forge flame later goes out for good, the sword is no less sharp. Does that answer you fairly?”

  Raidon thought on Cynosure’s words. He recalled the effects of the Spellplague on a person. The caravan chief, who’d died in its hungry grip, for instance.

  The monk grunted. He asked, “Why not tell Kiril all this? She’s Angul’s wielder. And a swordswoman. While I am proficient with blades, I prefer not to rely on them. You would be better enlisting her than me.”

  Cynosure replied, “As I said before, I lost track of Kiril after the Year of Blue Fire. She bears no Sign, yet in a dim way I was able to discern her condition. After she left the ruins of Ormpetarr, she and her dwarf employer plunged into something local survivors call the Plaguewrought Land. I have not detected her or Angul’s presence since. And, moreover, you are the only person with whom I can converse.”

  “How do you know Angul lies within the Plaguewrought Land?”

  “I do not. But it is the only lead we have. Perhaps you will learn more when you visit. A small settlement lies on its outskirts—you could get yourself a meal when you arrive.”

  Raidon’s stomach spoke up of its own accord. He was still ravenous. His grief-inspired fast had sapped his strength. A sit-down meal … perhaps that was what he needed. With a pot of steaming tea on the side.

  “Then send me on to Ormpetarr, when your strength is recovered. I will eat. After that, perhaps I will discover Kiril’s fate, and if I decide you are not dealing with me falsely, take up the sword, Angul, as my own.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The Year of the Secret (1396 DR)

  Green Siren on the Sea of Fallen Stars

  You can’t stop yourself, can you?”

  Japheth looked up, his hand half out of a fold of his cloak, his fingers clutching a dull tin.

  He frowned at Anusha. The girl perched on the edge of her travel case, nearly knee to knee with him as he sat on his cot. The porthole illuminated the cabin’s cramped expanse, though poorly. Her face was half shadowed, but he could read her expression well enough. She was concerned. Constant proximity to her over the last days had worn away much of the distance he preferred to maintain between himself and others.

  He had been lulled into a growing camaraderie. At first, she had done all the talking, relating to him the vivid details of her fight on deck against the sea hag. Japheth enjoyed her enthusiastic rendition of the events. In another person, he might have judged the story overlong, but somehow he hadn’t minded as the account poured from her lips. She’d never successfully stood off a determined attack by foes eager for her blood before—why shouldn’t she be flushed with success? More than that, he was interested to hear more of her peculiar sleepwalking ability.

  Her question about his traveler’s dust made him wish he’d maintained his customary reserve. The girl was becoming too familiar. Who was she to question his habits? Annoyance flared as a biting reply rose like acid in his throat. But he didn’t voice it. Why?

  Why did he not speak his mind with her? Why did he treat her so … delicately? Perhaps it was the fine cut of her jaw, her smooth-faced youthfulness. Her presence, in some way, recalled to him when he’d related to the world as she did, when he was still unscarred and saw limitless potential in everything. He had been like her not so long ago. Listening to her, watching her, he realized just how many dark events had got behind him. She radiated youth’s naivety and energy, unconsciously and without regard to its scarcity.

  If he allowed his guard to crumble further, he might make the mistake of dwelling overlong on her feminine attributes. It was better to think of her as a child, as when he’d first met her, rather than what she really was.

  He imagined cradling Anusha’s head in his hands and kissing her until they were both out of breath.

  Lord of Bats forefend! Where had that come from? He shook his head, attempting to dislodge his thoughts from that track. He didn’t need the complication of a relationship, however fleeting or innocent.

  He tried to think of something else, anything else. An image of his tin filled with roseate crystals popped into his head. His palms itched in immediate response. His concentration shivered, and he growled.

  “Are you all right?” Anusha asked, leaning toward him.

  “My business is my own,” he finally replied. He tried to make his voice cold, but it came out cracked.

  Wait! He remembered what his mind kept try
ing to forget. Despite her protestations to the contrary, she could still be an agent of Behroun.

  But once all was said and done, his hand seemed to spasm open of its own accord. The tin dropped back into his cloak.

  Anusha watched him a moment more, then asked, “Do you suffer? I don’t understand. You said your Lord of Bats keeps you from succumbing to the effects of traveler’s dust.”

  “True, but the craving never leaves me.”

  “Maybe you’re not getting the full benefit of your arrangement.”

  Japheth considered, then said, “I have taken more than the Lord of Bats was willing to offer. I may not negotiate further without risking all I have already gained.”

  Anusha digested that, then she asked, “What is a ‘pact stone’? In my half brother’s office, Behroun said he’d break your pact stone if you didn’t do as he said, and something about how that would make the Lord of Bats so mad he’d come for you.”

  The girl looked at him, waiting for a reply. Confident she’d get one. Was this unearned confidence a product of her youth or her privileged upbringing? Or, it dawned on him, perhaps it was merely her personality.

  “It is a complicated story.”

  Anusha stretched back. “We have days before we get to the atoll, you said. Tell me.”

  Japheth rubbed together the thumb and forefinger of the hand that had so recently held the dust tin. Why shouldn’t he tell her?

  The warlock said, “All right. This is the story. Before it became widely recognized that traveler’s dust was ultimately lethal, I traveled too far down the crimson road. I knew I was to die, so I decided to perish in dramatic fashion, at a time of my own choosing. I took all the dust I had at one time. A lethal dose.”

  Anusha put a hand to her mouth.

  “The crimson road leads directly into what may be the literal Abyss. Demons wait, hunger chasing across their glassy eyes. Victims of the dust walk, screaming, into demonic embrace. The road ends in a precipice, and in its tooth-lined gullet the drug-addled are consumed, mind and soul.”