The woman speared Behroun like a fish with her glinting stare. Behroun wriggled and gasped until she turned back to regard Japheth. She said, “You look confused, poor human. For all your stolen power, you’re only a plaything here. All of you are, Behroun too, though he thinks himself the ringleader.” She sighed and looked to the ceiling as if bored beyond the capacity for words.
The Lord of Bats sucked down another bloody red tomato and announced, matter-of-factly, “I shall murder each of you in a manner so grisly that veteran warriors shall shudder and weep when they hear of it.”
The woman continued to inspect the ceiling, her face managing to convey weariness for all its otherworldly perfection.
Behroun spluttered, his features draining of color, “But once I break the pact stone, you will have all you desire, Neifion! You’ll have your powers returned, with Japheth here to punish—”
“The longer you delay your side of our agreement, the greater latitude I’ll have in interpreting our deal,” declared the Lord of Bats, his dead-white lips smacking in anticipation.
Behroun glanced at Malyanna, then he snapped his attention around to Japheth. “Warlock! How goes the mission? How close are you to retrieving this object, what did the captain call it, the Dreamheart?”
With a dull voice, Japheth replied, “We sail to the lair of the creature that holds it even now.”
“You hear?” asked the shipping magnate in too loud a voice. “Once I get the Dreamheart, Japheth’ll be yours. I’ll have all I need to press my claim on Impiltur. With a relic as potent as Captain Thoster claims this one is in my hand, I won’t have to be satisfied with a mere seat on the nascent Grand Council. No, with an eladrin queen of the Feywild at my side—”
Malyanna’s voice drowned out Behroun with a simple, “Please, don’t you ever cease your mortal prattle?”
Behroun’s face crumpled. Trying to recover, he snapped his fingers at Japheth. “Shouldn’t you get back to your ship?”
Japheth looked at the man. A small man with grand ambitions was Lord Marhana. He had no power of his own, only a knack for being in the right place at the right time. Though he possessed no moral sense, he had a mean, ratlike cleverness.
The warlock once confronted Behroun, asking the merchant why he should do Behroun’s bidding. After all, if Japheth did not, Behroun promised to smash the pact stone. On the other hand, Behroun had implied that at some future date he would return the pact stone to the Lord of Bats, who would promptly smash it.
Either way, the stone would be smashed and Japheth would wind up dead. So why, the warlock had yelled, should he do what Behroun wanted when his choice was to die now or die later? Behroun had winked and replied that he didn’t actually intend to ever give the pact stone back to the Lord of Bats. If Japheth did his bidding, promised Lord Marhana, Japheth could live out his life without fear of being slain by a vicious Feywild spirit bent on brutal revenge.
The memory evaporated in a haze of reignited hate. Emotion burned the warlock’s throat as he stepped forward a pace. He was only about ten feet from Lord Marhana’s chair.
Japheth asked in a casual tone that belied his anger, “Do you have the pact stone with you now, Behroun?”
Both the woman and the Lord of Bats simultaneously swung their heads around to regard Behroun, real interest animating Malyanna’s face for the first time.
“What does that matter?” snapped Behroun.
Japheth advanced another pace. As he did so, he saw the image of someone behind him reflected in a silver decanter. A figure in full, articulated plate armor that shone like gold. The figure held a long sword as if it were weightless. Surprised, he glanced back. Nobody was there. But when he looked in the decanter once more, he saw again the figure. This time, he also noted the armored warrior was limned in small blue and black flames. The cuirass was molded to a figure with a distinctively feminine cast.
Anusha? If so, she didn’t look anything like the meek dream image he’d glimpsed before. Was she, as he had half suspected, really working for Behroun? Would she attack him if he threatened her half-witted half brother, who might very well have left the pact stone back in the world? If he struck suddenly enough to kill Behroun, then he could return to the world and retrieve his pact stone from wherever Behroun had secreted it. He’d be free!
Indecision cost him. Malyanna rose from her chair, pushing it back so hard it slammed into the wall and splintered. She did not stand—no, she hovered in the air with no support, her hair whipping dramatically in a wind as cold as the Hammer’s worst blizzard. She pointed a finger at Japheth and said, “Think not to harm this fool. Behroun is under my protection … for now.”
Japheth realized he was flanked by enemies. A dream aassassin at his back, maybe, and an eladrin noble before him, whose abilities he couldn’t gauge, though he suspected she was formidable.
And he didn’t have his cloak.
Japheth smiled at the floating woman, at the still seated Lord of Bats who watched the proceedings with great interest even as he nibbled on an apple, and finally at Behroun, whose struggle to stand up ended with both him and his chair sprawled on the floor.
He said, “I’m done with fear, Behroun. You should have brought the pact stone with you.”
Japheth uttered his most potent curse, aimed it at Behroun, and loosed it as if it were a hunting kestrel.
A blaze of fire swept down upon Behroun, who already sprawled behind his fallen chair. When the flames settled over the man, he began to scream.
The hovering eladrin noble sang out a single syllable. The motes of flame bedeviling Behroun instantly died in puffs of white smoke. A backwash of cold air touched Japheth’s cheeks.
The Lord of Bats began to laugh, even as he reached for a platter of sugar-crusted toast.
The warlock reflexively moved to step back into his cloak, to retreat into shadow. He failed. Of course he failed; his cloak still served as a bridge between Darroch Castle and the Green Siren back in the outer cavern! He cursed anew, this time with words devoid of arcane power; they were merely fragments of frustration and renewed fear.
Malyanna looked down her nose at him. A hint of interest, passion even, animated her eyes. She said something in a tongue Japheth didn’t know, a language that would have been beautiful in nearly any other creature’s mouth. In her mouth, it seemed sinister. Suddenly she switched to Common and said, “I will kill you now.”
A skirling blast of winter began to chase around her upraised hand and arm. She flung it at Japheth. It raked him as if an ice-clawed beast.
The warlock uttered a counter chant, sending eldritch rays of red light to nip and bite at the eladrin’s flesh. She flinched with each impact, but her eyes only grew wider and more excited, even as the miniature storm of ice she’d summoned continued to enfold Japheth.
He began to bleed, but his blood froze before it could drip on the floor.
This woman was powerful. Too powerful to be a moon elf native to Faerûn who’d spent her life wondering about stories of a fey realm nearly unreachable, until now. No, this was an eladrin who’d lived always within the Feywild. She had never suffered a separation from her homeland as so many of her kin had. Now that the Spellplague had reunited the world and Fairie, moon and sun elves of Faerûn could seek their ancestral homeland. For the first time, it occurred to Japheth that eladrin might have an interest in Faerûn equal to what the moon and sun elves of Faerûn had in the Feywild.
The woman’s strength was, he recognized, too much for him. Its chilling cold communicated an old and deadly determination. Ice crystals accumulated and began to encase his skin. He sent another red bolt Malyanna’s way, which she caught on a shield of ice and deflected. He wondered if he had met his end. Without his cloak, it could be. His cloak, which indeed was once the Lord of Bats’s, contained half his power.
“No!” yelled Behroun, trying to shout over the Lord of Bats’s insane mirth. “Malyanna, we need him! If you kill him, all our plans will be for nothing!�
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Malyanna sniffed. “Another will serve. That pirate captain of yours will get the relic. Thoster? This one is mine. My blood’s up, and I mean to finish.” She drifted forward, her hand still outstretched, her fingers subtly whirling with the icy winds that thieved away Japheth’s life. Her eyes were rapacious, as unlike a moon elf’s as any he’d ever witnessed.
Japheth drew a breath to utter his last true curse, but the air was like sandpaper granulated with ice crystals. Instead, he fell into a coughing fit. His cloak! He needed it! Could he summon it to him? Try, damn it, he pleaded with himself. But he was so cold …
A crystal goblet of sloshing wine rose from the table without any visible means of support.
“Now the crockery is haunted?” murmured the eladrin.
Only Japheth had the proper angle to see a distorted reflection in a bowl of pomegranates. The goblet was in the hands of the armored figure Japheth had seen reflected moments earlier.
“Anusha?” whispered Japheth. His voice was too faint for anyone to hear.
“What trick is this, Neifion?” inquired the eladrin, glancing to the Lord of Bats. When her eyes left Japheth, the cold immediately lessened. “Stop playing games.”
Neifion, still laughing, merely shrugged and shook his head.
The goblet suddenly rushed at the eladrin noble, its enchanted, red contents sloshing uncontrollably from its lip.
Behroun and Malyanna simultaneously uttered, “No!”
A moment before the liquid could strike the eladrin, she faded in a flurry of blowing snow.
The goblet continued its lazy arc and smashed messily on the flagged floor.
If it had struck the eladrin in the eyes or mouth, she would have been bound to the table with the Lord of Bats, there to eat away eternity, until released by Japheth.
The warlock started breathing easily again. The ice coating his flesh was already melting. But his strength was uncertain.
He felt a hand upon his arm but saw no limb. A whisper in his ear urged, “We must flee before she returns!”
“Wait—” he began, turning toward Behroun. But the man was already gone. He must have disappeared with the eladrin. Which made sense. Lord Marhana did not possess the craft to reach this realm under his own power. The man would survive this day, it seemed. He might already be back in his home, looking for the pact stone. Japheth had missed his chance to end his bondage.
Seeing where Japheth looked, the Lord of Bats ceased laughing. In a voice containing not the least hint of hilarity, he said, “Let us hope he is breaking that stone even now. I find this feast has whetted my appetite. Perhaps I will quench it by dining on your liver before the day is done.”
Japheth shuddered. He allowed Anusha’s unseen pressure on his arm guide to him through the exit.
He slammed the iron door and slid home the bolt. Not that he had any confidence left in its ability to keep intruders out of Neifion’s prison.
He turned and took the steps into the Great Hall two at a time. At the bottom of the stair lay Anusha’s sleeping form, curled on her side like a child. He tried to wake her. She didn’t stir.
A tiny silver vial rolled away from her right hand.
“Oh, Anusha!” He picked up the girl. Her head lolled on his shoulder.
“Japheth, I can’t wake up!” The voice came from a few paces to his left.
“Yes, yes, don’t worry. It’s the potion. It’ll take a few hours to clear out of your blood. Plus, you last used it only a few days ago.”
“Oh, sure, of course,” she replied, relief evident. “It’s a strange feeling, not being able to release my dream form …”
To distract her, he said, “Quick thinking, that was, throwing the wine at the eladrin.”
“Too bad I missed. Something was not right about her. She was too old for her skin, or something.”
Japheth nodded soberly. “Indeed.”
They walked quickly from Darroch Castle, a ghost at his side, and her warm flesh cradled in his arms.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The Year of the Secret (1396 DR)
Ormpetarr, Vilhon Wilds
The Year of Blue Fire and its consequences wrought calamity on Chondath, Sespech, and other nearby lands. The great body of water called the Vilhon Reach splintered into several smaller lakes. The black-walled mesas punched out of the ground, destroying roads, farms, and whole cities. Crazed pockets of gleaming light and sound, where madness and reality still churned, visibly writhed and coiled across the landscape even years after the Spellplague was thought concluded. Most of the people in the region who survived the initial onslaught fled as best they could. Many died in their exodus, and the rest found themselves unwanted refugees in far kingdoms that had their own disasters to deal with.
According to Cynosure, only the hardiest explorers dared the great frontier these days. Hideous, plaguechanged monsters haunted dark ravines. Ruins of cities devastated and deserted lay broken along old trade roads, near drained lake and river basins, and scattered in broken bits and pieces along the sides of newly birthed landforms.
The sentient golem noted that Ormpetarr had arguably weathered the transition better than any other in the region.
Raidon stood north of Ormpetarr’s battered, leaning gates, taking in the view from a rise in the rutted, weedy path once called the Golden Road. A moment earlier, he had been west of Nathlan, but the sentient golem of Stardeep “transferred” Raidon through a starry medium in the space of a heartbeat. His ears rang—the trip had been much rougher than the previous time the golem transported him.
Many of Ormpetarr’s ancient brass spires, famed for their ability to reflect the setting sun like flame, now lay broken and strewn down the rocky side of a steep precipice. The precipice separated the surviving neighborhoods of the city from a permanent, eye-watering cloud of color that churned south away from the city like the old Nagawater used to. This was the Plaguewrought Land, a pocket where active spellplague still cavorted and contorted land, law, magic, and the flesh of any creature that entered.
“You are certain people remain in this ruin?” Raidon inquired of the air, his gaze caught by the nausea-inducing area beyond the city.
No reply.
“Cynosure?”
The effigy had warned the monk that moving him so far across Faerûn would exhaust its energies for a time. Apparently, the golem was so drained it could no longer maintain simple communication.
“I pray you did not overextend yourself,” Raidon murmured, on the chance Cynosure could still hear him.
The construct had provided some background on the area, but he was on his own to learn what mattered most. Raidon walked south, down the road to the gates.
A one-armed dwarf appeared in the gap between the two leaning gateposts. The dwarf wore chain mail half gone to rust. He cradled a stout crossbow on one shoulder with his single limb, sighting down its length at Raidon. Apparently the dwarf was well practiced making do with one hand.
The dwarf called out, “Beg your pardon, traveler! Sorry to bother ye this fine spring day, but please stand still a moment, eh?”
Raidon paused. He stood some twenty feet from the gate.
The dwarf grinned through a beard whose tangles competed in size and intricacy with its braids. He said, “That’s a good fellow, eh? We don’t get many visitors, and those we do get are not always polite, if ye know what I mean.”
Raidon replied, “I am no outlaw ruffian. Will you let me pass? I have business in Ormpetarr.”
“What remains of Ormpetarr, you mean,” chuckled the dwarf. “I can see ye are no ravening beast, and better still, ye can speak, which argues all the more for what ye claim. Well then, I suppose I should ask after what brings ye here, and charge the customary fee?”
Raidon silently hoped the dwarf wasn’t courteously trying to rob him. He said, “An old companion of mine came here not long after the Spellplague. I seek to find what trace I can of her.”
“Mmm, hmmm,” grunted the gat
e warden, his curly eyebrows raised to a skeptical height. “Why’d she come here?”
“I hope to discover that.”
“Scar pilgrimage, as sure as water runs downhill.”
Raidon asked, “What do you mean?”
The dwarf dropped the point of the crossbow and used the entire weapon to motion Raidon forward. “Ye’ll find out within. And, since I’m feeling friendly today, a single gold crown will see ye through Ormpetarr’s gates, such as they are.” The dwarf nodded toward a great wooden chest chained to a granite slab. Raidon guessed the wide slit in the top served as a coin slot.
Raidon walked through the gates, dropped a coin in the opening, and continued into the city.
The dwarf wished him a good day, but Raidon didn’t waste more breath on the fellow. He was already past, his eyes crawling over the landscape of half-collapsed and abandoned buildings. Then he smelled charred meat on the wind. He stopped moving. His mouth watered.
The odor was ambrosial. His empty stomach commandeered his feet and turned him toward a rambling edifice just inside the gate. Like the other surviving structures he’d glimpsed, this building was cracked and worse for wear, having seen little if any upkeep. However, light, voices, and the smell of cooking food issued from it. No sign or exterior glyph indicated the name or nature of the place.
Raidon pushed through the open door into a wide, low chamber. It resembled the common rooms of travelers’ inns he’d seen all across Faerûn, complete with some four-footed beast sizzling on a spit in the fireplace. Raidon took a deep breath, savoring the odor.
About a dozen people were present, gathered into three distinct groups, save for a lone grandfather near the door snoring into a spilled tankard of ale, a woman in a barkeep’s apron bustling around the chamber, and a boy manning the spit.
A man muttered from his drink, “Look ’ee, a half-elf.” All eyes swiveled to regard Raidon.
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