by Troy Denning
After watching Midnight’s spell misfire, Kelemvor peered out the window. Cyric was nowhere in sight. “You missed,” he reported, still too numbed by Adon’s death to react.
Midnight did not respond. She lay curled up on the floor, gasping for breath and sweating uncontrollably. Her body ached from head to toe, and the magic-user felt as though willpower alone held her spirit inside her body. She recalled Bhaal’s warning that she would burn herself up if she did not learn how to wield Mystra’s magic.
That was exactly what it felt like she had done. Any spell wore a magic-user down, and part of a mage’s training involved increasing her body’s tolerance to magical energies. But Midnight, newly gifted with the ability to call upon a limitless supply of magic, did not yet have the endurance to withstand such energies. In theory, she could call upon her magic to do almost anything, but she now understood that the effort might leave her a lifeless husk of flesh and energy.
When he turned around, that was exactly what Kelemvor feared he was seeing. “Midnight!” he gasped.
For the first time since Adon had entrusted it to him, Kelemvor set the Tablet of Fate aside. He dropped the saddlebags, knelt beside Midnight, and took her into his arms. “How can I help?” the fighter asked softly. “What can I do?”
Midnight wanted to tell him to hold her, to keep her warm, but she was afraid to speak. Right now, she needed her strength just to stay conscious.
Kelemvor heard the shuffling of heavy steps on the stairway, and he knew the zombies had discovered their hiding place. His first thought was to charge the stairs, but he knew the undead would tear him to pieces. That would leave Midnight alone and at their mercy.
Instead, he cut the bucket away from the rope and threw it aside. The fighter tied the free end of the rope around Midnight’s waist. He intended to lower her into the cavern, then climb down after her.
He quickly realized he did not have time. The first zombie appeared in the door just as he slipped the mage into the hole. Kelemvor ignored the thing and began lowering Midnight. Two more of the walking corpses entered the room.
Midnight only knew that Kelemvor was lowering her into the darkness and that her strength was slowly returning. With the cavern walls echoing its bubbles and gurgles back toward her, the stream sounded incredibly large, more like a small river.
A few moments later, her descent stopped and she found herself hanging in darkness. Though it sounded as if she were only a few feet above the stream, there was no way for the mage to confirm or deny that suspicion. Midnight looked up and saw a dim square of light. There were forms dancing around it, but she could not make out any details.
Back in the tower’s basement, the first zombie ignored Kelemvor and picked up the saddlebags containing the Tablet of Fate. The fighter finished lowering Midnight, then grabbed his sword and hacked at the zombie. The thing’s arm fell off and it dropped the tablet. But before Kelemvor could retrieve the artifact, the zombie’s fellows joined it and all three attacked.
The fighter slashed at them to no avail. He connected solidly with the one whose arm he had already lopped off, opening a gash in its abdomen and temporarily stunning it. Heedless of their own safety, the other two corpses closed in, flailing wildly.
Forced to retreat away from the tablet, Kelemvor stumbled into the pit in the middle of the room. He grabbed the rope to keep from falling, then leveled a vicious slash at one of his attackers. The zombie’s head flopped off its neck and dropped to the floor. Another of the undead threw itself at the hand Kelemvor was using to hold onto the rope. The fighter instinctively slashed and connected. Then the stroke continued past the zombie’s body and the warrior could not draw back quickly enough to avoid cutting the rope.
Midnight heard Kelemvor scream, then the rope popped and went slack. She dropped into the stream, felt the current grab her, then began fighting to keep her head above water. Though she was still exhausted from the misfired spell, she knew that she had to find a reservoir of strength or drown.
Two splashes sounded to Midnight’s left as Kelemvor and the sword he had dropped hit the water in quick succession. The mage tried to swim toward the disturbance, but she was too weak and the current was too strong.
A moment later, Kelemvor called to her. “Midnight? Where are you?”
“Here,” she croaked. In the rushing water, she barely heard her own voice and knew it would not be audible to her lover. Midnight tried to swim toward the fighter, but the stream simply swept her away.
Kelemvor had more strength than Midnight, but he didn’t try to swim out of the current. He knew that the mage had to be downstream and was determined not to lose her. Allowing the tablet to fall into Myrkul’s hands was bad enough, but Kelemvor was unwilling to face life without Midnight.
The warrior swam downstream with all his might. He paused every now and then to cross the current, hoping to find Midnight. It was a good plan, but the fighter had underestimated the power of his strokes. He was quickly so far ahead of the mage that he stood no chance of meeting her.
Kelemvor continued his search for fifteen minutes before growing so exhausted that he could only concentrate on survival. For another quarter-hour, the stream swept the fighter and the magic-user farther into darkness. Sometimes it rushed into long passages completely filled with water, and both Midnight and Kelemvor believed they would drown before they bobbed back to the surface, exhausted and gasping for breath. At other times, they bounced against rocks or the cave’s walls. Despite the pain of such encounters, though, they always clutched and grasped at the slick surfaces, hoping to latch onto something and pull free of the current.
Neither one drowned nor pulled free. Both Kelemvor and Midnight continued into the darkness, cold and blind, aware of nothing but the rush of the stream, the weight of their soggy clothes, and the fetid water they swallowed with every other breath.
After a time—Kelemvor could not say how long he’d been in the water or how many miles he had floated—the stream straightened its course and grew more quiet. The fighter started to remove his clothes, for their weight was only contributing to his fatigue. But a strange slurping sound echoed off the cavern walls, and Kelemvor paused to hold his head above the water and listen. The noise was coming from the middle of the channel.
He swam across the stream, then the current grew faster and the slurping grew louder. Kelemvor turned his body away from the noise, then stroked harder and harder as the current spun him around. Finally, he felt himself being pulled back up the stream. The exhausted fighter lowered his head and swam with all his strength. At last, he broke free and continued downstream.
The twisting current had been the edge of a whirlpool, the warrior realized. It had been a small one, or he would never have broken free, but the effort still left him exhausted.
Then Kelemvor remember Midnight.
“Midnight!” he called. “There’s a whirlpool. Swim to the right!” He called this warning over and over again, until at last he could no longer hear the sucking sound of the whirlpool.
Even if she had been close enough to hear the warning, Midnight could have done nothing to avoid the danger. She was too drained to swim or even to pull off her heavy clothes. Her limbs were numb and clumsy with cold and exhaustion, her lungs burned every time she took a breath, and her mind was incoherent with fatigue.
When the stream straightened its course ahead of her, Midnight let herself drift into the center of the channel, relieved for a respite from the turbulent currents. While the slurping sound grew louder, she held her head out of the water and drew ten delicious, uninterrupted breaths. Then, as the water became faster, the fatigued mage pushed her feet downstream—and felt herself spiraling downward.
She had slipped into the whirlpool without realizing what it was, and now she barely cared. Midnight simply held her breath and relaxed as the water carried her away.
While Kelemvor and Midnight struggled to keep from drowning, Midnight’s misfired magic skipped along the High Mo
or. Wherever the ebony globe touched, the earth turned to black ice. It glanced off a maple tree and the sap congealed in the trunk. It bounced into a stag and froze the blood in the animal’s veins.
Nearly an hour later, the black ball tumbled into a creekbed and could not escape. It rolled downhill, dashing from one side of the gully to the other, leaving a ribbon of black ice in its wake. The gully emptied into a small, rocky canyon. The globe ricocheted from one wall to another, changing dripping springs into sable icicles.
As the ball bounced down the canyon, the underground stream carried Kelemvor farther away from the whirlpool. Finally, the current grew swifter and water filled the cave completely. At first, the fighter was not concerned, for his lungs were full of air and the stream had dragged him through a dozen similar passages. But two minutes passed and the warrior’s lungs ached to draw another breath. He swam to the top of the stream, scraping at the ceiling in a vain search for air pockets. His head grew light and, to keep from inhaling, he clamped a hand over his nose and mouth. For a minute or so more, the cavern did not open up and Kelemvor remained submerged.
Then, as unconsciousness threatened to take him, the current died away. The warrior floated upward and a dim, greenish radiance lit the water. Kelemvor realized he had escaped the cavern. But his lungs still screamed for air and an unreasoning voice told him to breathe.
Kelemvor kept his hand pressed over his face. With what remained of his strength, he swam. Ten seconds later, he broke the surface and gulped down a dozen breaths.
He was in a small mountain lake—no more than a large pond, really. There was a small beach a hundred feet ahead. To the fighter’s right, a waterfall plunged into the lake from a ninety-foot cliff. The small creek feeding the waterfall ran down the center of a narrow, rocky canyon.
Something black and spherical was bouncing down that canyon, rebounding from wall to wall. Though he had not seen the destruction the ball left in its wake, a terrible feeling of apprehension washed over Kelemvor. He began swimming for the shore, fighting his own weariness and the cumbersome weight of his wet clothes. He thought about stopping to shed his pants and boots, but that would have taken too much time.
Kelemvor was halfway to shore when the sphere reached the cliff. The waterfall turned into a cascade of black ice. The ball skipped into the air, then fell toward the lake.
Seeing what had become of the waterfall, Kelemvor swam harder, kicking and stroking madly despite the agony in his limbs. The ball fell steadily, inexorably, toward the lake. Kelemvor was only twenty-five feet from the shoreline when the globe touched the water.
Beneath the sphere, a black circle of ice appeared. The ball skipped away, touching down twice and leaving two more icy patches in its wake. As the globe bounced out of the lake, the black circles began to expand.
Kelemvor continued to swim. Ten feet from shore, an icy vise grabbed at his ankle. The warrior kicked free and swam two more strokes, then his hands touched bottom. The water suddenly grew frigid, especially around his legs. He tried to stand, but found his thighs and waist locked in merciless jaws of ice. Trying to break free, he threw himself forward—only to come crashing down in shallow water, his chin barely past the shoreline.
The ice continued to form, advancing toward the fighter’s shoulders and threatening to trap his arms and chest. Kelemvor could not let that happen. He pushed his torso out of the lake and waited while the water froze beneath him. When the ice reached his hands, he moved them to the shore and continued to hold his body out of the water.
The ice stopped forming when it reached his chin. After a moment of silence, the lake began popping and creaking, adjusting itself to the increased volume of frozen water. The ice sheet rose a few inches, then surged three feet forward, leaving Kelemvor and his icy prison well ashore.
As the fighter waited for further adjustments, he examined his situation. He was trapped from his waist to his knees in a sheet of black ice. Below his knees, he could kick freely, whirling cold water around his calves and feet. Judging by what he could feel, the ice was about six inches thick.
In front of him, two inches of snow blanketed tufts of beach grass and capped several dozen pieces of driftwood littering the shore. Beyond that, a steep bank of sand rose ten feet. Six inches of soil topped the embankment, providing meager purchase for a few twisted dwarf pines that perfumed the air with a sweet citruslike odor.
The lake itself was nestled in a hollow at the base of the High Moor. To Kelemvor’s left, a single brook—now frozen and black—drained the tiny lake. The only visible inlet was the frozen waterfall, though Kelemvor knew that at least one underground stream also fed the lake.
After his brief examination of his surroundings yielded no easy method of escape, Kelemvor jerked and tried to pull free of the ice. When he failed, he screamed in rage.
His bellow came echoing back to him, as clear and as crisp as when he voiced it. The echo only made the fighter feel more desperate. Kelemvor shrieked again and dug his hands into the sand, then pulled with all his might. A keen ache shot through his shoulders and down his spine. His arms, still fatigued from the long swim, felt as heavy as clubs. Still, he did not stop pulling.
Finally, Kelemvor’s muscles began to quiver, then he started shivering and realized how cold he was. The air stung his fingers and his face, while his torso prickled with icy needles. Below his waist, the cold gnawed at his bones, burning his buttocks and thighs with frosty agony.
He worried most about his feet. Despite his tightly laced leggings and well-oiled boots, his feet were soaked. Kelemvor suspected that the stinging in his toes was the first stage of frostbite. If he did not escape soon, the warrior knew he would lose his toes, perhaps even freeze to death.
A crow landed in the low branches of the closest pine, then stared at the trapped fighter with a hungry gleam in its eye. Kelemvor hissed at it. The bird remained perched in the tree, politely waiting for the green-eyed man to die. It could afford to be patient. Judging from its lustrous feathers and plump body, the crow fed itself quite well.
Kelemvor did not enjoy being sized up as if he were a leg of mutton. “C-Come back tomorrow!” he called, the cold causing him to stutter. “I’m not going anywhere.”
The crow blinked, but did not leave. Although it was in no hurry to start its feast, the bird did not intend to let some other scavenger claim its prize.
Kelemvor grabbed a piece of driftwood and hurtled it at the black bird. The stick missed and hit the tree next to the crow’s. The bird turned its black eyes on the trembling boughs, then looked back at the warrior.
“Just leave me alone,” Kelemvor growled, waving his hand at the bird. “Let me die with some dignity.”
The hopelessness he felt surprised the fighter. Kelemvor had never been one to give up before the battle ended. But he had never felt this frightened before.
Kelemvor avoided examining that fear too closely. He had faced death many times before, and had never felt as despondent as now. The fighter was afraid of something more than dying. He told himself that leaving the tablet to the zombies was what had upset him.
But he knew that was a lie. Though Kelemvor understood the importance of returning the tablet to Helm, losing it would not produce such anguish. The true reason for his distress was Adon’s death, and the uncertainty of Midnight’s fate. Though he had no way of knowing what had happened to her, the warrior felt certain she could not have avoided the whirlpool.
Stop thinking, he told himself. Stop thinking before it’s too late. Kelemvor suddenly wanted to go to sleep so he could wake up and discover that the zombies and underground stream had been bad dreams.
But the fighter did not dare to close his eyes. Even through his growing disorientation, Kelemvor knew that sleep could be deadly in freezing conditions.
The shivering went away and his muscles began to stiffen. Kelemvor knew he was slipping closer to death. He kicked his legs, then beat the black sheet beneath his chest.
The ice di
d not crack, did not pop, did not give at all. He was as good as dead, yet was still alive. That makes me undead, Kelemvor thought, like the caravan zombies. He chuckled grimly at this half-formed thought.
But undeath was better than what had happened to Adon and Midnight.
Forget it, he told himself. Thinking about the past will bring nothing but more sorrow. Survive first, then think.
Not thinking was easier said than done. If Kelemvor had not insisted upon rescuing the caravan, had not been so stubborn, his friends would be alive. But the fighter had been stubborn, as he always was. He thought that perhaps he deserved to die.
“Stop it!” He spoke the words aloud, hoping to snap himself into a more alert state of mind.
The crow squawked once, as if suggesting Kelemvor get on with his death.
“Fetch a dagger, then, or a sharp rock,” Kelemvor muttered to the bird. “I can’t kill myself with my bare hands.”
The bird cocked its head, then ruffled its feathers and stared at Kelemvor with a disapproving glare.
Kelemvor stretched forward and grabbed a thick piece of driftwood. The crow prepared to take flight, but Kelemvor had no interest in attacking the bird again. Hefting the branch like a club, the fighter turned to his right as far as he could, then smashed the branch down on the ice.
A loud crack pealed across the lake, echoing off the cliff on the far side. Kelemvor tried to move his leg and found it would not budge. He raised the log and struck again. Another loud crack rolled across the ice-covered lake. The wooden club snapped in two, and one end went skittering across the ice, leaving the fighter holding a two-foot long wooden stake.
The crow squawked several times, then hopped out of the tree. It landed on the shore, just out of Kelemvor’s reach, and squawked once more.
Kelemvor considered throwing his stick at the bird, then thought better of the idea. The broken branch was not much of a tool, but it was all he had. Instead of attacking the crow, he grasped the stick as he might a dagger, then hit the ice with its sharp end.