Blackstaff (14 page)

Tsarra saw twinkles of white and gray collect first into a wall of ice and followed by two walls of stone. All three perched precariously on the remnants of the upper floor just above the sharn. Their weight immediately crumpled the floor on which they rested, and all three fell atop the sharn. The creature’s speed still belied its bulk, and it managed to dodge the first wall, but the second wall pinned it in place. The third wall dropped on it, the ice broke into three large pieces, and the sharn died beneath it with a lowing cry and the sound of something heavy slapping onto thick mud.

“Honestly, Blackstaff. Couldn’t you be more direct in battle instead of spouting obscure references?” The man kept his eyes on Khelben but extended his hand to his lady, who placed her hand on his as they moved toward Khelben.

The Blackstaff replied, “If you hadn’t known it, I’d have been even more disappointed in you and your teachers than I have been in times past.”

Khelben kept his attentions focused at all times on the man and woman, though he grimaced while he pulled the axe free from his hand. His hands returned to his sides, and he left the wound alone. Tsarra flinched but stared with fascination as Khelben’s hand bled a bit, leaving a puddle of blood at his feet. Within moments, the wound closed, flickers of silver flame bubbling and burning at its edges.

Tsarra left Gamalon and her familiar behind her on the ground as she moved to Khelben’s side. She slung her bow over her shoulder and placed her other hand pointedly on the pommel of her scimitar. Silently, Khelben sent to Tsarra a request to
keep an eye on them a moment, please
.

The wizard turned his back on the wizardly pair and approached the guard captain. “Captain Grellig, we shall have to track and capture those responsible for this on the morrow. Tonight, I’m afraid there’s naught left for you and your men to do but prepare graves for the unfortunates. Major Jharna, I shall need your assistance.”

The major approached and muttered, “I don’t like the smell of this, Lord Arunsun. It’s the curse for certain.”

Khelben said, “Healthy skepticism is good, Major, but superstitions carry their own powers whether we like it or not. Pray, do not speak of curses until your lord is safe. Your troops can return to the city with Grellig’s Guard contingent in two days, but I need you to act more quickly for me.” Khelben pulled a ring from his belt pouch. “Use this, and it will take you and Count Idogyr directly to my tower, where he can get help. Tell Laeral to prepare Nine Silvers for the Legacy’s rise. Give her that ring, repair to
his excellency’s rented villa, and refrain speaking of this to anyone outside my tower, please.”

“Right away, sir.” Major Jharna walked over to the nine Tethyrian guards and servants who surrounded their count. He put the ring on his right hand, grasped Gamalon’s left hand, and twisted the ring’s gem to teleport away. Khelben returned to Tsarra’s side and faced their impromptu allies.

It bothered Tsarra that she didn’t know who she faced. Something about the elf woman reminded her of a vague half-memory from her youth in Ardeep. Perhaps Tsarra had gazed too intently at her, because the elf woman stared back. There was haughtiness and regal bearing in her face, followed by some amusement and flickers of shock and disappointment.

“You give
kiira
to half-breeds, Blackstaff? Either you like risking their sanity or you simply wish to insult
tel’quessir
. To add further insult, she’s not even a true wizard!”

Khelben spread his right arm in Tsarra’s path as she surged forward, his palm still bearing a smoldering, angry wound.
She wants you to take her bait to see what you’ll do. Don’t give her the satisfaction
.

“Is our truce at an end so soon, Blackstaff? You surely don’t intend to leave us to the mercies of an insulted child? However shall we prevail against such a foe?” The man’s smile reminded Tsarra of an overbold weasel.

Speaking in Elvish, Khelben said,
“Neither. Your business here is with me and my pupil, who deserves only the blessings and none of the burdens of such elven gifts. Tonight has proven more troublesome than expected. I thank you for your help, but hold from insulting each other in the interests of our tasks at hand.”

“My Elvish is a tad rusty, but I understood enough. Our agreement stands as discussed, despite the altered circumstances, provided you intend to honor it. You have our word to meet two days’ hence at Malavar’s Grasp.”

To Tsarra, it seemed the man either had the greatest confidence in the Realms or he was a fool to talk down to Khelben.

Actually neither, Tsarra
, Khelben sent to her.
Our helpmates here are formerly of the Zhentarim outpost of Darkhold, the mages Ashemmi and Sememmon
.

I
t took Raegar nearly an hour to work his way up the path to Stagsmere. The night was murky, clouds having covered up the moon. Because of that, he’d missed the moss-covered and ruined Stagstone the first time he passed it, taking it to be the corner of a fallen stone cottage. Raegar scraped off enough moss to identify the sculpture as a stag’s head, once he realized its antlers had long since worn away from weather or vandals. He turned his horse north up a long-unused trail that required him to dismount in places to slash away heavy undergrowth.

The moon broke through the clouds as Raegar approached the manor. Like its marker stone, Stagsmere had seen better days. The central manor stood three stories tall, off of which sprang two two-story wings on east and west. The entire front
corner and much of that part of the western wing’s second story had collapsed into a pile of rubble. Raegar couldn’t gauge the color of stone in the moonlight, but it was lighter overall, with dark stone forming surrounding porches, jutting balconies, and random details and decorations. On the battlements atop the roof’s edge, Raegar noted that a stone stag reared at each corner save the fallen one. The manor house was grand, and its architecture reminded Raegar of some of the older buildings in North Ward, especially the Brossfeather villa off Simmikan Court. He’d have to check that stone shield over the main door, but he suspected he might find the same Brossfeather coat of arms there as well.

Raegar, long used to the sounds of a city at night, listened intently to the clamor around him. Even with winter coming on, many animals croaked, cried, trilled, or howled on the night air, and the rogue could hear other creatures scuttling away in the tall grass, reeds, and underbrush around him. Still, he was glad not to worry about how much noise the mare made in her approach. As he came within a hail’s distance of the manor house, he heard shrill, unearthly screams and the sounds of spells in play. While the bulk of Stagsmere remained dark, lights crackled and flashed blue and gold in the eastern wing of the manor around the back.

Raegar urged the mare into a gallop along a gravel path leading around the building. The ground was unsteady on the long untended path, slowing his horse. Raegar drew the Diamondblade with his left hand and was glad to see it wasn’t sparking for a change. For that, at least, he let out a sigh of relief as he readied himself for another battle. From the scabbard on his right leg, he pulled his second short sword, a nonmagical one but still a weapon, and he wanted every weapon he had ready. He listened as Damlath shouted out his spells and heard the roar of flames or the crackle of lightning bolts. What Raegar realized he didn’t hear was Damlath’s laughter—the wizard always cackled with glee between his spells, and Raegar hadn’t heard him do that for tendays.

“Raegar, how did you manage not to notice that until now?” he asked himself. He gripped the pommels of his short swords all the tighter. He had to be careful or he might have more than one foe to fight right away instead of a time more to his liking.

The gravel path widened around the backside of the manor, allowing space for carriages and three-horse-wide teams. He didn’t need that much room and urged his horse up the steps of the porch that spanned the back of the entire manor. Lights and noise erupted through the long-shattered floor to ceiling windows where the eastern wing met the central house. Raegar leaped off the horse, landing noiselessly, and lashed her reins to the stone railing on the porch. He slipped into the shadows among the window breaks to assess the situation before leaping into it.

Raegar looked into what was once a proud dining hall, but its splendor was long since ruined. Loads of animal scat was piled in various places in corners and along the walls, together with the detritus of leaves and dirt and other natural debris blown through the missing windows. A few rags clung to the walls and window rods, the tatters silently framing the scene within. A long table that might have once seated twenty lay splintered and askew at the long room’s center, its chairs reduced to kindling. The cabinets that once lined the walls opposite Raegar to hold china and glassware still retained a few small panels of glass, but most of them had been shattered, their contents long ago looted. Blast marks along the walls and floors and the smoldering remnants of a large cabinet provided mute evidence of a spell battle only moments old.

The acrid reek of various spells and smoke drifting from the room was bearable but told Raegar that Damlath—or whatever he fought—had unleashed many more combat spells than usual. He knew the wizard memorized very few offensive spells unless he planned to be in an unavoidable fight. Usually, his repertoire consisted of many investigative spells and methods by which the pair of them stayed hidden from any potential opponents. But that day, Damlath—or
whoever posed as him—seemed spoiling for a fight. Raegar looked through the broken windows and realized the battle had ventured beyond the dining room. The rogue stepped sideways and slipped inside easily, making his way to the nearest door through which he could see crackling golden energy.

He looked into an entry chamber with grand marble staircases rising over Raegar’s head to the upper floors on both sides of the room. The chandelier had fallen long ago onto the hard marble floor, its metal construction twisted and broken in places but still holding a few now-dry oil lamps. Damlath stood within the massive round chandelier’s center, weaving a blue-green sphere of energies upward into the domed room’s center. Raegar had to move forward and through the small hallway formed by the stairs overhead to see Damlath’s target.

What hovered in the room’s center reflected the energy off its oily black hide, the eyes thick on its front closing to shield themselves from the bright lights. Its two massive limbs stretched apart, and the blue-green energy coruscating across its form collected around the ends of those limbs. At its base, where Raegar expected legs, he saw only a tail, as if the creature was a torso atop a teardrop shape. The creature’s three heads all roared in pain and anger, its jaws distended and moving sideways or tipping the head fully back. Raegar shuddered and was glad he didn’t have to fight the creature, whatever it was. Its skin moved and shifted, fingers, eyes, and mouths constantly forming and disappearing, keeping the aquamarine energy arcing across its form at all times.

The battle paused, and Raegar listened rather than leaping in to aid a no longer trusted ally.

“Now, creature, tell me why you bother me,” Damlath asked. “There is no mention of guardians within Rhaelnar’s Legacy.”

“We know of no Rhaelnar … Guardiansssss ussssss …” the creature hissed. “Lightning and sssstormsssss awaken ussss … Awaken from Ssslumber Willing … and remember …”

“Remember what? I know you to be sharn, creatures of power and mystery. I have no qualms about killing you if your answers prove pitiful.” Damlath closed his right hand, and the aquamarine globes pulled slowly together, wreathing the sharn’s form in greenish arcs of energy. All its heads roared, as did at least half the mouths along its arms and trunk.

“Look, little creature,” said the sharn, “into our mind, if you dare.”

Damlath laughed, but it was hollow and angry, unlike the joyful mirth Raegar liked to hear. “Don’t mistake me for a fool of short years, sharn. I know enough to not risk my sanity delving into your heads.”

“The Awakening isss upon usss … You quicken sssoulsss without knowing what you do … The remnantsss ssspark and affect our mindsss … remind usss of ourssselvesss … The powersss that ssstir usss fragment our mind into many … bring pain memory …”

Raegar watched the sharn intently, its voice growing melancholy. Raegar also noticed random faces pushing forth from the sharn’s skin as it spoke, though the speech still came from its massive unfeatured heads atop its torso.

Damlath shook his arms in anger at the creature and said, “I could care not a whit for your minds, save what they hold. The remnants—tell me more about them! I have many of them but not all. Tell me more about them, that I may claim more than one Nether Scroll.”

Raegar’s brow knitted. Damlath had never expressed any interest before in the ancient lore of Netheril, let alone tracking down the sources of their ancient magic. In fact, Raegar knew Damlath loved history but willfully ignored the North’s wizardly history over that of the southern Lands of Intrigue.

The exchange confirmed to Raegar that the man posing as Damlath was an imposter. The rogue looked around to see if the wizard—whoever he was—had set up a camp or at least had laid down any of the artifacts they had been collecting. He didn’t see any, but a light purple glow of
sparkles began forming well behind the wizard.

A black-skinned pair of four-clawed hands slid from the cluster of purple sparks and began to trace mystic symbols in the air. Small mouths at the center of the palms whispered arcane words. A beam of orange light shone from the pair of hands and enveloped the southern mage, whose form shimmered and shattered. The illusory Damlath fell away and Raegar saw his true form.

The wizard wore olive-green robes trimmed with gold runes, a hood drawn up around his face, even though Damlath’s face had previously appeared exposed. The wizard turned and spotted both Raegar and the sharn’s additional hands and began to laugh. The rogue gasped as he saw the wizard’s hands were skeletal, as was most of his head. All that remained of his face was a shred of grayish-black skin across his forehead and down the right side of his face. Red energies glinted within dark eyesockets, suggesting eyes where no physical orbs remained. Around his torso and over his olive robes, the lich wore a harness made of black leather and a large round silver plate covered in runes.