Stardeep (11 page)

He couldn’t be distracted! The Thayan was still the greater threat.

Raidon ducked beneath the troll’s legs and charged the wizard, unsheathing his daito. The look of triumph on the Red Wizard’s face crumbled, and he backpedaled. A root caught his heel, and he went over onto his back. The monk leaped forward, his knee coming down firmly on the wizard’s neck.

“Yield,” he instructed the scarred man.

The red-robed caster mumbled something unintelligible, then clearly stated, “You have made an understandable mistake—I am your friend, so I forgive you. Now, get up and help me to my feet.” The wotds rang through Raidon’s head like a gong, growing stronger and more reasonable the more he considered the new idea.

Then warmth touched his back once again, and the compulsion blew away like ash, leaving only powerless words, naked in their inanity.

The man’s eyes narrowed as he exclaimed, “That’s the second spell you’ve thrown off! What fell resistance guards your—urk!”

Raidon leaned, exerting slightly more pressure with his knee on the scarred man’s carotid. With the blood flow to his head restricted, the man passed out heartbeats later. The monk jumped and spun, but the rush of wind signaling the troll’s attack had warned Raidon too late. The troll gtabbed him and raised him in the air.

Whatever guardian spirit had protected him from the Thayan’s magic failed to tespond when the troll beat the monk like a wet rug against a nearby tree. The initial impact nearly jarred loose Raidon’s grip on the daito.

The troll raised him high once more, ready to dash him against another tree. Raidon cast away pain and bent his body forward, slicing at the brutal fingers squeezing his leg. The troll squealed and lost its hold plus a few fingers. The monk dived into a shock-absorbing roll. He grunted on impact but

used the energy of the fall to propel himself several yards away from the green-skinned giant before coming out of the maneuver on his feet.

Raidon turned and assumed a thrusting stance with the sword before him. He preferred using his limbs as weapons, but the daito was Raidon’s answer to the troll’s enormous, clawed reach.

Its roar of challenge was the sound of a furious waterfall at snowmelt. Raidon held steady in the blaring noise, but faint nausea touched him when he noticed new fingers growing from the bloody stumps of the troll’s hand, waving and reaching like worms. It was obscene, too much like watching the birth of tiny monstrosities.

Raidon charged. The troll waited, its arms apart, its mouth wide and hungry. The monk feinted left and chopped right. Off came the troll’s entire right hand. The creature’s lack of response to such an injurious loss was unnerving. Raidon had expected to press his attack, but the troll was already clawing at him with its remaining hand and biting at his shoulder. Its breath stank of spoiled meat.

A sparkle of green light washed across the troll. Where the light passed, the troll melted away, entirely disappearing in the span of an eye blink.

The monk’s head swiveled. Had a Commorand brother tracked him down and banished the Red Wizard’s guardian? No, he remained alone, save for the scarred man. Raidon shrugged. The creature, called by a spell, had probably returned whence it came. He hoped that was so. The less palatable alternative had the troll in some nether realm waiting to ambush him. Raidon decided to act as if his first surmise was ttue.

He studied the defeated Red Wizard. He bent and wiped the troll blood off his daito on the man’s expensive garment. The Thayan was not breathing.

“Xiang forgive me,” he mumbled. He’d pressed more forcibly on the man’s neck with his knee than he’d intended.

Raidon sheathed his blade and quickly stripped the man of his belongings, including a tome and a jagged blue wand. Raidon blinked when he found a writ of marque authorizing raids up and down the Umber River, even unto the edges of Aglarond. The writ was signed by Ansuram of Nethentir, Warden of the Fifth Lore. Raidon shrugged. If the scarred man had survived and regained consciousness without equipment or outer clothing, he would have fled upriver toward Nethentir and probably returned with an overwhelming force.

Raidon threw the man’s red robe into a ravine. He pulled off his own pack and stuffed the book and wand into it, amongst the splinters of his cedar box. He’d felt it collapse when the troll had bashed him against the tree. He reached in and pulled out his mother’s forget-me-not. It was warm to the touch.

A familiar warmth. It was the same temperature as that light touch on his back when he’d thrown off the wizard’s spells. He wore his pack high across his shoulders…

Raidon’s eyes widened. He clutched the forget-me-not, hard. Could it be true? Had his mother left him more than a simple remembrance? It seemed cleat the amulet was suffused with a potency he didn’t understand. A potency that had twice saved him.

He reverently drew the chain over his head. He gazed down on the stone as it lay on his chest, then dropped it beneath his silk jacket. Against his skin, remnants of its original warmth seeped into his body. The yeats of storage in a dark box were done. Raidon vowed to wear his mother’s forget-me-not from that moment until he found her.

She had left him an unexplained relic, something important. Why hadn’t she told him its real nature? Why leave it

with him in the first place? She must have been more than she seemed. After all, what was she doing with a relic of magic?

He would find her, as she must have anticipated. Then she would explain mysteries to him whose outlines he couldn’t conceive.

Stardeep, Outer Bastion War Room

From the shadows, Telarian inquired, “Commander Brathtar, how stands the Causeway?”

An elf caparisoned in mithral greaves and hauberk started, then looked up to the unlighted balcony. Btathtar stood before a great oak table scattered with maps, miniature figures sculpted in lead, and quill pens. Several others around the table, similarly armored and armed, if not quite as grandly as Brathtat, broke off their discussion, which had grown heated.

The Empyrean Knights were pledged to Statdeep first and foremost, and their watchword was valor. A knight who joined the elite in Stardeep first learned that anyone, meek or brave, could wake to valor if the cause was ttue. Empyrean Knights held fire in their hearts, but were not unthinking brutes. Knights held tight to sword in one hand, and strategy in the other. That sttategy was determined first and foremost by the Knights’ commander, Brathtar.

Brathtar studied the shadowed gallery, squinting, and said, “Keeper Telarian, I didn’t realize you were observing the War

Room. Please forgive my lapse.” A questioning, attentive mask settled upon the Knight Commander’s face. A mask, because Telarian knew the commandet had come to view him with grave misgivings.

Telarian allowed one gloved hand to fall, as if by accident, upon the pommel of his darkly sheathed sword. With its touch, even through the barrier his glove offered, the confidence of his convictions reasserted itself. He said, “I couldn’t help ovethear the concerns you and your people were discussing regarding my orders. Did I hear correctly?”

Brathtar visibly steeled himself, then replied, “Keeper Telarian, I’m afraid I must admit to real tactical incomprehension regarding the foray you’ve ordered. I judge such an action will merely draw the attention of the wood elves. My intelligence gatheters assure me the Causeway’s location, and perhaps even the existence of Stardeep itself, remains a well-kept secret in the Yuirwood. If we venture forth in force…”

Telarian nodded, saying, “My orders may seem counterintuitive, Commander. But, as I’m sure you appreciate, as a Keepet my sources of information reach farther than yours. I assure you, Brathtar, this foray is imperative. A physical patrol is warranted, lest sympathizers of the Traitot creep too close.”

Rank disbelief battled across the face of Telarian’s most trusted commander. The Keeper wondered from where his first reaction came—to bash sense into the man with the blunt side of his swotd, and if that did not suffice…

Telarian shook away the impulse. Not the most diplomatic of responses. But the commandet had been showing more and more disregard for Telarian’s orders the last few years. His insolence was becoming tiresome.

As Keeper of the Outer Bastion, the Empyrean Knights answered ultimately to Telarian. He should not have to

” suffer Brathtar’s second guesses and impudence. When had the trust between them evaporated? In the not too distant past, Telarian had occasionally joined Brathtar and his captains for their dice games. Other times Telarian had invited the Commander to his quarters for a glass of the sparkling white he imported once a year, at great cost, out of Sildeyuit. Once they’d even ventured into the first leg of the surrounding dungeon tunnels, tunnels whose existence hadn’t been realized when Stardeep was initially sited and constructed. Apparently, Statdeep hadn’t been the first prison to occupy this out-of-the-way locale. Brathtar had saved his life during that foray, when they’d disturbed a swarm of fossilized… undead? They were mindless but cruelly animate. Brathtar had ordered the tunnels closed after that, of course.

Telarian supposed things began to change between him and Brathtar after his Epoch-enhanced gaze first glimpsed the glyph-scribed blasphemy in the clouds. When he’d foreseen that the citadel of the Traitor’s hope was fated to emetge from prehistory, Telarian immediately bent all his thought toward averting that fate. With his investment in saving the world from catastrophe, time to nurture friendships was difficult to schedule.

Altering a fated future was said to be impossible—all the classic divinatory texts warned against such attempts. It was a fundamental philosophy of his school. When one attempted to thread destiny’s needle, unplanned consequences always followed. But it wasn’t in Telarian to give up. Even when sacrifices were required.

The Keeper’s gaze fell to the silent, blooding blade sheathed at his side.

The stakes were too high to back out now. Nis was a requirement of his plan, even if his dreams were sometimes tainted by the thing’s dark influence. If his relationship

to Brathtar was another requisite sacrifice to change the future, then so be it. Better a soured friendship than a world overturned.

He looked back to his commander, who was impatiently enduring Telarian’s long silence. He could relieve the man of his office… but Btathtar’s competence was unmatched. He needed Brathtar in his current role. Too bad force wouldn’t secure him Brathtat’s trust. Nor would truth—his plan spiraled too far from what any sane person would accept without the proof that only an Epoch Chamber vision could provide. And no one in Stardeep was properly ttained to endure such a vision. Except himself. So secrecy was required. Yet his commands still met resistance.

So he’d tried diplomacy. It had always been one of his strengths. Had he completely lost the knack? No, it was Nis. The blade put everyone off, even if they didn’t realize why. But Telarian couldn’t bring himself to leave the blade unattended, even locked in his inaccessible quarters.

But beyond Nis, the falsehoods he daily mouthed were taking their toll. The justifications he provided for all his recent decisions were a tapestty of pattial truths.

To be sure, the carefully constructed bed of untruth served as the necessary and moral foundation of his true effort to avert the final apocalypse. In the balance, he doubted a few truths twisted for sake of all Toril would stain his soul.

Yet he remained a poor liar.

“You have my orders. Your place is not to question, but to act as instructed. Please do not provide further reasons for me to wonder about my choice of Knight Commandet.”

Brathtar’s eyes narrowed. But he said, “You are the Keeper. I am pledged to Stardeep and will do what is necessary to protect her. I’ve already prepared the foray. A handpicked troop will ventute forth down the Causeway.”

Telarian let the commander’s dig pass unremarked, giving a curt nod. He called to the air, “Cynosure? Connect me to my quai tets.”

Moments latet, only shadows inhabited the balcony above the War Room.

When Delphe opened the door from her chambers that led to the common area of the Inner Bastion, something fluttered to the floor. A vellum envelope. She bent, retrieved it, and examined its exterior. The red wax seal proclaimed the letter was from the desk of Stardeep’s Empyrean Knight Commander.

What was the man’s name… ? Brathtar, that was it. She recalled seeing him in the Inner Bastion from time to time, enjoying Telarian’s patronage, though not recently.

“What have you found, Delphe?” inquired Cynosure, his voice issuing from a small statue standing in its niche at the center of the hallway.

“A memorandum from the Knight Commander. How odd. Why didn’t Brathtar ask you to pass the message?”

While useful for communication sent beyond the confines of Stardeep, a hand-delivered letter was hardly a substitute for asking the idol’s aid. Cynosure was everywhere in Statdeep. Perhaps the man enjoyed his formalities?

Silence greeted her question, so she broke the seal and shook out the parchment within. On it was scrawled:

Keeper Delphe,

Forgive this sudden request, but I humbly ask you to meet me at your earliest convenience. Please come in person.

Yours,

Commander Brathtar

“Odd… Cynosure—please relay to Commander Brathtar a question: Why do you want to meet me?”

Cynosure’s voice remained silent’a moment, then relayed, “I’m afraid that’s impossible, Delphe—Commander Brathtar and a contingent of his Knights departed Stardeep via the Causeway just this morning.”

The Keeper nearly dropped the letter. “Empyrean Knights rode forth from Stardeep? What’s happened?”

“Telarian ordered the excursion. I believe he had some concerns regarding a nearby wood elf encampment. You’ll have to inquire of Telarian directly. My purview doesn’t extend beyond the Outer Bastion.”

Delphe turned from her door and strode the curved length of Tardoun Hall, so named for one of the first Keepers to inhabit Stardeep aftet its delving. A frieze of carved figures ran along both sides of the hall, depicting elves involved in all manner of clerical and teleological pursuits—charting the courses of the stars figured prominently. She passed doots leading to the lounge, the baths, the archives.the repository, the noisy chamber housing Cynosure Prime, the dining hall, the steeply sloping stairs that led down to the Outer Bastion, and various lesser side halls. Finally, Telarian’s personal chamber. The door was closed. She knocked.