The Sorcerer (28 page)

“You heel-biting cur!” Ruha stormed. “What have you done?”

Even had he been able to speak, Malik would not have bothered to defend himself. He was too busy trying to mark the place the stone would enter the water. Flapping along behind the diving witch as he was, that was an impossible thing in its own right He saw little more than flashes of dark water and streams of fleeing veserabs.

“Kozah’s breath!” Ruha cursed.

She pulled up sharply, and suddenly. As Malik swung beneath her he had a view of nothing but water. A giant waterspout was rising up to meet the Karsestone, seven watery fingers stretching out to entwine it. Perhaps the One had heard after all. Or so Malik prayed.

The silvery fingers closed around the boulder and pulled it down into Shadow Lake, leaving behind a huge black whirlpool. Malik prayed that it had been Cyric’s hand that had taken the crown of the Shadow Weave and that consequently he would not be left to languish forever in the hell of his god’s displeasure.

But it was not to be. As the stone vanished into the lake’s murky depths, a glistening purple eye appeared in the heart of the whirlpool and winked at him.

Malik knew better than to hope the eye belonged to Cyric. The One never sent signs, except when he was angry.

•Š• o- •Š• <§>• •Š•

Head spinning with afterdaze, Galaeron arrived clasping Vala’s hand, his other arm looped around Aris’s knee, his eyes aching in the brilliant sun. Crackles, bangs, and half-muffled roars rumbled out of the sky while off in the distance an erratic din of booming splashes rolled across a broad expanse

of water. There was trouble over there, and it slowly came back to Galaeron that he and his companions were the cause. Aris groaned, stumbling forward, and crashed to a knee, spilling an armload of bloodied humans as he put a hand out to catch himself.

A glimpse of black beard was all it took for Galaeron to recall where he was and how he had come to be there. Instead of turning to check on the injured Chosen, he looked back and was disappointed to see the murk-swaddled city still hovering a thousand feet in the air, engulfed in swirling clouds of veserabs and releasing a steady rain of debris down into the lake. There were no obvious signs of pursuit, though anyone powerful enough to recapture Galaeron and three Chosen would come by shadow, not air.

As Galaeron studied the enclave, he noticed a thin line of darkness running between the lake and the city. It was near the shore and so faint as to be almost invisible but also straight and unwavering. As he watched, the lower end moved out toward deeper water, slicing through the purple waves without leaving a wake. Shade itself remained where it was. Galaeron spent a few moments observing, trying to puzzle out what he was seeing. Veserabs circled around it, and debris bounced off it as though it were a solid rope, yet it was as transparent as a pale shadow. Through it he could see passing Shadovar, falling boulders, and even the mountains on the lake’s far shore.

Galaeron finally gave up guessing, and seeing that the enclave was not going to sink any lower, he turned back to his companions. Laeral was handing Aris his third flask of healing potion, and the wounds Khelben and Storm had suffered were already closing. Khelben held a vial out to Galaeron and motioned at the gashes in his neck.

“You may as well take care of those before we return.”

“Return?” Aris asked. The flask Laeral had given him slipped from his hand and shattered on the stony ground. He appeared not to notice. ‘To Shade?”

“That’s where the mythallar is,” Storm replied. She stood and tested her wounded leg. It nearly buckled beneath her, but that did not stop her from nodding approvingly. “Ill need a quarter hour, no more.”

In what seemed another life, Galaeron would have been impressed by how quickly the Chosen healed. Having seen what he had seen and knowing how quickly any Shadovar warrior—especially the princes—could heal themselves, he knew his companions to be woefully overmatched.

But it was Aris who objected.

“Has that silver fire melted your brains? We can’t return to Shade without Galaeron’s magic, and look at him!” Hardly seeming to notice the two shadow arrows still lodged in his shoulder, the giant waved a huge arm in Galaeron’s direction. “He’s going to have a terrible time getting back to normal as it is. You can’t ask him to use more shadow magic.”

“Aris, there’s no ‘normal’ to get back to. I’ve told you that,” Galaeron said, wondering how he would ever make the giant understand that shadow and light were only illusions. Once one accepted the truth of that, everything became light… and everything became shadow. “I was not ail good before, and my shadow was not all bad.”

“You could have fooled me,” Aris said. “Or perhaps you have forgotten what happened in the Saiyaddar?”

“Of course not, but that happened because of the struggle, not because of my shadow. It’s the refusal to yield that causes the crisis.”

“It was the crisis that Telamont was trying to exploit,” Laeral surmised. “He wanted to make you fear your shadow so you would keep struggling and remain unbalanced until he could take control.”

“To some extent, yes,” Galaeron agreed, “but the struggle is necessary. You need to build strength. The shadow is very strong, and I think it would overwhelm you if you accepted it too soon.”

“I understand—better than you can know.” Laeral said. She cast a private glance at Khelben then looked back to Galaeron. “Once you’re ready, accepting your shadow will make you stronger and better.”

“Stronger, yes, but better?” Galaeron asked. “I don’t know. Strength overcomes weakness, so the strengths in my shadow have overcome some weaknesses in my character, and the strengths in my character have overcome most of the weaknesses in my shadow. So I feel whole—but that hardly makes me a paladin. The world is a darker place than I knew before, and I’m the darker for seeing that. It’s not something I’d describe as better.”

Sympathetic expressions came to the faces of all three of the Chosen, and Khelben said, “We can’t know what you’re going through, Galaeron, but I’m sure we share this much. There are times when we all wish we could go back to, uh… the way we were before, but the door only opens one way.”

“And even were it possible to go back, I would still use any magic necessary to return us to the city,” Galaeron said. As thankful as he was for the understanding and comradeship the Chosen were extending to him, he was also convinced that it was folly to do as they asked. “If we return now, we accomplish nothing but our own deaths. The princes heal as fast as the Chosen, and there are more of them than of us.”

“Which is why we must strike now, and quickly,” Storm said. Her eyes were locked on Galaeron, fixing him in place like a snake pinned beneath an eagle’s claw. “This is your plan. Will you see it through or not?”

“Not if it means losing three of Mystra’s Chosen,” Galaeron said. “Impotent though you may be, you are the only hope Faerűn has, and I will not—”

“Impotent?” Khelben grumbled. He stepped closer, all trace of his earlier camaraderie vanished. He raised his famous black staff as though he meant to rap Galaeron on the brow with it “I will teach you impotent!”

Galaeron stood unflinching, ready to take whatever blow

the wizard cared to deliver, if that would make him and the other Chosen listen.

Laeral spared him the necessity, catching Khelben by the arm and dragging him back a step.

“He has a point, my love. Telamont will not have failed to notice our helplessness once the mythallar was cracked.”

“All the more reason to strike now.” Khelben’s glare slid from Galaeron to Laeral as he said, “Before he expects our return. If we are as ‘impotent’ as the elf claims, surprise may be our only chance.”

“And if we fall, we have no chance,” Aris countered.

” “We?*” Storm echoed. “I doubt there is any sense in your risking your life as well, my friend. Your size is nothing but a hindrance, and your strength will do us little good.”

“Little good?” Aris boomed. “Did you not notice that I am the one who cracked the mythallar? You are not returning without me, I promise you that”

Though it did not escape Galaeron’s notice how smoothly Storm had shifted the topic to how they would return from whether, he turned a deaf ear to the argument and glanced toward Vala. She had remained on the fringes of the argument, silent and withdrawn, watching him the entire time in the blunt Vaasan way. Her green eyes remained as enigmatic as the emeralds they resembled.

Galaeron would have given anything to know what she was thinking. Did she consider him weak for yielding to his shadow? Or was she under the misconception—as he had been—that it was a sacrifice necessary to save Faerűn? He considered it a given that she hated him for abandoning her to Escanor. After all that had befallen her—and Telamont had described it to him many times while he was a prisoner in the Palace Most High—he did not understand how she could stand to look upon his face without drawing her sword, but the choice had been hers. She was the one who had hurt him in order to save him, and if her plan had worked she had only herself to blame.

Galaeron knew what he saw in Vala’s eyes: anger. She had given so much to protect him. It could only seem to her that he had thrown her sacrifice back in her face, that he had returned to Shade without a thought to what she had done and become the thing she had so desperately tried to prevent

She was right Though he had certainly hoped to free Vala, it was Evereska and Faerűn he had come to save. The Chosen would never have agreed to help him otherwise, and he could see how right they would have been. Vala was a mere afterthought, one even Galaeron would have forsaken for a slight increase in their chances of success.

None of that changed his love for her—or how he wished he had spoken to her about it when there was still a chance she would listen.

Galaeron grew aware of a heavy silence and realized the others were looking at him.

Without taking his eyes off Vala, he said, “You know the Shadovar better than anyone here. What do you want to do?”

“What I want is to end this and go home.” Vala’s gaze finally left Galaeron’s. She turned to face Khelben and said, “What I think—”

Vala pulled her darksword and spun back in Galaeron’s direction, her arm drawing back to throw.

Startled by just how badly he had underestimated her anger, Galaeron opened himself to the Shadow Weave. He swirled his hand before his body and hissed a wispy Shadovar spell, and a shadowy disk of protection sprang into existence between him and Vala

Vala dropped her gaze and scowled, and it was only then that Galaeron realized she had been looking past his shoulder. Khelben took advantage of the distraction to slip to her side and catch her by the crook of the elbow.

“No need, my dear,” he said. “If s Ruha.”

Vala squinted into the sky above Galaeron and said, “So it is. She really should wear some other color.”

Galaeron turned to see Ruha’s black-cloaked figure sweeping down from the sky, her aba and veil flapping wildly in the wind and a familiar figure dangling from a manacle chain attached to her wrist.

“Aha!” Aris boomed, yelling in Malik’s direction. “Let us see how you like life in bondage!”

Ruha circled them once, losing altitude, then let Malik slam down and dragged him half a dozen steps across the rocky ground before alighting gently herself.

She bowed in Storm’s direction, and pinning Malik’s neck to the ground with her foot, touched her fingers to her brow.

“Well met, my friends. Have you conversed with your sisters?”

Storm cast a quick glance in the direction of the other Chosen then said, “Not since our defeat in Shade.”

Thinking that no one was paying attention to him, Malik snaked his free hand out to reach for a rock. He found three throwing daggers—Galaeron’s, Vala’s, and Ruha’s—planted in the ground around his wrist and quickly withdrew the offending arm.

Ruha continued the conversation without pause.

“I am pleased to say they both survived. When they could not reach you in the customary ways, Alustriel grew worried and asked me to investigate.”

“How long before they’re ready to attack the mythallar again?” Khelben asked. Turning to Galaeron, he added, “They’d make a big difference, especially if we’re willing to risk the silver fire.”

“Fight? In the shadow harlot1 s den?” Malik cried. “I will cut my wrist off before I allow you to drag me back there!”

“Your wrist is safe for now.” Galaeron met Khelben’s gaze and said, “There is no point in fighting on their ground. Better to attack the shadow blankets directly and draw them out as the phaerimm were doing.”

“It hardly matters to you, Malik,” Ruha said. She pulled him to his feet, jerking his hand away from Vala’s dagger

just as his fingers brushed the hilt. “If I am not needed here, I ask leave to return Malik to the justice of Twilight Hall, while I still have him chained to my wrist.”

All three Chosen inclined their heads with expressions that suggested they would be just as happy to adjudicate the matter themselves and be done with it there.

Storm said, “An excellent plan, and I think enough magic remains here for us to see you safely sped along your way.”

“To Twilight Hall?” Malik’s fear was evident in the way his voice cracked. “Ill be murdered!”

“Only after you are found guilty of a few of your crimes,” Khelben answered. “And the word is ‘executed’.”

“Executed or murdered, it is all the same!” Malik cast a plaintive gaze in Aris’s direction and said, “Will you just sit by and let them do this to someone who has saved your life so many times?”

“I will be glad to describe how you saved me,” he said, “and also how you enslaved me so you could use my shape studies to grow your church!”

For the first time, a look of despair came over Malik’s round face. He seemed to consider his options for a moment then turned to Khelben with a wild-eyed gaze.

“I can tell you how to destroy Telamont Tanthul in a single strike!” He remained silent only a moment before his mouth began to twitch, and more words spilled out. “Of course, there is every chance that you will destroy all of Shade and half of Anauroch with him….”