The Floodgate

by Elaine Cunningham

  He had followed Kiva at first because he had believed she spoke for King Zalathorm. That fancy swiftly faded, but other reasons followed, reasons powerful enough to keep him at the elf woman’s side.

  According to everything Andris knew and believed, according to the laws of the land and the decree of the Council of Elders, Kiva was a traitor to Halruaa. Was it possible that she followed some deeper, hidden truth? Was her cause worthy, even if the pathways she took toward it were sometimes twisted and dark?

  Deep in thought, Andris pushed open the door to the guest chamber. He was greeted by a raucous little squawk and the flutter of bright wings.

  His lips curved as he noted the parrot perched on the windowsill. No bigger than Andris’s fist, it was feathered in an almost floral pattern of pink and yellow. The bird stood tamely as the jordain edged forward. Its bright head tipped to one side, lending it a curious mien.

  “Greetings, little fellow,” Andris said. “I suppose you’re a wandering pet. Congratulations on your escape. Never will I understand the impulse to cage birds for the sake of their songs!”

  “I quite agree,” the bird said in a clear, approving tone. “Fortunately, this enlightened opinion seems to be common hereabouts. I come and go as I like.”

  Andris fell back a step. Many of Halruaa’s birds could chatter like small, feathered echoes. Even sentient birds were not all that rare. He’d just never expected anyone at the Jordaini College might keep such a retainer.

  “This is an unexpected pleasure, my small friend. Might I ask what brings you here?”

  The bird sidled several steps closer. Its head craned this way and that, as if to reassure itself that no one might overhear. “A message.”

  “A message? From whom?”

  “Just read the books.”

  “The books?” Andris said blankly.

  Pink and yellow wings rustled impatiently. “Hidden under the mattress. Read them, put them back.”

  The bird was gone. It didn’t fly away; it was simply … gone.

  Consternation filled Andris. This was a wizard’s work, and serious work at that! Stern laws forbade the jordaini to use magic, or to have any magic used on their behalf. A blink bird might be either a natural beast or a conjured image, but both were forbidden.

  That knowledge didn’t stop him from looking under the mattress. He picked up an ancient tome bound in thin, yellowed leather. The pages within were fine parchments aged to pale sepia and covered with faded writing. Andris took the book over to the window and began to read.

  With each page he turned, he crept farther from the window, as if he could distance himself from the horrors revealed. He held in his hands the journal of Akhlaur! The deathwizard’s own hand had written these runes, turned these pages.

  Andris’s skin crawled. His sick feeling intensified as he considered the book’s bindings. No animal yielded leather so thin and delicate. The skin had once been human, or more likely, elf.

  Suspicion passed into certainty as he read on. Precise little runes and neat, detailed drawings related with matter-of-fact detachment atrocities beyond Andris’s darkest dreams. Elves had been the necromancer’s favorite test subjects, and none had endured so much as the girl-child Akivaria, more conveniently known as Kiva.

  Andris felt like a man gripped by the mosquito fever—burning with wrath, yet racked with numbing indecision. This book held secrets that could destroy the jordaini order if they became known. Now, he knew.

  As he had told Matteo, with knowledge comes responsibility.

  With shaking hands, Andris took up the second book, which proved to be a detailed genealogy of the early jordaini order. As he read, he prayed that Matteo’s friend Tzigone did not know the details of his elf heritage, or realize that one of his forebears was still alive and currently a “guest” of the Azuthan temple.

  He exploded into motion, snatching up his few belongings and stuffing them into his travel bag. After a moment’s hesitation, he added the books to his gear.

  His eyes stung with unshed tears as he slipped away, using the route that his friend Themo employed for clandestine trips to the port of Khaerbaal. No one noticed the shadowy figure leave. For the first time, Andris was grateful the jordaini had become so adept at averting their eyes. He could move among them as if he were indeed a ghost.

  So he was, by any measure that mattered. His future was gone, snatched away by the lingering madness of the wizard Akhlaur and by the jordaini masters who had first suppressed this knowledge, then spilled it over him in one scalding enlightenment. The only life Andris knew was that of a jordain. His future was gone.

  On swift and silent feet, Andris went to claim his past.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Matteo followed the jordaini lad who headed for the headmaster’s tower like a hunting hound hard on a trail.

  “I know the way,” he pointed out. “If you’ve other duties to attend, don’t let me keep you from them.”

  The boy shot an incredulous look over his shoulder. “Headmaster said to bring you.” And that, as far as he was concerned, was the beginning and end of the matter.

  Matteo sighed, envying the lad his certainty. Life had been simpler when the credo of jordaini service—truth, Halruaa, and the wizard-lords—were three seamless aspects of a sacred whole.

  The headmaster’s tower rose in a stately curve of white marble, resembling a slender stalk crowned by a budding lotus flower. The immense scale did not distort the sense of grace and serenity this blossom exuded. A lush garden surrounded the tower, and servants clad in simple green garments went about their tasks.

  Despite the prohibitions on magic use, the wizard’s tower did not look out of place. The jordaini were taught to know magic nearly as well as any wizard. Matteo could recognize hundreds of spells just from the gesture of a wizard’s hand or from the combined scent of the spell components. Having wizards for masters had always seemed normal and natural to him.

  “Normal and natural,” Matteo muttered, with more bitterness than he’d realized he harbored. But there was nothing natural about the image that haunted him daily—an aging woman with a wan face and vacant eyes. He did not know her name. He knew nothing about her, except that she had given him life.

  Oddly enough, if Tzigone’s hints proved true, his father’s name was well known to him. Most likely he had heard it his whole life without knowing its significance.

  Since his return to the Jordaini College, Matteo often found himself searching his former masters’ faces in search of his own reflection. Of all the masters, Ferris Grail was most like him in appearance. This added an unsettling edge to the coming interview.

  A green-robed servant admitted Matteo and led him to a small antechamber to await the headmaster’s summons. Here Matteo sat, and when he could no longer sit, he paced. He had ample time for both, for the sun rose to its zenith and sank a distance more than three times its diameter before the servant appeared again. By then Matteo was quietly seething. Why would Ferris Grail call him to the tower and then keep him waiting?

  He schooled his face to calm and entered the headmaster’s study. Two wizards awaited him. Ferris Grail was a tall man in late middle life, thickly muscled and clad in the simple white garments of a jordain. He might have been mistaken for one of the warrior-scholars but for his neatly trimmed black beard and the gold talisman bearing his wizard’s sigil. Had he been jordaini he would have gone clean-shaven, and worn a medallion enameled with the jordaini emblem: semicircles of green and yellow, divided by a lightning bolt of cobalt blue. The second wizard was older, wizened by the passage of time and the casting of powerful magic. Vishna, Matteo’s favorite master, had been a battle wizard before he’d retired to teach at the Jordaini College.

  Ferris Grail waved Matteo in. “There is a message for you,” he said without preamble, gesturing to a moonstone globe mounted on a pedestal.

  Matteo glanced at it, and his brow furrowed in consternation. Reflected in the globe was a woman’s face, pale as po
rcelain and preternaturally serene. Her dark eyes were expressionless, skillfully painted with kohl, and enormous in her unnaturally white face. It was a beautiful face, framed by an elaborate wig of white and silver curls, upon which rested a silver crown.

  “Queen Beatrix is waiting,” urged the headmaster.

  The young jordain shot him an incredulous look. Ferris Grail cleared his throat. “The queen knows the restriction upon her jordaini counselors. She would not summon you through magic if the need were not great. Service to Halruaa’s wizards is the first rule you must follow.”

  Matteo was not certain of that, but upon reflection he decided there was no real harm in the scrying globe. Just that morning, he and Andris had practiced with swords rather than matched daggers, the traditional jordaini weapons. Truth was not flexible. The length of weapons and the means of communicating with one’s patron were.

  His conscience accepted this reasoning, yet Matteo’s feet felt leaden as he moved before the globe and into his patron’s line of vision.

  Nothing in the queen’s expression indicated recognition, but after a moment she said his name in an even, almost toneless voice. “I am ready for my walk upon the Promenade. You may come for me.”

  Matteo suppressed a sigh. “Your Majesty, you gave me leave to attend urgent business. I have been absent from the palace for a moon-cycle and more.”

  The queen’s expression did not alter in the slightest. She did not appear chagrined to have forgotten, or peeved by Matteo’s absence. “Is this business finished?”

  The expansion of the Swamp of Akhlaur had been halted, the laraken driven away. Kiva was in the hands of the Azuthan priests. The jordaini falsely condemned by Kiva and conscripted to fight in her personal army had been cleared of all wrongdoing. By any measure but his own, Matteo had met and surpassed his obligations as a counselor.

  “It is not, my queen,” he said at last. “There are matters yet to attend.”

  “Very well.” She spoke as if his answer, or indeed his presence, was of no consequence to her. Her image winked out of the globe, leaving nothing but faintly glowing moonstone.

  “Matters to attend?” demanded Ferris Grail. “What might these be?”

  Matteo gave the older man a respectful bow. “Personal matters, my lord. If you have questions, please address them to my patron.”

  This was as close to falsehood as Matteo had ever come. He did not actually claim that he did the queen’s business, but his words could be interpreted as such. Ferris Grail raised one black eyebrow into a skeptical arch.

  Vishna leaped from his chair and seized Matteo’s arm. “Well, then, you’d best be off,” he said heartily. “You’ve lazed about here long enough.”

  Matteo allowed the old wizard to hustle him out of the tower. When they reached the courtyard, he disengaged himself from Vishna’s grasp and inclined his head in a grateful bow. “That was kind of you. I had no wish to prolong that meeting.”

  Vishna sent him a wistful smile. “First listen to some advice, my son, then decide whether to thank me or not. You’ve many gifts, but lying isn’t among them! If you’re set upon learning this art, I’d suggest you’d practice before a mirror until you can school the guilt from your face!”

  The wizard’s tone was light and teasing, but Matteo could think of no response. What did one say when a trusted master spoke of competent falsehood as if it were a good and worthy goal?

  As the silence stretched, Vishna studied the young man’s face with growing concern. “This unfinished business must be grave indeed.”

  “No more than that before any jordain,” Matteo said shortly. “I seek truth.”

  “Ah.” The old man’s wry smile acknowledged the reproof. “The search for truth can take unexpected paths. Yours has put distance between you and the jordaini order.”

  The man’s insight startled Matteo. “Why do you say that?”

  “I have known you since you left the nursery to begin your studies. Never have I known you to give evasive answers. That speaks of faltering trust”

  Matteo could not disagree. “If I offend, Master Vishna, I beg pardon.”

  “No need.” The wizard patted his shoulder. “The wise man does not trust easily or speak freely.”

  “True, but suspicion wears at the soul, and so does silence. I miss the days when we could speak our minds plainly, without subtlety or hidden layers.”

  “A child’s privilege, Matteo. You are no longer a child.” Vishna’s smile took any possible sting from the words. “But let us indulge each other. What wears away at my former student?”

  This time, Matteo chose his words more carefully. “We jordaini are considered the guardians of Halruaan lore, yet there is much we haven’t learned.”

  “Ah. I suppose you have something specific in mind.”

  “Several things. Why did we not learn the history of Halruaa’s elves?”

  “There are no elves to speak of,” Vishna pointed out.

  “Precisely. Yet there were once many elves in the Swamp of Akhlaur and in the Kilmaruu Swamp. It seems odd that two such places—neither of which are ancient swamplands—should develop on the graves of elf settlements.”

  Vishna gave him an indulgent smile and repeated the jordaini proverb about the Kilmaruu Swamp existing to keep the number of Halruaan fools down to manageable levels.

  “Andris is no fool,” Matteo stated, “and for that, Halruaa should bless Mystra. Haven’t you noticed that Kilmaruu’s undead rest easier?”

  “Now that you mention it,” the wizard said thoughtfully, “the farms and the coastlands bordering the swamp have been quiet of late. And this is Andris’s doing, you say?”

  “He prepared a battle strategy to rid the swamp of undead, and he presented it as his fifth-form thesis. I’m surprised you hadn’t heard.”

  “Hmmm.” The wizard considered this, his wrinkled face deeply troubled.

  “The Jordaini College is less forthcoming with information than its reputation suggests,” Matteo continued. “I have seen with my own eyes evidence that many elves once lived in Akhlaur’s swamp. Why were we not taught this?”

  Vishna spread his hands, palms up. “Such things are difficult to study. Where elves are concerned, there is always more legend than fact. You might as well to try to fathom the truth of the Cabal!”

  His tone was light and teasing, as if he named the ultimate example of futility, but Matteo was in no mood to be humored or indulged. He folded his arms and returned the wizard’s smile with a level gaze.

  “Perhaps both studies have merit.”

  Vishna’s smile faltered, and his eyes took on a shuttered expression.

  “You do not agree,” Matteo persisted.

  “No. The elves are gone, but for a few here and there. That is the way of nature. Before their time, dragons ruled. Their numbers are greatly diminished, yet they would not take it kindly if you attempted to harvest their eggs with the purpose of tending them until they hatched. likewise, the elves would not thank you for interfering in their lives, and they would not welcome you if you tried to inquire into their history.”

  “What of the Cabal? I’ve heard of it all my life, but we never learned anything about it”

  “With good reason. The Cabal is a particular kind of legend,” Vishna said slowly. “The sort that take shape over time, fashioned from whispers repeated so often that they begin to seem true.”

  “Some say it is a deeply hidden conspiracy.”

  Vishna snorted. “Conspiracies are useful things. They distract shallow, lazy minds from the labor of true thought. Such people see dire warnings as proof of wisdom. We’ve both met Halruaans who would regard a cheerful sage as a blasphemer, or at best, a charlatan.”

  “As the saying goes, never confuse a sour disposition with deep thought”

  “Just so, lad.” The wizard looked relieved by this return to familiar ground. “So when are you off on the queen’s business?”

  “Tomorrow morning, at first light,�
� Matteo said. “I will ride with Andris to Azuth’s temple.”

  The old wizard gave him a quizzical look. “But Andris has left already.”

  “What?”

  His sharp tone startled Vishna. “It’s true,” he asserted, as if Matteo had challenged his veracity. “The headmaster’s window commands a clear view of the back kitchen gate. I saw Andris slip away while I was in conference with the headmaster. Why is this so strange? He has permission to leave, and the Temple of Azuth is expecting him.”

  Matteo could not answer. He felt as if his throat was gripped in an iron golem’s fist. He could accept that some of Halruaa’s wizards kept dark secrets. He could fathom, just barely, that his beloved jordaini order might have had a part in keeping these secrets. That Andris, his dearest friend, could have told him a direct lie—this was beyond comprehension.

  He spun on his heel. Vishna seized his arm. “Don’t, Matteo,” he said quietly. “For the sake of your friend, pause and reflect. I can’t tell you why Andris went off alone, but this I know: You don’t always need to understand your friends’ choices, but you should honor them. Go back to Halarahh, and leave him to follow whatever destiny the goddess has given him.”

  Matteo gently pulled free. “Thank you for the lesson, Master Vishna,” he said, speaking the traditional words between jordaini student and teacher. “Your words hold great wisdom, as usual.”

  Relief flooded the wizard’s face. “Then you will return to court?”

  “That is not the conclusion I drew from the lesson,” the young man said softly. “What I heard you say was that it is not necessary to understand a man’s choice but to honor it.” With a quick bow, Matteo turned and sprinted for the stables.

  He snatched up tack and travel kit at the door. “I’m taking Cyric,” he announced to the startled groom. “I’ll saddle him myself.”

  The lad’s sigh of relief was almost comic. Cyric, a black stallion of uncommon speed and vile temper, had been named for an evil and insane god. The horse was nearly impossible to ride, but his temperament precisely suited Matteo’s mood and purpose.