Selana thrashed from side to side, trying to escape from the heavy folds of the wizard's robe. At last she broke free, but clung to the outside edge, riding along unnoticed as the human strode down the hall, past doorways flanked by dripping candles. Tasslehoff buzzed along behind, trying to count the doors he passed in case he needed to follow this route again.
His count was disturbed by Selana's mental urging. "Tasslehoff, land on his back. Then you can't get lost."
While this seemed like a good idea to the kender, he quickly realized it was easier thought than done. The fly's form was not nearly as graceful as the sparrow's, and the mage's back was constantly in motion. His clothing flexed and heaved with every step. Tas's first pass missed by many inches. On his second approach, he rammed into the churning surface and was knocked away. "It's too hard," he protested. "I'm losing count of the doors."
The wizard stepped through a doorway and onto a set of stairs that wound up and to the left. As they climbed, Tasslehoff became aware of how tired he was growing. Obviously, he thought, flies don't have much stamina. His wings ached, and he was very hungry. The hunger, he realized, was something new; flies must burn up food awfully fast. He considered looking for something to eat, but his recollection of the things he had seen flies eating quickly changed his mind. He decided to wait until something palatable appeared, then he would turn into something that could eat it.
Now they neared the top of the stairs. The mage stepped through the open doorway and turned left. As Tas raced after him, he collided with something invisible and stopped dead. He tried to move his wings, but the right one was stuck. The left one buzzed futilely, then it, too, brushed against something and stuck fast.
Selana's voice rang in his mind. "What's the matter? Why have you stopped?"
"I'm not sure," Tas responded. "I'm stuck in something, but… oh, my."
"What is it?"
Tas's voice was thick with apprehension. "It's a spider web, and I'm all tangled up in it. My legs and wings are caught, and the more I struggle, the more I get tangled."
"Wait there." Selana launched herself off the mage's back and headed back toward the doorway. She had just gotten the web in sight when Tas, who was working on freeing his legs, heard the mental equivalent of a scream. "Above you, Tas-the spider!"
The kender looked up in time to see a brown, hairy, murderous monster with venom-coated fangs racing across the sticky web toward him. Before he could do anything, it was on top of him, spinning web line as it whipped the trapped fly between its back legs. Tas felt the strands tightening with each revolution.
He wasn't frightened-kender rarely were-but the situation did seem grave. At the same time he was fascinated, marveling at the spider's efficiency and speed. Each time it turned him around he could see his own dark face reflected in the multifaceted eyes of the spider.
Selana buzzed helplessly past the web, too frightened to get close and too upset to think clearly. The webs began lapping over Tas's face. The spider's unblinking eyes hovered near Tas's neck, poised before driving its paralyzing fangs into its prey. Tas abruptly closed his eyes and relaxed. A moment later, surrounded by tiny, sparkling flashes, the fly became a little brown mouse. The web strands encircling him burst apart, the web itself shredded, and Tas plummeted to the floor as a mouse, twisting in the air to land on his four feet. The spider fell away, then caught itself on a hastily spun web, which it climbed as quickly as possible to the safety of the ceiling.
Laughing almost hysterically with relief, Selana landed next to Tas and metamorphosed into a mouse herself. She stood on shaking legs as Tas stretched his bruised limbs.
"Why didn't you think to do that right away?" she asked.
"I didn't hear you thinking to suggest it," he retorted. "Anyway, everything turned out OK. Why are you so upset?"
Selana ignored the question.
"There's old One Eye now," said Tas. They saw their quarry standing before a door at the end of a long hall lit by candles. The two mice skittered down the hall, hugging the base of the wall, staying in shadows until they were across from the door. The mage opened the plain wooden door and stepped through. Tas, ahead of Selana, could see there was a room beyond, not more hallway. But the door shut before they could reach it.
The two mice approached the door cautiously. Their sharp mouse ears could detect him moving around on the other side. The bottom edge of the door cleared the stone floor by at least an inch, plenty of room for two mice to squeeze through.
"After you," thought Tas, motioning with his whiskered snout. Selana slipped noiselessly under the door, followed by the kender, both of them wondering what horrors they would encounter on the other side.
Chapter 13
A Two-Sided Coin
Using his good hand, Balcombe shook fragments of a squirrel's brain from a pair of calipers into a stoneware bowl. His work area was a waist-high wooden table in the laboratory that adjoined his apartment in Castle Tantallon. The room was small, as magical labs were measured, but quite generous by the standards of normal castle chambers. One narrow loophole in the outside wall let in a small amount of light, though torches were still needed for full illumination.
Frowning, he licked the last, tart droplets from the porcelain bowl in the palm of his right hand. The spellcasting draft made from a snow-white pearl and an owl feather steeped in wine sharpened his senses in an unpleasant way. Noises took on a jarring quality, filling his head with sharp reverberations; smell brought with it an unsettling sense of time and the sequence of past events; worst of all, colors and shapes became more distinct, as if the two were no longer associated but could be separated and examined individually. Of course, that was the point. The elixir empowered him to identify the characteristics of a magical item. He could, quite literally, see, feel, hear, and smell the magical capabilities of an item he was handling. Currently he was examining the copper bracelet on his wrist.
Balcombe ran his fingers over the bracelet as one would stroke a lover. He liked the feel of heavy jewelry, took an almost sensual pleasure in certain pieces. This one was particularly stimulating in that regard, with the added benefit of the gems on its face; he coveted faceted stones of any sort.
Balcombe could see that the bracelet revealed the future through visions to its wearer, just as the pathetic little con man had said. Far more curious was its background. It appeared that it had been fashioned by a dwarf but it also bore the unmistakable signs of elvish influence. He could not identify the specific elf kingdom involved, but it was neither Silvanesti nor Qualinesti, of that he was sure. A faint but persistent saline odor clung to it that he had never encountered before. It could have come from the Isle of Sancrist, perhaps, or even beyond.
Regardless of its origin, Balcombe suspected that a practiced wearer could, in any twenty-four-hour period, seek answers to a set number of specific questions about the near future. Its potential was enormous in the hands of a skilled user, though mastery required much practice. He resolved to wear it for a full day sometime in the coming week, but now he was too tired to experiment with it, so he struggled to slip the bracelet over his hand and off his wrist; the fit was quite tight. Finally he wrestled it off and set it on the counter.
The mage's shoulders slumped in exhaustion. This spell had been ten hours in the casting; the first eight were consumed by purifying the bracelet, as the identification spell required, and removing influences that could corrupt and blur his magical sensitivity. He had been just going to finish it, when he had been interrupted by the awakening in the dungeon of his newest zombie, formerly Omardicar the Omnipotent.
He had been most annoyed to find the four oddly allied strangers there, doubly so for what they'd done to a zombie he'd not even had a chance to use yet. The captured dwarf and half-elf had provided little truly useful information, except that they'd been after the bracelet, though he had been unable to ascertain why.
Balcombe thought about the two who were safely behind bars. More intelligent and per
ceptive by far than the seer had been, they had proved a greater challenge to the mage's mind. He had probed them, both verbally and magically; the dwarf had given him little information, being naturally resistant to magic. The half-elf had provided little more, being magical himself.
They had a tenuous connection to the one they called Delbridge, Balcombe's short-lived zombie-claimed, in fact, never to have met him, which a detect lie spell revealed to the mage to be the truth. By the end of the interrogation, Balcombe felt quite confident they knew nothing of his connection to Rostrevor's disappearance.
They would make excellent zombies.
He anxiously awaited word that the two who had escaped, the oddly pale young woman and the kender, had had their deaths meted out by his shadow monster. He was taking no chances, now that he was so close to his ultimate goal.
Balcombe yawned and blinked heavy eyelids. The strain of the spell preparation had drained him physically, but the events in the dungeon and jail left him mentally keyed up. He desperately felt the need to relax. From a sideboard he picked up a blue bowl and the straight razor he used to shave his head. He carried the two items across the stained stone floor of the lab to a door and passed through it into his richly carpeted and appointed bedchamber. There he settled in a mauve, velvet-covered divan and reclined among a mound of feather pillows.
Balcombe placed the bowl on the floor. Extending his left arm off the edge of the couch and over the bowl, he opened the razor and positioned its keen edge against the ball of his palm. He lingered like that for several moments, savoring the anticipation of what he was about to do. A fine lattice of hairline scars paralleled the shining blade. With a glint of dementia in his eyes, he applied just enough pressure on the blade to push a shallow crease in his palm. Then, smiling tightly, he drew the blade slowly toward himself. As it slid, the parting flesh rose slowly up the side of the blade as the metal sank into the skin. A thin trickle of blood flowed out from beneath the steel, then ran in a warm red stream across his tilted palm to drip into the bowl on the floor. The flow surged in rhythm with his pulse, and his head nodded in time with the soothing beat. Soon tiny streams of blood crisscrossed his hand, following the minute network of lines etched there. A few moments after that his palm was drenched and growing sticky as the crimson fluid began to coagulate.
The discovery that the sight of his own^blood calmed him, that the sensation of his own pain thrilled him, had come on a horror-filled night ten long years ago. On that damp, moonlit night a broken apprentice mage had teetered on the brink of the Abyss only to ultimately cheat death by striking a deal with the devil himself.
Balcombe had learned much since then. The former initiate had secured a position as court mage to a paranoid and disenfranchised Knight of Solamnia in a forgotten corner of Abanasinia. He had become free- even paid-to hone his magical skills in the lap of luxury, without interference, without unwanted attention. He was free to stoke the flames of bitterness toward those he held responsible for his failure of the Test in the Tower-, the Conclave of Wizards, which had administered the Test and then left him for dead.
He never could decide which of the three orders he hated most for participating in his humiliation. The head of the conclave, Par-Salian, was a powerful wizard of the White Robes. The one time Balcombe had met him- when Balcombe had received his first assignment as an apprentice-the middle-aged archmage of Good had acted distant, as if the conversation were a distraction keeping him from his real work, which seemed too caught up in theory. Balcombe thought it likely that Par-Salian had designed the Test.
At the time of Balcombe's Test, Justarius had recently been appointed head of the Red Robes, the order Balcombe had sought to join. Now Balcombe found that order's neutrality infuriating, especially since it likely kept Justarius from intervening on behalf of the young Balcombe in his time of need during the Test.
That left LaDonna. Also middle-aged, the dun-haired wizardess was head of the Order of Black Robes. Balcombe knew less about her than the others, because during his formal training he had never considered wearing the Black Robes. In truth, he held her the least responsible of all because of her alignment toward evil.
That was why he sought to replace her in the conclave.
What greater revenge against Par-Salian and Justarius than to call Balcombe, a failure of their impossible test, their peer? He would achieve far greater power than he had ever dreamed possible when he made that first journey to Wayreth Forest.
If only Hiddukel held up his end of the deal.
Balcombe had learned much about bargaining since falling into this arrangement. Ten years and countless souls after he had struck his deal with the evil god in the darkness of Wayreth Forest, the mage had a plan that would help him reach his goal and stop his indenture to Hiddukel all at once. He would offer the god of deals, the dealer of souls, a spirit so pristine and priceless that the god would be willing to nullify his verbal contract with Balcombe just to get it.
But Balcombe intended to ask a higher price than even that. Hiddukel had long ago promised him both power and revenge. The former had been delivered, as Balcombe was certainly the most powerful wizard in the region. Now he would also have his revenge by claiming LaDonna's position on the conclave.
As he thought about how he would approach the subject with the god, Balcombe compressed the wound on his palm until the flow of blood stopped, then he wrapped it tightly with a clean strip of silk from an enameled box near the foot of the divan. He returned with the small bowl to his laboratory. There he mixed sweet-smelling powders with the thickening blood to make a paste. This he placed over a red-hot brazier, then thrust his head into the billowing cloud of smoke that streamed up from the bowl. This cloying vapor cleared away the exhaustion of the previous ten hours and left Balcombe feeling quick and sharp-minded.
It was a ritual he had performed countless times before invoking Hiddukel. Each encounter with the sharp-tongued god was a contest of wills. Hiddukel was the immortal sovereign of contracts. Anything said during a conversation with him, no matter how insignificant it might seem, could become eternally binding. Balcombe had long ago realized that any degree of caution was justified when dealing with such a being.
Feeling clarified and invigorated, Balcombe strode from his worktable to a heavily ornate floor cabinet standing in the corner. Inside were symmetrical shelves top and bottom, with an array of small drawers in the middle. The mage selected one drawer and pulled it completely out from its slot. He then reached back into the empty space and withdrew a smaller, square, completely closed box made of highly polished gray slate, approximately two inches on a side. He pulled a second drawer from its slot and nimbly popped open a hidden panel along its back edge and withdrew a tiny bronze key from the secret compartment thus revealed. Returning to the slate box, he turned it round and round in his hands until he found the side he sought. As he carefully passed the bronze key over that side of the box, an impression appeared in the shape of the key. Balcombe pressed the key into the notch and instantly the box folded itself open to reveal a small, royal blue velvet pouch.
Balcombe carefully unfolded the pouch, which appeared to be empty. Its most striking features were six tiny, steel hands, which held the mouth of the pouch tightly shut. The wizard spoke the sounds, "buldi vetivich," releasing the magical wards protecting the bag and causing the six tiny hands to disappear.
Tingling with anticipation, Balcombe tipped up the apparently empty bag and from it tumbled a perfectly cut, fist-sized ruby. Holding the gem up to the light of one of the many candles in the room, Balcombe could barely make out the frightened young face deep inside the gem's wine-colored facets, looking this way and that, trying in vain to see what was happening outside the magical prison.
They'd made it so easy for him, the knight and his son, and most especially the unwitting Delbridge, who by revealing the secret plan had provided everyone but himself with an alibi. Placing the gem in Rostrevor's sheets while supposedly casting magical se
als on the area was child's play. The instant the squire touched the gem, he was drawn into it and trapped like a genie in a bottle. When Balcombe unsealed the room in the morning, he simply pocketed the gem unnoticed. Everyone else was too preoccupied with the inexplicable disappearance of the squire to notice anything.
But trapping a soul was no small task, even for a wizard of Balcombe's advanced skill. First the wizard had to prepare the vault, which had to be a gem of extraordinary value or it would shatter when the soul was forced into it. Next it was necessary to ensorcel the gem, making it receptive to magical effects. Then the wizard had to create an enchanted maze inside the gem, thereby forming a prison capable of containing a soul. All of these steps were necessary prior to the magical casting that actually trapped the soul and had to be performed ritually each and every time Balcombe sought a victim to soothe Hiddukel's hunger.
In fact, hunger may have been the wrong word. Balcombe wondered, as he often did, precisely what use Hiddukel had for the souls he received from his faithful. Did he consume them as food, or was he beyond the need for nourishment of any kind? Perhaps they became slaves in some nightmare realm mortals could never imagine. Or, what Balcombe considered the most interesting possibility, perhaps Hiddukel used them as a form of currency in dealings with beings even more loathsome than himself. Ultimately, Balcombe did not care what became of the souls; his curiosity was completely academic.
Balcombe hesitated, staring at the enormous, nightmare gem for many minutes before reaching into the depths of his black robe. He loathed conversations with Hiddukel. Still, it was the only way to get what he desired.
The mage's fingertips met with the slight, almost un-detectable seam located just above his left breast. He tapped it four times-two quick taps followed by two slow ones. The secret pocket he had magically placed there opened, and he extracted from it a large golden coin, cold to the touch. For a time after he had received the conduit to the evil god Hiddukel from the swirling whirlpool of autumn leaves in Wayreth Forest, he had absently carried it with his other coins. Until the mind-boggling day he nearly-absently-traded it for a chicken at a local market. For the first time he began to think of the potential consequences of such carelessness. That very afternoon he had created a secret pocket in his robes; the coin never left his person again.
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