Lewan raised a trembling hand—a last effort to keep the thing at bay, though he knew it was probably futile.
But the thing flinched back just slightly, then leaned in, almost hesitantly, and sniffed. Then the thing’s mouth opened, and a dark tongue flicked out, like a lizard tasting the air.
“Lewan …” Ulaan rasped. He felt her hands clinging to him, trembling. “It’s … them. The dark things from the Tower. The Old Man’s hunters.”
The creature tilted its head, almost birdlike, and looked at Ulaan. The cold light in its eyes flared briefly, almost like a breath washing over an ember, then the creature returned its gaze to Lewan and gave a deep nod, almost a … a sort of bow.
“Lur’ashai,” it said. It stepped aside as one of the other creatures came forward. It also gave a semblance of a bow and then extended both hands. Resting in the creature’s palms, glowing faintly, was the hammer Berun had given Lewan.
The creature proffered the hammer. Part of Lewan wondered if this was some sort of bestial warrior’s code, if they would not kill him until he had a weapon in hand. But no. If this were Sauk, then maybe. But these creatures were unlike anything Lewan had ever seen or heard of. This had not been battle for them. They had ripped those men apart, like wolves taking down an elk.
Lewan reached out and took the hammer.
“Lur’ashai,” said the first creature. “Jankhota saalthua.”
“I … don’t understand,” said Lewan.
The creature who had carried the hammer suddenly stood to its full height—as tall as Lewan—but was unnaturally stiff, as if bound to some unseen board. Its arms stood out from its sides, and its fingers splayed. The creature’s eyes blazed, and it threw its head back.
“Little master,” it said, but Lewan knew at once that the voice from the creature’s throat was not its own. No. Lewan recognized this voice. It had spoken to him that day on the mountain. “The time has come. Your word, Lewan, is all I ask. The time has come.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Berun lay on a bier of fresh leaves and flowers. The creatures had carried him here. Trussed in vines like a caterpillar in its cocoon, Berun had not even struggled as they grabbed him and bore him up the stairs. Up and up and up to the roof atop the Tower of the Sun. Open to the air as it was, still the scent of rampant vegetation permeated the air. A stone table lay near the northern ledge. There, they laid Berun upon a bed of new leaves and blossoms, his head cushioned by soft larch branches.
He had been too stunned to resist, to even wonder where they might be taking him and why. Over and over again, he saw it in his mind and heard the words. Chereth, his beloved master, the man who had restored him to life—and more importantly taught him how to live—standing there saying, Welcome to my tower.
… my tower.
… my tower.
And then, Bring him.
And the creatures had obeyed.
… my tower.
It couldn’t be true. Chereth was master of the tower. Impossible. And yet it was the only explanation.
All he had been through in his life—both lives—
An orphan in Elversult, living as a thief, scrabbling for survival. Fighting. Beating and being beaten. Running. Hiding. His first kill.
Alaodin, the Old Man of the Mountain, finding him and taking him in. Giving him a life. A life of murder.
Sauk. The brother he’d never had. One to fight beside. One to die for. And kill and kill and kill and kill …
Talieth. Love? No. Neither Kheil nor Talieth had really known love. But they had known passion, had connected in a way that Kheil never had with any other woman.
And then death. Death by Chereth’s word. And life. Again by Chereth’s word. And more importantly, a way of life. Something to believe in. Something to strive for. Meaning. He became Berun.
But Chereth had left him. Left him to … to what?
“Questions,” said a voice. Nearby. Very close. Chereth’s voice. “You have questions, I’m sure.”
Berun felt the vines around him loosen, heard the rustle of the leaves, then they fell away.
“Your questions shall be answered,” said Chereth, still unseen but very close. “And if the answers spawn questions, those shall be answered as well. But first we must see to your wounds. Sleep now. Olirith.”
The last word held the tinge of magic, and Berun’s awareness fell away.
Berun slept beyond dreams, but he did not sleep for long. Slumber fell away from him. He heard thunder shaking the sky far away, and he opened his eyes. It was still dark, but wispy, glowing orbs filled the air over the roof, floating like cottonwood seeds on a breeze. Berun sat up. His shirt was gone, and all of the cuts he’d taken under Sauk’s assault were no more than lines of white scar tissue. Runes and holy symbols covered his arms and torso. The paint, smelling faintly of pine resin, was still damp. He could feel more on his face and forehead.
Berun took in his surroundings. Kheil had been here many times, the rooftop that was the highest level in the Tower of the Sun. The Imaskari had named it the Eye of the Four Winds, for standing at any of the waist-high ledges, one could see for miles in every direction. The stone tubes that wound their way up the tower connected to portals deep beneath the mountain—portals that opened to the elemental planes. With the proper spells, one could funnel both fire and water to the heights of the tower, so that in high summer, the fountains were always fresh and cool, forming falls that went over the heights of the tower. In the cold of winter, fires burned for light and heat.
Water flowed, giving off a clean scent, its song inherently soothing as it bubbled out of fountains, one at each corner of the roof. Fires burned, not from the tubes, which sat quiet and cold, but from a few braziers and several lamps, their flames low, their glow an orange as a dusty sunset. The light cast as many shadows as pools of light. In the nine years since he had last been here, the Eye of the Four Winds had been filled with vines, fruit trees, flowers, bushes, ivies, creepers, and even long strands of moss drooping off the stone.
“It is good to see you again, my son,” said a voice behind him.
Berun turned, and Chereth emerged from the shadow cast by the arm of an oak that grew from the floor and spread its branches over the ledges and up to the sky.
“Master?” said Berun.
Chereth had been old when Berun had last seen him, and he wore the past nine years heavily. His hair had lost none of its thickness, but it was bone-white and flowed well past his shoulders in a wild mane. Leaves and flowers peeked out from the strands, and Berun thought some of them might actually be growing there. Chereth leaned upon his staff, and his posture had a stoop to it that Berun had never seen before. Even his gait was slower. Not quite a shuffle, but it was the pace of a half-elf much closer to his grave than his birth.
The old druid came round the bier and stopped before Berun. He placed his free hand on Berun’s arm and squeezed. “My heart rejoices to see you, Berun. Truly.”
“Master Chereth … I …” Berun didn’t know what to say.
Chereth smiled at him. “Many, many questions, yes?”
“Yes, Master.”
“Our time is short, my son,” said Chereth. “But tonight, all your questions must be answered. I have long waited for your coming, and the rest of this night I give to you. All must be made clear before we finish what we began.”
Berun felt suddenly weak. He feared his legs would not hold him, so he sat back on the bier. “Finish what, master?”
“That should be your last question, I think,” said Chereth. “Better for your understanding if we begin at the beginning, yes?”
“I … I don’t know where to begin, master.”
“I should begin before you came to me,” said Chereth. “Before you were Berun. Before you were even Kheil perhaps, for I have walked this path many long years. It began when I was not much older than you are now. As a child of the Oak Father, I served among the Masters of the Yuirwood for many seasons. We saw many v
ictories and many defeats. Many defeats, both in the Yuirwood and in other places where my service to the Oak Father took me.
“Always I saw blight, corruption—both natural and arcane—assaulting the woods so beloved to our god. Every year I saw the forests grow a little smaller—if not in one place, than another. Villages, towns, cities … as they prospered and grew they dumped their filth into our rivers, our lakes. They fill the air with their smoke and stench. They cut and destroy and do not replant. Kings and their nobles hunt for sport, leaving animals to rot where the hunters’ arrows take them. These nobles will retrieve their arrows, but they leave bears, foxes, and wolves to rot, their death meaning only a moment’s amusement for pampered fools.
“I swore my life to the service of the wild. To communion with all living things. Yet year by year I saw the wild shrinking. Saw it polluted. Defiled. And so the Masters of the Yuirwood and other Circles sought to heal, to repair, to foster the wild. But over the years, after so many defeats, I saw this for what it was—a long defeat. For every grove we preserved or fallow field we filled with trees, ten groves were cut and the wild grew ever thinner.
“I began to search for an advantage. What the assassins of this place might call ‘an edge,’ something that would allow our efforts to go on the offense for once. Traveling through many lands, I sought lore, artifacts, relics, items of power of any sort, and allies to aid my work. I met many whose wisdom added to my own. I found the ancient works of the Imaskari, who were masters of the portals, using them to travel vast distances as if crossing the room. But they also used them to travel to other worlds—some strangely similar to our own, and others different beyond our imagination. Such … power this offered.
“The ancient histories all agreed that one of the greatest of the Imaskari wonders lay in the Endless Wastes. My studies led me to believe that this was none other than Sentinelspire itself, and all the scrolls I studied and tales I gleaned spoke of a fortress hidden on the mountain. And thus I first began to learn of the Old Man of the Mountain and his … cult of assassins.
“Perhaps two years before Kheil and I first crossed paths, I found some of Alaodin’s contacts in Glarondar. Unlike most who approached Alaodin, I did not want anyone murdered. I requested an audience with the Old Man of the Mountain, for I greatly wished to come and study the Imaskari lore at Sentinelspire. Why he granted my request I don’t suppose I will ever know. Nor do I care. He probably thought he could find a use for whatever knowledge I unearthed, or perhaps he saw me as a potential contact within the Yuirwood.
“Alaodin sent an escort for me—a quiet, secret thing that most of his blades did not even know. Using the portals, they brought me to the Fortress, and I spent many long days and nights studying in the vaults and libraries of the Fortress. Alaodin, despite being one of the world’s foremost murderers, had gathered an impressive collection of lore and relics of power—both Imaskari and otherwise. One item in particular was the relic you carried for so long.”
“Erael’len?” said Berun. “It came from Sentinelspire?”
“It did,” said Chereth. “How such a holy relic to our faith came to be in the possession of the Lord of Assassins I do not know. He had never been able to unlock its secrets, though he sensed the power within it. And here, I must confess that I defiled the rules of hospitality. I stole Erael’len and fled. I had no choice. For such a holy relic to rest in the hands of someone so unworthy … my heart would not bear it. During my escape, I was forced to kill several of Alaodin’s men.
“Alaodin felt that his honor had been insulted—that, and I’m sure he wanted the relic back. And so Alaodin gathered his very best assassins and sent them to kill an old druid in the Yuirwood. And here, my dear son, is where you enter this tale.”
Berun’s mind reeled. When the Old Man had ordered him to lead the blades into the Yuirwood and kill an old druid, Berun had not asked why. The opportunity to kill had been enough. The order to hunt and kill in lands he’d never seen had been … intoxicating. There had never been any word of retrieving a relic. At least not to Kheil. If that had been part of their mission, it had been only for the ears of one of the other assassins.
“Kheil and his band,” Chereth continued, “killed many of my people. But the old druid Chereth? Me, they missed, and Kheil was captured by my best wardens. And at my word, they put him to a just and deserved death. But the mysteries of the Oak Father are beyond comprehension. From death comes life. And so, by the grace and power of the Oak Father, I called you back to serve, to serve the will of the god and all we hold precious—growing things, the wild, life itself.” The old half-elf smiled, and his voice became raspy with emotion. “And you did, my son. You did. Served beyond all my hopes and dreams for you.”
Chereth turned, walked away, and began to pace the roof, the strange lights playing about him.
“But still my quest continued. I shared my desire with others of my Circle and other Circles. I pleaded with them of the need to strike a blow for the wild, lest it be lost beyond repair. But they failed to see the wisdom of my words. They failed to see the depth of civilization’s stain upon the world. And so I left, and together we sought the final pieces I needed.”
“Why, master?” said Berun. “Why did you never tell me any of this?”
Chereth stopped his pacing and held Berun’s gaze. “You were strong. Never doubt that, my son. Strong like a diamond. But, like a diamond, I knew that one strike in the wrong place and you would shatter. I knew you had taken to your new life, becoming berun for me and for the Oak Father. But I could also see that your old life still haunted you, that still you had to struggle with the corruption of Kheil in your soul. This is why you took so readily to the wild, I think. In civilization, in the cities, towns, even in the villages … Kheil’s desires began to reawaken, did they not?”
It was true. The fear, the memories, and all the horrors endured by a little boy forced to survive on his own in the streets channeled that into an anger, a bloodlust, that could never be satisfied. Yes, that had been Kheil. And in the cities—hearing the call of merchants, the plaintive cry of animals caged and penned when they longed to roam, the bickering, the laughter, all the thousands of little sights and sounds and scents of civilization … they woke the old fears, and the fears sought the one comfort they had found: The desire to kill, to slay the things that had used and abused him as a child.
All this was true, but Berun simply said, “Yes.”
“Yes,” said Chereth, and he resumed his pacing. “Besides, I did not want to draw you into the petty bickerings of the Circles, of men and women whose minds were too small to see what ought to have been plain as summer sun before them. And so we left, you and I, wandering, doing what good we could in the lands where I continued my search for the final keys that would allow me to accomplish my desire.
“Five years ago, during our wanderings through the Ganathwood, I found the last piece I needed. I knew that to begin my plan, I had to return to Sentinelspire—the one place in all the world you could not go.
“And so, return to Sentinelspire I did, anticipating a great battle. I even prepared for my own death. But other events had happened in my absence. I’m sure that the death of Alaodin’s god sixteen years ago was a severe blow to his power. His faith was shaken, but the lack of power also shook his authority within the Fortress. An old half-elf druid managed to enter the heart of the Fortress itself, kill many of the Old Man’s blades, and rob the place of a valuable magic item on the way out, then when the Old Man’s best assassin was killed in quest for retaliation … well, the resentment and ambition that had been building for years boiled over. While you and I were wandering the wild, the Old Man had to put down two rebellions among his own people. He won both times, but the last one was particularly savage, and almost half the blades of Sentinelspire ended up dead. Good for me, since they were still cleaning up the mess when I arrived. Already weary, both physically and emotionally, from slaughtering their brothers, the surviving assas
sins were in no position to offer much beyond a token resistance to my powers.
“To make a long tale short, I killed the Old Man. Killed him not far from where you now sit. Rather than seeking to avenge the death of their master, most of the assassins hailed my arrival. For I brought the thing they lacked—vision. I promised them a new way, a new vision of the future, in which my followers will rule as kings and queens of a new Faerûn.”
Berun shook his head. It was all too much to take in. “A new way? A new Faerûn? I have no idea what you mean.”
“Ah, and here we came to the thing for which I have labored and hunted all these years. My final solution. But for that, I must have a witness. Someone I am sure you will be gladdened to see.” He looked up, his gaze fixed on the shadows gathered round, and said, “Bring the boy.”
The shadows moved, taking form, and Berun recognized the creatures that had met him in the corridor and brought him here. They bowed to their master and disappeared down the stairs.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Surrounded by at least a dozen of the dark creatures, Lewan stood once again before the courtyard of the Tower of the Sun. The rain had slackened to a heavy drizzle that seemed to hang in the air. The grounds were much as Lewan had last seen them. The bodies of the assassins and the tiger still lay amidst the foliage. Rain had diffused the blood, but there was so much. Most of the inner courtyard was soaked in it, looking more black than red on the wet pavement, and much of it was slowly seeping into the street. Lewan was shocked at his utter lack of revulsion. Had he changed so much already? Seen too much death for it to have an effect upon him? He did not like the thought of that.
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