“Do you imagine, in all Faerûn, you are the only child ever to have been deprived of something—a home, loved ones, a dream?”
Varan sat across the pit from her, his robes pillowed beneath him on the cold cavern floor. Their hem still dripped wet from the water whip spell she’d used on him. “Though you’ve been blessed with none of those things, Meisha, you have a great gift slumbering within you. I am offering you a home—food and shelter, education, and power. What child would deny such a dream?”
Meisha met his eyes across the pit. Flames surged up between them, the fire reaching the ceiling. Varan never flinched, though the girl swore his beard was singed.
When the fire shrank away, the wizard sighed. “Very well, I concede the battle. Jonal will study water. Fire shall be your element. I cannot deny that flames match your nature. Fire’s inherent power will help you survive, until you embrace it for the right reasons.”
“What reason is there for hurling flame, except to kill things?” The little girl sneered.
“When you’ve completed your studies, you will have the answer to that question,” said Varan.
“And when I’ve finished, you’ll let me go?” Meisha asked, watching him closely.
“Of course. You are not a prisoner here. The apprentices walk around as they please. You may do the same, but there are rules,” he cautioned her. “You’re not a Wraith anymore. You will wash the mud from your body and let your hair grow in, though perhaps you’ll wear it short”—he rubbed his bearded chin as he regarded her—“to keep it from being singed. Yes, I think that will do. The Delve is my home as well as my fortress, and the caverns are secure, within the confines I’ve mapped. For your own safety, I ask you not to venture past my wards into the outer caves.”
“What’s out there?”
“Things you’re not ready to see, little firebird,” he said.
Meisha bristled at the childish nickname. “I can take care of myself.” She looked away and caught movement from the mouth of one of the tunnels.
A small figure stood watching them—a dwarf in dented plate armor holding a large battle-axe. The handle of the weapon was broken, rendering it useless, but the dwarf clutched the remaining piece as if his life depended upon it.
“Varan—” but as soon as Meisha spoke, the dwarf vanished.
Varan smiled. “Did you see something?”
Meisha kept her eyes on the tunnel, but the apparition did not reappear. “Who is he?” she asked, her voice hushed.
“You’ve seen him before?”
“He watches me,” said Meisha. She suppressed a shudder. “I didn’t know he was … that he wasn’t …”
“Alive?” Varan supplied. “I believe he is one of the Howlings.”
“Howlings?”
“This place was called the Howling Delve, long ago. The Howlings were dwarves—adventurers who made these caves a secret home. They rode on the backs of giant wolves and amassed quite a fortune beneath the earth, or so the dwarven olorns—magic stories—tell.”
“What happened to them?” Meisha asked.
“Obviously, they died,” said Varan, with a careless shrug, “as adventurers often do.”
“Then why are they still here?” The sense of unease tucked around Meisha like an ill-fitting cloak. How could Varan live among ghosts?
“They are only echoes of the past, child,” said Varan. “Lingering memories and nothing to fear. My magic can create similar effects.”
“How?” Meisha asked curiously.
“Would you like to see? To learn?”
Meisha heard the challenge in the question. She nodded slowly.
Varan reached into a small sack tied around his neck. “You’ll see these again when we begin your testing,” he said, pulling forth a small, square crystal. “They help me to gauge your progress.” He touched one clear surface, spoke a word, and suddenly there were two more figures in the room. The man and child were perfect doubles of Varan and Meisha.
Meisha stared as her mirror image raised a hand and brought it down in a chopping motion. A jet of water rose from the ground and slapped the image of Varan, soaking his robes. The real Varan chuckled and spoke another command. The images shrank and returned to the crystal.
Meisha looked at her teacher. “How long can you keep the memories?”
“As long as I wish,” Varan said. “Though perhaps I might erase that one, if you’d care to begin anew?”
Meisha stayed silent, so Varan continued, “I don’t expect you to trust me yet, but you can trust this: I am a selfish old man, too curious about magic for my own good. I like to experiment, and I know the value in rearing a fire elementalist, a true savant. You may have a home here as long as you wish, no matter how many hurts you attempt to inflict upon me. I will not send you away. When your training is done, you may go back into the sunlight, if that is what you want.” He removed another object from his sack, a small ring, which he handed to her. “When you leave, should you ever wish to return, all you need do is speak the command word on the band. The ring will bring you to the Delve.” He leaned closer, so close to the pit she wondered how he stood the heat. “What say you, firebird?” He stretched his bare hand over the flames and met her gaze in another challenge.
Without hesitation, Meisha reached across and touched his wrinkled palm. Pain scalded her arm, but if he wouldn’t back down, neither would she.
Varan’s eyes shone with approval. “There will always be flame in you, child, for the whole of your life. But it will not always hurt so. Trust me.”
Meisha nodded, bearing the pain. She looked over Varan’s shoulder and saw the ghost again, watching her from the tunnel mouth. A large pendant hung around his neck with the figure of a mountain inscribed upon its surface. A hole sat in the center where once a charm or gem might have nestled.
What do you want from me? Meisha wondered. If the dwarf was beyond pain, why did he look so afraid?
As if in answer, the memories faded. The child Meisha had gone, and the sleeping Meisha found herself in a place she’d never been in her waking life. Only in her dreams had she been trapped in the stone chamber.
Meisha felt the surge of the campfire in time with her accelerating heartbeat. She knew what was coming, but she didn’t want to face it.
This time, the fire was no friend. It held a living presence, awesome and terrifying and buried deep in a stone prison.
The presence, if it possessed a name, never spoke it to her. As far as Meisha was concerned, the creature was the Delve, and the Delve him. No further identity was needed.
She never saw a face, but she could feel the fire emanating from the creature’s body—a beast of fire and claws, claws that tested the walls of his prison and the ring of guards on silent vigil.
The dwarves—his keepers. Meisha sensed the beast desired to hunt, but the dwarves kept him sealed inside the cavernous prison. So instead, he hunted them all down, one by one in the vastness. Their screams echoed off the stone as each one fell to the fire-clawed menace. They were still here, trapped alongside him for eternity. He could slay them again, over and over, but Meisha sensed him growing weary of killing ghosts.
With renewed fear, Meisha thought, he wants to hear living screams.
But the fire beast was patient. His time would come. He could feel it. Until then …
“No!” the sleeping Meisha cried out. She watched helplessly through the eyes of the fire beast. He stalked forward and immediately met one of the dwarves. The small figure raised his broken axe in defiance. His pendant flashed briefly, brilliant silver, but the beast flexed his claws and ripped the broken weapon out of the dwarf’s hands.
Screaming, Meisha sat up in her bedroll. The campfire flared in one giant stalk that reached almost to the tops of the trees.
Meisha swept an arm out, panting. The flames died, becoming so much smoking wood.
I’d been doing so well; I hadn’t had the dream in months, Meisha thought bitterly.
Just when
she thought she might be free of the Delve and her master, the memories came surging back like the fire—memories mixing with strange visions. How could she recognize truth from fever dreams?
There was one way, but Meisha would never take it. Her master might be able to explain the dream. She’d never had it before coming to the Delve. The Delve and her master were inextricably linked.
She would never face either of them again.
CHAPTER NINE
The Howling Delve
1 Kythorn, the Year of the Worm (1356 DR)
Twelve Years Ago …
When Meisha rolled over in the darkness, she knew she wasn’t alone. Lying perfectly still, her eyes tracked every shadow in the small room, seeking a hidden foe.
Her gaze fell on the open chamber door. Meisha knew she’d closed it tightly before going to sleep.
She leaned forward, toward the crack of light filtering through the gap between the door and its roughly worked frame.
In the passage beyond, the dwarf stood quietly watching.
Icy needles crawled up Meisha’s back. Every night, she saw him—sometimes passing her in the narrow halls, sometimes in her room, standing at the foot of her small cot.
“What do you want!” she cried, raking her hands through her short hair. “Speak, or leave me be!”
But the ghostly apparition had already vanished. Meisha dropped her head into her hands, fighting the urge to run from the room. She fought the same internal battle every night. She longed to run to the wizard, to demand he return her to Keczulla, or Waterdeep, or to the frozen North for all she cared. Anywhere that was not the Delve, where she felt buried alive.
A knock at the door made Meisha jump.
Shaera, apprentice of air and one of Varan’s older students, came into the room. She cradled a candle in one hand. “Did you call me?” she asked.
“No,” Meisha said, her customary sullen gaze snapping into place. “Why would I want you?”
“Why, indeed?” the girl murmured. She walked right past Meisha, ignoring her hissed curses. “I came to leave you this.” She crouched next to the cot and spoke a soft, breathy word.
A small column of fire rose up from the floor, floating in midair as if suspended from an invisible wick.
“Just until you learn the spell yourself,” Shaera explained. “Always carry a light down here. If nothing else, light frightens the rats away.” She smiled encouragingly. “You’ll grow used to the Delve. We’ll help you.”
“You think I need your help to make fire,” Meisha said cuttingly. Her eyes rounded, and the flame soared higher, almost touching Shaera’s belt.
The girl’s smile didn’t falter. “He said you were powerful. I’m impressed. But can you make the fire last the whole of the night?”
Color rose in Meisha’s cheeks, matching the slow-burning flame. She said nothing.
“I thought not.” Shaera paused at the door. “If you get scared again, you can sleep in my room.”
“Get out!” Meisha yelled, mortified that the girl had heard her distress. “Leave me alone!”
Shaera nodded and closed the door behind her.
Meisha seethed. Never on her worst night in Keczulla had she cried out, not when she’d been beaten by the Wraiths for holding back food, not when she’d been starving because they’d denied her for a tenday afterward. Through it all, she’d never made a sound.
How dare she, Meisha thought, how dare she come into her room uninvited? What would Varan think of such an invasion of privacy?
She snorted. Varan had probably sent the girl.
“Maybe you’d like the favor returned,” she muttered. Her fear pushed aside by anger, Meisha slammed her door and headed for Varan’s chambers.
She listened at the doors to each of the apprentices’ rooms: Jonal, the water student; Prieces, the earth apprentice. Shaera and Lirna were both air, and shared a room across the passage. Meisha had never bothered to learn beyond their names and elements.
Each room was quiet, the occupants undisturbed by her earlier shouts.
Did none of them feel the unnaturalness of the Delve? Meisha wondered. Or had they been in the place too long? All the apprentices here were at least two years older than Meisha and more advanced in their training. Perhaps they had grown used to the underground setting.
The thought of ever growing accustomed to life without sunlight made Meisha’s skin go cold. She rubbed her hands up and down her arms.
That would never happen to her, she swore. She would always crave the Morninglord’s touch.
When she came to Varan’s door, she hesitated. A thin, green beam of light limned the crooked wooden planks. Enspelled globes, she thought. Varan used them in place of torches to light various parts of the Delve.
She reached up to rap on the wood and felt a tingle of electricity race down her arm: strong magic—dangerous, if she disturbed Varan in the middle of a casting.
The spell glow died away. Varan’s muffled voice came through the wood.
“Come in, Meisha.”
Scowling, Meisha dragged open the door to the chamber Varan used as a workroom. Her mouth fell open.
“Close the door, please,” the wizard said crisply.
Meisha shut the door and turned a slow circle in the chamber, the better for her eyes to take in the writing scribbled on every wall’s surface.
She could decipher only a handful of the arcane phrases. Inscribed and illuminated with green light, the writing blurred her vision if she stared at it too long. As if that were not disconcerting enough, Meisha swore she saw the writing move, rearranging itself as she tried to read.
“You couldn’t sleep?” Varan inquired, when Meisha continued to gape at the wall of power.
She shook her head. “What is all this?” she breathed, her earlier anger forgotten.
“Some of we poor practitioners still have to rely on spellbooks—the written word—to fuel our Art,” Varan explained, “especially when we create new magic.”
“Do you often?” Meisha asked. “Create new magic?”
“As often as I am able,” Varan replied. “Creation, as I see it, should be the ultimate goal of all who study the Art. That and teaching apprentices are the only ways our magic truly lives on. It matters not if the magic is used for protection or destruction, as long as it exists and can be turned and forged into something new.”
“And you think I will be your destructive force,” Meisha said, turning at last to regard the wizard.
“I’ve decided to reserve judgment in your case,” he hedged, “as you so often surprise me. But I do not think I will be disappointed, whichever path you choose to take.”
He waved a hand, and the light faded from the writing. “So you’re having trouble sleeping,” he mused. “It may be my stirrings of the Art woke you. In such a confined space, the magic has few places to go. The Delve is old, and the walls are worn with the imprints of old magic and the tread of feet—human and otherwise.”
“Why do you live here then?” Meisha asked. With no chair in the room, she settled on the cold floor. “If the Delve is so old, aren’t you afraid one day it will collapse?”
Varan chuckled. “From what I’ve been able to discern, the Delve has withstood far more than an old wizard’s spells and come out intact. Now it is my sanctuary. The walls will hold.” The wizard shrugged into a thick robe and plucked up a crooked staff as he spoke. “But we haven’t solved your problem; you need sleep.”
He ushered her out into the hall, spell-locking the door behind them. “When I can’t find calm, I work until I’m weary, and I still have a task to finish before I seek my bed tonight. This task will weary both of us, if you’d care to join me?”
Meisha nodded eagerly. Anything would be preferable to returning to her boxlike room in the dark, even with the flame burning all night. The weight of the Delve still pressed down on her, but in Varan’s presence the feeling seemed to diminish.
She followed the wizard down a side passage typ
ically forbidden to the apprentices. Meisha recognized the boundary of Varan’s wards inscribed on the tunnel wall. They walked right past the sigil, led by the glow from Varan’s staff.
They entered a wide-mouthed, bell-shaped chamber that Meisha saw was entirely submerged in water. The cavern’s ceiling reflected unbroken across the clear surface of the water, making it impossible to tell where the bottom lay.
Varan released his staff, causing it to hover over the center of the calm pool. “Fresh water source,” he said. “Something we’re always in need of down here. Close, too, so I’m considering extending the wards.”
“So other creatures won’t intrude on the watering hole,” Meisha surmised.
“Correct—ordinarily—but I’ve observed this particular watering hole is rarely used by wandering creatures,” Varan told her. “Can you guess why?”
Meisha looked at him sharply, at the same time taking a step back. “What dwells in the water?”
“Very good,” Varan said, “and to answer your question, something big.”
“So I’m to be your bait?” Meisha asked sullenly. She’d thought Varan would let her attack the thing.
Varan laughed. “Hardly, little one. I am not an ogre, or a Red Wizard, with apprentices to squander—and a waste it would be, for the creature that lives beneath the surface would rend you unrecognizable. Besides,” his eyes glinted, “I do not require bait.”
“How, then?” Meisha asked, intrigued. The wizard’s enthusiasm infected her. She trailed his steps around the rim of the pool.
“First, I’ll need your aid.” Varan twirled a finger, and his staff inverted, shining the light close to the water’s surface. “For all its might, the creature is shy and comes to ground only to hunt. It will need an inducement to reveal itself.”
He waited, and Meisha realized he proposed a test. Varan wanted to see how she would solve the problem.
Meisha squatted next to the pool and placed her hands above the water. The words came to her haltingly. She envisioned the words dredged up from the bottom of the pool like so many buried coins, humming with power and warmth. She spoke faster, and the power turned to heat. She felt the glaze of it along her palm, a blown-glass ball she shaped using only her mind.
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