The curious couple did not remain in his thoughts any more than did the southland. The north held his attention and his eyes, where Vaasa stretched out before him like a flattened, rotting corpse. He veered that way in his stroll, moving nearer to the waist-high wall along the edge so that he could better take in the view of Vaasa awakening to the dawn’s light.
There was a beauty there, Entreri saw, primal and cold: hard-edged stones, sharp-tipped skeletons of long dead trees, and the soft, sucking bogs. Blasted by war, torn by the march of armies, scalded by the fires of wizard spells and dragon breath, the land itself, the soul of Vaasa, had survived. It had taken all the hits and blasts and stomping boots and had come out much as it had been before.
So many of those who had lived there had perished, but Vaasa had survived.
Entreri passed a sentry, sitting half asleep and with his back against the northern wall. The man looked at him with mild curiosity then nodded as the assassin strode past him.
Some distance away, Entreri stopped his walk and turned fully to survey the north, resting his hands on the waist-high wall that ran the length of the gate. He looked upon Vaasa with a mixture of affection and self-loathing—as if he was looking into a mirror.
“They think you dead,” he whispered, “because they do not see the life that teems beneath your bogs and stones, and in every cave, crack, and hollow log. They think they know you, but they do not.”
“Talking to the land?” came a familiar voice, and Entreri found his moment of contemplation stolen away by the approach of Jarlaxle. “Do you think it hears you?”
Entreri considered his friend for a moment, the bounce in his gait, the bit of moisture just below the brim of his great hat, the look of quiet serenity behind his typically animated expression. Something more was out of place, Entreri realized, before it even fully registered to him that Jarlaxle’s eye patch had been over the other eye back in the tavern.
Entreri could guess easily enough the route that had at last taken Jarlaxle to the wall top, and only then did the assassin truly appreciate that several hours had passed since he had left his friend in Muddy Boots and Bloody Blades.
“I think there are some who would do well to hear me less,” he answered, and turned his eyes back to Vaasa.
Jarlaxle laughed and moved right beside him on the wall, leaning on the rail with his back to the northern land.
“Please do not let my arrival here disturb your conversation,” said the drow.
Entreri didn’t reply, didn’t even look at him.
“Embarrassed?”
That did elicit a dismissive glance.
“You have not slept,” Jarlaxle remarked.
“My sleep is not your concern.”
“Sleep?” came the sarcastic response. “Is that what you would call your hours of restlessness each night?”
“My sleep is not your concern,” Entreri said again.
“Your lack of sleep is,” the drow corrected. “If the reflexes slow.…”
“Would you like a demonstration?”
Jarlaxle yawned, drawing another less-than-friendly glare. The drow returned it with a smile—one that was lost on Entreri, who again stared out over the muddy Vaasan plane. Jarlaxle, too, turned and leaned to the north, taking in the preternatural scene. The morning fog swirled in gray eddies in some places, and lifted up like a waking giant in others.
Indeed, Vaasa did seem as if a remnant of the time before the reasoning races inhabited the world. It seemed a remnant of a time, perhaps, before any creatures walked the lands at all, as if the rest of the world had moved along without carrying Vaasa with her.
“A forgotten land,” Jarlaxle remarked, glancing at Entreri.
The assassin returned that look, even nodded a bit, and the drow was surprised to realize that Entreri had understood his reference exactly.
“What do you see when you look out there?” Jarlaxle asked. “Wasted potential? Barrenness where there should be fertility? Death where there should be life?”
“Reality,” Artemis Entreri answered with cold finality.
He turned and offered one stern look to the drow then walked past him.
Jarlaxle heard the uncertainty in Entreri’s voice, sensed that the man was off-balance. And he knew the source of that imbalance, for he had played no small part in ensuring that Idalia’s flute had found its way into Artemis Entreri’s hand.
He stayed at the rail for some time, soaking in the scene before him, remembering the night just passed, and considering his always dour friend.
Most of all, the dark elf wondered what he might do to dominate the first, recreate the second, and alter the third.
Always wondering, always thinking.
CHAPTER 8
THE RIDE OF MARIABRONNE
Arrayan had to pause and consider the question for a long while before answering. Where had she left the book? The woman felt the fool, to be sure. How could she have let something that powerful out of her sight? How could she not even remember where she’d placed it? Her mind traced back to the previous night, when she had dared start reading the tome. She remembered casting every defensive spell she knew, creating intricate wards and protections against the potentially devastating magic Zhengyi had placed on the book.
She looked back at the table in the center of the room, and she knew that she had cracked open the book right there.
A sense of vastness flooded her memories, a feeling of size, of magic, and a physical construct too large to be contained within.
“I took it out,” she said, turning back to Wingham and Mariabronne. “Out of here.”
“You left it somewhere beyond your control?” Wingham scolded, his voice incredulous. He leaped up from his seat, as if his body was simply too agitated to be contained in a chair. “An item of that power?”
Mariabronne put a hand on Wingham’s arm to try to calm him. “The book is out of the house,” he said to Arrayan. “Somewhere in Palishchuk?”
Arrayan considered the question, trying desperately to scour her memories. She glanced over at Olgerkhan, needing his always rock-solid support.
“No,” she answered, but it was more a feeling than a certainty. “Out of the city. The city was … too small.”
Wingham slipped back into his seat and for a moment seemed to be gasping for breath. “Too small? What did you create?”
Arrayan could only stare at him. She remembered leaving the house with the book tucked under her arm, but only vaguely, as if she were walking within a dream. Had it been a dream?
“Have you left the house since your return from your journey with the book?” Mariabronne asked.
The woman shook her head.
“Any sense of where you went?” the ranger pressed. “North? South near Wingham’s caravan?”
“Not to Uncle Wingham,” Arrayan replied without pause.
Wingham and Mariabronne looked at each other.
“Palishchuk only has two gates open most of the time,” Mariabronne said. “South and north.”
“If not south, then.…” said Wingham.
Mariabronne was first to stand, motioning for the others to follow. Olgerkhan moved immediately to Arrayan’s side, offering her a shawl to protect her from the chilly wind in her weakened form.
“How could I have been so foolish?” the woman whispered to the large half-orc, but Olgerkhan could only smile at her, having no practical answers.
“The book’s magic was beyond your control, perhaps,” Mariabronne replied. “I have heard of such things before. Even the great Kane, for all his discipline and strength of will, was nearly destroyed by the Wand of Orcus.”
“The wand was a god’s artifact,” Arrayan reminded him.
“Do not underestimate the power of Zhengyi,” said Mariabronne. “No god was he, perhaps, but certainly no mortal either.” He paused and looked into the troubled woman’s eyes. “Fear not,” he said. “We’ll find the book and all will be put right.”
The city was
quiet that late afternoon, with most of the folk still off in the south at Wingham’s circus. The quartet saw almost no one as they made their way to the north gate. Once there, Mariabronne bent low before Arrayan and bade her to lift one foot. He inspected her boot then studied the print she’d just made. He motioned for the others to hold and went to the gate then began poking around, studying the tracks on the muddy ground.
“You left and returned along the same path,” he informed Arrayan. The ranger pointed to the northeast, toward the nearest shadows of the Great Glacier, the towering frozen river that loomed before them. “Few others have come through this gate in the last couple of days. It should not be difficult to follow your trail.”
Indeed it wasn’t, for just outside the area of the gate, Arrayan’s footprints, both sets, stood out alone on the summer-melted tundra. What was surprising for Mariabronne and all the others, though, was how far from the city Arrayan’s trail took them. The Great Glacier loomed larger and larger before them as they trudged to the northeast, and more directly north. The city receded behind them and night descended, bringing with it a colder bite to the wind. The air promised that the summer, like all the summers before it so far north, would be a short one, soon to end. An abrupt change in the weather would freeze the ground in a matter of days. After that, the earth would be held solid for three quarters of the year or more. It was not unknown for the summer thaw to last less than a single month.
“It’s no wonder you were so weary,” Wingham said to Arrayan some time later, the miles behind them.
The woman could only look back at him, helpless. She had no idea she’d been so far from the city and could only barely remember leaving her house.
The foursome came up on a ridge, looking down on a wide vale, a copse of trees at its low point down the hill before them and a grouping of several large stones off to the right.
Arrayan gasped, “There!”
She pointed, indicating the stones, the memory of the place flooding back to her.
Mariabronne, using a torch so he could see the tracks, was about to indicate the same direction.
“No one else has come out,” the ranger confirmed. “Let us go and collect the book that I might bring it to King Gareth.”
Arrayan and Olgerkhan caught the quick flash of shock on Wingham’s face at that proclamation, but to his credit, the shrewd merchant didn’t press the issue just then.
Mariabronne, torch in hand, was first to move around the closest, large boulder. The others nearly walked into his back when they, too, moved around the corner only to discover that the ranger had stopped. As they shuffled to his side to take in the view before him, they quickly came to understand.
For there was Zhengyi’s book, suspended in the air at about waist height by a pair of stone-gray tentacles that rolled out from its sides and down to, and into, the ground. The book was open, with only a few pages turned. The foursome watched in blank amazement as red images of various magical runes floated up from the open page and dissipated in the shimmering air above the book.
“What have you done?” Wingham asked.
Mariabronne cautiously approached.
“The book is reading itself,” Olgerkhan observed, and while the statement sounded ridiculous as it was uttered, another glance at the book seemed to back up the simple half-orc’s plain-spoken observation.
“What is that?” Wingham asked as Mariabronne’s torchlight extended farther back behind the book, revealing a line of squared gray stone poking through the tundra.
“Foundation stones,” Arrayan answered.
The four exchanged nervous glances, then jumped as a spectral hand appeared in mid-air above the opened book and slowly turned a single page.
“The book is excising its own dweomers,” Arrayan said. “It is enacting the magic Zhengyi placed within its pages.”
“You were but a catalyst,” Wingham added, nodding his head as if it was all starting to make sense to him. “It took from you a bit of your life-force and now it is using that to facilitate Zhengyi’s plans.”
“What plans?” asked Olgerkhan.
“The magic was in the school of creation,” Arrayan replied.
“And it is creating a structure,” said Mariabronne as he moved the length of the foundation stones. “Something large and formidable.”
“Castle Perilous,” muttered Wingham, and all three looked at him with great alarm, for that was a name not yet far enough removed from the consciousness of the region for any to comfortably hear.
“We do not yet know anything of the sort,” Mariabronne reminded him. “Only that the book is creating a structure. Such artifacts are not unknown. You have heard of the work of Doern, of course?”
Arrayan nodded. The legendary wizard Doern had long ago perfected a method of creating minor extra-dimensional towers adventurers could summon to shield them from the dangers and hardships of the open road.
“It is possible that Zhengyi created this tome, perhaps with others like it, so that his commanders could construct defensible fortresses without the need of muscle, tools, supplies, and time,” Mariabronne reasoned, edging ever closer to the fascinating book. “It could be, Wingham, that your niece Arrayan has done nothing more than build herself a new and impressive home.”
Wingham, too, moved to the book, and from up close the rising, dissipating runes showed all the more clearly. Individual, recognizable characters became visible. Wingham started to wave his hand over the field of power above the opened book.
What little hair the old half-orc had stood on end and he gave a yelp then went flying back and to the ground. The other three were there in a moment, Arrayan helping him to sit up.
“It seems that Zhengyi’s book will protect itself,” Mariabronne remarked.
“Protect itself while it does what?” Wingham asked, his teeth chattering from the jolt.
All four exchanged concerned glances.
“I think it is time for me to ride to the Vaasan Gate,” Mariabronne said.
“Past time,” Arrayan agreed.
Mariabronne and Wingham dropped Arrayan and Olgerkhan at the woman’s house then went to the south gate of Palishchuk and to Wingham’s wagons beyond.
“My horse is stabled in the city,” Mariabronne protested repeatedly, but Wingham kept waving the thought and the words away.
“Just follow,” he instructed. “To all our benefit.”
When they arrived at Wingham’s wagon, the old half-orc rushed inside, returning almost immediately with a small pouch.
“An obsidian steed,” he explained, reaching into the leather bag and pulling forth a small obsidian figurine depicting an almost skeletal horse with wide, flaring nostrils. “It summons a nightmare that will run tirelessly—well, at least until the magic runs out, but that should be long after the beast has taken you to the Vaasan Gate.”
“A nightmare?” came the cautious response. “A creature of the lower planes?”
“Yes, yes, of course, but one controlled by the magic of the stone. You will be safe enough, mighty ranger.”
Mariabronne gingerly took the stone and cradled it in his hands.
“Just say ‘Blackfire,’ ” Wingham told him.
“Blackfi—” Mariabronne started to reply, but Wingham cut him short by placing a finger over his lips.
“Speak it not while you hold the stone, unless you are ready to be ridden yourself,” the half-orc said with a chuckle. “And please, do not summon the hellish mount here in my camp. I do so hate when it chases the buyers away.”
“And eats more than a few, I am sure.”
“Temperamental beast,” Wingham confirmed.
Mariabronne tapped his brow in salute and started away, but Wingham grabbed him by the arm.
“Discretion, I beg,” the old half-orc pleaded.
Mariabronne stared at him for a long while. “To diminish Arrayan’s involvement?”
“She began it,” Wingham said, and he glanced back toward the city as if Array
an was still in sight. “Perhaps she is feeding it with her very life-force. The good of all might weigh darkly on the poor girl, and she is without fault in this.”
Again Mariabronne paused a bit to study his friend. “The easy win, at the cost of her life?” he asked, and before Wingham could answer, he added, “Zhengyi’s trials have often proved a moral dilemma to us all. Mayhaps we could defeat this construct, and easily so, but at the cost of an innocent.”
“And the cost of our own souls for making that sacrifice,” said Wingham.
Mariabronne offered a comforting smile and nodded his agreement. “I will return quickly,” he promised.
Wingham glanced back to the north again, as if expecting to see a gigantic castle looming over the northern wall of the city.
“That would be wise,” he whispered.
Just south of Wingham’s wagon circle, Mariabronne lifted the obsidian steed in both his cupped hands. “Blackfire,” he whispered as he placed the figurine on the ground, and he nearly shouted as the stone erupted in dancing black and purple flames. Before he could react enough to fall back from the flames, though, he realized that they weren’t burning his flesh.
The flames flared higher. Mariabronne watched, mesmerized.
They leaped to greater proportions, whipping about in the evening breeze, and gradually taking the form of a horse, a life-sized replica of the figurine. Then the fires blew away, lifting into the air in a great ball that puffed out to nothingness, leaving behind what seemed to be a smoking horse. The indistinct edges of wispy smoke dissipated, and a more solid creature stood before the ranger, its red eyes glaring at him with hate, puffs of acrid smoke erupting from its flared nostrils, and gouts of black flame exploding from its hooves as it pawed at the ground.
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