by Mark Anthony
Snake put the darkened crystal away. He had another task to perform. He opened a drawer in an ornate wooden cabinet, taking out a small crystal vial and a thin golden needle. The vial held a thick, purplish fluid. It was telsiak, a rare poison native to the southern empire of Amn. One drop in the blood caused the heart to stop beating instantly.
He dipped the needle into the vial and then, taking great care, slipped the needle into a pocket. He left his chamber and walked softly through the dim corridors of the city lord’s tower. He passed a few Zhentarim, who only nodded to him respectfully and did not block his passage. Soon he stood before a door. He carefully unlocked it, pushing the door open. He stepped into the darkened chamber, shutting the door softly behind him.
A child slept soundly in a bed near the chamber’s window, bathed in the silvery moonlight. Without a sound, Snake moved to the bed and drew out the poisoned needle. He held it so that the point was a hairbreadth above the boy’s small hand. One prick, and the child would be dead.
Suddenly Snake cocked his head, his hard eyes going distant for a moment. He nodded then, a new understanding filling his mind. He put the needle carefully away and slipped from Kellen’s room. The boy never woke.
Kellen must still die, Snake knew as he crept softly back to his chamber. But his death could wait. The child might yet serve a certain purpose.
* * * * *
“The gateway is ready,” Morhion said to the companions, stepping away from the intricate circle he had laid out on the ground beneath the oak tree. The circle of silvery dust was perhaps a dozen paces wide, and the mage had scattered the interior with wild mint and dandelion. In the middle of the circle were two small pyramids of white stones, set far enough apart that a horse might walk between them. The mage had used a piece of burnt ocher to draw arcane symbols on the stones of the two pyramids, and atop each he had laid a single hawk’s feather.
“Below my tower in Iriaebor there is a magical portal,” the blue-eyed mage told the others. “It was fashioned by a powerful conjurer who dwelt there many years ago. I have cast an enchantment that links this portal with the one in my tower.”
“It looks more like a bunch of rocks and weeds to me,” Ferret commented skeptically, his beady eyes glittering.
Morhion regarded him icily. “That is why you are a foolish thief, Ferret, and I am a mage.” Estah interposed herself between the two of them, wanting to make certain one of them didn’t end up a toad and the other a corpse.
“I’ll go first,” Caledan said roughly, “just in case there’s trouble on the other end.” He swung himself into Mista’s saddle as the others followed suit.
Caledan nudged Mista into a walk, guiding her toward the circle Morhion had drawn. Mari watched Caledan’s mare step into the circle. Suddenly the silvery symbol drawn upon the ground began to pulse with an unearthly light Horse and rider approached the two stone pyramids, then moved in between them.
Mari gasped.
Mista’s head vanished! The rest of the gray mare was still there, Caledan in the saddle, but her head—no, now her entire neck up to her withers—was gone.
Caledan turned around in the saddle to glance at the others, but suddenly he, too, was gone. All that remained were Mista’s hindquarters, and in a moment they disappeared as well. There was one last swish of Mista’s gray tail dangling by itself in midair between the two small pyramids, and then there was no trace of either Caledan or his mare.
“We must follow quickly,” Morhion said. His smooth brow was beaded with fine droplets of sweat; his skin looked ashen. “I cannot hold the gateway open for long.”
The companions cast looks of trepidation at each other but did as they were told. One by one they rode into the circle. Mari was first. She swallowed hard and guided Farenth between the stone pyramids.
She felt a sudden chill slice through her. It was almost as if she were riding through an icy cold waterfall, frigid water passing over and then behind her. She felt her heart pound in her chest, and for a panicked moment everything went dark. The rolling plains vanished. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t feel the reins in her hands. She was lost in nothingness and tried to scream but found she had no voice.
Then a warmth broke over her. Her lungs drew in a shuddering breath as her heart lurched into motion once again. Farenth’s hooves clattered loudly against a slate floor. She realized she was in a dimly lit circular chamber of stone.
The spell had worked. She was in Iriaebor once again.
She watched in amazement as one by one the others rode through the portal. It was as though they were riding out of an impenetrable darkness into light, but Mari knew it was solid stone, not darkness. Finally they were all through. Estah breathed a sigh of relief as Tyveris mumbled a prayer to his god. Ferret simply looked nauseated.
Caledan seemed to have no desire to tarry at the mage’s tower, and soon they were outside, guiding their mounts through the cobbled streets of the Old City.
Iriaebor had grown even more shadowed in their time away. The sun was just now setting, yet already the streets were deserted. All along the avenue, doors were tightly closed, shutters securely drawn against the approaching night. A scrawny, mangy-looking dog slunk across the street. It pawed through a pile of rotten garbage, then moved on, finding nothing edible among the refuse.
“Nice place to come home to,” Ferret said, and Mari thought she noticed a hint of sadness in the thief’s normally merry black eyes. “I’ll ride ahead and warn the rest of you if I see any city guards coming our way.” The thief spurred his roan stallion and disappeared into the twilight.
The companions waited until full darkness before slipping into the garden behind the Sign of the Dreaming Dragon. Even so, Jolle had seen them coming.
“The inn was a dark place without you, wife,” Jolle said, embracing Estah tightly in the warm glow of the kitchen.
“Mother! You’re home!” Pog shouted, with Nog echoing her, though as usual his words were unintelligible. Estah hugged them tightly, but after a moment they squirmed free and bounded toward the others.
“And none too soon, I might add,” Cormik commented. The corpulent, elegantly attired man was seated by the fire with a glass of wine clutched in his hand. “Some of us have been hard at work while the rest of you have been off on your leisurely travels.”
“Leisurely?” Tyveris rumbled.
“Should I kill him now or later?” Ferret asked casually.
“Both,” Tyveris replied.
Cormik’s one good eye widened, and he shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “A little sensitive, aren’t we?”
Mari smiled wanly. “I think you’ll understand a little better after we tell you what happened.”
Cormik nodded. “Good. I have some news for you as well. But I don’t think you’re going to want to hear it.”
* * * * *
It was late. The companions, along with Cormik, sat around a table in the inn’s back room. Pog and Nog lay curled up on a rug before the hearth. The halfling children were fast asleep. Jolle was out in the common room, not that there were many customers to serve. No one ventured about the city this late at night anymore. Instead the halfling innkeeper was making certain that if any city guards happened upon the inn unannounced, they would see nothing out of the ordinary.
“Things are worse,” Cormik explained flatly, his face grim. “Much worse. The guards aren’t waiting anymore for folk to wander out on the streets after dark to abduct them. Now they simply break into people’s homes and take however many they want for the work gangs. Anybody who resists is killed.” Cormik sipped at the glass of wine absently, for a change not seeming to notice that it wasn’t the best vintage. “But that’s not even the worst of it. Ravendas is allowing fewer and fewer trade goods to remain in Iriaebor. Virtually everything that comes to the city from the west and south is loaded onto caravans bound for the eastern kingdoms. The free market in the New City closed last week for lack of goods to sell. Soon people will begin to st
arve.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” Mari said angrily. “What is the point of presiding over a dead city? There’s nothing to be gained in that. It’s almost as if Ravendas is punishing Iriaebor. For what?”
Cormik turned his one eye toward Caledan, yet said nothing.
Caledan sat with his back to the fire, his face lost in shadow. He had been silent and brooding all evening, but now he spoke. “Has she found the Nightstone yet?”
“My agents have been unable to discover that,” Cormik replied.
“If she had gained the Nightstone, we would certainly know it,” Morhion interposed. “For one thing, all of our efforts at concealment would be meaningless. There would be nowhere in the city we could hide from her.”
Mari swallowed hard.
“What of the resistance groups?” Tyveris asked Cormik.
Cormik sighed. “Paralyzed. For a time we were making progress against the Zhentarim. We were taking a serious bite out of their trading operations, and we were managing to smuggle some goods into the city.” He shook his head, absently twirling the rings on his stubby fingers. “Not anymore. Ravendas has captured too many cityfolk and pressed them into her work gangs deep in the Tor. At night they are locked in the dungeons below the tower. You’d have a hard time finding anyone in this city who doesn’t have a son or daughter, a brother or sister, a friend or loved one imprisoned by Ravendas. I’m afraid no one is going to fight against Ravendas when she could kill a thousand people with a single order.”
A despairing silence settled over the room. Then a thought struck Mari. “What if the prisoners were somehow set free?”
“That’s a fine idea,” Tyveris said, the firelight reflecting off the loremaster’s dark skin. “But just how do you propose we manage to get into the dungeons below the tower, let alone free the prisoners?”
Mari sighed. “I don’t really—”
Ferret interrupted her. “I think I might be able to manage something, Mari, provided Guildmaster Bock would be willing to cooperate. But I’m certain I can make him see the profit in it. After all, an all-out rebellion would mean a fair number of Zhentarim corpses. And Zhentarim always carry gold. I imagine Bock will find the temptation of so many gold-laden bodies to loot too great to resist.”
Tyveris shook his head, glowering. “You’re a nasty man, Ferret”
“Why, thank you, Tyveris,” the thief replied cheerfully.
“Well, Mari,” Cormik said with a wicked chuckle. “It looks as if you’re onto something.”
Cormik left to return to the Prince and Pauper, and Morhion departed as well, intending to study the mysterious magical crystal he had found on the shadevar’s body. Tyveris picked up the two sleeping halfling children and went with Estah to help bundle them into bed.
For a moment Caledan and Mari were alone.
“I wish you luck with your plan to free the prisoners, Harper,” he said, his tone frosty. “But there’s really only one thing I care about at this point. Revenge against Ravendas.”
He rose and made his way up the staircase, disappearing into the shadows. Somehow Mari managed to wait until she was alone before the tears started rolling down her cheeks.
* * * * *
Caledan sat alone in his room. Sunlight streamed heavily through the window, gleaming dully off the copper bracelet encircling his left wrist. Sometimes the thing looked more like a shackle than a piece of jewelry.
He sighed, trying to push the thought out of his mind. He had been stupid to believe that he could fall in love—again. The Harper had her mission, and he had his own. Ravendas was finally going to pay for what she had done to Kera.
He turned his mind back to that windswept day in the Fields of the Dead, when the phantom of Talek Talembar had appeared and spoken to him. He tried to recall the words the ancient hero had spoken—the one clue he had given them to the secret of the shadow song.
Talembar had said something about finding the echo of the song in the place where it was last played. Unfortunately, Caledan had no idea where that could be. The history of Talek Talembar in the Mal’eb’dala had been frustratingly incomplete. After defeating the Shadowking, the ancient bard could have traveled almost anywhere in the Realms. He could have played the blasted shadow song anywhere, Caledan thought in frustration. For all I know the secret of the song is somewhere in Sembia, or Thay, or the gods know where.
Yet that didn’t really make sense. The purpose of the shadow song was to counter the power of the Nightstone. Why would Talembar have needed it once the Nightstone was sealed in the Shadowking’s tomb? Most likely, Talembar had never played the song again. And that would mean that the last place the song was played was in the crypt of the Shadowking itself.
Even if the secret of the shadow song is buried with the Shadowking, I can’t see how that really helps, Caledan thought sourly.
He doubted Ravendas was going to let him search around the crypt hoping to hear the echo of the song. Still, he couldn’t quite rid himself of the feeling that there was more to Talembar’s clue than he gleaned on the surface.
A knock at the door interrupted his concentration, and he looked up. “Come in.”
It was Tyveris, filling the doorway with his massive shoulders. For some strange reason, Caledan found that he was almost disappointed it wasn’t the Harper.
“I’m sorry to bother you, Caledan, but you may want to come downstairs. Morhion just came back from his tower. There’s something he wants all of us to hear.”
A grimace crossed Caledan’s face. He had hoped his dealings with Morhion were over now that they had returned from the Fields of the Dead.
Caledan stepped into the inn’s private dining chamber and found the others already there. While he couldn’t say that he had ever seen Morhion excited—he had watched the mage engulf whole bands of attacking goblins in magical fire without so much as blinking an eye—there did seem to be a hard, bright light shining in the mage’s usually indifferent gaze.
“I have learned the purpose of the magical crystal I took from the shadevar,” Morhion said when Caledan sat down. The mage pulled the opaque gem from his pocket.
“I believe it is a communication device of some sort. By means of the crystal, one might speak across great distances to the one who holds the gem’s twin.”
“That must be how the shadevar kept in contact with whoever its master was,” Caledan mused.
“You want to use the stone, don’t you, to speak with whoever will answer?” Mari asked the mage.
Estah scowled. “That sounds rather dangerous.”
“Perhaps,” the mage said, “but it would not be the first danger I have ever risked. The same would be true for all of you.”
All eyes turned to Caledan. Much as he did not care for it, everyone had fallen into the old habit of looking to him as a leader. Even the Harper seemed to be waiting for him to say something.
“Do it,” he said to Morhion finally, an edge of steel in his voice.
Morhion lifted the cowl of his robe, concealing his face. He was wearing black, just like the shadevar. The companions watched as Morhion spoke several sibilant words of magic. The crystal began to glow with a pale luminescence.
Suddenly an image appeared in the heart of the crystal. It was the gaunt, severe-looking face of a man with eyes as hard and dark as stones. It took several heartbeats for Caledan to recognize the man. An image of a procession riding into the High Tower of the city lord flashed before his eyes. It was the day when he had first seen Ravendas in the city. And on a black horse before her had ridden … the lord steward Snake. The man who was rumored to be Ravendas’s lackey. He was the shadevar’s master.
Caledan looked up at the Harper involuntarily. She nodded. Apparently she had recognized the lord steward as well.
“Why has it taken you so long to make contact?” Snake demanded in a voice as dry as bleached bones. “I have been attempting to communicate with you for the last two days.”
Morhion drew in a breath
to reply.
“Never mind,” Snake interrupted impatiently. “It does not matter now. All that concerns me is Caldorien. Is he dead?”
Without hesitation Morhion nodded.
“Excellent,” Snake said, his voice pure venom. “Now no one with the shadow magic can stand against us. Things are moving toward an end. Perhaps I will let you deal with the fool Ravendas yourself.” A cadaverous smile touched Snake’s mouth. “You have done well. Our lord who is to come will not forget that.”
Again Morhion nodded.
“I must go,” Snake hissed. “I shall make contact again when all has been—”
Snake’s words were cut off by a sudden high-pitched commotion. Caledan swore under his breath and sprang toward the stairs, but he was too late.
Pog and Nog had burst into the room.
“Mother! Nog hit me!” Pog wailed before Caledan could quiet her. Nog’s piping voice rose in denial.
The damage was done.
In the image inside the crystal Snake’s hard eyes glittered with suspicion. “Who are you?” he demanded.
Morhion laughed. “A foe!” he cried. He passed a hand over the crystal. “Bahtra!” he spoke as the gem went dark. The image of Snake vanished.
They all stared at the darkened crystal for a long moment. Pog and Nog clung to Estah for comfort, sensing they had done something wrong. Finally Tyveris cleared his throat.
“Well, Caledan,” he said, his deep voice rumbling, “at least now we know who wants you dead.”
“Comforting thought,” Caledan growled in reply.
Eighteen
“I don’t like this, not one bit,” Caledan said, pacing agitatedly before the hearth. Night had fallen outside. The room was bathed in the warm glow of the candles Jolle and Estah were lighting. Pog and Nog had been sent to play upstairs, and the other companions sat around the oaken table.
“Snake said that soon he’s going to be rid of Ravendas,” Caledan went on. “If he’s powerful enough to summon a shadevar, he can probably make good on his little boast.”
