At some forgotten place in history, a race of beings—dwarves, perhaps, or one of their relations—had come and constructed a stair, carved out of the living rock, that circled behind the cone, between the basalt knob and the mountain, and emerged at the top of the monolith. From the flat summit, an adventurous soul could see a dizzying view of the valley and rolling green meadows below, with tributary streams branching and tumbling through them to a distant river, and only traces in the landscape of the solid black lava beneath it all.
The ancient, mysterious delvers had refined the voids and tunnels of the cone, making wide passageways and series of rooms, stairways from base to summit, and hallways big enough to house an entire village.
Some said they disturbed a primordial evil that slept in the passageways and were devoured, while others said they tunneled too deep and broke through to the Underdark, and were killed or enslaved by gray dwarves.
Who they were, no one knew, or would admit to knowing. They left only their stonework, the marks of their tools on the surface of the basalt, a few ancient runes on some of the walls, and legends of their passing.
The folk of the surrounding settlements avoided the place and said that it was cursed, or haunted, or that strange eldritch creatures dwelled in the bottommost depths of its mazes. No treasure was hidden there that anyone knew of, and there was little of value to be mined on or around that basalt protuberance, save for a few pretty quartz crystals. It sat on the border of Erlkazar but was too far from any city of size for any of the baronies to take an interest in it for settlement or even for use as a way station. Twice or thrice throughout the centuries this or that local lordling had claimed it, only to find it too remote and barren to be either a dwelling or an outpost. Folk called it the Giant’s Fist, or the Blackstone, or the Eye of Leviathan, depending on the custom of their village and the fancy of their bards, but unless they were asked about it, or had to retrieve some livestock that had wandered that way, they mentioned it hardly at all.
Gareth Jadaren knew the Giant’s Fist was no palace. The wind howled over it in an unpleasant way, like a harpy chuckling over a trove of carrion. It was desolate, gloomy, and unaesthetic. But it was defensible.
“And the work of tunneling is done for us!” he called cheerfully to Ivor Beguine and Jandi M’baren.
Ivor and Jandi looked dubiously at the monolith that loomed against the mountainside. The valley they had come through was ribboned now with streams and well grown with small trees and fields of mountain flowers, but the occasional crunch of the donkey’s hooves against pumice and a black tumble of rocks peeking through the grasses told of the lava plains beneath.
They had ventured well south of Turmish when they began to hear travelers’ tales of the Giant’s Fist, its legends, and isolation. The stories fascinated Gareth, and he persuaded the others to skim the northern border of Erlkazar and seek out the strange monolith.
He patted the donkey’s neck with satisfaction while the animal snorted and tore a mouthful of sweetgrass from the ground.
“Does Berendel claim the land all around the base?” asked Ivor, coming to stand beside Gareth.
“He does,” said Gareth. “As much as he can. Men set themselves up as barons here, laying claim to a splotch on a map and a handful of villages so others will bob their heads and call them lord. This land’s been part of a half-dozen baronies over the last hundred years, as far as I can tell. Not that it matters, for no one cares to come near it or make it their home.”
“It’s a lonely place,” said Jandi, pulling up more sweetgrass for the donkey and regarding the Fist narrowly. “A sad place.”
“We’ll make it a happy place,” said Gareth. “A prosperous place. All for ten platinum and a promise to call Berendel ‘m’Lord’ twice or thrice a year.”
“Strange he would sell it so cheap,” said Ivor.
Gareth tugged the donkey away from its lunch. “All the folk hereabouts have lived with it all their lives, and it’s just a remote, haunted spot to them. The trading interests want dominance over the established routes, and few think of the wilderness save as a source of occasional good and a breeding ground for pirates. Here”—he spread his arm wide, earning a bleat of protest from the donkey as he accidentally tugged at its tether—“a well-fortified headquarters could command trade from the Eastern Reaches to Turmish and beyond.”
Ivor prudently took the lead rope from him. He patted the donkey, and the animal snorted indignantly. “And we fortify it how?”
Gareth tapped the pouch at his belt where the bracelet lay. “Jandi said she could ward a fortress with this.”
“That’s not a fortress,” said the cat-eyed girl. “That’s a rock you’ve bought yourself.”
“More of a long-term contract,” said Gareth.
“Nevertheless, a rock. A very big rock.”
“A rock we’ll make a fortress,” said Gareth, his eyes gleaming.
Jandi turned to Ivor with a laugh on her lips, and caught him looking at her with a peculiar intensity—a look he didn’t intend her to see. When she returned it, he looked quickly at the ground and his tanned cheeks reddened.
“The sun’s going down behind the range,” said Gareth, oblivious to the silent exchange as he watched the sky turn pink. “I suggest we camp tonight and explore tomorrow.”
If he hadn’t been so distracted by his plans, Gareth would’ve noticed his friends’ replies were more subdued than was their wont.
Jandi sat at the base of an oak, watching Ivor pile black pockmarked lava stones into a ring for their fire pit. Gareth had ventured into the woods a short way to find firewood.
Ivor positioned a stone and stood up, stretching his back. In doing so, he caught her gaze, as she had done his down on the plains, and like him she felt herself blushing. He smiled at her, and the breath caught in her throat. A strange tingle that had nothing to do with her Art spread over her body.
When he turned to look at the ponderous monolith, she could breathe normally again, and the evening breeze felt cool against her flushed cheeks. She tilted her head back to look at the oak above her. The enormous spread of its branches showed its age, and it looked out of place in a wood thick with elm and birch. Perhaps it was an ancient remnant from the oak vastness of the Chondalwood, surrounded here by upstart trees spreading from the forests at the base of the Cloven Mountains. It was as strange among these younger trees as the black stone of the Giant’s Fist was in the softer flank of the mountain range.
She was still studying its interlacing branches when she felt someone approach and stand in front of her. She waited and counted her heartbeats—one, two, three—before lowering her head.
Ivor kneeled in front of her, bringing their eyes to a level.
“You said you could open the inside of a man like a lock,” he said.
“I can.”
“How?”
Jandi considered him a moment. “By making my will into a key and reaching inside,” she said.
He smiled, a teasing smile just short of mockery. “Do it to me.”
“What? No!” she exclaimed.
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t wish to kill you.”
He rocked back on his heels. “I don’t think you can do it.”
“Then more fool you,” she said tartly.
“You can’t.” His smile was maddening.
“Is that a challenge?”
He bent close. “Yes.”
She looked a long moment into his dark brown eyes, studying his face. Then she reached out and placed the palm of her hand beneath the open ties of his shirt, against the bare skin over his heart. Her hand was cool and his flesh was warm; she could feel the strong, steady beat of his heart.
He didn’t move, still staring into her eyes. It seemed to that her his breath became quick and shallow, and she felt the blood rush to her cheeks again. She dropped her gaze, concentrating on her hand on his heart.
He didn’t move as the sigil on her cheek pu
lsed once with a green light. Tiny green sparks, bright now in the gathering dusk, danced across her body and down her arm. He felt something insubstantial push through the wall of his chest, between his ribs and through the muscle. His pulse quickened at it.
She raised her eyes to his, and it was as if she held his heart cupped in her hands. He knew she could unlock him, but she wouldn’t—not this way.
Jandi closed her eyes, and he felt that gentle, dangerous touch withdraw. When she removed her hand from his chest, the skin it had covered was suddenly cold.
Her lips were warm when he bent forward and covered her mouth with his.
“Where are you laze-abouts? Come help me with the load!”
Gareth’s voice tore through the moment and Jandi and Ivor pulled apart, the breeze chilling their lips. Jandi glanced over Ivor’s shoulder and saw Gareth, his arms piled high with prickly deadwood, standing by the half-completed fire pit. A log rolled off the top of his burden. He cursed and turned toward them, laughing. The grin froze on his face when he saw them together, and he turned away suddenly. The wood falling on the ground made a sound like the clatter of sticks on a stretched hide being beaten to make soft leather.
Gareth and Jandi stood on top of the Fist while Ivor and the phlegmatic donkey kept watch at the base. Jandi drew her cloak closer around her body and shivered. The autumn wind moaning across the Fist’s flat surface was chilly.
“I didn’t leave Bane’s city to sojourn in Bane’s gravel pit,” she grumbled, kicking a pebble over the side. It bounced several times against the side of the monolith, making a clacking sound every time it hit. Far beneath them, she saw Ivor’s head turn to follow the sound.
“It’ll be a paradise by the time we’re finished with it,” Gareth proclaimed, hopping down from a knot of stone and examining the half-illegible characters carved at its base. “Is there any magic left here, from who—or what—went before? We don’t want any residual Power to clash with your Art.”
As she had done several times on the hike up the stairs that curved between the cone and its parent mountain, she closed her eyes and held out her arms, elbows at her sides and palms up. She inhaled deeply, and Gareth heard a gentle humming, although she didn’t seem to be producing the sound herself.
Jandi opened her eyes. “I don’t think so,” she said. “Possibly an echo in the depths. It’s hard to avoid any trace of magic. Creatures magical by nature pass by, and always leave some kind of trail, no matter how faint. I would be more suspicious of a place completely clean of magic—it takes an effort to burn an area clear. There’s nothing here that would interfere with my overlay.”
“Well, then, what’s stopping you?”
The young mage glared at the grinning ex-pirate and reached into the bag slung across her shoulder. “Nothing,” she said. “But you’ll need to give me the Key.”
Gareth pulled the torque from his upper arm, where it had nested the night before. Jandi had found a spot clear of rocks and sat cross-legged.
Jandi placed the Key cautiously on her lap and took a clean glass vial from her pack. She held it in her right hand and drew her small blade with her left.
“Give me your hand. I’ll need some of your blood. Oh, please!” She laughed as he flinched back. “I know you’ve had worse fighting. You’ve shed more blood while shaving!”
“That was due to ill-intentioned folk, or an accident,” he said. “I’m not accustomed to having those who are supposed to be working for my benefit stabbing me with their little knives.”
Imperiously she gestured with bottle and knife, and he sighed.
“Which hand?” he said.
“The one you would hold a key with, if you were unlocking a door.”
He kneeled and extended his right hand. She held the bottle close alongside while she sliced deeply across the pad of his forefinger. Thick blood welled, and she filled the small bottle quickly.
“Sorry,” she said, giving him a sympathetic smile.
He stood and wrapped the small wound in the tail of his shirt. “It is what it must be,” he said.
She sheathed the knife and took the Key in one hand, the glass vial filled with scarlet in the other. Her eyes closed, and the sigil on her cheek glowed briefly with the strange green light associated with her Art.
He retreated to sit on a nearby rock and reached in his own pack for a skin of ale. He watched as Jandi’s breathing slowed, the time between her inhaling and exhaling uncomfortably long. Minutes stretched to an hour and he finished the skin, wishing he’d brought another and wondering if anything was going to happen.
Then he saw the tiny green sparks hovering around her body like fireflies. Thicker and brighter they grew, coalescing into a ring around her. The circle of green light moved down her form, spreading as it met the rock. It was followed by another, and another. They moved across the surface of the Fist like slow-moving ripples.
On and on it went. As dusk came on, the glow became brighter. He watched, fascinated, and wondered what it looked like to the watchers below.
Down at the base, Ivor watched the Giant’s Fist turn from black to chartreuse, waves of green light drenching it like a strange tide. Although the outside temperature wasn’t particularly cold, he leaned against the donkey’s neck and shivered.
The walls of the oubliette flared suddenly, red-hot, and the walls of Fandour’s prison constricted. Fandour screamed, startled out of a deep state of meditation, and rolled away from the hot metallic surface, trying to be as small as possible. It didn’t work; the walls seared Fandour’s flesh. The glowing walls sprouted thick iron thorns, and they pierced Fandour’s tough hide, sharp pinpricks of pain in the midst of the dull agony as the sullen orange wall pressed, relentless.
Let me die, thought Fandour, struggling to send a clear tendril of thought through the pain. If I can’t be free, if I must be tormented, let me die and seek release no more.
And in answer to the acute mental cry, he heard a whisper, from a long way off. It was hard to understand, like a message read in an uncouth voice by someone who didn’t know the language and was guessing at the sound of the letters; like the language of the gith, muttered by an Aboleth, or an orc with a mouthful of pebbles.
Give, give, the voice cried, greedy as a baby bird. Give a morsel of yourself, a piece of your Power, a handful of light and stone torn by strong hands from the core of your essence. Give!
Fandour flung a thought back through the planes: Stop this, or kill me now. He flinched farther into himself as the hot walls constricted once more.
Kill you? Never. You will live forever, pressed on all sides by red metal and thorns. Give what I ask for!
Was the voice that of the Rhythanko? Could his bound avatar turn against him so? Or was his tormentor the alien mind that possessed the long-sundered key to his prison?
Fandour could bear no more. Take, he shouted, opening up and exposing a soft underbelly, going against every instinct to do so. Take, and stop this torment.
Ah, the voice gloated as something, not another entity but a thought and will made material and animate scooped out a part of Fandour, twisted, and escaped like a small savage fish nipping a chunk of flesh from bigger prey and darting away.
The thorns retracted, the searing heat was gone. Exhausted and quivering with remembered pain, Fandour sprawled on the floor of the oubliette and strove to understand what had happened.
Someone had used the Rhythanko to tear away a little of Fandour’s Power, to mold it and forge it into something of use.
Eagerly, ignoring the waves of pain that still rippled through his essence, Fandour sent tiny thought tendrils along the fragile and ephemeral ley lines that still connected the Rhythanko and the oubliette. Someone was out there, sitting on a great mass of stone, stone from the flaming heart of a mountain, cool and hard now and honeycombed with tunnels. Two people: one had the knowledge of the nature of all manner of locks and keys, magic, mundane and mechanical, in her head and held the Rhythanko in her hand; t
he other was harder to see, having little magic in him. He reached out, and the other, the mistress of things locked and unlocked, put the Rhythanko in his hand. A jolt of Power struck Fandour’s thought tendril, sending it back into him like a blow.
Fandour curled up inside the oubliette, clinging to the memory. The man reaching with tentative fingers for the Rythanko was bound to it by blood. The Rhythanko, in turn, was bound to him by the Power the woman had ripped from Fandour. That small essence Fandour had lost forever, but in that brief contact, Fandour had sniffed out the dark one’s blood, a nexus between him, Fandour, and the Rhythanko.
Time was long and until Fandour healed, there was little else to be done. He coiled about the memory of the blood, the nature, the taste, the smell, the tiny components of it.
Fandour would not forget anything to do with that blood.
A troubled expression on her face, Jandi sat silent as the green light of her Art faded. She turned the bracelet round and round between her fingers.
“You’d impress them back in Mulmaster,” said Gareth. “Why the glum look?”
She looked up at him, ignoring the hand he’d stretched out to help her up.
“I wish I knew more about how the Key was made, and the exact nature of the Power it taps into,” she said.
“Why? It did what you wanted.” He wiggled his fingers at her.
She seemed to see his hand at last and took it. He winced as she grasped his wounded finger tightly while pulling herself to her feet. She staggered, and he extended an arm to steady her.
Dawnbringer: A Forgotten Realms Novel Page 5
