Fistanadantilus Reborn ll-2

by Douglas Niles

  Cantor's face was distorted into a leer as, grinning, he lifted his knife. But then his eyes lighted upon the skull, the object that the kender found so discomforting. Enjoying the irony, the Theiwar sheathed his knife and reached down to pick up the bony artifact.

  "What are you doing?" demanded Emilo, whirling back to stare, wide-eyed, as the dwarf raised the skull over his head.

  "It's called murder," replied Cantor Blacksword, bringing the piece of bone down hard, feeling the satisfying crunch of the blow as the skull struck Emilo square between the eyes. Soundlessly the kender fell, rolled over, and lay still. The dwarf dropped the skull on the kender's motionless back. Then, clutching his treasure to his breast, Cantor scuttled from the room and started to make his way back to the world above.

  CHAPTER 8

  A Host, of Sorts

  251 AC

  His world had focused around one burning, constant feature: Pain.

  Everything was a throbbing ache, beginning in the back of his head, spreading through his jaw, his neck, his shoulders. It swelled out of the darkness, reaching with clutching, fleshless fingers, growing stronger with each stab of anguish, like hot blades piercing his skin and his mind. The agony reared high, like a kicking horse, and then the black void swallowed him again.

  Later, the pain was there once more, but he took some comfort this time, realizing vaguely that the sensations could be taken as a sign of hope. At least it meant that he was still alive. Even so, the swelling momentum of his suffering sickened him, set his stomach to churning. Before his eyes, all was blackness, save for occasional sparks of red and white that appeared in the far distance, whipped forward like shooting stars, then blinked away.

  Even in his confusion and his pain, he knew that these were not external lights, that they existed only in the bruised and battered passages of his mind.

  My mind. He told himself over and over that this was his body, that the thoughts meant that he was alive. And all along a deeper question arose, as menacing as a fang-tipped serpent, to leer at him out of the darkness. He tried to ignore the question, tried to tell himself that it didn't matter. But it hissed insidiously, this mystery that would not be ignored, whispering itself over and over into his ringing ears.

  Who am I?

  This was a new question, he knew-at least a new mystery to him. Once he could have rattled off the answer without difficulty, with no hesitation. He had a past, a mortal life with parents, with a childhood, and… and travel. He had seen much of the world in the guise of that mortal life.

  Why, then, could he not remember the person who had lived that life, the person he was?

  The question was as frightening, in its own way, as the sickening anguish that threatened to pin him into his place. The first attempt to move brought a fresh wave of agony, a sickening assault that sent bile surging violently into his throat. Ignoring the shrieking protests resounding within his head, he rolled onto his side and vomited, spilling his guts onto a flat stone floor.

  The floor, for some reason, triggered a suggestion of familiarity. He knew that he was inside, of course-the stale, musty air was confirmation of that. But now he perceived that he was far, far underground. There was no clue in his lightless surroundings to suggest that truth; it was simply a fact that he felt inclined to accept.

  That was a victory of sorts, and he collapsed onto the floor again, drawing ragged breaths, trying to remember where under the ground. While he thought, the aching in his head receded somewhat, and before he had considered the challenge of movement, he found that he had risen to a sitting position. Resting his back against a wall-also smooth, solid stone-he tried to stare through the darkness.

  There was nothing to see.

  His hands, familiar hands with short but dexterous and nimble fingers, probed into one of the pouches that he knew would hang from his belt. He found a flint and a short-bladed dagger right where they were supposed to be. And here was a bit of tinder, dry and brittle, protected by a soft leather folder. Beside that was a scrap of oily cloth.

  His movements were smooth and practiced, clearly well rehearsed, though he could not remember a specific instance of ever having done this before. He scraped sparks from the flint, blinking at the sudden brightness, watching as they sizzled and faded. Again he struck, and this time one hot speck caught in the web of tinder. A small breath, carefully puffed, brought the tinder into flame. Twisting the oilcloth into a knot, he touched the frayed edges to the fire, and now orange light flickered all through the confines of the subterranean chamber.

  And he felt a sharp stab of terror.

  A skull was staring at him, the dark voids of its eye sockets cast even further into shadow by the flaring of the makeshift torch. With a gasp, he scrambled backward, holding the flaming cloth high, unwilling to take his eyes from the glaring death mask. Only when he had scuttled, crablike, around a corner did he allow himself to draw a deep breath.

  He stood and, mindful of the rapidly burning cloth, began to search through the dark corridor. Soon he found what he sought: a creosote-soaked timber that had once been the leg of a table or laboratory bench. When the rag was wrapped around the blunt head of the tapered stick, the flames took slow root on the tarry timber, and soon a growing light flared brightly through the darkness.

  This was a flame, he knew, that would last him for many hours. And it would take him a long time to get out of here-though it still irritated him to realize that he didn't know where here was. He hoisted the torch and looked through the surrounding wreckage for clues. He saw overturned tables, a litter of vials and flasks, even some tomes and scrolls, but nothing that looked even vaguely familiar. With a shudder, he turned his back and left the place behind.

  For a time he wandered through a maze of stone passages, seeking only to avoid that menacing skull that had so startled him when he awakened. Yet despite his care, he found himself once again coming around a corner to confront the eyeless face that stared dispassionately upward from the floor. The bone-white visage had startled him when he had awakened, and he had the feeling that it was a dangerous object, lethal and powerful in ways that he could not understand.

  Yet now, as he looked at it in the yellow light of his torch, he saw it for what it was: a lifeless piece of bone, sitting motionless on the floor Where it had been dropped. He stepped closer, banishing the nervousness that once again churned his stomach. A trailing end of his long hair had somehow found its way into his mouth, and he chewed absently on the end of the thick mop.

  "You're dead."

  He spoke the words aloud, taking comfort from the sound of his own voice. He knelt beside the bone, noticing a fleck of rusty red on the back side. The blood was dried, but far fresher than the skull, and instinctively his hand went to his own forehead.

  There was a lump there, a bruised patch of skin and a scab where he had been struck, where his own blood had flowed after the blow of a hard object.

  He knew then that it was his own blood on the skull, that the piece of bone had smashed against his head and felled him here, in the depths of this shattered place. But why couldn't he remember?

  "Who am I?"

  He made the demand loudly, challenging the skull, the darkness, the stone walls-anything that might have been witness to the attack, that might offer him some hope of an answer. But of course, no answer was forthcoming.

  Again the black eye sockets drew him, and he knew that the skull should have been a terrifying thing- indeed, some time before it had frightened him, and he knew that he was a person who was not easily scared. Yet now he perceived little of that earlier menace. It was as if the skull was a vessel that had been full of something dangerous, but now, perhaps shattered by the force of the blow, the danger had flowed out and left the flesh-less head as a silently grinning remembrance.

  Resolutely he turned his back on the skull and started to walk. Soon he found the iron framework of an old stairway, and he didn't even pause before starting what he knew would be a long climb. Ascend
ing steadily, he held the torch in one hand, except during the most difficult parts of the climb. Then he clenched the narrow, unlighted end of the brand between his teeth so that he could use both hands to scale steadily upward.

  He stopped once, startled by a distant sound. Listening, he discerned a thumping pulse, like the beating of a heart. As he strained to locate the sound, he saw a sudden image: a greenish stone, red lights flaring within the gem in cadence to the mysterious heartbeat.

  Once again he suppressed a shiver a fear, knowing without understanding that fear was a strange emotion to him.

  After the iron stairs there were more corridors, and a room where there was water. He stopped here, grateful for the drink, and took the time to fill both of his water-skins. He remembered that, beyond this ruined labyrinth, he would find very little water.

  But how could he know this and not know where here was?

  Finally he emerged beneath the muted blue of a clear sky fading softly after the sunset. He was not surprised that the great edifice behind him rose so high, nor that it was cast so perfectly into the shape of a great skull. Now he knew that this place was called Skullcap.

  And then he had another vivid impression as the skull that he had left underground seemed to rise into his mind. He stared into those black, empty sockets and shivered under the feeling that it was still watching him.

  "But who am I?"

  He found the answer when he collapsed for rest in a shallow ditch. Under the fading light of day, he pulled out the contents of his pack. There was the hardtack-he remembered exactly what it tasted like, but he didn't know where it had come from. He found a soft fur cloak and knew that it would be useful on a colder night than this.

  And he found an ivory scroll tube that was certainly one of his prized possessions. Within the cylindrical container, he found several maps and pieces of parchment with strange symbols and indecipherable notes scrawled across them.

  At the top of several of the sheets, he discerned two words: Emilo Haversack. Taking a stick, he scribed the symbols into the sand, and he recognized that the words on the parchment had been written by his own hand.

  "My name is Emilo Haversack," he declared, as if the repeating of the words would make the truth that much more evident.

  But still, how had he come to be here?

  And where were the rest of his memories?

  CHAPTER 9

  From Black to Life

  259 AC

  For a long time he had done nothing, been no one. This was his protection as it had been in ages past, a tactic for use when those who sought his life for crimes real and imagined became too powerful. And so he had escaped the vengeful, had given pitiful humankind the false notion that he was finally and irrevocably slain.

  He recalled the fateful casting, the mighty spell that should have yielded passage to the Abyss, allowed him to challenge the Dark Queen herself. Instead, the enchantment had erupted in violent convulsion, tearing him to pieces, destroying him.

  Indeed, by now the whole world must believe that he had been killed.

  But he had only been hiding.

  How long had he lurked here, so far beyond the ken of humankind? He didn't know, really didn't care. As ever, he trusted to certain truths, knowing that the nature of human, dwarf, or ogre would eventually accomplish his task. The folk of Krynn tended to be violent peoples, and he needed their violence to give him flesh and blood and life.

  Finally violence had been done, and the gift had been given. Again his essence was cloaked in flesh, the blood pulsing through a brain that, while it was not his, had been given to him to use. He could not discern immediately whether it was a human or perhaps a dwarf or even an ogre that had bestowed this gift upon him. Nor did he particularly care. He could make any of these peoples his tool, use whichever body was offered him until he could exert full control, reclaim his rightful place in the world.

  So he had been content for a measureless time merely to rest within this mortal shell, to absorb the life and vitality of the body that gave him home. He did not need to take control, at least not yet, for he was still weak, still unready to reveal himself to the enemies who, experience had shown him, always lurked in the eddies of time's great river, waiting for his reappearance, for a chance to hurt or kill him.

  Such enemies waited with vengeance and treachery in mind, and they sought him out whenever his presence became known.

  And always he had killed them. He won because he waited until the time was right, and the same wisdom that had guided him then told him now that the time was too soon. He was content to let his host wander this far-flung corner of Ansalon, and the timeless one paid little heed to that body's travels or to its intentions and pleasures. For all this time he, the spirit of the ancient archmage, would grow stronger, would wait for the right moment to strike.

  Gradually his vitality returned. He began to feel warmth, to sense desires such as, initially, thirst and hunger. And then later he knew stronger, more deeply ingrained lusts, cravings for power, for lives, and for blood, and these desires confirmed for him that he was ready once more to plunge his life back into the great river's flow.

  Finally the time had come for him to emerge from hiding, to once more claim the prizes-in treasure, realms, and lives-that were rightfully his. He would take a new body, find the flesh of a strong young man, as he always had before. And he would once again claim the world of which he had once been master, in fact if not in public knowledge.

  He shifted then, steeling his essence toward the mind of the man-or dwarf, or ogre-who was his host. He was ready to seize control, to destroy the host's intellect, to make the mind, the body, the life of this person his own.

  But something was wrong.

  The will of Fistandantilus surged more strongly, and he sensed the host body's agitation, its ignorance and its fear. This was the time it should begin to respond, when the will of the archmage would vanquish the hapless individual who was doomed to become fodder for his future life. Again he surged, twisting, driving the force of his mighty presence, the vast power of his magic, the full awareness of the hundred or more souls he had devoured during the long course of his rise to power.

  And once more he failed.

  His host was not responding to his will. He could sense the coil of mortality, the flesh and being of a person. But there was a capricious, free-spirited mentality in this host that would not yield to his great strength- indeed, it seemed to delight in thwarting his attempts to assert control.

  His immortal essence had come to rest, as always before, in someone who could bear it, unawares, through the world. But now he desired to claim the host for his own, to consume him in the process of restoring himself to might.

  Yet the host would not respond.

  There were times when the power of the ancient arch-mage would reach out, seeking with ghostly skeletal ringers to lodge in the brain, or the heart or guts, of this unsuspecting person. But at best those grasps were fleeting, with the stuff of control always slipping away.

  The essence of Fistandantilus settled back in frustration, and inevitably the knowledge that he was being thwarted brought a rising sense of rage, a murderous intent that should have erupted in a burst of magic, sizzling the flesh and searing the brain of the unwitting host.

  But now he lacked the power, the means to work that arcane might. And as he struggled and railed against the fate that had imprisoned him in such a place, he began to consider the reasons. Any human, dwarf, or ogre, or even an elf should have yielded to the overwhelming force of great magic. The archmage would have preferred to have mastered a human, for that was the state of his normal, his original form, but he knew that he could make any of the others feel his power if need be.

  The answer seemed to be that his host was none of those victims, those earlier targets of his will. It was a being of capricious habits, carefree and fearless sensibilities, and a life of confusion and chaos that at last allowed Fistandantilus to perceive the truth.
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br />   And it was a truth that filled him with horror and fear, for his spirit, his essence, and his desires for the future had been imprisoned in the body of a kender.

  For a time, he could only shiver with uncontrolled fury, but gradually he came to the realization that he would have to change his tactics. And he was not without tools, without alternate plans.

  He reached out first toward a distant skull, but all that he could see through the lifeless eyes was a barren and abandoned underground.

  But when he sought for another talisman, a stone of blood and fire, he felt a more powerful, vital presence. There was a dwarf there, and dwarves had been known to yield to the archmage's power. The archmage strained to see while he felt the pulse and ultimately the perceptions of the one who carried the stone. A cursory study showed that this dwarf would be of only limited use: He was a cackling maniac, wicked but weak.

  Still, Fistandantilus had a place for his power to take hold. The dwarf was a fool, but he was a malleable fool. The archmage felt the power of the stone, used it to penetrate the simple mind.

  The dwarf would carry the bloodstone for a while longer, but ultimately he would bring it to someone who could be put to better use.

  And the wizard's path would open, leading him once again toward the enslavement of the world in past, present, and future.

  CHAPTCR 10

  A Stone of Power and Command

  263 AC

  Paleswelt-Darkember

  Kelryn Darewind rode out of Tarsis about two minutes before the captain of the city guards smashed through the door of the luxurious suite he had been renting in one of the landlocked city's finest inns. The fact that Kelryn had failed to pay for those lodgings, as he had failed to reimburse numerous merchants and vendors for goods and services during the half-year he had spent in the crowded city, was a significant reason behind the captain's-as well as the chief magistrate's- diligent attentions.