The lad gingerly picked his way down the slope, seeing that Nightmare had somehow reached the roadway. The black horse regarded him impassively as he probed through the boulders until he was startled by a voice from the shadows.
"Hello there," said the traveler. He came forward, and Danyal saw that he had been sheltered by an overhang of the bluff-the same place he had been driven by the extended swords of the bandits.
"H-Hello," the youth replied. "Are you all right?"
"I think so," said the man. "I'll admit that was bad luck with the landslide."
"Bad luck?" Danyal was amazed. "I think it just saved your life!"
"Oh posh," said the fellow. "It only chased away those men. And I could tell that one of them was just about to tell me his name!"
The youth wanted to reply that, to his eyes, it had looked as though the bandits intended something other than an informative conversation. Still, the stranger seemed so sincere, even genuinely disappointed, that Danyal changed his tack.
"My name is Danyal Thwait," he said tentatively. "Who are you?"
"Foryth Teel," replied the fellow, tsking in concern as he picked up the book that the bandit had thrown against the rocks. "It's not damaged," he said to Danyal, as if he never doubted that the lad was terribly concerned about the condition of the tome.
"Good," replied the youth. "But now, Foryth Teel, why don't you come with me? I think we should find a new place to camp."
CHAPTER 21
A Mind and Soul of Chaos
374 AC
On those instances when the essence of Fistandantilus became maddeningly, frustratingly aware, the archmage knew that he had languished within the kender host for scores of years. The spirit hungered for escape, craved the exercise of power that would bring him victims, souls that he could absorb, lives he would use to restore his unprecedented might. But always these desires went unsated, remained mere memories from a long-ago epoch of might and magic.
As more time passed, the archmage's hunger became starvation, and his need for vengeance swelled. He resolved that, when at last he celebrated his ultimate success, his killing would consume whole cities and countless thousands of lives.
In these times of lucidity, he remembered his talisman, the bloodstone. Upon occasion, he could almost feel the gem pulse in his hands, so vivid were his memories of its warmth and vitality. The artifact had ever been an eater of souls, and now it throbbed with the stored power of many consumed lives.
And the stone was still his best hope, for his efforts had brought that artifact into the hands of one who could use it-a man who had once been a false priest and had now become a lord of bandits.
Sometimes the soul of Fistandantilus tried to reach the bandit lord, using the stone as a conduit. The man had been pliable in some ways, and more than willing to use the powers of the stone. But he was also stubborn and independent, and instead of yielding, had learned to use the bloodstone for his own purposes. And because of the directionless kender, the archmage was unable to use his host to retrieve the stone.
Still, the archmage could be patient. Eventually there would come a chance for the kender to touch the stone, and then Fistandantilus could assert power and control: The false priest would become his tool, the wandering kender would be doomed, and ultimately the route for the archmage's return to flesh would lay open before him. Until then, however, Fistandantilus continued patiently to allow the power of the bloodstone to sustain the man, to prevent his aging.
And the ancient being was aware of another avenue of potential survival as well. He saw through a pair of eyes that occasionally gave Fistandantilus a specific view, and even in his ethereal state, he knew he was not beholding the environment surrounding his kender host. No, these were different eyes, eyes of power and magic, but lacking any substance of flesh, tissue, or tears.
When the image was clear, the archmage saw fire and smoke, a dark cavern where molten rock seethed and bubbled.
Sometimes he saw a villainous visage, a great head of scales and fangs that rose to regard him, that met his fleshless eyes with slitted orbs of fiery yellow. This was a great dragon, attempting to commune with the skull. Fistandantilus was forced to be careful; he knew he could never control such a beast, even in the limited way he did the Seeker priest.
For brief instants, the might of the archmage would surge, rising to meet the power of the skull or the bloodstone. These spells inevitably overwhelmed the kender's intellect and will.
But inevitably the power of the ancient wizard could not be sustained, and then the chaos of the kender's mind would twist and pull at him, tearing his rising presence into shreds. His awareness would fade and he would shriek his soundless horror and frustration until the dissolution cast him once more into the eternal wasteland of his own ambitions. The kender, with his awareness and will restored, was once more free to continue the capricious wandering that had occupied him for such an interminable time.
Fistandantilus was barely able to sustain the power needed merely to insure that the kender did not age. Drawing upon the store of lives he had consumed, the archmage maintained the fool's youthfulness for decades, making sure that the host did not suffer the debilitating effects of advancing years. As with the holder of the bloodstone, the ancient sorcerer dared not allow his all-too-mortal tool to suffer the ravages of age, else the mortal might perish before fulfilling the arch-mage's purpose.
But would he ever be free?
In fact, Fistandantilus never accepted the possibility of failure. He was endlessly patient, and he knew that eventually the potent gem and the wandering kender would come together. In anticipation of that moment, he could almost taste the blood, hear the screams of his victims as the wizard worked his deadly, consuming magic. His vengeance would require many, many victims, and he exulted to images of mass conflagrations, of helpless mortals crushed, one after another, by his own hands.
And though such gratifications remained but a dim memory for now, he began to sense an impending confluence. His hope, his talisman, was coming closer. The sensation grew in strength and substance until he could hear the pulse of that constant heart, the bloodstone of Fistandantilus.
It was out there somewhere, and it was not far distant.
CHAPTER 22
An Historian At large
First Palast, Reapember
374 AC
Instead of following the road in either direction, Danyal took up his fishing pole and creel, and he led Nightmare and Foryth up the streamside trail until they were half a mile or more from the gray stone bridge. The shadows were thick and the trail was rough, but the lad took heart, reasoning that the difficult going would also impede anyone who tried to follow them.
"We should be safe around here," Danyal finally suggested when the two humans and the horse stumbled upon a rock-walled niche near the bank.
"By all means," Foryth agreed, still displaying his air of bemused cheerfulness. "Gilean knows I'll be ready for a night of sleep after I take a few notes."
"Um, I think one of us should stay awake, just in case those men come back. We could take turns." The lad looked nervously into the woods, starting at each shifting shadow, each rustle of leaf or snap of a twig. He thought with a shudder of the young, handsome bandit with the curiously dead eyes, and he knew the man would as soon kill them as talk to them if he found them again.
Danyal had to admit, though, that this new camp was ideally situated for concealment. It was sheltered in another grotto, almost completely screened overhead by a canopy of trees, and as long as they remained quiet they should be safe from anyone who didn't stumble right into the midst of their hiding place.
Apparently lacking any of Danyal's practical concerns, Foryth had already knelt down to flick a spark into a pile of tinder he had gathered. With some difficulty, he brought the glowing specks into embers, waving his hand over the dry pine needles in an unsuccessful attempt to fan the flames.
"Don't you think we'd be better off without a fire?" a
sked the youth. "I mean, in case they come back? It could lead them right to us."
"Oh, I think those ruffians are long gone by now," the traveler said dismissively. "Now, where was I?"
"Here, let me help," Danyal said with a sigh. Admitting to himself that he was unusually chilly tonight, he knelt and puffed gently on the embers. In the sheltered grotto, it was hard to tell which way the wind was blowing, and Dan devoutly hoped the smoke would be carried away from the road.
Within moments, a finger of yellow flame danced upward, growing boisterously as he fed chips of bark and thin, brittle branches to the hungry fire.
Foryth used the flickering light to illuminate the page of the book he had retrieved from his pack by the rock wall. Once again he had his quill and inkwell out, the latter perched on a flat rock beside him.
"You're really going to write? Now?" Danyal couldn't believe his eyes.
"Why, of course. The best history is recorded while it's still fresh in the historian's memory. Say, you didn't catch the name of that fellow, did you? The young, handsome one who seemed to be in charge?"
"I don't care what his name was!" Danyal squawked, then bit his tongue as the sound of his voice echoed through the forest. He lowered his tone to a rasping whisper. "He's a bandit, and he could be coming back!"
But Foryth was already engrossed, his only response the scratching of the sharp quill across the page. "Let's see… the day is First Palast, month of Reapember, during this year of our chronicler 374 AC."
Foryth cleared his throat in ritual preparation. " "Bandits encountered on the Loreloch Road, fifth day out from Haven. My camp was interrupted following nightfall'… let's see… how many of them did you count?"
The sudden question took Danyal by surprise. "I–I guess there were six or eight of them, that I saw at least. There might have been-"
"Drat the luck that didn't let me get that fellow's name!" snapped the historian peevishly, though he didn't let the complaint still the pen-scratching of his scribing.
"Um-didn't one of them call him Kelry, or something like that?" Danyal recalled.
"Hmm… yes, I believe you're right. It was something similar to that." Squinting at his page, silently mouthing his thoughts, the man wrote with quick, smooth strokes. Once he looked up toward Dan, but it seemed to the lad as though Foryth didn't even see him.
"Why were you out here, anyway?" asked Danyal when Foryth, having busily written for several minutes, stretched out his hand and blinked a few times.
"What? Oh, thank you, yes. Some tea would be wonderful," the lone traveler replied as he returned his industrious attention to his page. The feathery plume of the quill continued to bob past his nose, casting a larger-than-life shadow across the man's narrow face. Features tight with concentration, Foryth Teel took a moment to dip his pen while he chewed thoughtfully on the tip of his tongue.
"Uh… I don't have any tea," Danyal interjected in the momentary pause of the pen's progress.
"Why, yes, that would be very nice." Foryth's head bobbed in agreement, though his face remained someplace very far away. "Help to take the chill out of the bones and all that. Now, where was I?"
Danyal sighed, figuring he could probably inform the historian that the sky was falling down on them and Foryth would merely suggest, politely of course, that he would really like a little sugar with that.
The lad stared into the flames, moping. For some reason, though he had a companion in his camp for the first time since leaving his village, he felt lonelier than ever. Foryth Teel couldn't even carry on a decent conversation. At the same time, the distracted traveler seemed as if he would be terribly vulnerable if the bandits decided to return. Again Dan wondered about the flames. He knew the fire was a beacon that would extend well beyond the confines of their narrow grotto.
It occurred to him that he could just take Nightmare and leave, moving farther up the streamside trail, but he wasn't ready to turn his back on the strange traveler. Foryth Teel, for all of his distractibility, at least did not seem likely to be any threat. And he was company.
Finally the historian drew a breath and raised his eyes. The book remained open on his lap, but he set the quill carefully on the flat log where he had placed his ink bottle. "Didn't you say something about tea?" he asked.
"No!" Danyal's exasperation crept into his voice. "I asked what you were doing on this road, and when you said you wanted some tea, I told you I didn't have any!"
"What? Oh, forgive me. I have tea. It'll just take a minute."
Danyal waited impatiently as the traveler pulled a tin pot from his pack, scooped some water from the stream-almost falling in as he did so-and then looked vainly into the surging flames, seeking a place to rest his kettle. "Here." With a sigh, the lad used a stick to pull a small pile of hot coals to the side of the flames. "Set the teapot on these."
"Splendid! Now, what was it you were trying to say?" Danyal was about to shake his head in disgust, muttering that it didn't matter, when Foryth brightened with sudden recollection. "Oh, yes-why am I here? I daresay they'd have to let me into the priesthood if I could give a complete answer to that one!"
He laughed self-consciously, though the youth saw no humor in the statement. Foryth continued. "I'm on my way to a place called Loreloch. It's up in these hills." He gestured vaguely to the darkness on all sides.
"I've never heard of it," Danyal admitted. "But I've never been very far from Waterton."
"Well, it's kind of a secret place. In truth, most people don't even know it's there. It's a little village, so I hear, gathered around a fortified manor house, a stronghold of armed men. The lord there doesn't have much to do with the outside world."
"Why do you want to go there?" Danyal also wondered, but didn't ask, how the befuddled researcher expected to find the place.
"Fistandantilus!" Foryth held up a single finger, as if that one word held the key to all of his plans and ambitions. Apparently observing that Danyal wasn't terribly impressed, he continued. "I'm a historian, seeking to chronicle the story of Krynn's greatest archmage. Specifically, there's a man who lives in Loreloch who went there after the Seeker priests were thrown out of Haven."
"I've heard of Haven," the lad declared proudly. "That's where my ancestors came from, not too long after the Cataclysm."
Foryth might not have heard; at least, he made no adjustment to his own tutorial "This man, the disgraced Seeker, declared that the archmage Fistandantilus was a god, and that he himself was the high priest of the religion. For a time, he had quite a few followers-until, of course, the Seekers were shown to be false priests."
In spite of himself, Danyal found himself fascinated by the story. "That was when the dragons came, right? And people learned that Paladine and the Dark Queen were still here, could still answer prayers?"
"Aye, the two great lords live, and so do many other gods as well. Gilean, the patriarch of my own faith, and gentle Mishakal. And others who are less benign as well.
"But back to my story: This false priest was driven from Haven and, with a small band of followers, he seized the stronghold of Loreloch for himself."
"Didn't the highlords object?" asked Danyal. "I mean, I know I wasn't born yet back then, but I heard that during the war they even came to Waterton and made folks pay them with food from every harvest. Or else they threatened to send their dragons in and destroy the town." The lad shuddered as his mind conjured up a vivid memory of just that. He looked at the man out of the corner of his eye, relieved to see that Foryth had apparently not noticed his distress. For some reason, he wanted to keep that incident a secret for now.
"They may have done the same to Loreloch. Gilean knows, they could have sent a dragon to raze the place if they were displeased," the man admitted. "I don't know why they didn't, to tell you the truth. Perhaps they simply paid no attention, or maybe he was too small a pest to warrant the trouble."
Foryth cleared his throat, and Danyal realized the man was organizing his thoughts, restoring his direc
tion after the question.
"There was another unique feature about this priest of Fistandantilus. Unlike most of the Seekers, this priest had at least one unnatural power: Though he had been the head of his sect for something close to a hundred years, he had never been known to age. It is said that he survived the war, which ended more than twenty years ago, of course. I'm wondering if he still possesses the same youthful appearance as he did back then, though his church was cast down and he was lucky to escape into banishment." "Lucky?" queried Danyal.
"Compared to dead, I should say so. After all, no less a personage than the dragonarmy highlord had issued an order for his death. And now, from Loreloch, he makes occasional raids into neighboring villages, preying upon the highway traffic into and out of Haven and the coastal ports."
"Don't the Knights of Solamnia object to his robbing people and stuff?" On several occasions during his life, Danyal had seen one or two of the armored warriors pass through Waterton. He vividly remembered his impressions of dignity, might, and awe-inspiring competence and capability. "I'd guess that no one could get away with crossing them," he suggested earnestly.
"Well, you're right about that last. Still, the knights have been awfully busy since the war. They've tried to restore some order to their realms, and they had another invasion of Palanthas to face just a few years after the Dark Queen was defeated. Too, down here the Newsea cuts you off from the centers of knightly power, although there is one knightly marshal, named Sir Harold the White. Still, he has a great territory as his responsibility, so, no, I would say that Loreloch is a little too much of a backwater to call for the attention of our Solamnic protectors."
"But why do you want to go there?" Danyal pressed. "I told you!" Foryth seemed exasperated, though the lad could not remember hearing an answer to that question. "Fistandantilus!" "He's there? But you said he was dead." "He's not there! But the leader of Loreloch is a man who claimed to worship the archmage, and this man doesn't get any older! Naturally I want to find out why." "If it's a secret place, how will you find it?" Danyal finally asked. "Why, my book, of course. The Book of Learning," Foryth explained, as if the lad should understand everything he was saying.
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