by Edward Bolme
“I had nothing to do with this,” said the woman, raising her arms to her sides, “though it appears that some of my people were involved.” She nodded to a decapitated body dressed in red and black. “I mean no foul play, and I am unarmed. If you please, I prefer to hold discussions face to face. May I turn?”
“Yeah,” said Kehrsyn, after some thought, “but keep your arms to your sides, and don’t do anything stupid.”
Kehrsyn stepped back to ensure she remained out of reach of the woman’s long arms.
The newcomer turned around very slowly. With her feet obscured by the long, snow-wet hem of her Tiamatan robe, it was almost reminiscent of seeing a hanged criminal turning on a gibbet.
“Tiglath!” blurted Kehrsyn as she saw the intruder’s profile and unique scars.
Tiglath raised her chin and said, “I recognize you.”
“Don’t play the fool,” said Kehrsyn. “You knew I was here, you just didn’t expect me to be alive.”
“I am never the fool,” said Tiglath. A brief pause. “Ah, yes, you were in our narthex, the one who chose to tell the truth. I granted you my sufferance.”
“Oh, I remember that,” said Kehrsyn. She advanced, dagger held forward and aimed at Tiglath’s throat, rapier level behind her, ready for a thrust to the torso. “Is sufferance your code word for ‘kill her later’? That’s an ugly way to pay someone back for giving you the truth.”
Tiglath drew herself up, and though her arms were still spread helplessly wide, her scar-framed eyes blazed with indignation. “How dare you? I would mete out great punishment for such temerity had I not already given you said sufferance.”
“Yeah, well, one of your brutes already tried that. Tried to kill me, he did. Your protection isn’t worth two grains.”
At once Tiglath’s eyes blazed even brighter, but the ire turned away from Kehrsyn and focused within as her eyes twitched to the side. Her nostrils flared, and her outstretched hands clenched into fists. At that moment, Kehrsyn decided it would probably be a very wise thing not to push Tiglath’s patience too far.
“Really?” growled Tiglath, as slow as rolling thunder.
“Yes’m,” said Kehrsyn, taking a step back. “I told him I had your sufferance just like you said, and he was even one of the ones there with you when you gave it.” Kehrsyn watched as Tiglath pursed her lips. Her skin started blotching with red, making her scars stand out even more starkly. “You, um, can put your arms down, now,” added Kehrsyn, not wishing to stoke the fires any further.
Tiglath fixed Kehrsyn with her gaze again, a look gone from a firestorm to cold steel.
“And where is this disobedient disciple now?” the priestess asked, her lips moving with exaggerated curves across her clenched teeth. Her arms began to drop.
“I, uh … well, he’s at the bottom of the stairs. Now.”
“Show me,” Tiglath commanded.
Kehrsyn took a look at Tiglath’s eyes and at the tendons standing out on her neck, and decided to obey. She trotted through the house, skipping uneasily over the bodies, with Tiglath’s heavy tread close behind. She moved down the staircase, vaulted over the rail to avoid the bodies at the bottom, and moved as far away as she could.
Tiglath stepped over the bodies and grabbed the hair of the Tiamatan that Kehrsyn indicated. She raised his head and stared into his face, swollen and purple with pooling blood.
“You bastard!” Tiglath spat.
It was the quietest yell Kehrsyn had ever heard, yet it packed the anger and malice of an outburst a hundred times as loud. Tiglath’s knuckles whitened where they gripped the ponytail, and the extra tension tautened the skin on the dead man’s face. She threw the head back down with disgust and, still kneeling beside the corpse, turned to face Kehrsyn. She forced her face into a calm expression, but Kehrsyn could see the fires still blazing behind her eyes.
“If you please,” asked the priestess, “would you tell me exactly what happened here?”
Kehrsyn gave a full accounting of what she had seen and heard, carefully skirting her involvement in the issue and especially avoiding any reference to the fact that she had been the one who’d stolen the necromantic wand in the first place. Tiglath nodded throughout the retelling, staring at an empty bit of space off to her left somewhere.
“In short, ma’am,” finished Kehrsyn, “I guess maybe it was a raid or something.”
“Indeed,” replied Tiglath. “That fits the evidence.” She stared straight at Kehrsyn. “I note your story neatly omits any reference to your involvement, but as I surmise your involvement was with Furifax and not with this worm, I’ll allow your secrets to remain yours. You’ve been satisfactorily forthcoming with the information I need. Thank you for killing him, though it’s a pity he didn’t remain alive for interrogation.”
“Who was he?” hazarded Kehrsyn, as it appeared Tiglath was in a mood to talk.
“He was one of my inner circle,” answered the priestess, “one of my trusted advisors.”
“If he was considered trustworthy,” observed Kehrsyn, “I’d sure hate to have your advisors.”
Tiglath snorted, and with a half-smile, said, “I suppose so. There’s a feeling you get when the ground just starts to give way beneath your feet, or when the axle breaks on your wagon, or right after you’ve drunk too much. It’s a feeling that there’s something wrong, something imminent and close, but you can’t put your finger on it and everything seems normal. I have had that feeling for some time within my church and most especially among my advisors. I dismissed those feelings as worry brought by the war. Now I know the feelings were right. I find that my most trusted people have been operating behind my back.”
“You’re sure that’s what’s happening?” asked Kehrsyn.
“I know they have not been pleased with some of my choices. I continued our alliance with Furifax and his people, and refused the aid of other, more aggressive, more ruthless factions. I did this to ensure that we did not save Unther only to yield our sovereignty to a foreign power. Not everyone sees the wisdom of this choice.
“Further, now that the god-king Gilgeam has been killed, I wish to replace his despotic thearchy with a government modeled after some of the younger nations, a meritocracy where the power resides in the hands of a council that rules for the betterment of the nation, not their own vanity. This decision has also met with resistance. My advisors do not understand that seizing control of Unther for the church of Tiamat only replaces one thearchy with another, and I will not see my life’s work perverted in such a manner.”
Tiglath sucked in her lips and drummed her fingers.
“It seems,” she said, “that those beneath me, some of them at least, have made other plans.” She chuckled mirthlessly. “Curious that a high priestess learns more from a street-smart refugee than she does from her own people.”
Kehrsyn shrugged.
“I am thankful that I spared you,” said Tiglath, rather kindly for a woman of her imposing demeanor.
“Yeah, well, so am I,” said Kehrsyn, sheathing her weapons.
An uncomfortable silence hung in the air for a few moments, until Tiglath slapped her knees and heaved her bulk to her feet again.
“Well,” she said, “you said they were after something?”
“Yeah, a magical relic that someone told me might be the Staff of the Necromancer. About so long,” she added, gesturing.
“Let’s see if we can find it, shall we?” asked the priestess.
Tiglath’s voice rang with forced cheer, but then, Kehrsyn mused, at least the priestess was trying to be friendly, even if it didn’t come naturally to her.
“I really doubt we’ll find it, if they didn’t,” said Kehrsyn. “They were very thorough.”
“I have better help than they,” said Tiglath. “I’ll be right back.”
The priestess went upstairs, and Kehrsyn heard her heavy footsteps tromp over to the front door, heard the door open and close again, and heard the stairs creak as Tiglath returned.
On Tiglath’s shoulder, Kehrsyn saw the smallest dragon she had ever seen. It peered back at her with two tiny, intelligent, emerald eyes. Its whiskers seemed to float as if underwater, and it bobbed its head as if scenting the air, or perhaps some ethereal breezes that moved beyond mortal senses. It peered closely at Kehrsyn, then stuck its muzzle in Tiglath’s ear.
“Really?” said Tiglath, speaking softly to her familiar. She pursed her lips with interest. “Fascinating,” she added, as the dragonet withdrew its muzzle.
“What’s fascinating?” asked Kehrsyn, rather unnerved that Tiglath was looking at her differently in the wake of the dragonet’s message.
“Nothing, dear,” answered Tiglath. “We have work to do.”
The priestess held her hand up to her shoulder, and the dragonet moved to perch upon it. Tiglath “tsked” and clucked a few times—soft, intimate noises—and the dragon flew away, whizzing from room to room, its wings sounding like giant wasps or paper sheets in a windstorm.
“You sure that’ll work?” asked Kehrsyn.
“Absolutely,” replied Tiglath. “They are far superior beings and have instinctive sensitivities that we can attain only through years of hard work in magic.”
Kehrsyn spread her hands, shrugged, and bowed herself out as the dragonet did its work. Turning on her heel, she began perusing the bunkrooms, looking for a cloak to replace her newly bloodstained rag. With luck, she’d find one that fit her, looked reasonable, and was at least water resistant, if not truly waterproof.
She found one that fit her needs, even if it was too wide and a tad short, and she went back to wait with Tiglath. The dragonet peered out of a different room, looked around, then zipped up the stairwell to the upper floor. Tiglath watched its departure and waited, staring at the stairwell, hands clasped in front of her.
“So, um, priestess?” said Kehrsyn. “Can I ask—”
“ ‘May I,’ dear,” corrected Tiglath.
“What exactly is going on in Messemprar these days?” Kehrsyn asked, ignoring Tiglath’s interruption. “I mean, Furifax, a bandit who had countless shekae on his head, has spies that know of this staff thing, and they’ve got all these people, yet they hire someone to steal it, and his allies come in and attack them for it, and their own leader doesn’t even know it’s going on, and both the bandits and the people they stole it from say they’re doing it to help the people, but the Northern Wizards can’t even know that it’s here, otherwise they would already have bought it or something, but the Red Wizards did know … well, it just seems all confusing. You seem to know what’s going on—” she paused and looked around—“aside from certain recent events, that is. So can you tell me … something? Anything? I mean, I’m just a juggler.”
Tiglath took a deep breath, causing her already ample form to grow, then let the air back out as she framed her answer. She turned to face Kehrsyn, who stood, rolling one toe back and forth on the ground behind her.
“You are far more than just a juggler, my dear,” began Tiglath. “For one thing, apparently, you’re an accomplished thief.”
“I didn’t say I stole it,” countered Kehrsyn.
“No, you didn’t,” observed Tiglath, “but neither do you deny it, and who else but someone at the very center of events would know so much about all sides? Oh, don’t fret, dear. Your secret is safe, for not only have you my sufferance, but you have provided me with invaluable information.” Tiglath moved closer, and despite her passive stance, she still seemed to loom over Kehrsyn’s slight build. “Thus, let me repay knowledge for knowledge and answer your question.
“Messemprar is the remnant of one of the oldest empires in Faerûn. Each grain of the sands upon which we stand has been ground from the bones of hundreds of generations of scholars, warriors, artists, and slaves, all of whom died to make Unther a dynasty to endure forever. Yet we find ourselves with a great void in the power structure.”
“I thought the Northern Wizards had taken control,” protested Kehrsyn.
“That is what they want people to believe,” responded Tiglath, “and, for that matter, many others are content to let that illusion remain, for without that false sense of security, the populace would panic. The Northern Wizards do have some power. They have consolidated their hold on the bureaucracy and taken nominal control of the judiciary, which was no small feat, but the rest eludes them.”
“But they have the army,” suggested Kehrsyn.
“Actually, they don’t. Just like a jackal defends her lair even though vipers have killed all her pups, so the army defends Messemprar and northern Unther. They are too busy fighting to meddle in politics, and frankly, they don’t care who pretends to be in power so long as they get their support. So they take what they need, and no one dares stop them, for doing so risks everything we’re fighting over.”
“But who else is fighting?” asked Kehrsyn.
“The Northern Wizards are opposed by groups like Furifax and his band—Gilgeam called them bandits, but they call themselves revolutionaries—our church of Tiamat (all glory to her name), Mulhorandi sympathizers, the Zhentarim—”
“The Zhentarim?” echoed Kehrsyn with alarm.
“They’re a poison in the wine if ever there was. While the rest of us fight at the top, they’re undermining the bottom, turning themselves into the heroes of the rabble and many of the minor noble houses, spreading their lies with free bread, extra constables, ploys like that. It wouldn’t be so bad if they weren’t part of a network that covers most of the continent. The organization is affiliated with the church of Bane, though I’m not clear if the Zhentarim are an arm of the church, or the church is an arm of their network.”
“Oh, boy,” said Kehrsyn. “I can think of a number of things I’d rather have heard than that.”
“I know the feeling,” commented Tiglath, and Kehrsyn didn’t doubt it. “Then there’s the leftover Gilgeamite clergy, two or three so-called royal houses that trace their lineage to Gilgeam’s dalliances, the Hegemony of Artisans, and, rumor has it, a subversive group of slaves that wants to turn the power structure upside down. Those are the people vying for power. The Red Wizards and a few other groups are trying to ingratiate themselves with whoever might come out on top by assisting in whatever manner possible.”
“I think I get the picture,” said Kehrsyn, “and it looks pretty ugly.”
Tiglath chuckled and said, “That’s the thrust of it. At the center of Unther, there is nothing. That cannot last.”
“No wonder you can’t trust anybody.”
“Almost nobody,” Tiglath amended. “The difficulty lies in finding those few who aren’t bent by the proximity of so much unwielded power.”
The dragonet whizzed back down the stairwell, arced once around the room, circled once again around Tiglath, and alighted on the priestess’ shoulder. Once more it thrust its muzzle into her ear, and the speed with which it did so made Kehrsyn cringe. Tiglath hardly appeared to notice.
“It seems our friends were thorough,” said Tiglath, after the dragonet had withdrawn its muzzle and curled up in the cowl around her neck. “There is but one enchanted item left in the building. It lies in Tharrad’s office. Come, let’s see. With luck, it will be the staff of which you spoke.
They walked into the office where, but a watch or so before, Kehrsyn was having a rather enjoyable conversation … even if it was with someone she sought to betray. The once-pristine room had been ransacked. Tables had been overturned, drawers pulled out and their contents scattered, even Tharrad’s chair was slashed and gutted. The dragonet nosed among some of the detritus and indicated what it had found.
Kehrsyn’s heart stopped. There was the coveted wand, broken in two and left behind. Tiglath kneeled, picked up the halves, and looked back over her shoulder at Kehrsyn.
“Is this the item of which you spoke?” she asked.
Kehrsyn could only nod.
Tiglath passed her hand over the object, murmuring an incantation under her breath. After
a few moments, she stood up and held the pieces out to Kehrsyn.
“What magic it had has been shattered and is fading fast,” she said. “I’d say that Tharrad or one of his people broke it rather than let it fall into the hands of … my people.”
Kehrsyn took the pieces and turned them over in her hands, stunned that something that magical could be so readily sundered. She ran her thumb along the smooth surface of the scepter and down the edges of its carvings. She noted with surprise that a hollow tube ran down the center of the wand, empty save for a few motes of alabaster dust from when the item was broken.
“I—I don’t know what to say,” muttered Kehrsyn. She ran one finger around the smooth, hollow interior. “This is a really old item, lost for a long time, and now it’s gone, just like that. I thought this was important to them, important to Unther.”
“Regardless, it was a pointless waste,” murmured Tiglath. She looked at the bodies at the foot of the stair. “A real waste,” she repeated. “I wonder what the cause was?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” asked Kehrsyn. “They knew that the Furifaxians had the staff, and they wanted it. That means they had some kind of inside information about its theft.”
“What?” responded Tiglath. “How would they know about something being stolen from a merchant house, let alone care?”
“Well, Tharrad … you, like, knew him, right? He said that they had allies who had someone on the inside of Wing’s Reach. They had a map, and they knew exactly where the staff was being kept.”
Kehrsyn stopped prattling and looked askance at Tiglath. The priestess looked blankly at Kehrsyn, then it dawned on her, too.
“Are you saying that I have a spy planted in Wing’s Reach? I have no such thing. Why would I give a wedge about a merchant?”
“Because he’s got the Staff of the Necromancer,” observed Kehrsyn.
She started to step away from Tiglath, resting one hand on the hilt of her rapier. Tiglath folded her arms and sank her head on her chest to think.
“That makes a vile sort of sense, you know,” the priestess said, rocking on her heels. “If my people are working behind my back, this is the sort of scheme they might buy in on, but infiltration is not their style—not our style, that is. No, the Staff of the Necromancer is supposed to be quite a potent weapon, and that’s what they’d be in it for. That makes me wonder if Furifax’s people didn’t actually double-cross my people.”
