by Kate Novak
Sudacar grunted. “Remind me to let you pick up the tab next time,” he said with a grin. “Culspiir, I’ll be out for the rest of the day in consultation with Master Giogioni.”
“Of course,” Culspiir said, his eyes not leaving the fishing tackle as the two men hurried through his office and out the door.
On the front steps of the manor, they bundled up their cloaks and pulled up their hoods against the rain, which was still icy but far less violent than it had been at noon. They left the castle walls.
As they trudged down toward the Immer Stream, Sudacar explained, “I never actually had the honor of adventuring with your father. To tell the truth, when I met him at court he was already a legend and I was just an apprentice sell-sword. By that time, Cole had single-handedly vanquished the hydra of Wheloon—walked into the beastie’s lair unarmed and walked out alive an hour later. He was all cut up and bleeding, but, as the saying goes, you should have seen the other guy. His Majesty’s troops went into the lair afterward and found the monster everywhere—diced into pieces.”
Behind the privacy of his hood, Giogi tried without success to picture the quiet, gentle man he remembered from his childhood killing anything, even something as fierce as a hydra. His imagination remained as gray as the soft sleet falling around him.
Sudacar began regaling Giogi with a tale of how Cole had let himself be kidnapped by pirates. By the time the local lord had reached the part where Cole sailed the pirate ship into Suzail’s harbor with all the sea thieves in irons, the local lord and the nobleman had reached the bridge where Giogi had encountered Sudacar the day before. The stream’s water was a little faster and the level a little higher. Patches of ice crusted over the stiller shallows near the banks.
Sudacar wasted no time whipping his line out over the water, but he continued with another story about Cole. This story was set, as Sudacar put it, “in ’aught eight,” when the gnolls came down from the north. Saboteurs had burned the bridge over the Starwater. The purple dragoons might never have marched to the Cormyr border’s defense in time had Cole not managed miraculously—and mysteriously—to repair the bridge overnight with no one to help him but Shar, the master carpenter—who later became Cole’s father-in-law.
Giogi’s gaze remained fixed on Sudacar’s lure as it flew out over the water, slithered downstream and jerked out, over and over again. The noble’s thoughts, though, were occupied with trying to figure out why Sudacar’s tales sounded so familiar. It wasn’t until the older man began a story with Giogi’s mother in it, that the reason came to Giogi in a flash.
In the story, Shar, the master carpenter, had come to Cole begging that he rescue Bette, the carpenter’s daughter. Bette had refused the mad red wizard Yawataht as a suitor, so Yawataht had kidnapped and imprisoned Bette on top of a glass mountain. He left her there to freeze, high above the tree line, up in the clouds. Cole flew up there—though Sudacar could not say how—but he looked so fierce when he arrived that Bette mistook him for one of Yawataht’s minions and smacked him on the head with a hammer.
The name “Yawataht” and the image of a woman striking a man with a hammer finally reminded Giogi why Sudacar’s tales sounded familiar. “Uncle Drone’s told me all these stories,” he said, “but the hero was someone named Callyson, and the woman he rescued on the mountaintop was named Sharabet—”
Sudacar laughed. “Wasn’t your grandmother’s name Cally?” he asked.
Giogi smacked himself on the forehead. “Callyson—Cally’s son! Sharabet—Shar’s Bette! Of course! Aunt Dorath made Uncle Drone swear he wouldn’t tell me my father was an adventurer, but Uncle Drone told me all about my father, anyway—only he disguised the truth as bedtime stories.”
“So, did he tell you how your father used the spur in the stories?” Sudacar asked.
“He—” Giogi hesitated. He racked his brains trying to remember any mention of a magical item in the Callyson stories. “I don’t remember for certain. He told me those stories more than ten years ago. I don’t think so, though.”
“Well,” Sudacar said, “since your father wasn’t a magic-user, it’s probable the spur gave him the power to fly.”
“There’s lots of other magic like that, though,” Giogi pointed out. “Why steal the spur just to fly?”
“It could also have been responsible for Cole’s strength and fighting prowess,” Sudacar suggested. “Killing a hydra is no small feat. Neither is chopping and carting the lumber for a bridge meant to span a river as wide as the Starwater.”
“That’s true,” Giogi agreed. “It might help if I could pin its powers down more exactly, though.”
“Wait a minute,” Sudacar said, stroking his chin. “There is someone you could talk to, someone I know traveled with your father at least once.”
“A rogue or a ruffian?” Giogi asked.
“Pardon?”
“According to Aunt Dorath, my father traveled with rogues and ruffians. Aunt Dorath is a little funny that way—”
“Yes, I’ve always found her amusing,” Sudacar admitted grimly. “The person I was thinking of, though, was Lleddew of Selune.” The instant Sudacar mentioned Selune, the goddess of the moon, he got a strike on his fishing line.
“Mother Lleddew?” Giogi echoed with astonishment. He’d been expecting Sudacar to name one of the adventurers who’d been at the Fish last night. Lleddew was a high priestess and older than Giogi’s Aunt Dorath. The idea of the ancient holy woman tramping about the countryside with Cole was a little hard for the nobleman to accept. “Are you sure?”
Sudacar grinned and nodded as he pulled in his line, playing his catch. “Your family dedicated Spring Hill to Selune, but Lleddew built the temple, the House of the Lady, with the booty from her adventuring days. The trips she made with your father were her last. I’ve heard her call one of them ‘the roofing campaign’—Gotcha!”
Sudacar interrupted his story as he grasped at the gleaming bass on his line and slipped it off his hook. He poked a holding string through its gills, looped the string over a rock, and let the fish drop back in the water to wriggle before suppertime.
Giogi looked upstream toward Spring Hill. Strangers to Immersea often wondered why the Wyvernspurs hadn’t built Redstone Castle on Spring Hill. It was the tallest hill on their land; it had the best view of the surrounding countryside, and a natural spring of sweet water gushed from its peak. The family’s founder, Paton Wyvernspur, had dedicated Spring Hill to the goddess Selune, according to legend, at the request of the goddess herself. None of his descendants was ever so foolish as to try to take it back.
These days, the spring’s water poured from Selune’s temple, tumbled down the hill in a series of enchanting cascades, and ultimately became the Immer Stream. There was a road approaching Spring Hill from the north, which wound up the hill to the temple, but the hike alongside the water was far more interesting. The sun was getting low, but Giogi figured he had just enough time to make the climb and speak to Mother Lleddew before dark.
Sudacar followed Giogi’s gaze and guessed his intentions. “Could be a tricky climb in this weather,” he warned. “Maybe you should take the road instead.”
“It’s so far out of the way to reach the road,” Giogi argued. “Besides, I’ve climbed the stream path often enough as a boy.”
Sudacar shrugged. “I hope you find what you need to know,” he said as he cast his line out again.
“Thanks.” Giogi turned and began striding to the west.
At first, the going was not too difficult. The ground was level, and the muddy banks were frozen enough to hold his weight but rough enough to offer traction for walking. Ahead of him, the westering sun was breaking through the canopy of clouds. The red rays of the last light of day made the crystalline sleet at his feet shimmer like rubies.
Giogi had to slow down once he reached the lowest cascade of water at the base of Spring Hill. The red light had subsided to indigo; the marshy fields ended and thick woods began, and his path begin to
climb a steep slope, over large rocks and boulders slick with ice. Giogi tucked his mittens in his pockets to keep them dry as he scrabbled for handholds to keep his balance.
A third of the way from the top of the hill, the stream crossed the road that wound around the hill to the temple. A simple but sturdy stone bridge spanned the water, high enough to allow someone moving up the stream to walk beneath it.
By the time Giogi reached the bridge, it would have been easier arid safer—and possibly faster—to climb the banks and take the road. Yet the nobleman couldn’t bring himself to abandon his original course, even though he was cold and tired and getting a little hungry. When he was a boy, other children called the cascades Selune’s Stair, and they said that if a person climbed to the top of them, he or she was supposed to get his or her heart’s desire. Of course, one was supposed to climb them in the water by moonlight, but Giogi figured Selune would make allowances considering the season and weather.
A tiny, niggling voice in his head told him he was wasting his time and energy playing silly games. The voice sounded suspiciously like Aunt Dorath, so Giogi ignored it and continued climbing, leaving the road behind.
So far, he’d been pretty impressed with himself. His skill at scrabbling up the slope and leaping from one rock to another had not deteriorated with maturity. He might not have looked quite as agile as a mountain goat, but he felt it—until he reached the final cascade.
The last cascade was larger and steeper than the rest, and at its base was a wide pool. More mist hung in the air, so the rocks were damper there. Giogi leaped between two large boulders in the twilight, hit a slick spot, and went sprawling on a ledge that hung out over the pool.
He was bruised but otherwise unharmed. The niggling Aunt Dorath-like voice inside his head said, “I told you so,” and Giogi began to think he would be lucky if he could reach the top before the light failed and he fell in the drink.
The sky at that moment grew very, very dark. Giogi hesitated. Maybe it’s just a darker than average storm cloud over the setting sun, he hoped. He waited on the ledge for a minute, then another, for light to return. The forest around him remained dark.
Giogi realized he’d miscalculated. The sun had set already, and twilight in the dense woods had been very short. The moon would be full tonight, though, he remembered. It should rise soon, now that the sun has set, he reassured himself.
In the meantime, the nobleman couldn’t help feeling there was something malicious about the darkness. It was filled with rustling and twig-snapping, which he could hear uncomfortably well over the rush of the cascade. Unwilling to wait for Selune’s light, Giogi crawled toward the cascade and began climbing the rocks by feel.
Something scaly brushed against Giogi’s hand, and he pulled it back with a jerk, lost his balance, and tumbled sideways, landing with a splash in the pool of water below.
Giogi surfaced immediately, sputtering water and soaked to the skin. The water was only three feet deep, but that was more than enough to submerge his clodders, and the young noble could feel icy water creeping down his stockings.
A beam of moonlight broke through the clouds in the east, illuminating the pool around him. Giogi stifled a shriek and began to back away. In the hip-high water all around him bobbed the bloated corpses of men.
As he stepped backward, one of the corpses in front of him sprang to life, lunging out of the water at him like a trout striking at a lure. Rows of needle-sharp teeth gnashed inches from his face. Giogi shrieked without inhibition, terrified.
He recognized the creatures from Uncle Drone’s books. They weren’t just corpses, but lacedons, undead monsters that preyed on the flesh of the drowned. Giogi took another step backward, but the lacedons had him surrounded. The nobleman had just enough presence of mind to draw his foil.
A second lacedon breached directly in front of him with its hands raised over its head. Giogi could smell the fetid, mossy scent of the creature’s breath as it brought its decayed face close to his own. Then the monster’s sharp, algae-covered fingernails struck at his forehead. Giogi jabbed his weapon into the creature’s flesh, but the lacedon wriggled itself free and swam off.
The remaining lacedons swam slowly around him, thumping up against his legs, trying to knock him off balance, and occasionally breaking the surface to leer and gnash and slash at his face. They’re playing with their food, Giogi thought, fighting back his nausea.
Blood dripping from his wounded brow obscured his vision in one eye and splashed into the water—spurring the undead into a frenzy. Giogi screamed again and stabbed at the hideous beings, trying to clear a path to the shore. It was hard to lunge into the water accurately, though, and there were too many of them to concentrate on one direction at once, without risking attack in the rear.
One of the lacedons toward the back of the pack reared up and began walking forward, so Giogi had a better view of its scaly body, water-rotted face, and bulging, yellow eyes. Another lacedon adopted an erect stance, and another and another, until all the corpses advanced on him like soldiers.
The noble turned in the frigid water, unable to decide on a direction to run. He caught sight of the glimmering gemstone in the top of his boot. The light of the finder’s stone pulsed in the darkness, even beneath the water.
Giogi drew the finder’s stone out, hoping the light it would cast might frighten off the monsters, or at least hurt their eyes. He tried to recall the bit of rhyme he knew as a child: Vampires fear the morning’s lights, something, something, something, and wights.
The finder’s stone cast a bright beam to the shoreline, but its light had no effect on the undead monsters’ behavior.
The undead began gurgling like the drowned men they were. From the way they raised their claws in unison, Giogi guessed they were making some sort of battle cry. They all leered at him with their fanged mouths. I’m finished, the nobleman thought.
From the top of the cascade behind Giogi came a great roar. Before Giogi’s eyes, the lacedons’ bodies ignited into cool, blue flames. The corpses slumped back into the pool. The water in the stream sparkled with the blue fire still consuming the undead. The pool turned murky with the disintegrated bodies. Then the murkiness washed downstream, and the pool’s water was clear again.
Giogi saw that only two monsters remained in the water with him, both to his left. As the young noble splashed in the direction of the right-hand bank, praying the creatures would be unable to follow him on land, a dark, hulking shape plunged from the top of the cascade, over his head, and into the pool beyond. Giogi threw himself out of the water and landed with a thud on the rocky shore, knocking all the air out of himself.
More splashing and a second roar came from the pool behind him. It took a moment before Giogi could summon the energy to roll over to see what had joined the lacedons in the water.
The headless body of a lacedon floated past the near shore. The second lacedon lay on the opposite bank, pinned beneath the paws of a huge black bear. The monster struggled feebly before the bear ripped it, throat to belly, with a single swipe of its paw.
“Sweet Selune,” Giogioni whispered.
The bear looked up at him when he spoke. Giogi froze. He’d never seen a bear so large in all of Cormyr. The creature’s coat was as dark as the night, except for two silvery gray, crescent-shaped patches, one on its underbelly, the other on its forehead.
The bear stared at the nobleman for a moment with its head tilted to the side. It snuffled, and great clouds of steam rose from the bear’s nostrils. Then it turned and bounded into the darkness of the woods.
Giogi pulled himself up the last cascade and left the dark woods behind him. Atop Spring Hill, a moonlit meadow surrounded the temple. Giogi collapsed on the grass beside the water, shivering and gasping for breath. His head was on fire, but the rest of him was freezing.
In all his years in Immersea, he’d never been attacked by undead. What were lacedons doing in a stream sacred to Selune? Did Mother Lleddew know about them
? Giogi wondered. Is it possible she’s getting too old to defend the hill from evil?
In the east, the sleet-filled clouds began to break up, as if evaporated by the full moon’s light. Moonbeams shimmered across the Wyvernwater, along the Immer Stream, and up Selune’s Stair. The moonbeams continued past Giogi, turning the stream, which meandered through the meadow, into a silver ribbon.
Giogi pulled himself to his feet and followed the stream to the temple, water squelching in his boots with his every step. Silvery, moonlit water flowed from inside the temple and down a channel cut into its steps. Giogi climbed the steps beside the channel and entered the House of the Lady.
The House of the Lady, the temple Mother Lleddew had built to Selune, was really not a house, but an open-air shrine. A circle of white stone pillars rose from the temple’s floor and supported the domed roof. There were no walls. The rising moon’s light shone past the pillars and silvered the spring-fed pool bubbling in the center of the temple.
A slender young girl in an acolyte’s robes sat beside the pool, gazing into the spring’s depths. The ends of her long tresses trailed along the surface of the water. By some trick of the light, her hair appeared as silver as the water, so it seemed that water flowed from her hair into the pool.
Giogi rang the silver bell hanging from one of the pillars beside the water channel.
The girl looked up without surprise. She had dark skin, a lovely smile, and radiant eyes. She was very pretty, but seemed far too young for her calling. She couldn’t have been more than sixteen. “Blessings of the full moon,” she greeted Giogi.
“Blessings of the full moon,” he responded. “I’m looking for Mother Lleddew.”
“Are you sure you’re not looking for your heart’s desire?” the girl asked with a grin.
“What?” Giogi replied with confusion.
“You did just climb Selune’s Stair by the full moon,” the girl pointed out.
“Well, yes, I did,” Giogi admitted. “All I really wanted, though, was to see Mother Lleddew.”
“She’s on a night-stalk,” the girl said. “I’m here to watch over the temple until she returns.”
