Forgoing the gangplank, I vaulted over the rail as soon as the ship pulled into port, landing lightly on the worn wood of the pier and wavering slightly at the sudden stability. Though my gut told me I was already too late, I hadn't come this far just to give up the chase within sight of my goal.
From the docks I cut through the throngs of travelers and workmen and set out northwest toward the Foreign Quarter, disdaining the main thoroughfares with their close-packed carts and stalls in favor of less-populated alleys and half-remembered shortcuts. Despite new construction and misremembered turns, I still made faster progress than I would have trying to fight my way through those clotted avenues that make up Absalom's primary arteries. At last, one of my alleys broke out onto a wide cobblestone plaza, the thick press of shops clearing away and allowing in a swath of blue, cloudless southern sky. And below it, the shining walls of the Grand Lodge, eternal seat of the Pathfinder Society.
Beneath a stone arch prominently displaying the Glyph of the Open Road, twin gates stood open and guarded by armored young men with halberds—probably initiate Pathfinders. Though most of the traffic through the plaza continued past the massive complex without slowing, a steady trickle of men and women entered and exited through the gates. Hitching up my bag, I moved forward through the press and joined them.
"Greetings," the guardsman said when it was my turn. "Name?"
"Eando Kline, Pathfinder."
"The Grand Lodge welcomes you, brother." The guard stuck out his arm politely, and we clasped wrists. "May you find what you seek, and your stories be told." Taking a bit of ribbon, he bound my sword to my sheath.
"Thank you," I said, but he was already turning to the next man in line. Self-consciously tugging at the hilt of my sword, I moved on into the picturesque gardens and walkways of the compound.
The bit of ribbon would snap with ease, of course, but that wasn't the point. It had been a long time since I'd had any of my weapons peace-bonded. I wasn't sure I liked it.
Inside the walls, the Grand Lodge rolled out before me in all its elegance. Dead ahead rose the five-towered palace of Skyreach, a spired fortress of white stone high enough to be visible from miles away. Beyond it, six smaller fortresses of varying architectural styles studded the manicured groves and pristine squares, connected via white-paved paths big enough for a cart. To the east and west sat numerous conventional buildings of wood and brick: dormitories for visiting Pathfinders, workshops, smithies, and all the other necessities that kept the lodge running. And of course, farthest from the gate and sheltered by the towering walls, the doorless lump of the Repository squatted, its walls housing the sixty-six tongueless and enchanted criminals who transcribe chosen reports to create each volume of the Chronicles.
Like most of those entering, I proceeded directly to the front gates of Skyreach, passing up its marble steps and into the vast hallways. Strange that after all this time it should still feel so familiar. Doors and stairways to either side led off to sections that I had never been invited to see. In truth, I doubted if there were any outside of the Decemvirate who had been in every room of the Grand Lodge. Exploration, as initiates young and old had whipped into them early on in their training, was something best left for outside the lodge.
Yet those places I've been I remember well, and soon I turned a corner and entered the carpeted expanse of the Den, one of the many combination lounges and libraries where Pathfinders meet to drink, study, and mingle with their compatriots. As a young man I had spent hours here, attaching myself to grizzled adventurers for as long as they would continue talking, soaking up every fact and half-truth from their journeys. Just as I remembered, the room was half-full of Pathfinders relaxing in knots of quiet conversation centered on tables and couches. Yet I had eyes for only one.
"Belzig."
My voice was over-loud, and several heads turned toward me. I ignored them and stalked across the room toward where the oily-haired fop stood drinking wine with a number of companions. He smiled and gestured with his glass, his cohorts making way for me.
"Ah, Eando!" he cried, full of genuine good humor. "I wondered how far behind me you were. Apparently only a few hours. Delightful!"
I said nothing, only tightened my grip on my sword. Belzig glanced down at it pointedly and smiled wider.
"Tough journey, eh? I can't say I'm surprised—I had a devil of a time myself. I was just telling my friends here about my near-conversion in Razmiran." He waved to indicate the others, two men and a woman.
"Garud, Eryk, Chlora—allow me to introduce you to Eando Kline. He and I go back a long way, and ran into each other several times during the course of my most recent discovery—but then, you'll read all about that once it's published." The group murmured polite greetings.
Durvin Gest, the most famous Pathfinder.
"Your discovery?" With all my strength I managed to unwrap my fingers from my sword.
"But of course! I'm happy to say that my latest gamble has paid off handsomely—I've been invited to present it to the Decemvirate itself shortly. Needless to say, I'm honored." He tipped his glass toward me. "And you? I know your last effort met with poor results, but didn't you have another in mind? Something about being a scribe for the orc lord in Urgir?"
It was time for me to leave—had been, since the moment I entered. Ignoring the curious stares of our audience, I turned and left without saying a word.
The next few hours passed in a blur, and darkness found me sitting alone on a bed in a private room in the East Dormitory, fiddling with a dagger and unable to make myself light a candle or put pen to paper. Somehow, recording my every thought didn't seem quite so important just then. Finally, long after the rest of the building had quieted down, I judged it dark enough and repacked everything except my dagger. That I slipped into my belt, then threw open the window. Outside, night had muffled the city's bustle. Thankful that this side of the dormitory was away from the lantern-lit walkways, I slipped out the window and found a grip on the overhanging eaves.
The information I needed had been laughably easy to obtain—just wait for a change of staff, then pretend to have drunkenly forgotten which room I was in. All that was left now was the silent shimmy along the side of the building, pressing myself tight against the weathered brick. Booted toes sought purchase in the mortared spaces and found it, barely. Fingers locked into claws drew me sideways across the face of the building, trying not to acknowledge the ground three stories below, until I came to the darkened window I wanted. To my surprise, it was cracked open. Crouched on the sill, I slowly lifted the sash, then pulled myself inside.
The room was completely dark, lit only by the window behind me. On the far side, against the wall, the modest bed held a familiar shape, its breathing slow and deep. I stood motionless, listening, until I was sure that he was asleep. Then I moved quickly forward and drew my dagger.
I wish I could say that my hand wavered, that I found myself choking on the idea of murdering a man in cold blood while he slept. But I can't. The dagger rose.
"I wouldn't do that."
I jumped. Eyes still closed, Belzig smirked.
"Really, Eando, did you think I'd make it that easy? Just kill me and all your problems will go away?" His eyes opened and he sat up, shoving my knife away.
"At this moment, my notes are in vaults belonging to the Decemvirate, along with a letter stating that if anything happens to me, it is undoubtedly the work of Eando Kline, a failed Pathfinder driven mad by jealousy." He pulled open his shirt to reveal a hairy chest. "So go for it, Eando. Take your shot. You'll be a wanted man, disgraced to the only organization that cares about you, and the knowledge you so desperately want to cover up will get published anyway."
"You're forgetting one thing," I said.
"What?"
"It would feel really good."
I met his eyes and held them. If I take an
y pride in that memory, it's that, for just one moment, his smile faltered. For a single second, he feared he'd misjudged me, and that now he was alone and unarmed in a room with a lunatic.
Then his composure returned. "Get out of my room, Kline."
I left through the front door.
Dawn came, and I watched it rise from the high stone pediment of a statue. I was more than a little hung over. Flat on my back, I peered up from between the legs of Durvin Gest, greatest of the Pathfinders. Only the servants were up and about at this hour, preparing meals and maintaining the dew-lined hedges and trees. Several passed by and regarded me with quiet disgust. I agreed with them. Above me, Durvin met the new day with the quiet, self-satisfied confidence I'd worn so frequently myself. I put my arm over my eyes to protect them from the burgeoning light and let the cool stone leach the heat from my body.
"Well, isn't this a fine portrait of a Pathfinder."
The woman staring up at me from the foot of the pedestal was roughly my age, with straight black hair and no-nonsense traveling clothes draped over a body built for speed. The delicate nose was slightly raised, giving her a pugnacious look. Her arms were crossed.
"Shevala."
"Gods, it is you." My venture-captain practically spit. "What the hell happened?"
My addled brain struggled to answer, but nothing I could come up with seemed sufficient, and instead I lay there on my stomach, peering over the edge at her.
She sighed. "Come on, then," she said, climbing up on one of the stone angels ringing the statue's base and getting a grip on my shirt. "Let's get you out of here." She heaved, and I was barely able to get my feet below me before I hit the ground.
Some time later we sat in a dingy bistro, thick stew and over-salted bread stealing the wine's fog from my brain.
"So," she said when I had finished scraping the bowl with my crusts. "Talk."
I talked. With Belzig's information already in the Decemvirate's hands, secrecy didn't matter anymore, and in any case I had been alone too long. I poured out my story in every miserable detail, from the moment she'd dispatched me to retrieve Dakar's ioun stone in Kaer Maga to my frantic race with Belzig across Avistan. I told her of the serpent city, my fears of what would happen once its location were released. Of my aborted attempts at murder to keep it hidden. Most of all I told her of the people I'd left to die, friend and foe alike—all in the name of the Pathfinders.
"Sounds like you did what you had to," she said noncommittally.
"But for what? To become famous? To get my godsdamned journal published?" My hands shook. "Here I've come up with the greatest discovery of the age, and I wish I'd never left Magnimar. I've done things—become things—I never wanted, all to find out what waited at the end of the road. And this is it." I gestured at the empty bowl.
"There's still time to submit your journal to the Decemvirate. It'll be your word against Belzig's, and your version undoubtedly holds up better."
"That's not the point anymore." I gestured wildly. "I don't want any of it published. And that's just it: I've spent the better part of my life devoted to the idea that information—all of it—should be free. That by unveiling the hidden, we're bettering the world. And now I know that we're not." I ran a hand through my greasy hair and clenched, tugging hard on it.
"And if I don't believe that anymore, then—who am I?"
Shevala reached over and pulled my hand from my hair, a surprisingly intimate gesture.
"Look, Kline," she said, voice soft. "Even Durvin Gest didn't give up all his secrets to the Society. Only fools like Belzig think that's all there is. I trained you better than that."
She stood up abruptly and threw down a few coins for my meal, suddenly all business again. "So clean up, quit feeling sorry for yourself, and get ready."
"Ready for what?" I asked, but she had disappeared out the door.
That afternoon I received my summons from the Decemvirate.
The Hall of Inquiry was every bit as intimidating as it sounded. For the first time in my life, one of the quiet servitors in Skyreach led me past the Den, past the Great Hall used for rare assemblies and lectures, and up the many staircases of one of the great towers. Most of the corridors were deserted, and those few Pathfinders or servants we passed moved quickly and confidently past doors which varied wildly, from elaborate portals covered in glyphs to iron-banded slabs more appropriate for a bank vault—or a prison. At last we passed through an ornate archway and into the hall itself, an imposing chamber taking up most of the tower's crown.
Belzig was already there, standing casually with hands folded behind his back. He inclined his head in a mocking salute. Before him rose a high stone dais that took up half the chamber, its shape a horseshoe opening toward us. No banners or tapestries adorned the walls—other than the dais itself, there was no furniture in the room whatsoever. Just the bare stone floors, the high-arched ceiling with its scrollwork buttresses, and tall windows that flared with light.
The servant directed me to the middle of the room, a spot roughly even with Belzig, then stepped back to join another beside the entrance. As he moved, I caught the flash of a blade up one voluminous sleeve. The Decemvirate took no chances.
"Nice of you to attend my ceremony," Belzig said.
My reply was short and anatomically improbable.
Before things could go any further, the deep tolling of a bell close by sent both of the servants snapping to attention. At the far end of the room, a door opened and ten figures moved through in a solemn line, taking up positions behind the dais, whose purpose I now understood. From a platform behind the long podium they loomed over us, staring down like gods prepared to pass judgment.
And they were impressive. Male and female, young and old, their identities were obscured completely by the elaborate masks they wore, each as unique as the many architectural styles of the Grand Lodge. One man wore a domino mask of pure black studded with glowing crystal tears, others more intricate affairs that terminated in the horns of stags or rams. One bore a strange whorled black mesh that wrapped his entire head like a tangle of briars, and another had no eyeholes at all. Of the women, one's face was screened by magically flowing water, and another bore spreading branches like a winter snag. In the center, a figure whose gender I couldn't determine was dressed entirely in white, its face obscured by a featureless veil. Some wore the practical clothing of warriors or travelers, others robes and dresses to shame the courts of Taldor. All watched us with level, impassive stares.
"The Decemvirate recognizes Arnois Belzig and Eando Kline, Pathfinders." It was the woman masked by the branching spikes. "We have already reviewed Belzig's writings, and have found his discovery of the serpent city more than worthy of publication in the Chronicles. Yet it has come to our attention that you, Kline, were also involved in the discovery, and have different information."
"You may state your version of the events."
I wonder if even the Decemvirate's members know each other's identities?
I did so, starting with my assignment in Magnimar and holding nothing back. As with Shevala, the simple act of revealing the information caused a weight that I hadn't known I was carrying to lift from my shoulders, my body growing lighter and straighter as I confessed every act, noble or otherwise, before this blank-faced council. When finally I finished, Belzig twitching impatiently at my side, I was flying. For better or worse, I had fulfilled my mission.
There was a long pause as the Decemvirate digested my story, then the man whose mask resembled a horned ram's skull spoke.
"Your account is impressive, Kline. Yet it is imperative that we confer further before any decisions are made." He turned toward his companions and waved one hand negligently.
All sound in the room vanished. Not even my own breathing registered, my bones refusing to conduct vibrations. Next to me, Belzig's stricken expressi
on showed that he hadn't been spared. Before us, the council conversed freely, their lips moving in no language that I recognized.
It made sense—why bother to sequester themselves before issuing their verdict, when they could simply deafen their audience? I was impressed by the casual display of power, if not necessarily their regard for their fellow Pathfinders.
Finally the spell lifted, the tiny sounds of the room rushing back in a thunderclap, and the council sat stoically observing us. Once more, the woman with the branching headdress addressed us.
"The council has heard your words, Kline, and read those that Belzig has presented, and found them to be of equal merit. While we find your constant conflict at odds with the Pathfinders' code, the lack of permanent harm has convinced us to overlook your behavior. As such, if you desire it, both of your findings shall be published concurrently." Belzig's smile was small and forced, but he bowed his head in acknowledgment.
I didn't. "While I'm honored, lords, I think you've missed the point."
None of the Decemvirate shifted, yet the ensuing silence spoke volumes. I pressed on.
"With all due respect, I'm not sure anyone who hasn't been in the city can appreciate what we've uncovered here. These beings are incredibly powerful. I know—I've felt one of them inside my brain, felt the ease with which it controlled me completely. Only by sheerest luck was I able to break out of its power, and that was just one of them."
"Your graces, they want us to come down there. They've been waiting for thousands of years for us to mature to the point where we're strong enough to be decent servants. If word gets out about the city, we won't be able to stop the treasure-hunters, or even our own scholars, from flocking to it. And once this genie is released, we won't be able to bottle it again.
"Let this discovery pass us by. Record it and relegate it to the darkest part of the Vaults, some unused corner of the Repository. Just don't let it leave this lodge."
The Compass Stone: The Collected Journals of Eando Kline Page 24
