Ashemmon smiled and nodded. “True, very true. You’ve my admiration for recognizing when to confront and when to prevaricate. You’ll be a splendid help in teaching Vajra to be more politic. I doubt she’ll listen much to me. Or Khelben. She’s too much like Kyri.”
“This was all a test to see if I could help Vajra?” Laraelra asked.
“We know you can do that. We’ve been watching. We want to know how you might help her in the future. I think you will be a good friend to the Blackstaff.”
Laraelra flinched as she realized the colors of her surroundings had been bleaching away, the blond and scarlet on Ashemmon’s image slowly shifting to greens.
“I don’t know if I’m worthy of such attention,” she said. “Besides, my father would explode if he thought I was to work directly with the city’s oppressors, as he’s always called those in and of power.”
“He’s aware of your talents, is he not?”
“He must be, as I’d inadvertently cast spells on him before I understood what I could do. Most days, I think he chooses to ignore what he knows and operate as if I’m just a tool for him to manipulate for his political games. I don’t know if I deserve to—”
“Poor child.” Ashemmon’s shade became more and more translucent as he spoke, fading almost to invisibility. “Like me, you were so often told your limits—what you could not be—that you fail to see what you can be. I see a future unimaginable for you right now—power and privilege with a price, but honor throughout. You and your friends share a noble goal. Do not despair. Do not abandon that dream. We shall not judge. But we shall be watching.”
By the time Ashemmon’s form became transparent, so too did the Ralnarth manse. Laraelra felt an icy cold draft whipping around her, and she shivered, thinking of her low-necked gown. She hugged herself, and found she was again clad in her heavy wool cloak and her usual beltarma and robes. Her hazy surroundings whipped around with another blast of wind, and where she found herself was as unexpected as her first location inside Blackstaff Tower.
CHAPTER 22
The Art that is true magic cares not a whit for the hands that wield it. It sings in the heart that embraces Art for her own sake, not the sake of power.
Zahyra Ithal, Annals of the First Vizera, Volume XXI,
Year of the Burning River (-159 DR)
11 NIGHTAL, YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)
Unlike her companions, Vajra had been to Blackstaff Tower many times before. She knew to expect the odd architecture, the guardians, and the dissociation when teleporting from one stair to another. She knew she stood in the entry hall of Blackstaff Tower, regardless of how it looked. Free-floating architectural details filled the room, from arches and statues to doors and torches set into walls that were mere patches floating in space. The rest of the air was filled with elements from the royal court at Faerntarn in Tethyr, the lonely hills where Samark died, and her childhood home at Shelshyr House. The most dominant feature here was a set of stone steps spiraling up through the center of it all, and at the foot of them stood Samark.
Vajra’s heart leaped, and she tried to dash forward to where he stood, but he shook his head. “You are not whole, darling Vajra, and you are not Blackstaff. Not yet. We must test you, heal you, and then you can move around the tower.”
Another ghost wisped into existence before Vajra’s eyes—Kyriani Agrivar, a mischievous half-elf spirit of a former Blackstaff. “You and I share two things—we assumed the Blackstaff’s power without proper preparation, and we fight wars in our hearts. Until we settle the latter, the former can never be attained.” With that, Kyriani simply shuffled sideways, lay down catlike on a divan that floated by perpendicular to Vajra’s floor, and drifted off, leaving the young woman alone again.
“We’ll allow you one brief moment to address those with whom you arrived,” Samark said, “and then all will be called to testing, for Blackstaff Tower is no place for the unwary, the unwilling, or the unwise.”
Samark and Kyriani both cast spells, and Vajra saw Osco upside down on a gray stone platform, Meloon standing to her right on a patch of grass, Renaer on her left on a floor near a wooden shelf, and Laraelra alone stood eye to eye with her, though a gap loomed between them. Vajra looked down and saw Vharem’s cocoon far below in a dark tomb alongside a number of other sarcophagi.
Vajra looked up again and locked eyes with Laraelra, a lone tear running down her cheek. She spoke to them all, knowing they could hear her if not clearly see her. “I’m sorry, friends, for what we now must endure. I thought it safe, but the tower seeks to prove us worthy to walk its halls.” She sobbed. “I’m sorry—and may Tymora bless you with good luck.”
Once she finished, her friends faded from view, though the chaotic environment did not. Indeed, it became even more confusing when she saw two more images of herself floating on the platforms with Kyriani and Samark and one closer to her, alone. The closest image was Vajra as a young girl, weaving illusionary fairies in the air. With Kyriani stood a ram-rod stiff figure of Vajra, standing at a bookstand and reading a wizard’s tome. Her other image lay with Samark on a hastily conjured bed of cloud, and the sounds of their shared passions drifted to her ears.
“What do I do?” Vajra asked.
But no one answered her. Kyriani simply stared straight at her, while Samark ignored her in favor of the ardorous image of her. This pained her, as she ached for one more moment with Samark. But this situation held its own message. Vajra fought to remember what she could about Kyriani.
Despite the greenish shades of both Samark and Kyriani, Vajra knew Kyri had purple eyes when she was alive. The half-elf was once one of the tel’teukiira—the Moonstars, as humans called them. Kyriani saw the second Blackstaff—Tsarra Chaadren—and her heir die in battle against a coven of vampire-wizards in the Stump Bog. Kyriani honored her friends by taking up the Blackstaff and risking her own sanity to carry its power back to Waterdeep.
What else? As if Kyri could hear her thoughts, the half-elf’s eyebrows rose and the ghost idly scratched one of her pointed ears. Vajra furrowed her brow in concentration. Kyri was a half-elf, and there lay a clue.
Kyriani Agrivar had been the daughter of a human wizard and a drow. Vajra remembered weeping the first time she read of Kyri’s constant battles to reconcile and merge her warring natures of darkness and light, and how she’d twice been split into separate bodies.
“That’s it!” Vajra exclaimed.
“What is it, dear?” Kyriani asked.
The other Vajra on the platform behind her muttered, “Shush. I must study this.”
“I’ve got to reconcile myself—change my self-image,” Vajra said. “For so long, I’ve seen myself as different things, and they’re all here.” She pointed at the various platforms and images of herself around the room. “I’m a child and a sorcerer, Tamik al Safahr’s youngest girl, and the only one born with magic. I’m the Blackstaff’s heir, and I must study and learn more and more to be worthy of this honor. I’m a woman desperately in love despite the differences between us.”
Kyriani asked, “So why are all those separated?”
“For the same reason you warred within yourself—we get so used to compartmentalizing ourselves and our images of self that we splinter what should be whole.” Vajra wept as she saw the image of her long-dead father pick up her child-self and toss her high in the air. “I was fourteen when my father died defending Darromar from assassins. My sorcerer’s spells weren’t enough to save him, and he and my aunt died for my failures. I had just begun my wizard training with her, and I turned my back on sorcery that day, since it was the wizardry she taught me that helped us save Tethyr’s Queen Cyriana and King Errilam.”
“Ignoring an essential part of you creates holes in you,” Kyriani said.
Vajra nodded, then turned her gaze on Kyriani and the image behind the green shade. “I see myself there as the wizard, the Blackstaff’s heir, the capable student. But never a master. I’ll never learn enough magic and w
izardry to deserve the honor of being the Black staff’s heir.”
“That’s a problem, then.” Kyriani laughed. “Since you’ve got to accept being worthy enough to be the heir and to be the Blackstaff. Who filled your head with this nonsense?”
“I did,” Varja said, casting an embarrassed eye toward the ardor-fueled meeting of Samark and herself. “I came to Waterdeep to learn foreign magic, as is required of any student of Tethyr’s Court Vizera. If we challenge the Tethyr Curse and survive for a winter, we may return and enter her apprenticeship, in hopes of serving the Crown directly. I joined the Watchful Order and expected to return to Tethyr three summers ago, but …”
“Yes?” Kyri pushed her.
“I never thought love could overpower me,” Vajra whispered. “It’s a more demanding magic than any Art I’d known. It drove me to his side, and he fled, thinking it improper. Samark was like me.”
“How so?”
“We were both so afraid at first. We ignored it, and you know how it is when you don’t answer love’s call.”
“Afraid not, dear.” Kyriani giggled. “I never resisted.” She winked, and Vajra found herself both blushing and slightly jealous of the woman.
Vajra fell silent, searching her head and heart for the key to reconcile these fragments of herself. Samark’s ghost winked out from the divan where he and her other self lay. He reappeared before her, his robes and composure restored. He reached out, and his cold touch ruffled the short hair on the nape of her neck. “Still questioning, my heart?” he asked.
She looked into his green eyes, remembering them as the sea green they were during his life, and she wept.
“I regret what happened to you in our name, love,” he said.
Vajra’s head snapped up at his words and she gasped. “No, you don’t.”
Samark and Kyriani suddenly floated free of any platforms, and all of them began to shift around the chamber.
Vajra kept her eyes on Samark and spoke with confidence. “You said it after we finally admitted our love. ‘Only regret what is left undone, what is left unsaid. Regretting what has happened that cannot be changed is wasted energy.’ Stop questioning and just accept—that was my test.” As she spoke, she relaxed. Taking a deep breath and wiping away the tears on her cheeks, Vajra chuckled. “The answer’s been so simple and in front of me so long.” She concentrated, snapped her fingers, and a Blackstaff shod with silver on both ends appeared in her hands. “Even the heir can summon a simple Blackstaff.”
Vajra looked over the room and saw all the sides of herself drifting near and far. She resolved to change that.
“I’m ready now.” She closed her eyes, resting her forehead on the staff, and whispered. “I am Vajra, daughter of Tamik al Tamik el Safahr, paladin proud, and Parama yr Manshaka, mother beloved. I accept the gifts with which I was born, the Art in my blood as sorcerer. I am Vajra, apprentice to Mynda and the Princess Zandra, the Court Vizeras of my homeland, and I am worthy of their praise and teachings. I am Vajra, heir and lover of the Blackstaff Samark Dhanzscul, and our love and our magic completed me. I am Vajra, I am worthy, and I am unified.”
Vajra opened her eyes to find her other images missing and the entry chamber gone. She now stood in the private library of the Blackstaff, though she focused little on the books surrounding her. She looked upon the true Blackstaff, no longer hidden in its smoked-glass cabinet but floating free before the massive fireplace. The true Blackstaff was a massive entity of rune-inscribed dusk-wood, made black by years of use, melded with veins of silver metal rune-carved. Atop the staff was a large axe head in the shape of a snarling wolf’s head, its eyes aglow with green magic.
Drawn on the flagstones beneath the true Blackstaff were six circles, all aglow with runes and magic. Each circle held the silvery wizard mark or sigil of each Blackstaff before her, and each of them hovered above their marks, staring at her. Vajra had met all but the last and eldest in her three years at Blackstaff Tower, but the first Blackstaff usually only manifested by locking doors or appearing as forbidding eyes whenever she sought to explore more of the tower than he thought wise. Today, she faced every spirit of the tower. She quailed inside, but breathed deep and steadied herself. She would face these spirits in chronological order, from the most recent at the outer circle to the oldest Blackstaff at the center.
Khelben spoke, his bass voice thundering. “When the Blackstaff was forged, it was made by the will of my father, myself, and our goddess. Since that time, the assumption of the true Blackstaff has gained its rituals. Step forward, make your claims, and be the Blackstaff, if you so dare.”
“By what right do you claim the Blackstaff?” asked Samark, his kindly smile muted for the seriousness of the ritual.
“I claim it by responsibility, for no one stands as the Blackstaff, and Waterdeep needs one to stand for Art, for order, and for good.”
With her answer, the shade gestured, and the outermost circle around the staff disappeared, allowing Vajra to step closer to it.
“By what right do you claim the Blackstaff?” asked the shade of Ashemmon.
“I claim it by inheritance, for I am the last heir.”
“No, child, you are not. Another has been recruited.”
Vajra stopped, the litany in her head disrupted. She stared at Ashemmon’s shade in disbelief, then searched her memory. She nodded and smiled. “It’s Eiruk, isn’t it? Even with Khelben possessing me, we all felt it when he touched us—Khelben’s mark is on him.”
“Aye, lass, good deduction. He may be your heir, should you choose, though he himself is yet unaware of his potential and his gift.”
Vajra hesitated, then said, “He is a good friend, but his feelings run deeper for me than mine do for him. Until I can face that more evenly”—Vajra cast her eyes back at Samark’s ghost—“let us leave Eiruk in peace. The Blackstaff needs less passion and more thought at present.”
Ashemmon’s shade began again. “By what right do you claim the Blackstaff?”
“The Blackstaff before me bound me to this power, this tower, and this time and place.”
Again, the ghost gestured and the circle barring her from moving closer disappeared.
“By what right do you claim the Blackstaff?” said the image of Krehlan.
“I claim it by power, having been born of Art with sorcery in my veins.”
Another circle gone.
“By what right do you claim the Blackstaff?” said Kyriani’s spirit.
“I claim it by knowledge, having learned of magic at the feet of the Grand Wizard of Tethyr’s Crown, the Court Vizera and my aunt, Mynda Gyrfalcon-Thann.”
Kyri winked at her as she skipped around the circle, the magical barrier dissipating with each playful step.
“By what right do you claim the Blackstaff?” asked the ghost of Tsarra Chaadren.
“I claim it by love, having earned the trust and heart of Samark, the Blackstaff before me.”
“By what right do you claim the Blackstaff?” came the stern question from Khelben, the greatest and oldest of the Blackstaffs.
“I claim it by pain, having endured much in its service, having lost friends and lover.”
Khelben smiled grimly. “Girl, you have not yet known hurt or loss.”
With that forbidding omen, Khelben swept his hand around, and the final barrier between Vajra and the true Blackstaff was gone. Vajra was sure she heard the wolf’s head on the staff snarl a warning at her, but her heart pounded in her ears now.
All six of the Blackstaff spirits hovered near, creating a new circle around Vajra and the staff. They joined hands to seal the circle behind her. When they all linked, the floor pulsed with silver and green energy, filling the room with light.
Taking a deep breath, Vajra said, “I, Vajra Safahr, take up this burden willingly, humbly, and with all I was, am, and ever will be.”
Her right hand closed about the metal-and-wood amalgam. It felt warm and inviting. The only sensation she felt was a centering, a
grounding, as much of her tension slipped down through her body and into the stones beneath her. She shuddered as she expected some explosion of power when she touched it, but she felt nothing new other than a reduced pressure in her head.
She looked at Samark and Khelben, who stood together, surprised. Samark’s shade said, “Darling, you’ve been carrying the full power and knowledge of the Blackstaffs within you for months. It came to you when I died, as it does to the Blackstaff’s heir. Alas, since you didn’t come to the tower and touch this staff to ground that power, it wreaked havoc with your mind. For that, I’m so sorry. Our spirits remain here in these stones, available for counsel and help, but never to walk the city again.”
“You mean I was as powerful as any of you all the time I was Ten-Rings’s captive?” Vajra felt her temper rise, but let it go when Kyriani raised her hands before her.
“No, dear heart. You carried fragments of our spirits, pieces of our knowledge, and only some wisps of power—enough to let us send you aid to keep you alive.”
“I don’t understand.”
Krehlan stepped forward and said, “Woman, when the Grand Mages of Rhymanthiin and I dissipated the kiira n’vaelhar that held the spirits of my father, Tsarra, and Kyriani, we bonded its magic to this tower and its sister in the Hidden City. When someone takes on the mantle of the Blackstaff or its heir, a template of their spirit, their intellect, their knowledge, becomes part of the Blackstaff and its place of power. What you had to endure was all that knowledge without sorting or grounding it properly in ritual. While Ashemmon and Samark assumed their power easily inside the tower, you had neither the benefit of a Blackstaff in hand to hold some of the power nor the tower itself to ground it. You held all our spirits and knowledge, but our collective lifetimes and awareness overwhelmed yours.”
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