Sandstorm: A Forgotten Realms Novel

by Christopher Rowe

  The WeavePasha took a clay vial from a rack, removed its cork stopper, and peered at the contents. A doubtful expression crossed his features before he shrugged and turned the vial upside down over Corvus’s leg. Yellow steam boiled from the wound, and Corvus would have fallen from the table as he convulsed had Shan not rushed to hold him.

  “Whatever poison was borne in the mud and garbage of the alley has sickened you well enough. That tincture will boil it out of your blood, though.”

  Corvus snapped his beak open and closed several times. “The choice was between possible infection and certain blood loss. I judged that Shan would find her way over the wall in time to deal with the first, but not the second. And as I was blinded by the djinni’s spells, I could not see what I was using to staunch the flow.”

  The WeavePasha frowned. “Yes, that’s the most troubling aspect of this business. He spoke the truth about only being present by semblance. If a magician of his power had appeared in Almraiven, I would not have been the only one to sense it. As I should have sensed his spellwork this close to the palace. The djinni is digging deep in his stores of knowledge and making use of ancient items of power. He has to be. The question is why. If they’ve discovered my plans for Cephas, there was no need for such a display.”

  Shan passed her dancing fingers before Corvus’s eyes. “Your Grace,” he said, “Shan asks about the vizar’s threat concerning a goliath and a halfling.”

  The WeavePasha waved dismissively. “I would know if any dislocative sorceries were attempted against my defenses. Be at ease, adept. My wards are not so easily defeated coming in as you found them to be going out.”

  If Shan was embarrassed by the WeavePasha’s chiding, she did not show it in her expression, which remained worried despite his assurances.

  Corvus sat up on the table, steadied himself, then hopped down to the stone floor. He bent his right leg a bit farther than his left on landing, but there was no other sign of his recent wound. “Still, perhaps it would be best if we check on our friends. It seems that we will be in Almraiven longer than we had intended, now that you must abandon your plans for Cephas.”

  The WeavePasha narrowed his eyes. “I have no such intention. The windsouled woman has just now finished the task I chose her for, and through a means I had not anticipated.” He smiled. “Remarkable woman.”

  “I wondered what her role was in your game,” said Corvus. “But even so, Shahrokh is aware of the gambit. It makes no difference that Cephas has gained a Second Soul that will see him welcomed by his father. You cannot hide a death spell in him, because the djinn know it will be there.”

  Shan stood very quietly, watching each man in turn.

  “The djinn will look for it,” the WeavePasha said. “They will not find it, and their pride will allow them to announce the return of Marod yn Marod and parade him before the windsouled nobility of Calimport. The plan—which you devised, I will remind you—remains sound. I will enact the ritual tonight.”

  Corvus shook his head. “You know I bow to no one in my respect for you and your abilities. But I fear that it is you who are blinded by pride, not the djinn. Your powers are legend, but as you yourself said, Shahrokh is expending enormous magical capital. What if they detect your sorceries inside Cephas?”

  The WeavePasha waved aside the protest. “That was always an acceptable risk.”

  Corvus eyed the wizard up and down. “You remain true to yourself, old friend,” he said eventually. “My first judgment of you stands. You will do anything for this city.”

  The old man looked sharply at the assassin. “And my first judgment of you stands. You are here, and alive. The genasi is below, expressing his mother’s shameful secret no more, and alive. These things are true, Corvus, because you will do anything at all.”

  “Enough,” whispered Mattias.

  Trill understood his tone better than his words, as always. She ceased the prattling and complaining she’d voiced as they ambled along the path. She stretched her neck out long and low, balancing it with the lashing spike of her tail. She held her wings close, unlike a wyvern in the wild when faced with fight or flight. Mattias was on the ground, and she would take no action without first seeing him safe on her back.

  The ranger saw the silver glint from three hundred paces away. Alone, he would have made a cautious approach, secreting himself in the trees and stealing closer, silent as a ghost. Trill’s presence precluded stealth, though it presented other advantages.

  One hundred paces away, Trill’s nostrils flared and she fluttered her vestigial lips. “Yes,” he said. “Fire magic, but coupled with air. Anything is possible here, girl, but el Jhotos usually confines such experimental dabbling to his workrooms.”

  Fifty paces from the reflection, Mattias saw what the afternoon sunlight sparkled on. Trill sensed his alarm and surged forward, the keen of a clutching wyvern separated from her fledglings rising in her throat.

  “Wait!” he told her. “Stand watch. I must glean what I can from the ground here before we hunt.”

  Trill answered with a quizzical chirp.

  “Oh, yes,” he said, already calculating how long it would take him to find the others. Already he was wondering if he had seen the last of Corvus Nightfeather, or if the kenku would be at his side when he shook the dust of these gardens from his boots.

  “Oh, yes,” he assured her. “We will hunt.”

  In a way, the WeavePasha was glad to learn he could still be surprised. Whatever signal passed between the kenku and the halfling, he saw no sign of it. He only saw the woman raise her hands, and his first thought was that the control the Arvoreeni adepts were said to hold over their own bodies must be even greater than was rumored, because while no magic flared in the chamber, her closed fists sprouted a forest of silver talons.

  Ah, darts, of course, he thought, as she flicked her wrists. Missiles flew in every direction. The woman even had the temerity to launch one at him, though he sent that one flying wide with a thought. Many of the others, however, found targets.

  She had to have chosen at random. He himself did not know the contents of all the bottles and jars on the cluttered workroom tables, and had cataloged only the smallest fraction of the artifacts brought to him from around the world. And as mirrors crashed and vials exploded, his concern was not great. A conflagration born of the untidy release of many disparate magics was a heartbeat away, but there were contingencies for such mixed into the mortar of the room’s walls, and his personal protections could stand against a god.

  The woman was not intent on testing those. She drew a short sword that came near to dazzling the WeavePasha’s magic-sensitive vision, matched the draw with a parrying blade in her left hand, and leaped—not at him, but at Corvus.

  The kenku’s unreadable black eyes, the WeavePasha found, had not shifted their gaze from his own when the halfling launched her insane attack. The only movement the assassin made was a light cock of his head, as if puzzling over something. Then he was lost in the shadows that swirled around him, and the charging woman became lost in them as well, as they both faded from view.

  A vast explosion wracked the chamber. The WeavePasha felt the warp of reality buckle, and he cursed. He would have to take a moment to see that the mystic energies boiling around him did not entice some otherworldly threat to descend on the city, which bought the kenku a little time.

  Summoning his power, the WeavePasha wondered at the kenku’s luck in managing this distraction. Then he chuckled, remembering that Corvus Nightfeather never relied on luck.

  “Contingencies, indeed,” he said, and went to his weaving.

  As they made their way back to the tents, Cephas imagined that nothing would ever make him let go of Ariella’s hand, even though the clasp of their intertwined fingers was light. As it turned out, all it took was the strike of a wyvern, diving at speed from on high.

  Trill closed her great claws around the windsouled pair, barely slowing before she beat on, gaining altitude and wheeling t
oward the fountain, which Cephas could see below. The impact of Trill’s gathering them up had knocked the breath from his lungs, but as soon as he could speak, he said, “Are you all right?”

  Ariella nodded, dazed by the sudden, unexpected flight.

  In his new body, Cephas was still heavily muscled, but not as broad of shoulder and hip as when he was earthsouled. He learned this when they dressed in the glade, and Ariella laughed at his baggy shirt and how he held his trousers up with a gather of cloth in one fist. Cephas made short work of adjusting the straps of the patchwork scale armor in his satchels, and was glad he wore it since Trill took less care with her grip of him than she did with Ariella. In fact, the wyvern seemed troubled by him.

  They lurched to one side as Trill performed a wingover roll and ducked her snakelike neck down and in so that her enormous face studied Cephas briefly before she had to straighten to maintain their flight. In that instant, her tongue darted out and its tip struck Cephas full in the face, as solid as a blow from a quarterstaff. His head snapped back.

  “Ah!” he cried, and would have brought his hands up to wipe the wyvern’s stinging spittle from his face, except his arms were pinned by her grip. “Why did she do that?”

  “She’s confused by your new appearance!” called Ariella. “You are you but not you, so she had to check!”

  “I hope none of the others use the same technique!” he said as Trill dropped them a few arm spans above the courtyard. Matching Ariella, Cephas found the wind in himself and floated down to the ground.

  Their smiles died when they saw Mattias, coolly holding an arrow nocked and ready, his canes twisted into their form of a curving greatbow. The old ranger narrowed his eyes on seeing Cephas, but other than that, his only reaction was to say, “Of course. The elite of Calimport are windsouled, so Corvus and el Jhotos must have a windsouled.”

  Before anything else could be said, a swirl of shadows twisted out of nowhere by the fountain, and Shan came rolling out. Like Mattias, she was fully armed and armored, blades bared like her teeth, casting about for an enemy. When she did not recognize Cephas, she charged, rejecting the twin’s usual flourished rolls and spins in favor of a full-on sprint, blades extended.

  “No!” The cry came from two directions, Ariella at his side drawing her sword and Corvus behind Shan, holding out one hand.

  “Shan, it’s me!” Cephas said. “It’s Cephas.” His tone was gentle, which sounded odd to his own ears. Ariella had told him that the changes in his body and abilities would be mirrored by changes in his mood and feelings.

  Shan skidded to a stop, forgot his presence, and ran for the tent she shared with her sister the previous night. She stopped when Mattias called after her.

  “She’s gone, Shan. So is Tobin.”

  The kenku gestured for Cephas, Ariella, and Shan to approach. When they all stood together, he said, “I was attacked by a djinni skylord of Calimport. I know him to be the vizar to the pasha of games there, the man the WeavePasha believes is Cephas’s father. The djinni threatened to capture a halfling and a goliath from among my companions.”

  “He’s done so,” said Mattias. “The firesouled Cabalists were his agents. They used magic far beyond what they should be able to wield, some combination of fire and air I have never seen. Cynda fought, but she and Tobin were taken. Where, I cannot say. The firesouled left by sorcery. El Jhotos had to have known they brought powerful items with them onto these grounds, Corvus.”

  The kenku shook his head. “I don’t think so. Or if he did, I think their nature was disguised. Appearances deceive, functions change.” He looked at Cephas, taking in his silver skin and the short strings of crystal that served as hair where he was smooth-pated before.

  “But it makes no difference,” he added. “The WeavePasha is no longer our ally and seeks to prevent us from mounting a rescue. Cephas, I have placed your life in danger, and I will offer explanations and apologies soon. For now, we have only enough time to attempt escape, and you must accept that as amends.”

  Cephas did not know what to make of this swift change of circumstances, but something inside him welcomed it. He looked to Ariella, who gave him a curt nod.

  “I can get out of the city on my own,” Corvus said. “Old man, can you and Trill win past whatever the WeavePasha sends against you?”

  Mattias did not hesitate. “Yes. Shan can ride behind me. And Trill can carry Cephas and Ariella, at least for a time. That is, if the lady is accompanying us.”

  “Even if I did not have other reasons,” Ariella said, “it is my duty to track down Lavacre and Flamburnt. If they acted at the direction of a Calimien djinni, as you say, then they acted for the enemies of my queen and stewards. The swordmages of Akanûl are trained to deal with traitors.”

  A long blast sounded from a brass horn atop one of the minarets of the palace. A hum rose in the air, and the tiny crystals in Cephas’s hair caught a vibration that churned his stomach.

  “The WeavePasha comes!” said Corvus. “Mattias! The petrified delta of the Quag!” Shadows boiled around the kenku.

  “He will know we flee in that direction!” shouted Mattias.

  Corvus said, “But he dare not follow there,” and disappeared.

  Mattias cursed and signaled Trill to lower her head. “But of course we dare go there. Shan! Where are you?”

  The halfling came running from Ariella’s tent, a bundle strapped to her back.

  Cephas kept a wary eye on Trill’s launch and approach after Shan leaped up behind Mattias, aiming to have some influence over where her claws closed around him this time. “I guess Shan thinks you’ll want your armor!” he called to Ariella as they were caught up again.

  “I’m beginning to wonder if I should ever take it off around you!” she shouted, and then, despite the circumstances, when she saw his crestfallen expression, she laughed.

  Many hours later, bells rang three times in the WeavePasha’s darkened inner chamber, indicating that his high vizar sought permission to enter.

  He waved a hand and the woman, eldest of his grandchildren, materialized before him. She looked exhausted, and her boots and cloak were coated with dust. Before she spoke, he pointed at the decanter and crystal goblets on a nearby rosewood table. The vizar’s thanks were in her sigh, and she trudged across the room to pour a glass.

  After she drained the wine in a single draft, she wiped her lips with the back of her hand. “Mattias Farseer,” she said, “is a devil. And Corvus Nightfeather does not exist. At least, my mages can find no trace of him on this or any other plane of existence.”

  The WeavePasha chuckled. “Mattias is a human man. One of tremendous talents and extraordinary dedication, perhaps, but I have begun to wonder if it isn’t unshakable fidelity that defines humanity. Or at least its heroes.”

  The woman across from him had heard the WeavePasha say such things every day of her life, and she was approaching her one hundredth winter. “Your dedication to the city is unshakable, Grandfather,” she said. “His dedication is to a wild animal and a handful of criminals. It is you who are the hero.”

  The WeavePasha heard the note of fanaticism in her voice and sighed, knowing he’d planted it there. He trusted she would grow out of it. They always did—all but him.

  “Did he kill anyone?” he asked, and stood, deciding that he, too, wanted a drink.

  “The ranger? No.” She hesitated. “Though in truth, he could have.” A different note came into her voice, and the WeavePasha refilled her glass before pouring a half measure of ruby wine into his own. “In truth, Grandfather,” she said, “he could have killed me. The charms you sent with us dampened the enchantments of the bow, at least temporarily, but even after it was nothing but a length of heartwood casting mundane arrows … The reach of the thing. The speed he shot with. And he was prepared for the disenchantment. When the aetheric string failed, he pulled a length of gut from his beard—his beard!—and was shooting again instantly. That is a mighty bow you made, Grandfather.”r />
  The WeavePasha inclined his head. “And yet,” he said, “when my magics were drained from it and its wielder faced the mightiest of my descendants, he still escaped.”

  His granddaughter took a seat on a footstool, her shoulders slumping. “Yes. He and the halfling that rode behind him on the wyvern’s back. The genasi she carried dropped away in the scrubland along the coast, perhaps half a day’s ride west by horseback. I have sent out a company of the city guard, but …”

  “But they will find nothing,” he said, gently finishing her sentence. “Because the windsouled will enter the Plain of Stone Spiders long before our horsemen arrive, and our commanders know they are forbidden to enter those lands.”

  “Not that they would, anyway,” said his granddaughter. “Not that anyone sane would.”

  “So you believe there will be deaths after all, eh?” he asked.

  The woman shifted uncomfortably. “If they are fools enough to cross the old course of the River Quag, yes. But, my lord …”

  “Ah,” he said. “We come to Corvus.”

  “There were no deaths among those of us who flew in pursuit of the wyvern.” She saw his darkening features and rushed on. “And none of those who sought the kenku were harmed, either. But the summoners among them believed their spectral hounds had his scent near the docks and called up a chain of runespiral demons.”

  “Within the city walls?” he demanded, anger in his voice. “The kin I set to guard against such things unleash them in my city?”

  “In a district of empty warehouses, WeavePasha, in the Street of Stolen Stones. They judged the risk acceptable, and they never lost their grip on the leashes. The demons all converged on the same ruin, and … they all died, Grandfather. Six of them.”