Forsaken House tlm-1

by Richard Baker

  "I don't like the idea of leaving the horses here alone," Grayth said. "If something hungry comes along, they'd be in a hard spot. Should we post a watch out here?"

  "Who?" countered Maresa. "If something hungry comes along, our sentry would be in a hard spot, too."

  "I think I agree with Grayth," Araevin replied as he studied the sun-dappled forest. It seemed difficult to believe that it might prove dangerous, but there was a sense of menace in the air that he didn't like. It was nothing he could put his finger on, just a single note of warning in his heart that told him to be careful, to be thorough. "I'm not worried about the horses so much as the forest. I don't like the idea of being inside that tower with no idea of what might be skulking around out here."

  "I'll stand guard," Brant offered. "I can keep an eye on the horses and the tower door at the same time. If you need me inside, you can simply shout."

  "Are you sure you don't mind?" Ilsevele asked.

  "Well, I'd rather go in with the rest of you, but someone needs to do it." The young swordsman shrugged and looked around. "That looks like a good spot."

  He trudged over to the enormous wreck of a fallen redwood, and settled himself against the moss-covered log. They left him there, and advanced on the ruin. Before they entered, Araevin cast a spell to sniff out any traces of magic in the old tower or its surroundings, while Grayth murmured a prayer to Lathander and searched for signs of evil. The others waited as the elf mage and the human cleric studied the ruins together.

  "I sense no evil," Grayth said finally. "But if there are hidden chambers inside or below the ground, I wouldn't sense them from here."

  "There is old magic here," Araevin said. "Old protective wards. Some have likely failed, but others may still remain functional. We will have to be careful."

  "Can you dispel them?" Maresa asked.

  "Possibly, but I hesitate to use such a spell until I know we need it. If I have to study my spellbooks again it would take hours." Araevin allowed his divination spell to fade. He checked his bandolier of components, and made sure his wands were holstered at his hip. Finally he loosened Moonrill in its sheath on his left hip. "All right. Let me cast some protective spells on the rest of you, in case we run into trouble."

  He produced a pinch of granite dust and powdered diamond, and sprinkled it over Grayth, Maresa, and Ilsevele in turn. Murmuring the words of a potent defensive spell, he armored their flesh against physical blows. Then he cast a spell that provided all of them with the ability to see in the darkness. After that, Grayth blessed each of them with prayers sacred to Lathander, to protect them all against acid in case they encountered the horrible corrosive breath of a green dragon. With their spells in place, the small band advanced to the empty doorway in the stone house adjoining the tower, and one by one slipped inside.

  The house itself was large, and likely had been quite comfortable and strong in its day. The wooden flooring was weak and rotten. Grayth, with his human weight and heavy armor, had to move with care, but the elves and the genasi were light enough to stand on it without worry. Large holes gaped in the roof overhead, and moldy heaps of fallen beams and broken shakes lay beneath each collapse. Rotten old chairs still stood around a sturdy table in the center of the first room, in front of an empty stone fireplace. The whole place was somewhat dank and musty.

  "There can't be any magic that's too deadly in here," Maresa laughed. "There's a bird's nest in the rafters. Come on, let's see what's in the tower proper."

  "Do you still sense the other stone?" Ilsevele asked Araevin.

  "Yes," he answered, "but it is so close I cannot tell exactly where it is. All I know for certain is that it is here somewhere."

  Araevin and the others followed Maresa through the empty rooms of the old house, looking in on old kitchens and disused bedchambers before they found the doorway leading into the base of the round tower at the house's far end.

  Maresa studied it, and started to lean in to look around in the next chamber. A brilliant blue sigil glowed brightly above the doorway, and a sheet of coruscating azure lightning crackled across the doorway. Maresa yelped and hurled herself forward, rolling through the archway as the magical electricity snapped and popped around her. Smoke and sparks showered from the rotten wood of the lintel, and the stink of burning stone filled the air. "Maresa!" Ilsevele cried.

  She started forward, but Araevin caught her arm.

  "Wait!" he warned. "The sigil is not discharged."

  Araevin hurriedly worked a counterspell, striking the glowing blue symbol from its place above the door. The hissing sheet of lightning guttered once and failed, leaving bright spots dancing in their eyes and acrid smoke drifting in the air. The instant the curtain of sparks collapsed, Ilsevele darted into the tower room, an arrow nocked on her bow. Araevin and Grayth started to follow, but a massive iron fist smashed into the doorway in front of them, crushing stone and blocking the way. The hulking arm drew back, replaced by a blank-eyed visage of the same black metal. The thing turned away from them and moved ponderously in pursuit of Maresa and Ilsevele.

  "Damnation! That's an iron golem!" Grayth snarled. He glanced at Araevin. "Do you have any spells that can hurt it?"

  Araevin quickly reviewed the spells he had stored in his mind, trying to imagine what might damage a hulking automaton of iron.

  "Not really," he answered.

  "Well, that's unfortunate," said the priest. "Guess I'll have to do it the hard way."

  Grayth leaped into the room and aimed a powerful two-handed cut at the towering golem's knee. Holy steel clanged against animated iron with a terrible sound, and sparks flew from Grayth's blade, but all he achieved was a thin crease in the side of the construct's leg. The hulking machine pivoted and smashed its fists down at the Lathanderite, but Grayth backed away across the uneven floor, choosing to avoid the golem's terrible punches rather than try to parry them.

  Now we know why the dragons haven't bothered with this place, Araevin thought grimly.

  He followed Grayth into the room more carefully. The tower's ground floor was a large, round room with a sagging ceiling twenty feet overhead. The stairs leading to the upper stories were long gone, but rotten posts still stuck out of the sockets in the stone walls, circling the room as they led up. Once the chamber might have been some sort of workroom or laboratory. Old workbenches stood against the walls, and dusty old glassware was being smashed and broken at a furious rate by the attacking golem.

  Maresa levitated in the air near the high ceiling, her white hair streaming around her as she hurled magical darts one after the other into the golem, which ignored them.

  Ilsevele crouched atop a table, bow in hand. She took careful aim and fired a pair of arrows into the golem's back. One glanced off the thing's thick iron skin, but the other punctured a hole in the creature. The golem boomed and grated, its joints screeching like a rusted gate as it turned to face the latest attack.

  "Maresa!" Araevin called. "Forget those spells, they can't hurt the creature."

  "What do you want me to do?" the genasi snarled in frustration. "My rapier wouldn't even dent that thing!"

  "Distract it from Ilsevele. She has arrows that can pierce it, but we have to keep it away from her."

  "Distract it? How?" the genasi muttered, but she moved over to the wall and dislodged a large, loose stone from the wall. She grunted with effort, but managed to maintain her levitation spell and drift back over the iron golem before releasing the heavy stone. "Here, try this, you rust bucket!"

  The block dropped ten feet and caught the golem square on the top of its head with a tremendous crash! before tumbling off its shoulder and cracking the flagstone floor. The golem staggered in its tracks, its head marred by a large dent, but the construct simply steadied itself and looked up at the genasi drifting overhead.

  Araevin crouched in the doorway, thinking hard. He knew a little about golems. The living statues were common enough as defenses in wizards' towers and magical fortresses. Tower Reillo
ch possessed a small number of the devices, hidden in various places. Golems were built to be immune to most magic, but some spells could affect them, if in unexpected ways. Magical rust would be the best way to attack a golem of iron, but he had no such spells.

  What other elements might serve? he thought furiously. Cold might make it brittle; fire was unlikely to trouble it much. Lightning? A creature made of iron couldn't possibly avoid a lightning bolt…

  "Grayth! Back off a bit," he called.

  As the cleric backed away, Araevin leveled his lightning wand at the golem and barked out the command word. With a roar like the tearing of an enormous sheet, the brilliant bolt slammed into the golem's chest. Arcs of electricity danced over its body. The golem lurched awkwardly and toppled backward, crushing a rotten old workbench, but it immediately climbed to its feet again.

  Grayth chose that moment to dart in at the creature's back, ramming the point of his sword at a joint in the device's armor. The golem whirled on him and knocked the Lathanderite flying with one backhand blow of its mighty fist, but Grayth bounced back to his feet almost instantly. Araevin's protective spell had absorbed most of the blow for him. He started circling in more carefully. Meanwhile, Ilsevele shifted a few feet back, calmly sighted on the same joint that Grayth had pried open, and sent two more arrows deep into the constructs back. Sparks showered in its innards, and the golem stumbled to one knee. Abruptly it belched out a great cloud of horrible green gas, flooding the room with fumes.

  Maresa was safe above the cloud, but Ilsevele threw a hand over her face and turned to scramble up the old sockets of the vanished staircase, leaping lightly from post to post as she climbed up and out of the bilious green vapors.

  Araevin retreated back through the archway calling, "Grayth! Get out of there!"

  The cleric stumbled out of the mist, coughing and gagging. He managed to get through the archway before falling to all fours, his sword clattering to the ground beside him. Blood flecked his beard, and his face and hands smoked with the awful vapor. Araevin hurried to his side, but Grayth waved him off.

  "Check on the others," he gasped, "I will be fine."

  He fumbled for his holy symbol and began to rasp the words of a healing prayer.

  Araevin nodded and turned back to the doorway. He could hear the golem's great limbs creaking and scraping as it moved, but the thing was still hidden in the middle of its own poisonous mist.

  "Ilsevele," Araevin said, "Maresa… are you hurt?"

  "No, but we can't see the damned thing!" Maresa called back.

  I may not be able to affect it directly with my spells, Araevin thought, but I can certainly do something about that.

  He quickly pronounced the words of a wind spell, and blew the green vapors away from the golem. Maresa and Ilsevele huddled together at the place where the old stairs had met the floor above, the genasi holding the spellarcher steady in her precarious perch.

  "That's better," Ilsevele said.

  She laid an arrow across her bow and drew it back as far as she could before sending it down into the golem again. The arrow caught it in the back of the neck, sinking down deep into its iron chest. The automaton sparked and smoked, its arms jerked up and down, and it fell face-forward to the ground and didn't move again.

  Araevin sighed in relief. He looked behind him, where Grayth stood unsteadily but had stopped coughing blood. The cleric plodded up to stand beside him, gazing at the wrecked golem on the floor of the tower room.

  "Just like old times," he said. "Lathander grant that there aren't any more of those around."

  "I'm sure it will be something worse," Araevin replied. He clapped the human on his broad shoulders. "Thanks, old friend."

  "It was nothing," Grayth said, and he coughed hard, eyes watering, one mailed hand kneading his armored chest. "Your lady did all the hard work with her archery," he rasped. "I don't know if we could have beat that thing without her. Now let's find your gemstone and get out of here before we learn what else this place has in store for us."

  Nurthel Floshin hurried into Sarya Dlardrageth's con-jury, wings trailing behind him like a great black cloak. His remaining eye glowed green with avarice and purpose, and his infernal golden mail gleamed in the lurid firelight Sarya favored in her chambers. He halted just inside the door and bowed before his queen.

  "You sent for me, my lady?" he rumbled.

  Restlessly, the demon-sired sorceress circled the chamber. The conjury was a vaulted stone room deep in the catacombs beneath the grand mage's palace. Five thousand years of imprisonment had left Sarya with a distaste for dungeons and deep vaults, and she therefore visited her conjury for only the most important of work.

  "Lord Floshin, you would be well advised to answer with more alacrity when next I call for you," she hissed.

  "I apologize, Lady Sarya. I was involved in working spells of sending to dispatch your orders to our spies in Yartar and Everlund."

  Nurthel Floshin had served as Sarya's spymaster for almost five years, and continued to do so even after she had broken open Nar Kerymhoarth. He had been one of the first fey'ri she had gathered to her side on regaining her freedom, and he was far more familiar with the shape of things in the North than the ancient fey'ri warriors who made up her new armies.

  "Ah. I might forgive you for that, then." Sarya's ceaseless prowling slowed a step. She glanced at her fey'ri servant, and moved over to a black silk shroud that covered some unseen furnishing in her conjury. "How go your efforts to locate the mage with the telkiira?"

  Nurthel watched Sarya with interest. The shrouded object was something he hadn't seen before, and he was more than a little curious about it. Sarya didn't care to set foot in the conjury without good reason. On the other hand it was likely that Sarya would explain it in her own time. He quelled his curiosity and answered her question.

  "Twice I have scried him briefly, but each time he has succeeded in blocking my divinations. I have dispatched two fey'ri to find him, but we are still so few in number, I did not dare send more. Just now I directed our agent in Yartar to retain the services of a certain merchant's guild, whose true trade involves dealing in information and dispensing with unwanted rivals. I have promised them a handsome sum if they locate this fellow for me."

  "And what results have you achieved with all that effort?"

  "I believe he is traveling on the Trade Way, heading south from Waterdeep. He is riding with four companions, including a high-ranking cleric of Lathander. I infer that he is in the process of traveling to the second stone, but I do not yet know where that is or how soon he might reach it."

  Sarya trailed a hand over the black shroud and said, "That is not good enough. He might find the second and third telkiira before we find him! You must redouble your efforts, Nurthel. But perhaps I have failed to provide you with the proper implements for the task."

  Sarya drew aside the silken shroud, and allowed it to fall to the floor, revealing a great crystal orb resting in a heavy iron stand. The device glimmered with «a weird emerald light deep in its countless facets.

  "What is it?" Nurthel asked softly.

  "A telthukiilir, a High Seeing Orb-one of the many useful treasures we recovered from the depths of Nar Kerymhoarth when we freed the fey'ri legion. This is an artifact of ancient Aryvandaar itself, buried for thousands of years in that dolorous citadel."

  "A crystal ball?"

  "Not quite. Crystal balls are useful enough, but they are easily blocked by those who know rudimentary defenses against scrying. The telthukiilir is a much more powerful instrument. You will find it capable of piercing all but the most powerful of barriers your opponent may raise. But you must use it with care, since its most powerful abilities consume its magic at a prodigious rate. The orb will require a long time to restore its power after defeating the defenses of a knowledgeable enemy." Sarya invited Nurthel with a languid gesture. "Try it now, if you like. I would do so myself, but you have seen this fellow. You will find him more quickly and easily than I
would."

  Nurthel moved up to stand before the orb. He reached out a hand to pass above the great crystal sphere, and he felt the restless surging of its magic beneath his fingertips. He whispered a few arcane words, and called to mind the face of the sun elf mage he sought.

  "Show me the elf who carries the telkiira of Kaeledhin," he said.

  The orb glimmered, as emerald energy spiraled deep below its surface. It grew transparent in the center, and Nurthel leaned closer, peering into the orb. Sarya watched him, her arms folded. In the orb an image formed of an old vine-covered tower in a great forest. The picture reeled and blurred, as if the orb was moving closer to it, then it steadied again. Nurthel gazed on the bronzed features of his nemesis from Tower Reilloch. Distantly he heard the sounds of battle, and he realized that the mage and his friends were engaged in a fight against some unseen peril.

  "I see him!" he snarled.

  "Good. Study the surroundings, fix them in your mind, then gather your company and summon your demonic allies. But remember, I want him alive. He can lead us to the last of the stones."

  "He may prove difficult to coerce."

  Sarya laughed and said, "Do not underestimate my powers of coercion, Lord Floshin! I am certain we will be able to persuade him to help us."

  The forested hillsides above Elion glittered with the soft light of a thousand lanterns, looking for all the world like fireflies in a summer field. The night was cool but not cold, with a patchy silver overcast through which broad swaths of stars glittered. Seiveril stood with his hands clasped behind his back, gazing up from Seamist's green arbor at the growing army encamped about his seat. Each day more elves came, and more elves, so that the scattered camps of a hundred different bands, companies, clans, societies, and orders filled the hills above the Miritar palace.

  "So many," he murmured. "So many. How can I hope to put them in some kind of order quickly enough to aid Evereska?"

  "Perhaps you should have thought of that before you sent your voice ringing over all of Evermeet, calling us to your banner," said Vesilde Gaerth.