The Ancient

by R. A. Salvatore

  “And so Gwydre rose to power in Vanguard Town, a young, impressionable girl.”

  “Never that,” Dantanna interrupted, and Ancient Badden’s scowl put him back on his heels.

  “And when your master died, Gwydre’s ear was passed to you,” Ancient Badden went on. “Your duty was clearly relayed: to keep Gwydre from the Abellican encroachment. Your own assessment if you will, Dantanna. Did you succeed or fail?”

  Dantanna began shaking his head. “It was more complicated….”

  “Are you couching an admission of failure?”

  “No, Ancient. Dame Gwydre has sought a balance from the beginning. She counts me among her trusted advisors as she counts—”

  “The monks of Chapel Pellinor?”

  “Yes, but …”

  “One of them in particular,” Ancient Badden said.

  Dantanna swallowed hard, unable to deny the truth of it. Dame Gwydre had fallen in love with an Abellican monk, and the Church of Abelle had done nothing to dissuade the union—obviously for cynical, political reasons. Chapel Pellinor stood on the outskirts of Vanguard Town, by far the most important town north of the Gulf of Corona; Dame Gwydre commanded the army of the entire Honce province north of the Gulf of Corona, the region known as Vanguard. As her relationship with her lover monk had grown, so had grown the power of the Abellicans in Vanguard Town and across the land. Dantanna had not been able to resist that movement, and had come to believe that playing an amenable role was the only way he and the Samhaists could retain any semblance of influence over the feisty and headstrong dame of Vanguard.

  He had improvised. He had taken his own initiative. He had gambled and had thought that he was carving out a suitable role for his Church—until the hordes had descended upon Vanguard from the north at the direction of Ancient Badden.

  “You wear your answer on your face, foolish Dantanna. It is true, then.”

  “Dame Gwydre beds a monk, yes,” Dantanna admitted.

  “And you allowed it to happen.”

  Dantanna balked at the words, spoken as they had been as an accusation. “Allowed?”

  “Yes, allowed. You saw the relationship budding years ago, and you did not stop it.”

  “Love takes its own course, Ancient. I tried to dissuade Gwydre. Indeed, I did. But her heart was set and immovable, and—”

  “And you did not kill this monk.”

  That took Dantanna’s breath away.

  “Is the importance of this lost upon you?” Ancient Badden asked.

  “No, Ancient. No.”

  “Then why did you not recognize your duty and fulfill it long ago? It has been many months since the commencement of the unholy tryst and yet this Abellican still draws breath.”

  “You ask me to murder a man?”

  “Were you not so trained in the magic of poison? Do you think that training no more than an exercise in the hypothetical?”

  Dantanna shook his head helplessly, his jaw hanging slack.

  “Have you not the power to kill a single young monk?”

  “I am no murderer,” the younger Samhaist whispered.

  “Murderer, bah!” Ancient Badden huffed, and he waved his hand and walked to the lip of the glacier, looking down the thousand feet and more to the mist rising off the lake. “An ugly word for a noble task. How many lives would Dantanna have saved if he had mustered his courage and done as his duty demanded? This entire war could have been avoided, or surely minimized, if Dame Gwydre had not been smitten by a heretic Abellican, you fool!”

  “The war was one of choice,” Dantanna dared to say.

  Ancient Badden turned on him angrily. “Choice?” he roared. “You would cede the souls of thousands of Van-guardsmen to the heretic Abellicans?”

  “We have our place …”

  “Shut up,” Ancient Badden said simply, and he turned back to look out over the southland. “You have failed, in the one task which meant anything, the one action that might have avoided years of strife and carnage. The misery, the death, the rivers of blood are all upon you because you had not the courage to strike a single blow.”

  “You cannot believe that,” Dantanna gasped.

  “I suppose, though, that I should thank you,” Ancient Badden went on, as if he had not heard the comment. “The Ancient Ones saw fit to fill my divining pool with Images of the battle of Chapel Pellinor. And the screams and cries. It was glorious, indeed.”

  “How can you say that?” Dantanna asked under his breath, despite himself and his fears.

  “To hear men weeping like children!” Ancient Badden snickered. “To hear the cries of women who knew they were doomed for their heresy, who knew their children would be torn apart in retribution! Oh, the beauty of justice!

  “And do you know the greatest victory of all?” Ancient Badden asked, spinning about and staring wild-eyed and wide-eyed at the stupefied younger Samhaist, who merely shook his head as if he was numb to it all.

  “The captives!” Ancient Badden explained. “Lines of them, hundreds of them, perhaps, tethered together and marching for this very place.”

  Dantanna turned about to regard the giants, lazily pounding home the wedge spikes. He viewed the hanging glacial trolls, their thin blood dripping down into the melt, hindering the refreezing of the glacier. Another platform had been constructed near to them, this one with a crank and a long, long rope, one that would deposit the anticipated sacrifices deep within the chasm, where the white worm waited. When Dantanna turned back to Ancient Badden, the man’s smug smile proved very revealing.

  “They will feed D’no, and his frenzy and heat will facilitate the Severing,” Ancient Badden confirmed, using the sanctifying term he had coined for his work on the edge of the glacier. “As D’no burrows and further melts the ice, we will feed him more. We will make him stronger and swifter, that he will reach to the stones about the ice to join our efforts with the earth magic of the Ancient Ones.” He paused and regarded the younger Samhaist with a nod, one that seemed almost of approval. “I will allow you to offer many of them,” he said, and turned back to stare out—mostly to hide his grin at Dantanna’s horrified expression.

  “Offer them?” Dantanna stammered. “You would murder them as food to further your ambitions here?”

  “Murder,” Ancient Badden said with a dismissive laugh. “A word you use so easily. Their lives are forfeit, by their own actions. They sided with heretics and so we—you—will exact proper punishment. Perhaps if I teach you to better wield that knife you were awarded, you will be less likely to fail us in the future when you are called upon by all that is holy to put it to proper use.”

  As he spoke, Ancient Badden summoned his magic to enhance his senses, and he clearly heard Dantanna’s approach. Thus, he was not surprised when the man, standing right behind him, gave a shout and shoved him hard. Nor did Ancient Badden resist that push, lifting his arms gloriously wide as he went off the edge of the glacier, plummeting toward the mist below.

  Dantanna gave a gasp and even offered a contrite wail as the supreme master, the Ancient of the Samhaist religion, tumbled toward certain doom.

  Ancient Badden heard it and smiled all the wider, knowing that he had pushed the young fool to abject desperation. He closed his eyes and felt the wind thrumming about his falling form, his robes flapping noisily.

  He used that sensation of freedom from mortal boundaries to fall deeper into his magic.

  Back up on the ledge Dantanna sobbed, his head in his hands, and so he did not immediately see the transformation as Ancient Badden assumed the most ancient form of all. His arms became leathery wings, his eyes turned yellow with a single line of black in the middle, and his face elongated into a snout, filled with fangs, and spearlike horns sprouted atop his head.

  His shriek, the keen of a dragon, startled the sobbing Samhaist and those giants and other workers behind him—even one of the hanging glacial trolls, near death, looked up in horror. Dantanna sucked in his breath when he scanned far below to see a dr
agon swooping out from the mist, rising suddenly on the updrafts from the hot waters of the mystical Mithranidoon.

  Dantanna scrambled to his feet and turned about, stumbling as he tried to flee. He got up but slipped again when he heard the sharp screech of the dragon. Seconds seemed to pass as minutes, every step became a chore— and most steps left him prostrate on the ice, trying to rise yet again.

  Dantanna felt a thunderous slam against his back. He didn’t fly forward, though he surely would have, had not a large talon-tipped foot closed about him to hold him fast. Flailing and screaming, he went up into the air a dozen feet and more.

  Then he was falling, landing hard against the ice.

  Again he was scooped in dragon claws. Again Ancient Badden lifted him into the air. And again Ancient Badden dropped him, though higher up this time.

  Dantanna screamed in pain when he hit, his leg snapping under his weight, ligaments tearing, bones breaking. He tried to curl to grasp the wound tightly.

  But the dragon grabbed him again, carrying him even higher.

  Down he fell, landing with a crunching impact, his breath blown away. He tried to crawl but his bones were shattered and he was too far from consciousness to begin to coordinate his movements, foolishly flailing about. Somewhere in the back of his rapidly fleeing thoughts, Dantanna expected to be hoisted again. But it didn’t happen, and he settled down into the deep, cold, gloomy recesses of darkness.

  Sharp, agonizing stabs of pain in his shattered limbs awakened him some time later. He was hanging by his ankles from the very rope he had noted on the new platform suspended over the chasm. His hands were securely and tightly bound behind him.

  “You failed,” he heard, distantly it seemed, though when Dantanna managed to turn his head, he saw that Ancient Badden was standing on the edge of the platform only a couple of feet to the side and above. At the man’s feet lay a sack, its contents of troll ears spilled. “A pity. I had thought to educate you. I had thought to build your resolve and your understanding.”

  As he spoke, the Ancient lifted his arm and signaled behind him.

  Dantanna’s eyes went wide, and he thrashed about painfully, pitifully. Ancient Badden watched passively as Dantanna was slowly lowered into the gorge, the younger man sputtering desperate pleas. The agony in his shattered legs did not even register any longer through the thickening wall of sheer terror. He screamed his repentance to Ancient Badden, but the old and wicked Samhaist had taken up an ancient song of praise to the great D’no, the white worm god.

  Dantanna tried to settle his thoughts. He bent a bit at the waist to get a glance at the rope bound to his ankle, noting that it was the same one that bound his hands. He growled and tried to curl up to get near to that rope. He wanted to free himself, to fall the remaining distance and kill himself outright!

  Better that!

  But Dantanna’s executioner was no novice, and the young priest could get nowhere near the binding cord, nor could he hope to free his hands. In the dimming light he could see the myriad tunnels along the sides of the chasm. The ice was wet down here, as the pieces melted by D’no, blended as they were with the mist of glacial trolls’ blood, could not fully refreeze. The web of tunnels. The burrowing of D’no.

  From somewhere deep within the ice of the gorge’s northern side came a guttural rumble, the growl of a monstrous beast.

  Dantanna touched down on the wet ice, a trickle of water running past him. Now he scrambled more furiously, tugging his hands from side to side. Somehow he managed to pull one free, and the other slipped out of the noose. He rolled over and sat up, grimacing against the waves of pain emanating from his legs.

  “Crawl, crawl,” he gasped, working desperately at the ties about his ankle. His hands were numb and cold, though, and he couldn’t get a proper grip on the rope. He cursed and fought harder. He heard a rumbling growl. Right behind him.

  Dantanna’s heart pounded in his chest. The growl became a hiss. He could feel the intense heat of D’no. He turned to face his doom just as the giant worm lashed at him.

  From the platform above the crevice, Ancient Badden could see nothing of the feast. But he heard the screams. Indeed, he heard the horrified, delicious screams.

  The rope tugged and jerked a couple of times.

  The screaming stopped.

  Ancient Badden motioned behind him, and the trolls operating the crank began turning it furiously, working with the frenzy of creatures who knew that they might be the next down the rope if they disappointed their mighty master.

  Ancient Badden chuckled when the rope came up, to see the bottom half of Dantanna’s leg still attached, the skin of the upper calf blackened by the heat of D’no.

  Ancient Badden casually freed the limb from the rope and tossed it back into the gorge. Then, with a look of disgust at Dantanna’s betrayal, he used his foot to sweep the troll ears into the chasm, as well.

  “Eat well, Ancient One,” he said.

  THREE

  Rocks, Always Rocks

  Rocks, rocks, it’s always rocks!” the young and strong man complained, his muscular bare arms glistening with sweat. He was tall, more than halfway between six and seven feet, and though he had lost considerable weight on this multiyear journey, he did not appear skinny and he was certainly not frail, his lean muscles standing taut and strong. A mop of blond hair covered his head, bespeaking his Vanguard heritage, and he wore a scraggly beard, for even though his superiors disapproved of it, they would not enforce their rules against facial hair when they possessed no implement to easily be rid of it. He stood on a slope of brown dirt and gray stones—fewer near him now, since he had already tossed scores over the ridge so that they would roll and bounce down near to the wall the man and his companions were repairing. He hoisted another one, brought it near his shoulder, and heaved it out. It didn’t quite make the lip and began to roll back his way. He intercepted it with a few fast strides, planting his foot against it and holding it in place before it could gain any real momentum.

  “Catch your breath, Brother Cormack,” said an older monk, middle-aged and with more skin than hair atop his head. “The air is particularly warm this day.”

  Cormack did take a deep breath, then gathered up his heavy woolen robes and pulled them over his head, leaving him naked other than a bulky white cloth loincloth.

  “Brother Cormack!” the other monk, Giavno by name, scolded.

  “Always rocks,” Cormack argued, his bright green eyes flaring with intensity. He made no move to retrieve his heavy robe. “Ever since we came to this cursed island we have done nothing more than pile rocks.”

  “Cursed?” Giavno said, shaking his head and wearing an expression of utter disappointment. “We were sent north to frozen Alpinador to begin a chapel, Brother. For the glory of Blessed Abelle. You would call that cursed?” He swept his arm to his left, beyond the ridge and to the small stone church the brothers had constructed. They had placed it on the highest point on the island; it dominated the view though the square structure was no more than thirty feet on any side.

  Cormack put his hands on his hips, laughed, and shook his head helplessly. They had departed Chapel Pellinor in Vanguard more than three years before, all full of excitement and a sense of great purpose. They were to travel to the fierce mountainous northland of Alpinador, home of the pagan barbarians, and spread the word of Blessed Abelle. They would save souls with their gemstone magic and the truth and beauty of their message.

  But they had found only battle and outrage and their every word had sounded as insult to the proud and strong northmen. Running for their lives more than proselytizing, the band had become lost in short order and had stumbled and bumbled their way along for weeks with the freezing winter closing in all around them. Surely the nearly two score monks and their like number of servants would have found a cold and empty death, but they had happened upon this place, a huge lake of warm waters and perpetual steam, a place of islands small and large. Father De Guilbe, who led their expeditio
n, proclaimed it a miracle and decided that here, on these waters, they would fulfill their mission and build their chapel.

  Here, Cormack mused, on a lump of rock in the middle of the water.

  “Rocks,” Cormack grumbled, and he bent low and picked up the heavy stone again, this time heaving it far over the ridgeline.

  “The lake teems with fish and food. Have you ever tasted water so fine?” said Giavno, his voice wistful. “The heat of the water saved us from the Alpinadoran winter. You should be more grateful, Brother.”

  “We were sent here for a reason beyond our simple survival.”

  Giavno launched into another long sermon about the duties of a monk of Abelle, the sacrifices expected and the reward awaiting them all when they had slipped the bonds of their mortal coils. He recited from the great books at length. But Cormack heard none of it, for he had his own litany against the despair, an unsought but surely found reprieve, one that he hoped would bring him the greater answers of this muddling road called life….

  She glided from the boat as the boat glided ashore and with equal grace, her movements as fluid as the gently lapping waves. The moon, Sheila, was almost full this night and hung in the sky behind and above Milkeila, softening her image further. She wore few clothes, as was normal for everyone on the hot lake of Mithranidoon, other than the monks and their heavy woolen robes.

  Cormack felt his heavy robe about him now, and he became almost self-conscious of it, for it felt inappropriate in the soft, warm, misty breeze.

  Milkeila’s hand went to her hip as she moved toward him, and she untied her short skirt and let it fall aside. Still walking, she pulled her top over her head. She was not embarrassed, not uncomfortable, just beautiful and nude, other than the necklaces of trinkets—shells and claws and teeth—strung about her neck and a bracelet and anklet of the same design. A large feather was braided into her hair.

  It was the first time Cormack had seen her naked, but it felt no more intimate to him than the last time they had been together, at the great meeting between the shamans of Milkeila’s tribe, Yan Ossum, and a few select brothers of Chapel Isle. That’s when he had known and when she had known. That’s when Cormack had found a witness to his life, a justification of his heart and mind, a spirit kindred, a heart equally wide. All of the bantering, all of the posturing, between the shamans and the monks had played out like a sorry game to him, a juggling of positions with each side trying to gain the better ground.