Blackstaff (24 page)

Raegar heard her say, “Done,” followed by the sound of a bowstring.

Pain lanced through Raegar’s left arm, and he let go. A small fountain of blood gushed from his forearm onto his face, and the arrowhead jutted from where his wrist and forearm met. His legs squeezed hard, and even Raegar was surprised to find himself hanging fully upside-down, lightning crackling between his left hand and the scroll. Khelben hovered almost directly below him, but Raegar could not hear or see the tressym. Tsarra also remained out of sight behind him.

Raegar smiled ruefully as he heard her say, “Very manly and stoic, not making a sound. Guess I’ll need another arrow.”

Raegar liked her sense of humor, despite the circumstances.

“Tsarra! You’re not a tressym playing with your prey. End this now!” Khelben growled at her then uttered a stream of arcane syllables to summon a globe around the sharn, muffling its harsh cries.

Raegar found that instead of falling or remaining still, his body rocked back and forth. He screamed, “Hrast!” without sound as he realized what his body was trying to do. His torso snapped backward hard as his legs released, and Raegar swore loud and long inside his head as he back-flipped
through open air, his left hand aching toward its goal of the scroll. The thief blanched even whiter when his flip revealed the tressym’s location directly behind him. Raegar wasn’t sure what he felt more at that moment—stunned pride in his body for having executed such a bold move, the sharp sting as the tressym’s foreclaws slashed into his neck and face, the harsh pain as one claw hit the arrow embedded in his forearm, or the shock and shudder as his hands successfully grabbed one edge of the metal scroll and red sparks of magic coruscated all over his left arm and the scroll. After the initial contact, however, Raegar lost his grip with his left hand as blood gushed from his arm and covered the glove and parts of the scroll.

The red sparks increased to a radiance that spread across the scroll and built in strength, rendering the blue lightning bolts purple within it. Raegar noticed they were arcing in a different direction—toward the woman below him, her bow drawn and ready. The blue sparks erupted around her midsection, and she said, “Khelben?” a moment too late.

The sparks grew, as did the red glow around the gloves and scroll. Tsarra threw herself backward and away from the statue, but Raegar could only grit his teeth as he felt the lightning bolts build. At the same time, he felt a different tingling around his hands from the magical gloves.

From below him, Khelben yelled, “No!” and launched himself up into the air just as the lightning bolts grew into one massive bolt focused through Raegar’s left hand.

The massive bolt—the bluish magic leeched out to more brilliant white—thundered out and slammed into the Blackstaff with staggering force, blasting Khelben down to the floor. Raegar noticed that the sharn also crackled within its globe, and it keened in pain.

Raegar’s attention returned to his own precarious perch. He didn’t know what magic the gauntlets worked, but his left arm was totally numb, and his right hand was freezing cold as the red magic began pulsing. With the first pulse, all eyes not blinded by the earlier blast looked upward to see the red energies start to contract with each pulse. The
energies also rendered the golden scroll in Oghma’s marble hand smaller. The second pulse pulled the energy into both gauntlets while rendering them and the scroll translucent, almost invisible save for the red luminescence. Raegar sensed what was coming and prepared to fall as the third pulse contracted the radiance to pinpoints on his hands, and the scroll and gauntlets disappeared.

Raegar fell backward toward the cold marble. He lashed out at the last second, hoping to spin himself around so he might land better, but he only managed to kick empty air. The tressym zipped around Raegar and almost seemed to laugh at his predicament, mocking him with the very flap of its wings. Raegar struck the floor with his left shoulder, his head bounced off the marble, and he fell unconscious.

26 Mirtul, the Year of the Normiir (611 DR)

The man without a name flew fast and silent. It mattered little to him most days, but some days brought up raw emotions decades old and saw him rage at the burdens namelessness placed on a child. That day, he raged for other reasons, and his anger fueled his speed. His swiftness also came from a new spell that rendered him incorporeal while in flight to allow no winds to hinder him.

He had spent the past two days in constant flight. A recent vow to his Lady of Mysteries barred him from using gates, portals, or other methods of instantaneous travel. Flying across the North forced him to see the Everhorde’s devastations firsthand. He saw the ogre war bands, the orc legions, and the giant patrols ravaging many places dear to him. His dreams and connections to her bade him press on and rein in his fury and his will to slow the Everhorde’s onslaught.

Not until he approached the mountains scant miles north of Deepwater Bay did he find an unavoidable battle. The creatures sounded like orcs, attacked as orcs did, but they had scaled skin of black and red, spat fire and acid, and flew on scalloped wings. The nameless one had never seen their
like before until he suffered their mid-air ambush when he flew through Peryton Gap. His spell, which prevented interference by the winds, did not protect him from their physical assault.

In his youth, the man had learned to fight in treetops and defend against foes coming from every side. As a mage, his spells placed him in many arenas stranger than the air amid a mountain pass. Magic protected him as he took their measure.

He swept a flare of silver flame, an expanding aura of fire that blasted to cinders the two who grappled him. The other four he dispatched within minutes, using spells to break or ensnare their wings and doom them to deaths by long falls.

The man let nothing hinder his mission, even though he suffered some wounds and his clothes were worse for the battle, singed or acid-burnt in various places. He wore a wool overcloak of steel blue that matched his eyes. Beneath his cloak were a simple tunic, leathern breeches, and soft doeskin boots. Due to hardships and spell battles long past, the only memento of his earlier life was the iron badge that was his mother’s, worn on a chain around his neck. A botched counterspell in battle six tendays back against an undead Shoon vizar had left him with badly burnt hair. While the gifts of his goddess allowed him to alter his features at will, he deemed it too mundane a task for magic. Thus he shaved his head and trimmed his beard down to the modern Cormyrean style of a beard and moustache only covering his upper lip and chin. The look was deemed “appropriately sinister to match your moods” by acquaintances in Dolbron’s Mill two night’s prior. The people there had long since taken to calling him “the Nameless Chosen,” “Grimspells,” or “friend.”

“Mystra grant me strength,” the Nameless One said through gritted teeth as he soared lower toward the mountain and into the smoke coiling around its still-snowclad upper slopes, smoke he had spotted even before the ambush. The spell had an added benefit of sharpening his hearing, but the wizard worried as he heard no sounds when he alighted in the courtyard at his destination—the Pentad Retreat.

He had visited the mountain sanctuary only once early in his service to the Lady of Mysteries. Reachable only by well-hidden tunnels, a barely discernible and treacherous footpath, or by air, the monastic enclave rested within an extinct caldera and remained hidden to all but the most attentive of those who traversed that cluster of peaks. It was known to very few outsiders, as the ideas embraced by those pious folk would bring down the wrath of five religions on their collective heads. Of five modest stone temples and chapter houses, a granary, cookhouse, smithy and forge, and a common hall, only smoldering rubble lay. The dream he had two nights past had come true. He had seen the mountain and the five symbols of the gods aflame.

Only the library—the largest building and the most fortified beyond Dumathoin’s Altar—remained standing. It dominated the northern side of the complex, leaving little room between itself and the outer defensive walls. Two stories tall, the building was made entirely of a silver-white stone not indigenous to the mountain range. The merlons and crenelations atop the walls were carved as open books, unrolled scrolls, and one unique symbol for the gods of the place: a circle enclosing five smaller circles which held an eight-pointed star, a partially unrolled scroll, a mountain with a gem at its heart, a pair of eyes atop a crescent moon, and an oak leaf superimposed over a sun.

Arun’s Son knew the Everhorde raged everywhere across the North as it had since earlier spring when it claimed Luskan and later Mnarsvale, Suthcliff, Droversford, and countless other hamlets north of the Delimbiyr Vale. It encroached on Yarlith, and the forces of Phalorm moved to intercept it. He had hoped the monastery would remain safe, but his earlier attack showed him the horde had reached even there. The wizard also knew the orcs—even altered ones such as he fought—could never have found the place without help. He ran toward the library to discern what had happened.

Many orcs lay as if they had fallen from great heights, others killed by arrows. Of the nine bodies he found
sprawled on the library’s steps, four wore amulets with a sigil on them—a wizard’s mark known to him.

“Palron Kaeth. Of course he would use the Everhorde to his advantage,” the man mused aloud. “A reckoning will be coming soon to you and yours, Prefect. So vows the son of Arun.”

The bodies were all cold, some with ash and snow settling on their graying skin, suggesting death was not recent for them. He heard a muffled clang through the closed doors of the library. The mage placed a hand flat on the door and whispered the password:
“Siilathaeraes.”

The door, which had remained firm against an onslaught of axe blows, acid bursts, and fiery blasts, opened easily to his touch. As he entered, Arun’s Son whispered spells to make himself invisible and silent.

The room had a perimeter around its stone floor more akin to the naves of a church, allowing him to make a circuit of the chamber with ease. The library was one singular area, its open balconies and roof held aloft by ten fine-crafted stone pillars of lighter stone than the building itself. Carvings on the pillars depicted twice each the idealized forms and sigils of the five gods of the Pentad: Corellon Larethian, Sehanine Moonbow, Dumathoin, Mystra, and Oghma. The tables and desks in the center of the room made three rings that demarcated the divisions of labor in the library.

The wizard sighed in relief as nothing seemed disturbed or destroyed, the inkwells on the desks still open and unspilled. The secondary ring were granite slab tables numbering twenty in all, each longer than two adult humans and half again as wide. The tops, sides, edges, and legs were all replete with Dwarvish runes. The innermost ring of tables consisted of secretaries, desks with three bookshelves attached to them. Six were placed in a row, back to back with another row of six, each row facing either side of the room. The angled desks each held a tome and the shelves above the desks were all thick with massive volumes chained to them. The Nameless Chosen could also see additional secretaries,
cabinets, and shelves on the balconies overhead, most with books chained in place to prevent theft.

The only place where someone could hide was the curate’s office that enclosed the eastern balcony. The Nameless One approached the stone spiral staircase in the northeast corner that led directly to the office, still silent and unseen. At the foot of the stair was a golden goblet resting on its side with a bent lip. That had made the noise that alerted him, and the wizard glanced up to find the trapdoor into the office wide open.

He cast three spells on himself and one upward into the room as he slowly ascended the stairs. He could not detect any evil or any invisible creatures beside himself. His last spell was merely guaranteed to counterspell the first magic cast upon him.

The noiseless and invisible mage rose up into the curate’s office. The room, like the library below, had light filtering in through theurglass skylights in the ceiling. Unlike the light below, the rectangular room glistened with refracted rainbows of colors on the wood paneled walls. The sparkles came from the eleven crystals hovering in mid-air among an arc of six tall wing-backed chairs, five of which had their backs to him. Four small gems, each about the size of his thumbnail, orbited the others with faster motions, and those were colored brown, umber, orange, and red. The other seven crystals were clear and as long and thick as the wizard’s torso.

The Nameless Chosen inadvertently spoke aloud in his astonishment,
“Kiiratel’Uvaeranni …”

Voices answered him from among the chairs.

“Very good, Nameless One.”

“Approach us and sit.”

“Be quick—our time grows short.”

“Are we sure he’s the one?”

“He has ties and loyalties to us all. He is the one.”

The Nameless Chosen froze where he stood when an elf’s hand appeared above the back of the nearest chair, beckoning him forward. Its skin was glistening and jet-black, and
claws seemed to flex in and from its fingers like a stretching cat. The wizard pulled some iron, diamond dust, and an assortment of herbs from his belt pouch as he yelled out a quick spell. The magic wrapped each of the chairs in glowing chains, each link a handspan wide. Another chorus of dispassionate voices considered his actions.