Sandro was halfway down the tower by the time the echoes of the slamming door had died away, the stride of his long legs eating up the steps in a fast, angry walk that was nearly a jog. He had made his case, and he had made his decision. Now he had to make his escape.
It did not take long to gather all of his belongings from his chambers; the alchemy equipment and other furnishings all belonged to Ethric, anyway. He packed his satchel with chalk, ink, wax, paper—all the tools of his trade—and slung his scroll organizer over his shoulder. Taking the chest from the foot of the bed, he piled his personal effects—travel kit, clothing, cauldron, and the ever-present mirror—into it, snapping it shut with the lock from his spellbook's case.
The spellbook itself, bound in solid adamantine with pages of engraved mithral foil, he dropped in its slipcase and tossed in his satchel, along with his map case. He paused in the act of throwing a hooded, black satin cloak over his shoulders as he caught a glance of himself in the full-length scrying mirror that hung on the wall. He was tall, lithe as an elf, with a shock of unruly, medium-length hair—not orange, like some "redheads," but true blood-red locks, straight and silky. Jade-green eyes, almost feline with their near-imperceptible slant, stared back at him out of a pale face that sported the high cheekbones of his mother, offset by his father's square, but pointed, jaw. His nose was straight, his mouth sensuous but petulant, revealing sharp, fanglike canines when he grinned at his reflection.
Like a cat, he was vainly hesitant about covering himself, perceiving such an act as denying the world at large the opportunity to drink in his appearance. He was one of those narcissistic people who knew they cut a fine figure, and couldn't stand other people not knowing, which was why nearly all the clothing he owned was a mish-mash of short, open vests, skintight leather breeches with dangerously low waistlines, and little dangly things crafted from silken mesh and chain links—all of it, naturally, in blacks and grays.
Tonight, though, practicality won out, and he shrugged the cloak the rest of the way onto his shoulders, throwing the hood up. There would be no one in the pass to appreciate his otherworldly good looks—besides, it was going to rain, anyway. It wouldn't do to get his hair wet.
He hung his dagger on his belt, opposite his spell component pouch—both finely-made gifts from his mother, Aslenne—and took from its rack near the door his most prized of possessions, save his spellbook.
It was a scythe, so finely-wrought that it could only have come from the forge of an elven or dwarven craft master. The shaft was a straight steel pole, as tall as he and burnished to the sheen of high-grade silver, its foot a vicious barb that could easily double as a spearhead. The long, curved blade was inlaid with a filigree of gold wire, and sharp enough to cut through the proverbial silk handkerchief, its edge a shadow's breadth from the razor keenness that, normally, only magic can achieve.
It wasn't magical yet, but he was working on it. Sandro's father, Zoltan, had been of the opinion, during his son's formative years, that even a wizard should know how to use a weapon, since, eventually, even the greatest archmage can run out of spells. He reasoned that a spellslinger who could hold his own in close combat would be better able to ration his precious power, finding no practical point in incinerating someone who could just as easily be dispatched with a sharp bit of metal. Sandro fully supported this theory, and intended at some future date to demonstrate the effectiveness of his father's philosophy to his enemies by enchanting the scythe until it smoked.
Struggling, Sandro managed to cradle the weapon in his elbows and grapple the chest; the problem of the door took a bit longer, but, eventually, he made it into the stairwell, and thence to the base of the spire. In the center of the large first-level chamber was an anatomical model of an equine skeleton, an odd bit of sculpture amongst the other strange furnishings that came standard with a wizard's stronghold. The young necromancer set his chest beside it, propping the scythe between a handy pair of ribs, and heaved a two-wheeled wooden cart from the jumble of bric-a-brac that filled the room. This he affixed to the horse's skeleton, managing with some difficulty to attach the device, which was intended for creatures of flesh, to the calcareous model. Once the macabre steed was safe between the shafts, he loaded his chest into the cart, filling the remaining space with a fine, silver-inlaid black saddle and harness, then covered the lot with a sheet of canvas to protect it from the rain. At last, he climbed into the seat and took up the reins, laying his scythe across his knees.
When I kill you and claim this place for my own, Ethric, Sandro thought grimly, I shall have a proper stable constructed.
He paused, savoring the thought for a moment, then clicked his tongue and snapped the reins.
The skeletal beast animated suddenly, starting forward in horrific facsimile of a horse's canter with no preamble; it simply went from motionlessness to action. Grinning smugly, Sandro spoke the command word that opened the quadruple gates, and sat back to enjoy the ride as his undead companion carried him out into the rain, and northeast, to home.
To Shadowdale.
Elsewhere in the region, the night was clear and filled with stars. The leaves rustled as a playful breeze ruffled the trees of Cormanthor. Somewhere, an owl hooted, and a wolf howled in response.
Trendal, son of Furalith, knelt in a clearing at the center of the forest, his scimitar unsheathed beside him on his right, a stout halfspear laid close to hand on his left. His hide armor creaked as he shifted position for the first time in what felt like hours, and was probably days.
He concentrated, drinking in the sounds and smells of the woodsy evening with his entire body; he could taste the blood of a fresh kill on the tongue of a hunting cougar, feel the damp forest loam beneath the feet of a grazing deer. He could sense the life of the land, beating with a slow, steady pulse all around him, swallowing him up with its enormity.
He opened his eyes slowly, filled with a preternatural calm. Across the clearing, a huge gray wolf sat on its haunches, watching him with eyes like molten gold. He met its gaze fearlessly, staring into the depths of those great yellow orbs; reaching out with his mind, he called it.
The beast cocked its head to one side, as though listening to something only she could hear—Trendal was sure it was a she, now—and silently padded across the clearing toward him. Halfway there, the wolf passed through a pool of shadow, and a beautiful elven woman, scantily clad in green armor crafted from wood and leather, emerged from the other side.
A river of hair, silver as moonlight, streamed out behind her, and her gold-tinged skin was patterned with green and blue tattoos that curled, vinelike, around her slender limbs and torso. She made no sound as she moved, only looking at him with eyes as golden as the wolf's had been.
"Stand," she commanded softly. He rose slowly to his feet, and she placed a hand on either side of his face—a task made easy because they were of a height—then rose up on tiptoe to bestow a single kiss on his forehead. Her lips burned like a brand on his flesh, filling him with tingling sensation akin to the pins-and-needles in his still-numb legs, and he felt inexplicably stronger.
"You are ready," she whispered, her breath cool as a breeze on his ear, her voice like water rippling over stones.
"Then it is time," Trendal replied, and his own rather pleasant tenor was rough and harsh in his ears by comparison. He pushed his gold-wire-rimmed spectacles back up onto the bridge of his nose with one finger.
The elven druid nodded. "You must return to Shadowdale. We have given you all we can; now it is up to you to do the rest." She paused. "I hope your quest meets with success; the loss of a sibling is a wound that never heals, an ache not meant to be borne by children such as yourself."
"I'm a grown man," he replied tartly, with a boyish smile.
"Perhaps among your own people, you can now be considered so," she conceded. "But to an elf, you are barely more than an infant in swaddling. Still," she added, "I believe you have much ahead of you, and now you are capable of facing it without turning aside."
"Thank you, Sylvianna," Trendal said seriously. He bowed deeply to the elven woman. "For all you have done, I am grateful."
"Take her words to heart, human man," said a deep male voice from the shadows behind Sylvianna. A large horse stepped, as silently as the elf had, into the clearing; its coat was blindingly white, with a flowing mane and a long, tufted tail. Its eyes and cloven hooves were golden, as was the long horn that sprouted, gleaming, from its broad forehead.
"You have the gift," the unicorn continued, its tone very matter-of-fact, as though it were simply stating the future instead of trying to predict it. "I can sense it. You will carry the power of these woods beyond the forest's edge. It will go with you when you leave. I think you will succeed."
"Gileam is rarely wrong about anything," Sylvianna told the young man wryly, "a fact that he is slow to let us forget. And he is correct now—here, away from 'civilized' Cormanthor, on the edge of the wilderness, the fringe—I can feel it. The land has spoken to you, and it will guide your path. Trust in its power to guard you, and to heal your sister."
"I will," Trendal gravely agreed.
"Come," she bade him as she mounted the unicorn, almost seeming to flow onto the creature's back. "Gileam will bear you to the forest's end. You must go tonight."
"Is it so important for me to leave right away?" he wondered, climbing up behind her. "I wish to be on my way, but I thought that I could at least take my time and enjoy the journey back; it's only a few days travel from here to Shadowdale."
He gasped and gripped the elven woman's waist tightly as Gileam sprang into motion, nearly flying through the trees, soundlessly galloping across the night-filled woods.
"I think it is," Sylvianna responded, although Trendal didn't hear. The druid closed her eyes, listening to what the forest was telling her.
"I think it is important. Something wicked this way comes."
Though it was late, and the evening made darker by the heavy storm overhead—a cloud cover that had lasted more than a week—the inside of the Tower of Ashaba was still brightly lit, and the lively music that poured from an upper window seemed fit more for a summer picnic on a level greensward than for a dark and rainy night in the Twisted Tower.
Arkantis was always a little too cheerful for everyone else, and now was no exception. Thunder and lightning or no, he was determined to enjoy himself, and his lute was working hard to spread the joy of his song throughout the entirety of the fortress. There was a heavy thump on the other side of the thick stone wall against which the young bard had propped himself, and he chuckled mentally as he began to count.
Settling himself more easily against the headboard of the bed, he redoubled his efforts to educate the world at large, with regard to the endless possibilities for romance that lay between an enterprising elven youth and generations of human shepherdesses who hereditarily brought their flocks to the same pasture near the forest's edge.
Three…
Arkantis's voice, though growing stronger with training, had never been very good—especially for an ambitious bard—and he had, by and large, made little attempt to correct the situation. He had long ago mastered the surprisingly complicated fingerings of the lute, as well as a half-dozen other stringed instruments, and that was good enough for him. He whimsically assumed that the voice would train itself, if he used it occasionally; in the interim, there was nothing quite like a strong, loud, off-key baritone to awaken the denizens of Ashaba.
Two…
The lute had been a gift from his mother, in fact, when Uther—Arkantis had long ago stopped thinking of the grim old knight as father—had forbade him to sing anymore, loudly proclaiming that his voice was neither entertaining to listen to nor useful for making his way in the world. Always supportive of her younger son, however, Annah had procured the lute—once owned, played, and then discarded by Finder Wyvernspur himself, before his ascension to godhood—so that Arkantis could continue to practice his music without drawing as much attention to himself. As a result, he had become much more of an instrumentalist than a vocalist.
One…
He had always been a disappointment, he knew. Uther had wanted another strong, strapping, brainless prat like Shadrian—another knight to train up and then lead around, doing the gods only knew what for the Lord of Shadowdale. But Arkantis had been sickly and weak, unable even to hold a sword or stay on a horse, much less wear armor, and so he had been cast out to find his own way. The way of the Harpers.
Well, Uther would quickly revise his opinion when the offspring that he had so readily shunted off to one side returned to Shadowdale, rolling in gold and famous the world over in songs of his own making.
Now…
His door slammed open. "What, by Milil's hair and harpstrings, do you think you are doing?" the slender blonde woman in the archway shouted shrilly at him.
Unconcerned, Arkantis finished the last verse of his song, ending with a trilling, drawn-out note that was remarkably close to the right one. Growing up in a sickbed, and for half of that in his bookworm of a cousin's household, he had acquired some small intelligence and learning, but had never developed that caution or common sense that comes so naturally to other children, who played outside and got their arms broken. He spent too much of his time being glad that he was now capable of walking around and holding an instrument at the same time to waste effort on practical wisdom. The only reason he had survived this long, in the rough-and-ready atmosphere of Mourngrym Amcathra's stronghold, was probably that it was so hard not to like him that people who wanted to hit him gave up and went away instead.
The young man looked slyly sideways at the fuming woman, without turning his head. "What are you doing up so late, dear teacher?" he asked in his most innocent voice.
Her eyes narrowed, and she leveled an accusing finger at him. "Don't pike with me, you leatherheaded sod. I'm surprised Mourngrym himself isn't up here right now to give you a sound thrashing; I've more than half a mind to sew your fool bone-box shut myself!"
Unless one knew her, it could take awhile to work all the way through one of Golden Chord's sentences. Apparently, the story amongst the other Harpers went, she had been a bard long before becoming a priestess of Finder Wyvernspur, and had, during that time, spent a number of years…somewhere else. No one knew how many years—some said she had only been gone a short time, others said two decades, maybe more, although she didn't look much past thirty—and no one knew what other place. Nearly everyone who had any magical training at all, including the little snatches of lore and power that a bard often picked up, knew that there were other levels of existence, other worlds, where someone could go; but not very many—at least not in the Dalelands—knew much more than that. Wherever she had been, Golden had picked up a wealth of experience, a library of songs never heard in the Dalelands or in Cormyr, a full-body tattoo job consisting of sinuous black patterns, a new name, and someone else's entire vocabulary.
Her eldritch tattoos were writhing now, like snakes under her skin, as they always did when she was irritated. "How many times," she grated, "have I told you? Never mind—even I can't remember. Too many. But mark you this: You'd better tumble to the concept of waking hours but quick, if you can find the dark to bang your fool brain-box on it, or I'll pen your name in the dead-book personally." She said it with a dreadful finality.
"Yes, ma'am," Arkantis said obediently, giving her a trite look of completely fabricated repentance.
"Why, I ought to—" the cleric started, but suddenly cocked her head to one side, closing her mouth instead. After a moment of silence, she said, "What in Finder's name is that?"
Then he heard it, too—a steady clop-clopping outside, like distant hooves on the muddy stones of the road leading to the Twisted Tower. Curiously, he rose, setting his lute on the bed, and opened the nearby window. Golden, far too short to peer over his shoulder, shoved him out of the way instead so she could look out into the night.
"Sodding barmy," she muttered. "A berk would have to be either totally clueless or completely sodding barmy to be out on a night like this. Must have come up from Shadow Gap, too; no word from the Mistledale road all evening."
"The Shadow Gap. So?" Arkantis grunted, unconcerned.
"So," Golden mocked, elbowing him in the side as she strode past him, still clad only in her shift and a robe, "who do we know from the Shadow Gap? Let's go down and greet our interesting traveler."
"Can't the guards deal with it?" he called plaintively after her, rubbing his bruised ribs and completely missing her point.
Her voice came floating back up the hall, fading rapidly. "Of course," she said, "but now that I'm awake, I want something from the kitchens downstairs, anyway. Maybe if some sod hadn't woken me up, I wouldn't be hungry."
Arkantis rolled his eyes and followed her tirade faithfully downstairs, making sure to drag his feet the whole way. Via this mode of transportation, he arrived in the great, enclosed courtyard at the base of Ashaba just as the mysterious traveler pulled up to the tower gates. The archers on the wall were warily eying the dark, bulky shape that sat just outside the circle of light provided by the sputtering torches.
The bard peered through the rain, just able to make out a hunched figure, clad in a black robe, seated atop a two-wheeled wooden cart of the same sort that his mother might drive to visit the greengrocer. A single horse stood between the shafts, but there was something odd about it…
"Hail and well met, traveler!" Golden yelled through the gates, looking slightly ridiculous in her bedclothes. No gatekeeper, no sentinel, no warden, thought Arkantis, has ever worn a uniform like that.
"Sanctuary," the figure called back dryly. The voice, distorted by distance and the sounds of the weather, was oddly familiar.
The priestess had noticed it, too. Sure now that her hunch was right, she grinned and shouted, "Every berk who's ever nicked a gully in a peel/Has heard the chant that Hardheads follow close upon their heel!"
"They get the rope and bang around in bondage to the Dead," the stranger sang back wearily, in a voice much better than Arkantis's own, "But the Hardheads gave the Chord the rope and got the laugh instead. Can I come in now, or shall I just push your tower over and press on?"
It was the way he said it—chillingly devoid of any jest, completely certain in the simple truth that it could be done, and easily—that had the guards on the wall looking edgily at one another and Arkantis leaping into the air, whooping with glee. The gates were opened, and the cart pulled inside, drawn by a horse out of a nightmare, but Golden ignored it, having seen much stranger things, and Arkantis didn't even notice, swarming up onto the cart to embrace the driver in a rough bear hug.
"Get off me, you daft malingerer!" the silvery voice cursed him.
"Cousin Sandro!" the bard squealed like a child. "You're home!"
