Umber

The prophecy appears to roll along, fulfilling itself in the way that prophecies will.

Her nightly meditation completed, the elven psion withdrew her greatsword from the sheath propped against the wall next to her and laid it across her knees. Concentrating, she summoned into her mind an image of Crusader as she’d appeared on the Abyss: tall, emerald-skinned, winged. 

The planetar spoke within her mind. “You are troubled.”

Psydney grimaced. ”Now there’s a novelty for you.” Crusader smiled faintly, waiting. ”Maybe it’s these continuous waves of evil swirling around and toward me as I walk. It’s hard to get used to. When we were in Greyhawk, I thought I would go out of my mind. I’d almost rather know to a certainty when someone is good, and guess at the rest.”

“You will learn not to dwell upon it. And perhaps if we were merchants of the gods, they would have granted us the ability to sense the currents of law as they flow around us, the better to strike an honest bargain. But we are warriors, and knowledge of evil serves us better.”

“Merchants of the gods?” Psydney said. “And Hanen thought celestials were humorless.”

“He is not entirely wrong,” Crusader replied. “There is joy to be found in the heavens, but in truth little humor. It is all too often the product of someone else’s misfortune. A mere prank is pointless, and anything more serious will have serious consequences which cause laughter to die on the lips. I believe that is why Enai’s request for gates onto Thanatos amused Bahamut. It was prankish, and could be appreciated as such, but its purpose was in fact a grave one, and therefore worthy of the dragon god’s time and attention.” She paused. “But your thoughts are not occupied with the temperament of the celestials.”

Psydney shook her head. “No. I was thinking about the two tables of the Champion. Justice and Mercy, Power and Freedom. Remembering the choices we made, wondering what choices our opponents made. The table was created on the Abyss. Were those who gathered around it dedicating themselves to the forces of blind, willful destruction? I suppose we’ll never know now. And just as well. Did they know that their choices could change them, the way they changed us? Or perhaps,” she mused, “they didn’t change us at all, but affirmed what we already were and hadn’t realized until the alternatives were so starkly put before us.” She was silent for a while. “The last time we saw Tenser, Serge and Enai stood before the table and added their essences to the Champion.”

“And how did they choose?” Crusader asked.

“Enai chose both Justice and Mercy. If it hadn’t been for our earlier dealings on the plane of the heavens, that would have surprised me. The first time Bahamut met us on Lunia and offered her the Choice of Celestia, she declined. But the second time, she accepted. She gave no indication, to us at least, what changed her mind. For her, perhaps, Tenser’s table was an affirmation of the commitment she had just made.”

“And Serge?”

“He did something that I don’t think any of the rest of us had considered. He took his place at the table, but refused to extend either hand. He said his conscience wouldn’t permit it.”

“What was Tenser’s reaction?” the planetar asked.

“For a moment, I thought he was going to fly into a rage. Then he mastered himself. He said he was disappointed, but respected the rogue’s willingness to make at least the commitment he did.”

“Commitment of resources, if not soul?” Crusader said.

Psydney shrugged. “I don’t know. Perhaps. In any case, the soul of the table imprinted itself upon him, in accordance with his choice.”

“An interesting feature of the table,” Crusader remarked. “I wonder if the archmage intended it, or if it is a byproduct?”

“If it was within his power, deliberate intent is plausible,” Psydney said. “He is a man of great conviction and principle, but he is not subtle. It would certainly be like him to create a structure which would, for all intents and purposes, brand the consequences of your actions on your forehead.” Again a long silence, until Psydney laughed to herself.

“Yes?” the planetar said.

“I was just thinking about Tenser, and our most recent trip to King Yiss and the site of Baltron’s beacon. The first time we explored the place, we stumbled across a handful of individuals: a centaur, an elven woman, a monk, a cleric and a mage, all of them turned to stone. We were, unfortunately, in no position to do anything with them. I don’t think the rest of us ever gave them another thought, but Bane remembered, and finally insisted after we left Mage Point this last time that we return and do something about them. In some ways, he is very much a student of Tenser’s. In others, he is very different.”

“In what way?”

“Tenser would not have forgotten them either. But I think he would have gone back and melted down the entire tower, burying the innocent with the guilty, to guarantee that the secret of blackfire would never haunt the world again.”

“Bane would not have approved that course of action,” Crusader said.

“No, I don’t think so. If sacrifices must be made to the greater good, one must take care to ensure that they are quite necessary, particularly when they are someone else’s sacrifice. We had no trouble deciding to restore to life the centaur, the elf and the monk, all of them clearly victims of the cult’s machinations. Although afterwards, I was less certain that we’d done them a favor. So much time has passed, and the world is very different from the world they knew. They may have difficulty acclimating.”

“But you have given them back the ability to choose their destinies for themselves.”

Psydney nodded. “I suppose that’s true. The cleric and the mage proved a stickier matter. Both were wearing, prominently displayed, the symbol of blackfire. Some of us were in favor of leaving them as they were, as the idea of animating them only to kill them – and they clearly had no chance of defending themselves against us – had little appeal. Some were opposed to that decision on the grounds of, curiously enough, cruelty: leaving them in a state of everlasting suspension struck them as worse than killing them and being done with it. Others were opposed from the fear that, should someone less scrupulous than we stumble on this place and break the enchantment that bound them to their stone form, the production of blackfire might begin again.

“Finally we agreed to return the cleric to life and question him. It was fortunate that we did so, as it turned out that his former state had been a punishment for the doubts he was already beginning to have about the glorious future promised by the keepers of the black flame. He was more than willing to leave his past behind him and even to accept Kuhlefaran’s offer of atonement, and as he lacked knowledge of the blackfire’s preparation it was safe enough to send him on his way.”

“And the mage?” the planetar asked.

“The cleric told us enough to confirm that he might be a threat. He was overeager to ascend in the hierarchy – the reason he earned his own punishment, presumably – and the cleric believed it quite possible that he knew something of the black flame’s creation.”

“So the debate began all over again.”

“Indeed it did,” Psydney confirmed. “Magnus, Enai and I were all opposed to reanimating the man only to kill him moments later. Bane, I think, leaned a little toward what I would think of as the Tenserian solution: turn the stone to mud, and let that be an end of it. Serge was unimpressed with any of our propositions. It was Kuhlefaran who proposed a kind of compromise. We would make the mage the same offer as the cleric: atonement, with an additional condition. If he did in fact, as we suspected, possess the secret of blackfire, he must agree to have it excised from his memory by a specialist of our choosing. If he did not agree we would, however much we might regret it, kill him.”

“From your tone, I assume he did not agree.”

“No, he did not. At least his babbling delusions of ultimate conquest left most of us with few qualms about his fate. Confronted by six heavily armed and armored individuals, he persisted in smugly asserting his superiority over us all, and reached into a pocket for components to cast a spell. Enai killed him with a single blow.”

“And the spell was, in fact…?”

“Yes, it was blackfire. I could see Magnus visibly shuddering as he stared down at the mage’s corpse. He was on blackfire himself for some time, you know, struck by an enemy with a treated weapon. Tenser – we didn’t know who he was at the time, but that is a different story – gave Bane a spell which would suppress the effects, but tracking down the actual antidote took somewhat longer. An unpleasant experience for the fighter, and one he is I think eager to see inflicted neither on himself nor anyone else. In any case, he was adamant that we not leave until the body of the wizard had been obliterated beyond any possibility of resurrection.”

“A sensible precaution,” Crusader said. “The lizardmen are vigilant and fierce, but they are not invincible. It sounds to me as if, in this case, you all chose wisely.”

“In this case…” Psydney’s gaze drifted into the distance.

“In this case? What further choices do you find more disturbing?”

“So many choices,” the psion replied distractedly. “Were there always so many to be made? Have they truly become weightier?” A flash of anger darted across her mind. “Or do we just take ourselves too damned seriously? Murmurings of prophecy, the Hand that has uprooted the tree…”

Crusader – sword, companion and now instructor – sensed the growing disorder in her student’s thoughts. “Tell me of these things,” she said. “Focus.”

Psydney sighed. “Serge is enamored of his new toys. As any of us would be in his place, I suppose. But not satisfied with seeing the threads that bind individuals to the planes, not content even to travel along them, he sought the power to affect them. Even, perhaps, to destroy them. As you know, we have been pressed for some time, and these tests he wished to perform were a luxury we did not have. But now that we were back on the Prime Material in search of rest and supplies, his thoughts were bent to devising an experiment which would permit him to determine the true extent of his power. And so he consulted the party on what would make a suitable test subject.”

Crusader’s tone was level. “And what was their counsel?”

“Bane and I both had very strong opinions about experimenting with anything like the ring of the svirfneblin. One does not trifle with a gift offered in fellowship, nor potentially put the givers at risk. Magnus suggested summoning a demon, but I argued that even if they were evil, we did not have the right to call one to us for such a purpose. Then undead were mentioned. If we could find something mindless, like a zombie, how could anyone possibly object? But I did object. Even to experimenting with undead. Even though they are mindless. Even though they are abominations, deserving only of destruction.”

“It is one thing to destroy a creature outright, another to use it,” Crusader suggested.

“That’s it, exactly,” Psydney replied. She pondered the matter for a moment. “And it isn’t even a question of what it does to the zombie – it is a question of what it does to the one who uses in such a fashion.”

“And they proceeded with that plan?” the planetar asked.

“Evidently. I was in the Glitterhame and knew nothing of it until Magnus and Bane communicated with me via our telepathic bond. The rest of the party was in the vicinity of Nightfang Spire, and Serge was missing. I immediately joined them there.”

“But he returned to you.”

“Barely,” the psion said. “And accompanied by, for all intents and purposes, a piece of a plane, which slammed into us and knocked Serge and Magnus unconscious before continuing on to the gods know where. If they even know.”

“Excuse me?” the planetar said, convinced she had not heard properly.

“From Serge’s description of events, Bane believes that he tore away a piece of the plane of Shadow.”

“Tore it away?” Crusader sounded startled. “To where?”

“We don’t really know. The Black called it ‘the places where there are no roads,’ and if it’s a place they don’t know how to reach, that makes me nervous. Bane thinks that in effect Serge created a demiplane out of a chunk of Shadow, but it was apparently unstable.”

“Did he tell you anything of what happened?” she asked. “I would like to know more of this.”

“They found a gathering of specters, shadows and zombies, and Serge crept toward a shadow that was creeping toward him. Rather than observing or touching the thread that trailed toward its native plane, he tugged on the line nearer the Prime Material. Instantly, the creature was transported to his side.”

“And then he tugged on the farther side of the line?” Crusader guessed.

“Yes. And, from the party’s perspective, instantly vanished. Serge found himself in the midst of a dark forest, near the base of a very large tree, with four shadowy horses apparently searching for him. He thought to evade them by climbing the tree, only to find that it attacked him as well. Held in the powerful grip of strong and supple vines that he had a difficult time evading, struck repeatedly by the horses who had now homed in on his location, he tried latching on to the thread that was bound to the ring of svirfneblin friendship. He had done that once before, and arrived safely in the throne room of the king.”

“But not this time,” the planetar said.

Psydney shook her head. “He didn’t manage to travel very far. And the tree and horses came with him. In spite of that, he might have survived indefinitely, except that every time he looked into the forest, there seemed to be fewer trees. And it wasn’t just the forest that was shrinking – it was the entire reality around him. A few more seconds, and he would be annihilated. To make matters worse, the threads attached to the few objects he possessed with interplanar origins were fading as well, until only the ribbons of the portable hole and the Eye of Nyr remained.”

”Clearly he didn’t attempt to travel the line of the portable hole,” Crusader said, “or he wouldn’t be here.”

“No,” Psydney replied. ”He sought out what lay at the other end of his eye: the cavern of the four death knights. Desperate to be free of the clinging vines, he used the Hand of Nyr to beckon them, agreeing to pay their price, not even knowing what it was. They appeared, slaughtered the horses and the tree, then disappeared. To Serge’s vision, they didn’t go anywhere, but merely vaporized, as if they had disincorporeated. Unfortunately, the horses and the tree disappeared as well, leaving him on a still-shrinking demiplane with no obvious means of escape besides the same two lines of force: the portable hole, and the Eye of Nyr.”

“And so he looked into the cave again?” the planetar asked.

Psydney nodded. ‘And saw within four shadowy horses and a large, dark tree. He called upon upon them for help, they emerged, and that’s when the demiplane crashed into the Prime Material. We don’t know what happened to the tree, the horses, or the plane for that matter, but when Serge looked into the cavern again it was empty.”

“How did you react to his return?”

“We were glad he was still alive, but stunned at the sight of the tree, anchored to its bit of untethered Shadow, its vines wrapped around the horses like bridles, flying at us and then sailing out of sight. It would have been shocking under any circumstances, but another formerly obscure portion of the prophecy leapt to most of our minds: ‘The Hand will uproot the tree, and it will -‘ Destroy? Transform? Klavicus’ translation was unclear. It seemed to have eluded Serge’s recall, so Magnus tossed him a copy of the prophecy, to refresh his memory. He looked a little uncomfortable as he read it.”

“Do you believe that he sees condemnation in your gaze?” Crusader asked.

“Haissha is a Conscience. If he seeks condemnation, he can find it from her in ample supply. I only brace myself against the consequences I fear are inevitable. Even if the demiplane has been fully reabsorbed and is completely harmless, there are many eyes upon us. Many of those that are not openly hostile still fear us. If we continue to uproot bits of planes and fling them about the spaces between the multiverse, they may have just cause.” She sighed. “And more immediate consequences seem to have accrued to Serge’s little adventure.”

“Indeed?” the planetar said.

Psydney nodded. “Silvertongue was furious with the rogue for putting it in a position where it faced total annihilation, alone, in a place of no glory. It said it was willing to give Serge another chance, though, and that he could redeem himself almost wholly…if he refilled the cavern from whence the death knights had come. Serge replied that it seemed increasingly obvious that his aims and Silvertongue’s were not aligned. Then, to everyone’s surprise, he held the sword out to Magnus.

“The fighter, after some hesitation, took it. You could almost see the silent test of dominance between him and the blade, then Silvertongue said, ‘You have a strong will.’ Magnus smiled and held the sword some distance away from him in his large fist. ‘You’re a little small,’ he said. He ran a finger along the blade. ‘You’re not very sharp either.’ Silvertongue sputtered a bit, apparently caught off guard, then said it would work on it. ‘You do that,’ Magnus said. Then without further ceremony he stuffed the sword into his offhand sheath.”

A flicker of a smile crossed Crusader’s face. “An interesting way to establish authority,” she said, ”by giving it an inferiority complex. I doubt if Silvertongue is accustomed to being told it is only perhaps good enough to be wielded as an offhand weapon but that if it applies itself, it may aspire to something more. Do you think it has found a safer home?”

”I don’t know,” Psydney replied. “Serge was not especially ambitious, but he is easily swayed, and I think over time he may have grown more susceptible to the weapon’s influence. I believe that Magnus would not shrink from building an army, but his will is strong, and his ego such that he would require troops that reflected his own prowess. At least Haissha would not need to fear for her peasants, I suspect.”

“Speaking of Haissha’s peasants…” Crusader trailed off.

“Yes, we have planted the gem in Blasingdell. Those who participated in the sowing gained the right to grant passage to evil.”

“And who did participate?” the planetar asked.

“Haissha, of course. And all of us, except Serge.”

“The rogue abstained? Why?”

”He said he didn’t trust himself,” Psydney said. “I don’t think any of us really knew what to say in response. People may trust him, but faith in his – appendages – is in much shorter supply.”   

Crusader let the matter rest there. ”And the Tree?” she asked. Psydney transmitted a mental image of it where it stood now just inside the gates of Blasingdell, 150 feet tall, with platinum and gold leaves that fell softly on the streets of the town, then after a time faded away. “They’re so beautiful, the people don’t sweep them up,” Psydney said.

“How large is the forbiddance?” Crusader asked.

”Last time we checked, thirty miles. It encompasses the farmers, Clement’s people, even the Glitterhame.”

Fervor glittered in Crusader’s eyes. “A bastion of righteousness such as Oerth has never seen.”

May it never fail, Psydney thought to herself. Or the retribution may be terrible indeed.