Umber

The Bard seeks shelter in the Enclave from the increasing madness of the world, but finds less shelter than he’d hoped.

A middle aged man with a lute slung across his back rode cautiously through the Gamboge Forest. He passed a certain boulder, a certain tree, a certain cairn, and then he stood before two tall, red-barked spruce trees. He reined in his horse and waited. In a few moments three elven archers appeared before him. He recognized one of them from earlier visits. “Noawna,” he greeted her. “How fare you?”

Her face remained stony, and instead of addressing him she called over her shoulder. A young elf clad in soft leather dropped from the branch of a nearby tree. “Tell the mistress the bard has arrived. What are her instructions?” Hanen smiled at him but before he could say a word, the elf clapped his hands over his ears and ran away toward the heart of the Enclave.

“I am unaccustomed to such a welcome,” he said to Noawna.

“We are unaccustomed to these times,” she replied, her tone softening only a little. “T’lar has given strict orders that no thickhead – that is, outsiders – are granted entry to the Enclave without her permission. No exceptions. Not even old friends.”

Something in her emphasis on the word old disturbed him, but he did not press the matter. “Orders?” he asked wryly.

The elf looked away briefly. “I know what you’re thinking. But our freedom means little if the Enclave is destroyed. We do not accept discipline gladly, but she does not give it gladly, and for us that is enough.” She did not appear interested in further conversation, and Hanen was content to be silent. Whatever might have happened, he had won back harder hearts than these, and his history with T’lar was long. Within a few minutes the messenger had returned, accompanied by three more archers.

The young elf whispered to Noawna, and she to another. That elf stepped toward Hanen. “You will surrender your weapons.”

He looked startled. “I have never done so before. Surely – ”

“The mistress bids us tell you that they will be well cared for. But you will surrender them.” Hanen frowned, unbuckled the belt sheathing his two rapiers, and passed them to the elf. “And the instruments.”

That was too much. “I most certainly will not hand over my instruments, to you or anyone else.”

“The mistress bids that you not utter a further word until you are brought before her. You will be silent now, and you will surrender your instruments,” the elf insisted.

Hanen fixed him with an angry stare. “And I tell you I will do no such – ” Too late he realized why they were arrayed in a semicircle around him, with no guard at his rear. Unwillingly he met gazes suddenly glowing with psionic intensity. A discordant hum and the scent of taverns and city streets filled his ears and nose as his limbs stiffened and he felt consciousness slipping away from him.

When he awoke, he was sprawled on a chaise longue in T’lar’s private guest quarters. He lay quietly looking around him, waiting for his head to clear. Usually bright and cheerful, the room was shrouded in near darkness. Although his vision was still blurred, he could see that the large windows were fitted with shutters that he had never seen before. No sign of locks, he thought to himself. They must bolt from the outside. She has been waiting for me. But why? Directly across from him but well out of reach he watched a vaguely humanoid form resolve itself into triple, then double, then into a single small elven woman dressed in alabaster leggings with a pale face and hair so gold it was nearly white, her torso protected by fine mail clearly worked by elvish smiths. Her arm hung casually down the right side of the rough hewn chair in which she sat, but the small crossbow it held was plainly visible. A lute leaned against the left arm of the chair, and a flute lay across her lap.

She held his cherished instruments out to the elven fighter who stood beside her. “Leave us, and take these,” she ordered. Hanen was sure he had been stunned long enough for this transaction to have been completed already; he was equally sure that, for whatever reason, T’lar wanted him to suffer their loss consciously. “Guard them well, and do not let him have them.” She studied the bard carefully; if he was shaken by the loss, he gave no sign. “Ariene is still deafened from last month’s assault by those crazed wizards, is she not?”

The guard bowed slightly. “Yes, mistress. Our healers are able to do nothing for her.”

T’lar nodded. “Give the lute to her to safeguard then. Tell her to let no one take it, not even me, until,” she paused to consider, “until Psydney has come to the Enclave and tells her personally that it may be returned to him. Tell Ariene to inform my sister, should she come, that if she and her friends wish to destroy it instead, they are welcome to do that as well.” Now, for an instant, she thought she saw a flicker of worry on his face, and the sight gladdened her heart. “If you sought haven here,” she said coldly as the fighter departed, “you have come to the wrong place.”

“It has served me before,” he said softly.

“It will not serve you now.”

He tried to read her face, but anger so suffused her that he could see nothing more. “What have I done to merit such treatment?”

“You will know when I choose to tell you,” she said. “But first, you will tell me: what news of the world?”

“Given the reception I received at your gates, you know that it is grim.”

“I know what we have beaten back from our borders,” she replied, “but I wish to hear from you how far beyond the forest this unbridled madness extends, and why it has been visited upon us.”

“Diseases abound: horsemouth, brain burn, and a mysterious illness about which some whisper but no one names. It is said to have no cure. Greyhawk lies in near ruins. Armies are clashing throughout the Flaeness. Even the dumb beasts are said to be stricken with madness. The clerics of Fharlanghn and Cuthbert have all but vanished from the face of Oerth – dead or in hiding no one knows – and the remainder are said to have been abandoned by their deities. The souls of the dead are rumored to walk the land, unable to find their final rest. And that is all that I know. More what, perhaps, but no more why than you.”

Her expression was frozen in nearly death mask perfection. “No more why than me? Perhaps. But would you like to hear my news? News of Castle Pescheour?”

He sighed. Sometimes he wished Fireharp had never told them that story. It had changed T’lar somehow, transmuted her lightness of spirit to bitterness, and he had never really understood why. “Ah, that,” he coughed lightly. “You’ve heard. T’lar, I…”

She interrupted him. “Spare me your explanations. Yes, I was angry that you told them of the castle, even more so that you never told me that my vow of secrecy was not yours, but I am not angry now. Not about that. I have spoken with Psydney. The castle has been found.” She told him what she knew of the party’s search, their arrival, their fight to the very entrance of the castle, their minor tribulations and easy triumphs. “She said they were preparing to search the main tower. That was over a year ago.”

A year ago? He permitted himself to relax a little. If he had been responsible, however inadvertently, for her sister’s disappearance or death, her rage was more than comprehensible. And, he was confident, it could be overcome in time. “And you have heard nothing more?” he asked, striking precisely the right note of concern.

“I did not say that,” she replied. “In fact, after many fruitless months, I finally contacted Psydney recently. Would you like to know what I’ve learned?”

He heard a strange tone in her voice, something strained, almost dangerous. But his curiosity overrode any alarm that caution might have indicated. “Yes, I would very much like to know.” He felt a gentle probing, recognized it, let the telepath enter his mind. The onslaught was so intense that if he had not been already seated he would have staggered and fallen amidst the blur of images. An egg of indescribable beauty, a man in gold armor, dead knights, dead girls, a flayed human skin draped across the corpse of its former owner, the heads of Svengali and Hadrack sewn to…Hanen groaned quietly. “By the gods, T’lar, stop this, stop…” But still the rush of images went on, and shot through them like shards of broken glass cutting into his flesh feelings of betrayal, sorrow, despair and, above all, blind, mindless fury. And then just as abruptly the torrent ceased. He lay back, breathing heavily. “What was that?” he asked between gasps.

“What you have wrought,” she hissed. “Psydney was so overwhelmed, so stricken by the horror of what she and her friends have seen and done, that she didn’t even try to guard herself. She poured them all into me, every deed, every fear, every regret. Now I have given them to you, and I expect payment for my gift, bard.” She stared at him with knifelike eyes he had never seen before. “Tell me their story.”

He felt blinded as well, stricken nearly deaf and dumb. “I couldn’t possibly…” he broke off.

“But that is what you do, human. You have been grateful for these borrowed and stolen thoughts in the past, so complete, so intimate, so easy for one of your talent to craft into heart-rending beauty and laughter and sorrow.” T’lar raised her bow, and only now did he see the bolt already nocked, its tip gleaming black. “It is a simple choice, much simpler than those they have been granted. The story, or you die. Tell me the tale of the Heroes of Castle Pescheour.”

She has gone mad, he thought. There is no point in telling her that these things are not my fault. She has gone mad. And I have delivered myself to her. “I am waiting,” she said. “And you know that I do not wait patiently.”

“I don’t -,” to his annoyance, he was stumbling over his words. “I don’t know where to begin. It’s all such a jumble…”

“I know you’re a thickhead,” she said condescendingly, “but concentrate on my sister’s thoughts. There is order there, and sequence. Discover it.” It had been amusing in the past, sitting at her side and listening to her deride the occasional non-psion who ventured into the Enclave, while he reveled in his privilege, his ability to conquer her mistrust and antipathy. It wasn’t amusing now. “Replay the images in your mind,” she ordered, “and describe what you see.”

He closed his eyes and, however unwillingly, allowed Psydney’s vision to flow through him again. These images, at least, were tolerable to contemplate. “They saw a pair of black dragons patrolling the space around the tower. They talked briefly of killing them, protecting their rear, but decided not to expend the resources and instead went inside. They stood before a pair of stairs, leading both up and down. They decided to ascend. Serge walked before them, assuming his ethereal form to ascertain the state of each room before they entered it.”

“See?” T’lar said in mock encouragement. “It’s not so hard when you put your mind to it. Go on.”

“On the first floor was a bedroom, with an attached bath. Magnus examined a well-crafted suit of armor and sword. He wanted to take them with him. Psydney registered an objection, then turned away. It is an old argument, almost pro forma. She will disapprove, and he will take. Enai was attracted to a table containing a set of exquisitely carved statues of a castle and a scene of war. As she drew near, a large statue in the corner came to life and attacked her. It was only an iron golem, however, and they dispatched it without incident. Then they moved on to the second floor.”

“Don’t forget Bane,” she prompted. “He employed his special sight, didn’t he?”

“Yes, and registered an item of overwhelming power somewhere in the four floors above them. Its strength nearly stunned him. When he tried to sense it again, two floors later, he did fall dazed.”

“An item of overwhelming power,” she said. “Could it be what the party had been sent to seek, and deliver to the man in the golden armor?” The images tumbled over themselves in his mind again. A man standing on a platform receiving the egg, the castle collapsing into a ruin, talk of a seed which grounds all things, the Prime Material cut loose from its proper moorings… “Do not lose your audience!” T’lar snapped, bringing him back to the present moment.

He tried to organize his thoughts again. “On the second floor stood life-sized statues of a king and queen, a magical clay basin and a decanter. When they first entered the room the statues, stone golems in actuality, animated and begin to lumber across the floor. But Sardis projected an image of an empty room before them and, nearly mindless creatures that they are, it sufficed to lull them into insentience again. Curious, Enai poured the water in the basin, summoning a giant water elemental. It asked for orders, but when she attempted to give them it laughed, attacked, and was killed by the party. This room also contained a table with small sculptures, these of animals. From one of them, a manticore, Bane sensed an aura of magic. Curious, Serge picked it up. It animated, attacked, and was killed by the party.”

“Yes, yes,” T’lar said impatiently. “And they found a painting which was covered with a cloth, and Psydney laughed about curiosity but uncovered it anyway and her soul was nearly sucked into the painting. And Magnus wanted to take it with them. And on the next floor they were attacked by a medusa shooting poisoned arrows, which Psydney killed. And Serge stripped the enemy of her remaining arrows, envenomed with her own blood. But it’s the next floor where things become interesting.”

Hanen shuffled the images through his mind: too many, too vivid. But the tower was standard adventuring fare, easily contemplated, easily told. “Serge poked his face through the closed door of the fourth floor and saw twelve suits of armor lining the walls of the room. To his dismay, the suit in the middle of the room took a single step forward and raised its blade in a gesture of salute. It clearly saw him. The rogue backed away rapidly. Sardis tried the illusion that served so well with the stone golems; the knight not only penetrated the illusion but the ghaele’s invisibility as well, saluting him as he did Serge before him. Seeing no way to avoid the confrontation, they moved in to engage the enemy. Just before battle was joined, they heard a maniacal giggling from the floor above them.”

“More of the usual,” T’lar interrupted again. “The knights appeared to think and act in unison; Bane and Psydney retched in revulsion when they raised their visors as one to reveal masses of maggots swarming their faces. The heroes were nearly overwhelmed at the outset but regrouped in more defensible positions. They were quite pleased with themselves when Sardis cut the knight grouping in two with a well-placed force wall, but gained seconds and nothing more when the three who stood isolated pooled their resources and punched a hole through the energy barrier with a single unified blow. Still between the fighters’ prowess and the power of the spellcasters, they prevailed against their foes. Then the giggling wizard upstairs put in an appearance, disappeared, and appeared again.”

And Enai, Bane and Kuhlefaran felt time outside the walls of the castle tear its fabric and advance without them. And Serge died, and Bane, and Sardis…“The ground around his feet roiled and churned,” the bard took up the story again, “as if he stood on water rather than stone. Kuhlefaran anchored him to the fabric of the plane, and Psydney moved in to attack. She placed a solid strike, but given the deadliness of his spells she was not optimistic that they could kill him before he killed all of them, and shouted to Enai to search upstairs for something, anything, to neutralize the extraordinary power he seemed able to muster. After a moment’s hesitation, Enai bounded up the stairs. Just past the landing hovered a nine foot tall, disembodied hand. Beyond it in the center of the room, she saw a small egg of nearly incandescent beauty suspended in an intricate platinum framework. One of the tower’s many shutters had been smashed, and suspended within the window hung the rogue mage of Olidammara with whom the party had unpleasant dealings in the past. He appeared to be engaged in preparations for telekinesing the egg to himself and making his escape. ‘Maybe soon you can pray to me,’ the rogue laughed, ‘but right now I’m rather busy!’

“But to his dismay and anger, Enai leaped around the still inert hand, removed the egg from its pedestal, and exercising her monkish discipline returned to her friends on the floor below in a single, supernatural step. Taking the egg achieved the desired goal of diminishing the enemy spellcaster’s power, although it had other effects as well. He fell to the ground in convulsions, blood spurting unnaturally from the single wound he had suffered. And the castle began coming apart around them, its very stones shooting through from the walls and forming a stairway whose genesis was a hole in the very floor they occupied and whose apparent terminus hung suspended in midair high above them. Wasting no time, Magnus called for his Black, snatched the egg from Enai and Sardis and Serge’s corpses from the floor and bolted up the stairs. The stairs extended themselves ahead of him even as he advanced, and a force barrier slammed into place behind him. With the Black at their sides such obstacles were meaningless, however, and in moments they stood together, a large platform materializing in the air even as they watched.

“The enemy party, who had carefully waited until the climactic conflict had begun and the heroes’ attention was occupied to launch their own assault on the treasure, hurled a final volley of arrows and spells at the unprotected group on the stairs to no avail, and bypassing mere movement the Blacks carried their riders to the platform, where the man in the golden armor awaited them. He made a single, slight motion toward the oncoming assailants and they all vanished; Serge saw a tangle of teleportation threads before they disappeared. Then he asked for the egg. Still wary, they examined him carefully.”

“He was real this time, not a projection,” T’lar said, recalling her earlier exchange with Psydney. “He radiated no evil. He made all the right gestures, said all the right words. Magnus handed him the treasure, as they had been instructed. As Kuhlefaran prepared to resurrect Serge and Sardis using the Traveler’s Star to circumvent the lengthy process of preparing the spell, he interrupted her casting and returned life to the rogue and the ghaele himself. This further affirmed their trust in him, for who but a pure spirit would commit such an act of generosity? They were told to await their second test, a test of character. Then the man in the golden armor vanished, taking the egg with him.” She glared at the bard. “They acted in good faith.”

It’s not my fault, he wanted to shout. I said nothing of golden armor, an egg or a platform. I, too, acted in good faith. “They stood alone on the platform, confused, weary, their resources depleted,” she continued. “They pondered the man’s last words, they reviewed the notes of the scholar Thrombose. And something, some premonition, drove them back to the castle, now collapsed in on itself in the middle of the swamp.” She stopped and waved her crossbow at Hanen. “But excuse me, this is your story. Please, continue.”

Unwillingly, he called the scene to mind. “They scanned the rubble that was all that remained of the castle. They came upon the site of the conflict with the harpies, but the corpses that lay there were not harpies at all.” He closed his eyes, and the corpses lay brutalized before him. He opened them, but the shocked faces of Bane, Enai and Kuhlefaran pursued him, and the horror coursing through Psydney’s mind flooded his own as well. Tricked. Betrayed. What have we done?

T’lar shifted in her seat impatiently. “You lapse in your tale, bard. What did they see?” When he remained silent, she shouted into his mind, over the link he had allowed her to establish and she had not yet broken, What did they see?

His voice cracked as he spoke. “They saw serving girls, cut to pieces. Their desperation growing, they searched the courtyard. Where Serge had slain the trolls in their sleep, there were now dead grooms. The stable of nightmares was filled with war horses, crushed by the castle’s falling debris. Enai ran to the body of the dragon, and found only a man. Her eyes wide, she said to the others, ‘We took that dragon’s hide. For armor.’ Pawing through their extradimensional storage, she pulled out the skin of a human. It was the last item any of them ever took from the portable hole. She tried her best to lay it across the violated corpse. Psydney turned away.” If only I could stop seeing their faces, feeling her feelings. But it’s like a tap that won’t shut off. “They wanted to believe that it was an illusion, but all available evidence told them that the deception had occurred earlier, when the battles were fought.”

“But how could that be?” T’lar asked coldly. “Nearly half the party is gifted or enhanced with true Sight. Their eyes are not easily deceived. Psydney verified that every single one of them – the dragon, the harpies, the trolls, the nightmares – they were all evil. And yet, of everything that died that day, only the natives were natives, and the yuan ti, yuan ti. Everything else was a lie.”

“I don’t know,” Hanen said haltingly. His place was not to know, but to tell, and thereby maintain detachment. “Neither did they, but they sought fervently for answers. Bane wanted to raise one of the girls, since they were there before them, but Psydney said to retrieve one of the knights. She thought a knight might have more information about the castle, and what had happened there, than a mere servant. Magnus agreed with her.”

“They thought strategy would still aid them,” T’lar said softly. “They didn’t yet understand that the world had gone mad around them, that the strategy and logic they have known were meaningless.”

“With the assistance of the Black, they extricated the maggot-faced knights from the castle rubble. They were knights indeed, but true ones. Strong men, but only men. Kuhlefaran attempted to raise one, but there was no soul to contact. They attempted to speak with the dead, but this too failed. Bane tried to summon a vision of the castle and its inhabitants, but nothing came to him. Then the Black nervously said that the Roads were changing. Serge saw the threads that tie the places of the multiverse together begin to flicker and fade. They opened their portable holes to find only pieces of cloth. Bane and Psydney’s holy symbols appeared as inert baubles. Crusader, disquieted, informed Psydney that her own link to Lalibela appeared to have been cut. Only Kuhlefaran’s connection remained strong.”

“Because of her power?” T’lar asked.

Hanen quickly reviewed his cosmology. “No, I believe that Fharlanghn actually resides on the Prime Material. He may very well still have considerable strength here.”

“No wonder his clerics are in hiding,” she replied acerbically.

True enough. A single man may be easily destroyed by the needs of a thousand. “Their reserves exhausted, they had intended to rest, but now it seemed that it might not be safe to tarry here. They gathered the bodies of those they had slain, buried them where they hoped they would lie unmolested in the cave of the dragon who was not a dragon, and made their way west.

“Without the benefit of teleportation, which failed soon after their portable holes, the journey was wearyingly long, even with the great natural speed of the Black. They learned to their dismay that, however great the distance they put between themselves and the castle they were beginning to wish they’d never set eyes upon, the peculiar alteration of the multiverse did not fade. ‘We have to reach habitation,’ Bane said. ‘We have to find out what’s been going on, whether all of Oerth has been affected.’

“At the first town they reached, there was not a single individual of good conscience to be found. Skittish of more lies after enduring so many, they skirted it and moved on to the next. On the way, they saw a large flock of blackbirds veering toward them. Magnus sent his raven to investigate, and as it drew close the flock closed to attack, hounding the familiar as it returned to Magnus. It would have attacked the party as well, but the Black quickly outstripped its pursuit. The second town they reached was largely a ruin, its buildings reduced to charred shells by a fire in the recent past. The inn was still standing, however, and though its keepers were of evil intent the party stopped for information. The common room was empty, save for the bartender and two travelers. Whatever his moral inclinations, the bartender was friendly enough, serving them pork buns and ale with an offer of oxtail soup. Psydney quietly checked the buns for poison, finding none. Enai picked one up and was about to bite into it when Psydney, still suspicious and investigating further, spoke into Enai’s mind, “It may not be poisonous, but it still smells wrong. Don’t eat it.” Bane surreptitiously slipped one into his pocket for later alchemical analysis. The adventurers offered to buy the bartender a beer, and chatted as casually as one can in such circumstances about the fate of  the town.

“He related a terrible tale of vermin infestation. Rats seemingly gone mad swarmed everywhere, a pack so large and dense that no object not nailed down was safe from toppling as they passed. Including, unfortunately, combustibles, and soon fires were raging throughout the town. Diseases followed in their wake: high fevers followed by people literally bursting into flame, spellcasters suffering from a strange disorder in which their heads swelled, distorted, and finally exploded. Now, alas, no one was left alive. He didn’t know why they had been spared, but they offered what aid and comfort they could to passing travelers.

“The two travelers currently occupying the inn seemed overwhelmed and withdrawn. They had little news to impart, and none of it good. The borders of the Bright Desert were said to be expanding. The waters of the seas were said to be shrinking. Fisherman reported thousands of smelt leaping out of the oceans and lakes and rotting on the shores of every waterside village. They had come from Greyhawk, and were never returning. When the adventurers pressed them on the subject, they said only that there were things in the city that they would not speak of, and never wanted to lay eyes on again.

“The innkeeper offered rooms to the party. Seeking to allay possible suspicion of the party’s suspicions, Magnus paid for six, although they intended to occupy no more than two, and they retreated upstairs. Bane retrieved the pork bun, reached for the portable hole containing his alchemical equipment, then sighed. Still, he could perform some rudimentary tests, and set to work. Serge fretted still about the innkeepers, and decided to slip downstairs and check on their whereabouts. Psydney accompanied him.”

T’lar had been listening quietly as the story unfolded. The Bard’s even cadences had almost lulled her into a semblance of mental quiet again; the events almost existed out there, in a world distant from her. But as he spoke of Serge creeping downstairs, as she envisioned the i following silently behind, waves of rage once again crashed against her skull, and the scene took on the immediacy and inevitability of the darkest reality she had ever known. “More lies,” she snarled. “Deception upon deception.” Her pale eyes met his, and the fury that he saw there he had seen somewhere before, but it was somehow not her own. What did they see?

Responding to the unvoiced imperative, Hanen continued. “The inn wasn’t an inn, the common room wasn’t a cozy little space with a nice fire burning and comfortable tables and benches. It was an abattoir. Blood and body parts were strewn everywhere. The scene was complete chaos. The travelers whose company they had so recently left lay dead in pools of their own blood. There was no sign of the so-called innkeepers. And in the midst of the butchery, grotesque in its banality, sat a plate of neatly stacked buns with a note propped against them.” The image in his mind failed him. ”I’m sorry, I don’t know what the note said.”

She shrugged. ”Of course you don’t. Thickhead memories are so feeble. It said, ‘So it begins. You have only to wonder when you will meet your end, and who will be your executioner. While you ponder, please enjoy your complimentary breakfast. Eat up – the staff put a little bit of themselves into each bun.’ It was signed with a single initial – M.” Now go on.

“The remainder of the party had come downstairs by now. Seeing the buns and the note, Bane looked at Psydney and quickly looked away. ‘What was in them?’ she asked. ‘Elf, mostly,’ he replied. ‘A little human, a little dwarf, I think.'” Imagine if the high point of your day was avoiding cannibalism.

I caught that, bard. ”Do you find this amusing?” T’lar demanded. ”You have my assurance, I can cure you of that mood.”

”No, I don’t find this amusing at all.” More guardedly he thought, Not what was done to them, not what you’re doing to me. He sighed and continued. “They were in agreement that spending the night in this den of atrocities was out of the question, so they rejoined the Black and rode to a nearby, defensible hill. Bane and Kuhlefaran settled in to sleep, but the remainder of the party sat up, keeping watch, thinking perhaps, but saying little to one another. Enai, Magnus and Psydney wondered  briefly how anyone could have anticipated their arrival at the inn as neatly as seemed to have happened, but Serge’s disdain for their puzzlement was withering. ‘In what sense have we made any choices?’ he demanded. ‘What have we done that just about anybody couldn’t predict? We left the castle, we went to the first town. Oh, look, everybody’s evil, we don’t want to talk to anyone here. So then we went to the next town. Wow. That’s not obvious. Face it – just about anybody could have known we’d go to that inn, and arranged to be there ahead of us.’ The others fidgeted uncomfortably. He wasn’t wrong.

“The night passed uneventfully, but as dawn inched toward them Serge and Psydney spotted movement in the distance. Six figures, walking with a shambling gait, headed in their direction. They were nearly human, but misshapen somehow, and as they drew closer Serge saw that they were not truly men at all, but parodies of humanity, abominations sewn out of scavenged parcels of flesh, extra limbs and other appendages tacked on as grisly decoration. As they advanced nearer still it was Psydney who first recognized three of their faces, although their heads did not sprout from their necks as they should.”

Don’t say it. Hadrack. Svengali. Glom Gargull. T’lar’s face twisted in someone else’s remembered pain, and her mind seemed entirely elsewhere. Hanen wondered if he could disarm her while she was distracted. She snapped to attention. I’ll kill you if you even think that again. Continue.

“Psydney sent the i down to the creature with Hadrack’s face. It struck at it clumsily, and the psi warrior willed herself to believe it an illusion, that truly Hadrack stood before them. Enchanted, perhaps, but somewhere to be found and rescued as they had before so long ago. But the ghastly vision did not waver. Magnus, Enai and Serge ran down the hill to engage them, touching or slapping them lightly, but no coming of dawn would dispel this nightmare. Magnus was the first to bow to the truth. He began to bind the creatures and affix them to trees some distance from the camp. Psydney watched him, and said, ‘If this is where you will leave them, this is where I will guard them. I will not abandon them to the wild beasts.’ Magnus sighed, untied the restraints, and moved the grotesqueries closer to the place where Bane and Kuhlefaran were just awakening.

“Bane prepared a scrying spell, and focused his thoughts on Blasingdell’s tree of forbiddance. To everyone’s relief, it still stood, if anything taller and healthier than when they had last seen it. He watched the townspeople coming and going. Most of them also seemed healthy, if somber. Then Haissha and Berrick came in to view. To his surprise, they knelt before the tree and began to pray. ‘What are they doing?’ he asked. ‘Pelor does not speak to them,’ Kuhlefaran replied. ‘I would imagine they are frightened. In these times, the tree may have been their salvation.’

“’Well, I’m going to speak to them now.’ Casting another spell, he whispered into the crystal ball he held between his hands. ‘Haissha, do you hear me? It’s Bane. If you don’t know how this works, you can talk back to me.’ She raised her head, looked around in momentary confusion, then said, ‘Bane? Where are you?’”

“’Somewhere south of you. We’ve been,’ he hesitated, ‘occupied. What’s been happening?’

“What had been happening was a litany of horrors. War, pestilence, chaos. Blasingdell had suffered as well, although less than many, for which she was grateful. The canopy of forbiddance was expanded to nearly forty-five miles, so although their people were as prone to the strange diseases sweeping the countryside as anyone, the tides of war had largely passed them by. There were rumors of an archdevil running amok through Greyhawk, and murmurs of a still greater threat, a roaming being calling himself the Dragon King who cast spells of incomprehensible power. ‘And when he does,’ she said, ‘all life dies for miles around. All life.’ She paused. ‘Hadrack, Svengali and Glom Gargull were in Greyhawk. They haven’t returned. I’m afraid for them.’ Bane stole a glance at the mindless faces of the trio. Unable to bring himself to tell her of their fate, he diverted her attention back to current events.

“She told him that Clement had led his people out once, to put down a massive assault of undead in the villages outside the tree’s sphere of influence. ‘It was strange,’ Haissha said. ‘Clement told me that they were much more easily defeated than he would have expected.’ Bane said in an aside to his companions, ‘Not if they couldn’t tap into the plane of negative energy. Then doing battle is like cutting through a dead chicken with a meat cleaver.’

“Only once did she let her frustration show. ‘My tie to Pelor is severed. It has been for months. People sicken, and I can’t heal them. We bandage them up, and then they live or die by chance. By chance. And I keep dreaming of a wounded man, and walking toward a castle in the snow, and a trail of blood behind me. I don’t know what it all means.’ Fear was plain on her face. Bane shifted uncomfortably, but before he could form a reply he sensed a scry attempt in his vicinity. ‘Wait, Haissha,’ he said. He concentrated on the new sensor; it belonged to Tenser.

“The archmage looked concerned. ‘Where have you been?’ ‘Out of the time stream,’ Bane replied soberly. ‘A lot has happened. We don’t understand most of it.’ Tenser was dismayed at the news of Hadrack, Svengali and Glom Gargull. ‘They have been used to make flesh golems,’ he said. ‘If you bring them to me, I may be able to reconstruct their bodies. Isolated from the rest of the multiverse, we cannot raise them in the conventional way, but I have been working on other means.’

“The two wizards shared what information they had. Tenser said that the fiend loose in Greyhawk was an archdevil called Moloch. ‘He used to be one of the rulers of Hell. But there was a conflict, and he lost. He’s been roaming the planes ever since, crafting his return to power. As far as I can tell, it was sheer ill luck that he was here on the Prime Material when the gates to other worlds slammed shut. Furious at the interruption in his plans, he vented his anger on the city.’

“‘And the crater?’ Bane asked.

“‘Created when the Eight took him on. They were defeated. Badly defeated. His powers are immense. Ordinary mortals flee in fear at the sight of him. He can touch a man’s limb and it will instantly wither. And worse.’ Moloch, Bane thought. M. Why was he looking for us? How did he know where to find us?

“Fearful of the answer but wanting to know, Bane asked, ‘Has the sword of the Eternal Champion returned to the table?’ Tenser replied that it had in fact done so, a few months past. He could shed no light on the Dragon King, who was as much a mystery to Tenser as Haissha. His face was grave, however, as Bane told him what had transpired with the party. When it was Tenser’s turn to speak again, it was clear from his face that he had something terrible to say. He spoke of an artifact, the seed of creation. ‘It is said to be rooted somewhere in the Prime Material, said to be the root of the Prime Material. If it were uprooted somehow, well, the effect could be much as we’ve seen. And the final result could be the end of the world as we know it.’ Bane summoned his courage again and asked the necessary, if dreaded, question: ‘What is it said to look like?’

“Tenser answered, and now there was no evading the fears they had struggled to keep at bay as they rode through the countryside. The seed of creation was nothing other than the prize of Castle Pescheour. They had taken it from its rightful place, delivered it to – whom? Impossible to say. This agent had accepted it from them and vanished. And now apocalypse was upon Oerth.” Do you feel her, bard? Tricked. Betrayed. Why did we do it? What have we done? How many have died for our ignorance? How many more will die still? Lives lost beyond count, and yet I dare to keep my own…How can it be undone? I’d trade my soul for the power to undo this…Then her mind turns nearly glacial. No more thinking. Find a thing, and do it. Do you feel it, bard? The bard did feel it; he felt he might suffocate under its weight. Go on with the story.

Hanen’s tongue felt heavy in his mouth. “She moved to the Svengali abomination, untied it from the tree and secured it before her on the Black. ‘I’m going to Tenser’s keep,’ she said. Enai called her own mount. ‘I’ll come with you.’ So the adventurers made their way to Mage Point, each bearing a melancholy burden. The archmage himself came out to meet them. At his direction, they tied the golems each to the other, forming a long, secure chain. ’What will you do with them?’ Psydney asked.

“Tenser opened his mouth to reply, then hesitated. He seemed to be searching for words. ‘We must – I will need – the entire body does not go into the vat. Only that which belongs to – ’

“Psydney cut him off. ‘Then we must kill them.’ Expressionless, she reached for the i, but Tenser laid a restraining hand on her arm. ‘That’s not necessary,’ he said quietly. ‘They are only constructs now. I can – deanimate them.’ The psi warrior’s hand dropped to her side, and a flicker of gratitude crossed her face. Tenser still looked grim. ‘I can regrow the bodies, but the souls are not here. They will need to be found. Trapped. Brought here to me, so I may reunite spirit and matter.’”

Do you feel it, bard? She wants nothing more than to run off to Greyhawk, where they were last seen, claw her way through the swarm of drifting souls in search of three she holds dear. Even the weretiger. But there are higher duties to be performed, even if in the end the three are lost. She knows it. Tenser knows it. He will do his duty, in the hope against hope that all will be well, and they must do theirs. “I may have misjudged him,” T’lar said. “Even though in their ignorance his champions have triggered apocalypse, Tenser neither abandons nor chastises them, but remains true and steady, and works as he can against the coming of darkness. Whatever our differences, I am forced to respect his – ” she hesitated, as if she might choke on the word, “nobility.”

Hanen studied her carefully. At moments her face seems scarcely her own. Were those really her words she was speaking? He summoned a vision of Mordenkainen from the surfeit of images he was force-fed. “Mordenkainen isn’t blaming the party either,” he pointed out. “What does that say of him?”

T’lar’s own expressions slowly slipped back into focus. “Yes, the tale,” she said distantly. “And Mordenkainen.” She leaned forward, intent again. “What did Mordenkainen say to them?” Tell me.

“He was barely coherent. He told them of the battle with Morloch, the scattering of the Eight. No one knew whether Warnes Starcoat still lived. Bane asked after Jallarzi; Mordenkainen replied that, seeing the power arrayed against them, she had the sense to stay out of the fray. Before the shaken archmage could sever the connection, Bane asked, ‘If we need you, will you help us fight?’ Mordenkainen’s face was, as always, inscrutable, but his tone conveyed genuine conviction as he said, ‘Yes, I will come. But beware,’ he added. ‘With the gods out of reach, death here is now oblivion forever. Tenser may be working to reverse this, but even if he is successful life is fraught with new peril. Death has never been something to take lightly, but its weight is more oppressive now.’

“This doesn’t sound like the Mordenkainen you’ve always spoken of. Nor the Tenser,” she interrupted.

Hanen thought of the Eight, the stories he had heard and songs he had sung over the years. “I think,” he said slowly, “that the fates of Mordenkainen and Greyhawk were somehow bound together. He loved that place, and put all of his energy and strength into protecting it. When one was shattered, so was the other. Mordenkainen is as empty now as the crater in the center of the city. He doesn’t know what to do anymore. As for Tenser, his strength is within himself. The ideal to which he has pledged his allegiance would withstand the very destruction of the multiverse. Were he alone to survive the cataclysm, he would work, and wait, that should the world be born anew Justice might find a place already prepared for It.” And would that new world be better for it? I’m not at all convinced.

T’lar looked puzzled. “I still don’t understand why Mordenkainen would offer to help them now, when he has done nothing but thwart them in the past.”

Sometimes Hanen was amazed at her inability to grasp even the simplest political facts, but since only one of them was armed this was definitely not the time to be condescending. “Mordenkainen is committed to balance. Access to all the planes is now cut off. There’s an archdevil rampaging through Greyhawk, and this mysterious Dragon King wreaking havoc throughout the rest of the Flaeness. Neither of them have intentions that appear anything like benevolent. So who’s left of even remotely equivalent power to oppose them?”

If the echoes of her sister’s misery hadn’t still been coursing through her veins, T’lar almost could have laughed. “So Tenser’s champions are now Mordenkainen’s as well. Because there is no one else.”

Hanen thought of the intensely secretive Blastir and Achomed and their hidden fortress of children, preparing for a day that looked more likely to happen with each passing month. Not as far as he knows. “Most likely.” Again the pressure in his mind: Go on.

He gathered the interrupted threads of his tale. “The adventurers were desperate for counsel. Although their bodies were bound to the Prime Material more inextricably than ever before, their spirits were in free fall. They had endured so many lies, so many illusions, with such dire consequences, they no longer knew what tasks to set themselves. And so they spoke with Tenser, and Mordenkainen, and finally Kuhlefaran reached out in holy communion. Fharlanghn himself responded to her supplication. For the most part he confirmed what they expected to hear. Because they disturbed the seed of creation, they bore primary responsibility for the current chaos on Oerth. Both the Dragon King and Moloch needed to be stopped. It was possible that the Eternal Champion would be necessary to defeat both of them, which posed a grave conundrum. It was unclear whether Jake could be called to them in the moment of the Champion’s arising. Something, somehow, had to be done to restore the seed of creation to its proper place.

“She ended the contact, and as she did so the deity himself appeared before them, sitting on a rock that hadn’t been there before. He too spoke no words of blame, and few words of comfort. He assured them that the Test of the Castle was real, though in this instance it had been perverted. When the adventurers asked him what the mysterious figure meant by the Test of Character, he replied, ‘Even one who lies may inadvertently speak the truth.’ When they probed him for knowledge of the creation seed, he replied that, as with the place of souls, the deities were bound not to speak of it. When they asked about rumors that clerics of Cuthbert were still in contact with their deity, he said that somehow Cuthbert was still able to offer small reserves of power to his strongest clerics. How the deity was able to do this was unclear even to Fharlanghn. Before he left them, he said, ‘Do not despair; Justice will come to your aid.’

“After he left, they – ” Minutiae, minutiae, T’lar’s thoughts came impatiently. Nothing more of importance happens until they sleep and dream. Tell me of the dream.

He hunted for the images, stifling a yawn. How long had he been talking? “In sleep and meditation, a shared dream and vision came to them: They find themselves on a barren, snow-covered plain, staring at a castle in the distance. Although the scene is foreign, they feel they have been there before. A trail of blood spatters the snow, leading to the castle, and from somewhere nearby they hear water bubbling. They are unwounded, yet they are sure that the blood is theirs. As they put a foot on the trail, it divides into two paths. They know they must choose the right one if they are to find the castle and the wounded man that lies within.

“The vision faded, and they were jolted back to consciousness. The camp was gone, and they realized that they had been physically transported elsewhere. They saw mountains nearby, and a fresh snowfall covered the surface of the bleak surroundings. Of the blood trail there was no sign. If there were a path to follow, they did not know where it lay. They began to take counsel among themselves when a young fighter, disheveled of hair and wild of eye, charged toward them. He demanded their assistance to fight a giant, horned menace that had been rampaging through local villages, slaughtering peasants and causing great destruction. From his description, there was no mistaking the beast: it was the Tarrasque. The fighter demanded that they swear an oath to kill it, but his demeanor was so feral that none were willing to bind themselves to his fate.

“Before they had time to prepare, or even to consider whether to engage it, the creature lumbered into view, heading for yet another hamlet. The fighter let out a yell and began running, helmless, waving his sword. Magnus and Serge tried to stop his advance, but he wrenched himself away. With a nimbleness belying its size, the Tarrasque leapt upon the warrior and, before anyone could intervene, swallowed him whole.” They could have chosen to disengage, left it to its meals. What was my sister’s famous line? ‘We aren’t going to involve ourselves in every carnivore’s efforts to feed itself.’ Morloch on his rampage in Greyhawk, the Dragon King defoliating whatever he touches, and yet they stop to engage the Tarrasque. I wonder why. But continue.

“It was a battle of sheer, brute force. Magnus and Psydney, Serge and Enai chopped away at the beast until it finally dropped. Serge spent an uncomfortable time in its gullet, and Magnus avoided the same fate only by virtue of his immense physical strength, but in the end it fell, and Bane commanded the arcane forces at his power to heed his will and destroy the creature forever. He was noticeably drained by the effort, but the deed was done as he wished. And thus the Tarrasque was slain. But in what might to the casual observer appear to be a moment of great triumph, something unexpected happened. Go on.

Hanen felt fatigue overwhelming him. He had ridden long to reach the Enclave, and aside from a few moments of psionically-induced unconsciousness T’lar had not allowed him to rest. But the crossbow was still cocked and aimed in his general direction, and that was something of a motivator. “An old man appeared, shook a fist at them and shouted, ‘What are you doing? You don’t even have a Plan!’ Then he turned and started walking toward a tower. Serge and Psydney followed, tried to speak with him, but he ignored them. He closed the tower door behind him, but when Serge used the glasses which allow his sight to penetrate solid objects, the room was empty.” But that’s impossible. All means of interdimensional travel are barred. So who was the man, and how did he leave the tower? For that matter, how did the adventurers reach the snow-covered plain?

Facing death or not, Hanen was too tired to keep this up for much longer. “I don’t know,” he replied, hostility creeping into his voice. “Do you?”

“You know what I know,” she said, “which is all that Psydney knows.” And feels. I feel it still. Whether by psionic or blood bond, regret and anger and hopelessness reverberate through my very being. They will sing through yours, too, bard. I will see to that. You will not forget. I will not allow it.

“What do you intend to do with me?” he asked.

“If they prevail and undo what has been done, we will celebrate together. Perhaps I will even forgive you one day. If they fail, and the Oerth is destroyed, you will die with us here.”

“And if in spite of their failure, some of us still live?”

T’lar stood. A cruel smile on her face, she raised her bow again and pointed the poisoned bolt at Hanen’s heart. “Then I will kill you myself. For what you have done to us, and for what you have done to them. Whatever fate I might have wished them, I didn’t wish them this. I’ll be back later this evening, and you’ll tell me the story again. Try to have polished it up; this telling was a little ragged around the edges. We’ll work on it until you have it right.” She backed toward the door, bolt still at the ready. “I know your favorite means of escape,” she said, “but it offers less promise than it used to, doesn’t it? You might as well be in Sigil again, where magic is not welcome. Unless the world is righted, this simple lock will suffice to restrain our rhapsodist, I think. Dream well, bard. May your heroes’ deeds follow you in your sleep.”