Umber

The Bard receives an unexpected visitor.

The border guards of the Enclave, a haven for psions hidden deep within the Gamboge, are renowned for their vigilance. But for nearly a week they had failed to notice a tiny fly moving a little too purposefully through the forest, hovering a little too near the patrols’ soft-spoken conversations, studying the mistress of the Enclave a little too closely. Late one morning, the fly buzzed past a certain boulder, a certain tree, a certain cairn, then darted between two tall, red-barked spruce trees. It traced lazy circles around the Enclave until a small, pale elf exited the only shuttered building in the complex. It slipped inside, up the stairs, down a hallway, and through a keyhole in the door to T’lar’s private guest quarters.

Hanen lay on the velvet chaise longue, his arm thrown across his eyes. Each time T’lar contacted Psydney the tale of Castle Pescheour grew longer, and each time she came to him she forced him to tell it from the beginning again. Two, three, even four times a day. Sometimes he managed to withstand her efforts to force her sister’s experiences into his mind, but more often not. Sometimes he didn’t even try. She had just left to investigate a rumor of orcs on the border; he could look forward to at least three or four hours of uninterrupted solitude. But no sooner had he drifted off to sleep than he heard a rustling in the room. He opened his eyes to see T’lar, unarmed, pulling her chair from the center of the room close to Hanen’s own. A change of heart? Wordlessly, she stood beside him and smiled. The bard returned the smile hesitantly, uncertain what her behavior portended. “How long shall we stare at one another?” she asked. Her voice was lyrical again, almost seductive, lacking the hostility and distaste of the past days. But there was something not quite right about it. A trick?

When she spoke again, her voice was considerably rougher, considerably deeper. “You’re far too cautious to play with. A pity.” Her skin darkened to near crimson, her body distorted into something broader and more muscular, until she towered nearly twelve feet tall. Claws sprouted from her fingertips, and her elven chain stretched and softened into a velvet paisley smoking jacket. “You’re a hard man to find these days, Hanen.”

“I don’t know when T’lar will return,” the bard warned.

The creature laughed. “Ah, but I do. I sprinkled a few sensors in the hallway. Should she decide to put in an unexpected appearance…” The figure vanished, then Hanen heard the buzzing of a tiny fly around his ears. A moment later, a balor stood before him again.

Although they had last parted on not the best of terms, Hanen was immensely grateful to see the old demon. “So tell me, Klavicus, what brings you to my humble prison?”

The demon pulled a wine skin and two glasses from inside his coat, filled them and handed one to the bard. Eyeing the wooden chair he said, “Such tiny furniture.” He waved a finger between the chair and the chaise. “Would you mind?” Hanen nodded pleasantly and ceded his seat to the balor, who dwarfed even the recliner. “What brings me here? Apocalypse. You owe me a story, old friend. I will trade the untold events on the Abyss for what is happening now. And don’t tell me you don’t know. All the elves in the Gamboge whisper that you caused it.”

Hanen grew agitated. “That is not true.”

“How can I judge,” Klavicus smiled, “unless I know the facts?”

“Such an obvious ploy does neither of us credit,” the bard growled. He sighed. “Still, there’s no denying that their endless suspicions gnaw at my brain. And you have no particular attachment to any of the players. I would welcome some objectivity.”

“My pleasure,” the demon replied.

Hanen launched into the grim history, beginning with his own singing in Blasingdell. When he reached Tenser’s revelation that the token of Castle Pescheour was in fact the seed of creation, Klavicus waved him into silence and creased his brow in thought. “Thus the prophecy is fulfilled,” he murmured to himself.

The bard was confused. “What do you mean? I don’t see the connection.”

Klavicus looked at him suspiciously. “What do you know of the prophecy?”

“Psydney might have mentioned it,” Hanen replied evasively.

“And its translator as well?” Klavicus asked. “Now I understand to what I owed your unexpected visit last year.”

The bard nodded sheepishly. “Even though she didn’t mention your name, it isn’t hard to narrow the pool of Suloise linguists who also happen to be balor. The one is small and the other, as far as I know, a singularity.”

“No matter. In any case, the passages to which I refer in particular are: ‘The Hand will uproot the Tree. The entire world will despair.’”

“But they had no contact with a tree,” Hanen protested. “And I thought those sentences appeared in the other order.”

The demon shook his head. “You’re a very good poet, but a very poor linguist. Word order in ancient Suloise bears no resemblance to any modern language. A translator is inevitably forced to improvise. Clearly in this case I put them the wrong way around. As for the Tree, if the prophecy was written in an earlier variant of Suloise…”

“What difference would that make?” the bard interrupted.

Klavicus frowned. “Languages aren’t static. Each word is a history unto itself. I would expect one of your profession to be aware of that. It would make for richer stories,” he scolded. “In our own language, the root of the word ‘mercy’ is ‘price paid’; ‘free’ comes from a word meaning ‘own’; ‘empathy’ is rooted in ‘passion.’ It is not at all inconceivable that a word which meant ‘tree’ in what would have been modern Suloise had an older variant in which it meant ‘seed,’ or even ‘egg.’”

“So that’s it? They’ve been pawns of fate all along?”

The balor was unperturbed. “So it would seem.”

Hanen felt a surge of anger within him, not entirely on the adventurers’ behalf. “You’re telling me they couldn’t have done anything differently? They were forced down this path by, what? Irreversible tides of destiny?”

“What do you think?” the demon asked calmly.

The bard searched desperately for the slightest glimmer of self-determination, as much for his own sake as for theirs. “Perhaps they should have been less trusting. More suspicious.”

Klavicus shot him a condescending glance. “Do you listen to your own stories, Hanen? Suspicion literally dripped from their anxiety-drenched foreheads. They knew, to a virtual certainty, that something was wrong. But given the information they had, what were their choices? What could their monk have done, at the fatal moment? Let the enemy rogue seize the seed? Fight off the rogue and leave the seed in place? Ignoring for a moment the fact that they had no inkling that moving the seed was dangerous, that would have meant certain death for her six companions downstairs, two of whom were already dead, because that insane wizard would have retained his access to a nearly infinite power source.”

Hanen groaned. “Then T’lar’s right. If they just hadn’t listened to me, if they hadn’t gone near the place…”

“Don’t overestimate your own importance,” the demon said. “If they had walked away from the tale and gone about their lives, their Olidammaran friends probably would have reached the seed unimpeded. The world would have been in the exact same state it is now, but no one would know why. Strange as it may sound, and small comfort that it may be to them, their very culpability may be Oerth’s best hope of redemption. Because they care about what they’ve done. Because they retain the ring, which enabled them to find the Castle in the first place. If events make it necessary to return to it, at least they know where it is.” Hanen was quiet for a long while, considering the implications of Klavicus’ words. Finally the balor cleared his throat. “Silence I had in abundance back in my own rooms,” he said. “Would you mind getting on with the story?”

The bard shook himself out of his reverie and continued, pausing after the party vanquished the Tarrasque. “They seem angry,” Klavicus mused. “Especially the celestial psion.”

“I don’t think I could adequately convey how angry she is,” Hanen said soberly. “T’lar could, but I can’t recommend the experience.”

“Really?” Klavicus smiled. “Oh, to be an archdevil on the Prime Material now.”

“There is an archdevil on the Prime Material,” the bard pointed out.

The balor snorted. “No, I mean a clever one. An Asmodeus,” he rubbed the fingers of his left hand together, “with a magic touch for corruption.”

Hanen didn’t care for the implication, and tried to change the subject. “Moloch has caused a great deal of destruction.”

“With so little artistry,” Klavicus sniffed. “And they accuse demons of having no finesse. No wonder he lost his kingdom.”

A thought occurred to the bard. “Could you defeat him?”

“Possibly.” Klavicus considered the idea for a moment. “Probably.” When he saw Hanen watching him expectantly he said, “But I have no reason to try. He hasn’t attacked me personally. And I hear the libraries in Greyhawk have already lost some of their splendor.” He looked around the room. “I rather like it here.”

Hanen laughed. “T’lar’s no paladin, but I’m not sure she’d take to having a balor on the premises, even if you were a psion, which you’re not. And being a friend of mine doesn’t have quite the cachet that it used to.”

“No, I suppose not. But I find myself growing tired of the ex-Witchking’s castle, and having extraplanar servants,” he sighed, “isn’t quite as helpful as it once was. Still, she might change her mind if circumstances spin any further out of control. I have my uses.” He smirked at Hanen. “All kinds of uses. And you seem to have handily lost her affections.”

The bard glared at him. “That is not funny.”

“I’m not the one who sent her sister and her sister’s friends on a merry jaunt to Apocalypse. And don’t bother clenching your tiny fists. We both know I’ll indulge whatever fancy strikes me. But don’t worry.” He leaned forward and topped off Hanen’s wine glass. “I’ve never developed a taste for bitter elf.”

Hanen sat sullenly, less pleased with his visitor now. “Well if Moloch isn’t enough of a challenge for you, what about this mysterious thief of the egg?”

The demon’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t like the sound of him. The Creation Seed is no Wand of Orcus. If he doesn’t know what he’s doing, he could easily destroy us all. If he does know what he’s doing, he may decide to destroy us all anyway. He almost makes me nostalgic for the Abyss. No, I have no desire to meet this individual.”

They sat in silence, drinking their wine. Klavicus watched a panorama of expressions, none of them pleasant, flutter across the bard’s face. Hanen was new to captivity, and in any case probably not much of a reader. “Come now,” the balor finally said genially, “I meant neither what I said about your elf nor your culpability.”

The bard stared at the floor. “I don’t need anyone to say anything about my culpability.”

“We haven’t yet established that, one way or the other. Let us try now. Under what circumstances were you given leave to tell the tale of Castle Pescheour?”

Hanen squirmed in his seat, then finally jumped up, crossed the room, and slammed his hand against the wall. “Under no circumstances! I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone at all. Ever.”

“I see.”

“No, you don’t see,” the bard fumed. “If I’ve ever known anyone entitled to any good thing life had to offer, it is they. To you they are the little ones, but they are powerful, and courageous, and indefatigable. They have undertaken hopeless quests for reasons both individual and cosmic, and they have always found a way to prevail. If they have prospered for it, it is no less than they deserve. Through it all, they have answered to nothing but their own conscience. And that is the rarest achievement of all.” His voice, which had risen to the ringing tones of an orator, dropped to a whisper. “I could conceive no reward great enough for what they have accomplished. And so I gave them the only thing I had. The knowledge of Castle Pescheour.”

“What you have given them,” Klavicus said evenly, “is the ability to become the most fell tool ever employed for a nefarious purpose in the history of creation. And because they are powerful, and courageous, and indefatigable, they have found a way to prevail. They have triumphed straight into the ultimate defeat.”

“I didn’t intend for this to happen. I don’t know how it happened.” The shaken bard leaned his head against the wall. “I don’t want to be to blame.”

“Blame is not an interesting concept,” Klavicus said. “What is done is done. Perhaps we’ve all had our part to play. If I’d withheld the translation of the prophecy from them, would it have made a difference? If Lyzandred had never written the words, would the course of events have been changed? Hanen!” the balor roared when it became obvious that the bard wasn’t listening. “Our past is fixed behind us. All that matters now is whether it is suspended in crystal, transparent to our current wisdom, or vanished from sight like rotten leaves, destined to feed the errors we will make again and again.”

“But you said it yourself,” the bard muttered. “This is Apocalypse. What is there to learn from? What is there to learn for?”

Klavicus shifted his features to form the face of a cleric of Fharlanghn of Hanen’s acquaintance. “Oh ye of little faith,” she said. “We have not yet failed.” Returning to his natural shape, he said. “Let us try to determine what happened to you. If not for posterity’s sake, at least for your own. Who told you this story?”

“Darryn Fireharp. It was one of the last tales he told me, in fact. Not long before he died. He swore me to absolute secrecy concerning it.”

“And yet didn’t you say that when the adventurers questioned the corpse of Fireharp, he appeared to have no memory of it?”

The bard nodded. “But you know how precarious a thing speaking with the dead is. They assumed it was not much on his mind.”

“The secret of Oerth’s root? The most precious secret a man could have in his possession? Not much on his mind?” The demon shook his head, then closed his eyes for a long moment. Finally he reopened them. “Well, Hanen, at least one statement you’ve made in your life is indisputably true.” The bard looked at him expectantly. “Truly, no one would ever mistake you for a sage.”

Hanen frowned. “What do you mean?”

Klavicus patted the empty chair. “Come, sit down.” When the bard complied, he leaned close to him and whispered, “I think you’ve been played. As thoroughly as your lute.”

“But Fireharp told me – ”

“I believe that Fireharp told you nothing. And I don’t believe that he died slightly after he told you the story. I believe he died slightly before.”

“But that’s imposs– ”

Before he could finish his sentence, the head of an elven woman with hair so gold it was nearly white appeared on the body of the demon inches from his own. “Tell me a story, love.” T’lar’s voice issued from the creature’s lips. Hanen uttered an expletive and fell backwards in his chair, tumbling ungracefully to the floor. As he reseated himself, the demon resumed his natural form, refilled the bard’s toppled glass, and with a cantrip cleaned the stains of the spilled wine from the carpet. “Even your heroes’ little wizard can change his shape.”

A look of dismay slowly suffused Hanen’s face. “But if I was deceived…why? And why swear me to secrecy?”

Klavicus was bemused by the bard’s obtuseness. “To be certain you would tell someone. But only someone very powerful. Someone strong enough to achieve the teller’s goals. Someone strong enough to hand him the Seed of Creation, freely, willingly, believing it to be the apex of heroic achievement.”

The bard dropped his head into his hands. “Then it was all – a lie.”

“I doubt that,” Klavicus mused. “I am obviously unfamiliar with the story, closely guarded as it is, but if I had to guess I would say that there is a kernel of truth to it. Perhaps, for that matter, only a kernel of a lie hidden deep within the veracity of the remainder. Yes, that must be it.” He patted the bard on the shoulder. “Don’t be too hard on yourself. This coup has been a long time in the planning, and by a genius, if the handiwork is any indication. And if it proves to be in the best interests of Oerth that your friends executed this commission, then it is for the best that you gave it to them.”

Hanen raised his head and looked at the balor. Strange, receiving words of comfort from a demon. “Thank you for that at least.”

“And now,” Klavicus said briskly, “it is probably about time for me to be on my way. Sometime soon your captor will determine that there are no orcs on her borders. Drink up. I’ll be back later, if you don’t mind. I’m rather hooked on this story.”

“As long as I don’t have to tell it from the beginning again,” the bard said, draining his glass and handing it to the balor.

Klavicus began to shift back into a fly, then paused. “I could help you leave here, if you’d like,” he offered.

“Putting aside for the moment the fact that T’lar is always a bowstring away from killing me,” Hanen replied, “there aren’t many safer places to be right now. And I have a front row seat for the end of the world. What more could a bard hope for?”

The balor studied him carefully. “Bravado does not become you, Hanen. I think there is another reason you stay.”

The bard sighed. “T’lar and I have known each other a long time. Well, long for me, if not for her. We have been many things to each other, but never before enemies. I would like that to change. And however much I try to deny her blame, I do feel it. If I could convince her, perhaps I could convince myself that it was not so very wrong.”

“That poison on her crossbow is not to be trifled with,” Klavicus warned. “Are you willing to die at her hand?”

“I’m hoping it won’t come to that. If she needs to hear the tale, she needs to spare the teller.”  Hanen smiled weakly. “And even if the multiverse isn’t quite the playground it used to be, I still have a trick or two up my sleeve. If necessity dictated, I’m reasonably sure I could escape from here.” Klavicus cocked his head in interest. “Sorry, old friend, but it’s not a trick anymore if I share it.”

The balor eyed him sternly. “It’s a pity you didn’t feel that way about Castle Pescheour. Many things might have been different. Probably not, but they might.”