Umber

The reforging of the Blade of Fiery Might is prevented, and Ammitai discovers the meaning of the Purple Plume.

“But she’s been out there for several hours now, sir, just circling about in the woods on the outskirts of town.”

Sir Geoffrey barely glanced up from his almost finished paperwork. “Presumably for approximately half an hour longer than the last time you told me she was out there.” He had a difficult time hiding his exasperation. His new assistant was fresh-faced and eager, and while he hated to dampen the young man’s enthusiasm the numerous interruptions of dubious import were becoming intolerable.

“Yes, sir. She hasn’t come into town, and she hasn’t gone.”

The paladin signed his name to the report, slipped it into an envelope and sealed it. Then he pushed back his chair and gave the aide his full attention. “Last time I checked, it wasn’t illegal to ride in the forest on the outskirts of town.”

“But the guard didn’t like the look of her, sir. They called me to take a look, and frankly, neither do I. She wears some kind of holy symbol, but not of any civilized god any of us recognize. Suppose,” he lowered his voice and said dramatically, “she’s one of them? Maybe we should shoot her first, and ask questions later. Given her looks, I’m guessing we’ll find an ochre robe in her pack. But I didn’t like to give the order without asking you first.”

Geoffrey sighed to himself. Clement’s stated reason for appointing him baron of Montinelle was as part of an overall strategy to keep certain commanders well-hidden from prying eyes. He suspected a secondary reason was to keep the provincials in places like this from panicking at Tharizdunian rumors and burning innocent travelers, or each other, at the stake. It was not the most glorious assignment he’d ever been given, but one served as one must. “I thought you said she was riding a pegasus.”

“She might have dominated it somehow, or something. She carries a peculiar kind of staff, with animals all over it. Maybe she used that. And she has these strange, mismatched eyes, and scars all over her face.”

Geoffrey’s jaw and fist tightened simultaneously. Rising, he crossed to a stand and snatched up a thick woolen cloak and his sword. “Tell the guard to stand down,” he said. “I’ll ride out and meet her myself.”

A look of triumph rose in the aide’s eyes. “Then she is dangerous.”

“I certainly hope so.”

Triumph collapsed to uncertainty. “Sir?”

“Congratulations, lad,” Geoffrey said stiffly as he passed him on his way out. “You came very close to shooting one of the king’s knights.”

Although he seldom rode Petesthai locally, he took him out today to meet his specter in the forest. She saluted respectfully, then gave him a sheepish smile as he approached on the destrius. “I suppose I should have just come or gone.”

“My aide-de-camp thought you likely to be a cultist. I believe he was planning to cut you down and search your pack for evidence after the fact.”

Brin grinned. “He would have found it, too. None of us travel without Tharizdunian robes and holy symbols. You never know when you need to drop by a shrine on short notice, and I hate being improperly dressed.”

Geoffrey looked around the clearing. “Where are the others?”

“We’ve been, most of us, on Celestia. I’ll be going back, soon.” She ducked her head in discomfort. “You can laugh if you want. I know Hadrack would.”

The paladin neither laughed nor even smiled. “Hadrack’s early efforts to coax you closer to his world view were well-intentioned, but ill-considered. I’ve seen rhetoric change minds, but never hearts. As I think he himself has realized since.”

She leaned forward on her pegasus to look at him. “Sometimes,” she said after a long silence, “you remind me of Achomed.”

He nodded gravely. “I’ll take that as a compliment. Now, will you come back for supper at the manor, or would you prefer to continue drifting through the woods and frightening my militia?”

“I’m sorry. I was – I had news I thought you in particular might want to hear.”

“And, I think,” he said, studying her face, “questions.”

“No, I mean yes, but I don’t want to take you away from your – ”

Geoffrey waved his hand to quiet her. “There aren’t so many demands on me that I can’t make time for the questions of one of Dunthrane’s knight-errants. It can be difficult, traveling without – ” he paused.

“Guidance?” she filled in. “I won’t take offense, if that’s what you meant. Its absence weighs on me at times. There’s something comforting about the hierarchy, and we seem to spend most of our time away from it.”

The paladin nodded sympathetically, and they turned their mounts back toward Montinelle. “Have you been to see – ”

“No,” she cut him off abruptly, then muttered an apology for interrupting.

“This business with Corwin has been a strain, hasn’t it?”

“I try to tell myself it doesn’t matter, but – he’s not with us right now. And not just because we’re on Celestia. When we left Acheron he was shunted off in another direction. Vayel wanted to go after him but, given the circumstances, I wasn’t sure it was wise.”

Geoffrey didn’t want to leave her brooding as she was, and was curious himself as to the circumstances, but speaking of the Dispatch and Clement’s other, darker forces in the open air was also unwise, and they rode in silence until they reached Montinelle. Hovering servants made anything but small talk impossible until after they had dined and retreated to the paladin’s study. “Your mission to Acheron was a success, then?” he asked as soon as he closed the door behind his chastened aide. “Wee Jas,” he had murmured sternly in the hallway out of Brin’s hearing. “Not an uncivilized deity, and not an enemy of Dunthrane. Remember that next time.”

“Yes,” she replied, accepting the tea he offered. “The blade will not be reforged. The souls of the murdered smiths have been released from servitude. Anyone with the means and the desire will be able to raise them now. I’ll send a message to Forestguard in Furyondy soon, but if you know of anyone – “

“Of course. And the spawn of Ashardalon?”

“Had his fortress collapsed on top of him, by the steel predators.” At Geoffrey’s incredulous look she paused to explain Imperagon’s enslavement of the pack leader and his minions. “Once they were freed from his ill-gotten influence they were steadfast companions in the endeavor to disrupt his plans. I’m not sure how we would have gained entrance to the fortress without them. As we learned from Tevarus, there’s only one legitimate mode of entry.” Her face darkened. “If you’re embodied, at least.”

“And that was?” he prodded gently after she’d stared off into silent space for what he deemed long enough.

She returned her gaze to his. “One of Imperagon’s blade golems stands perpetual guard outside. It has the only key. Is the only key – its hand opens the lock. But, Tevarus warned us, destroying any of the golems raises a castle-wide alarm.”

“An eventuality I assume you preferred to avoid.”

She nodded glumly. “We’d already tried to breach the fortress once.”

“Not a bad plan on the face of it,” he said when she concluded her summary of their initial ill-fated attempt to storm the castle, “but risky without knowledge of the fortress’ layout, as you discovered.”

“At no small cost to Dryden,” she sighed. “We’d already met more of the denizens than we could handle at one time, and Tevarus informed us that we hadn’t met them all. So while two of the steel predators held the blade golem down, we ripped off its arm and opened the door. We left them there to restrain it and entered the fortress with the two remaining predators Tevarurs had assigned to us.”

“How much resistance did you encounter?”

“Not much, at first. I don’t think Imperagon expected intruders to make it inside, and if they did, his roving metallic cats would quickly dispatch them. Once we were inside, the question was how to proceed.”

“At least both forks of your two-pronged mission – preventing the completion of the blade and freeing the trapped souls – were likely to lead to the forge.”

“Three-pronged, in my mind,” she said. “I had no interest in letting anyone walk away from that fortress. Not after what they’d done.”

“Excpet for the archon,” he prompted. Brin had mentioned their encounter with the fallen celestial, and he had the distinct impression that whatever fate befell her was what had drawn Brin to Montinelle. “Why were you so interested in capturing and returning her to Celestia?”

“I suggested to Ammitai the possibility of redemption, to Corwin the strategic advantage of having Celestia in our debt for returning one of its strayed sheep.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” he said mildly.

It took her a long while to reply, but finally she said, “She was theirs to judge, not ours. And I suppose I was curious. What causes a being like that to stray so far from its path? Mortals – well, it’s an occasion for wonderment if we cleave to our principles for any length of time at all, but an immortal? And if we had just killed her, we wouldn’t have learned anything.”

“Subduing a celestial would not be an easy task. How did you intend to accomplish it?”

“I didn’t really know. I guess I hoped to find her alone, take her unawares. The fortress was full of creatures Imperagon recruited or attracted – a fiendish cloud giant and its cryohydra pet, a pair of mind flayers and their bodyguards, a dust mephit and a kyton – ”

“Quite the gallery of evil,” Geoffrey interjected wryly. “So diverse.”

“And not particularly fond of one another’s company, which made our work easier. The illithid were there on business, I think – not that we gave them a chance to explain themselves. The dust mephit and the kyton appeared to be Imperagon’s personal torturers. We heard screaming as we passed the door to their chamber.”

“Who did you find within?” Seeing a guarded look cross her face, he said more sternly, “You did rescue their captive, didn’t you?”

Her answering tone was unapologetic. “It was a subject of some debate. Vayel, ever cognizant of her watchful incorporeal charges, demanded that we go to the rescue. Some others were less certain.” As Geoffrey’s lips tightened to a thin line she said, “There were many souls at stake within the fortress, and many, many lives beyond its walls if we failed in our attempt to prevent the blade’s forging. Our resources were limited. We had to at least consider the possibility that one life was not too high a price to pay for a more certain success.”

“If you were a paladin,” Geoffrey sighed, “I would lecture you on that calculus. But as you’re not…what did you decide?”

“Dryden sided with Vayel immediately. Corwin was opposed. Ammitai was uncertain – I believe he thought it was some kind of trick. In the end I took Vayel’s part as well – because it meant so much to her, not because it was strategically sound. We found a lillend in chains, grievously wounded; Vayel freed her while the rest of us dispatched her tormentors.”

“What was she doing there?”

“Her people had lost a smith, and she came to investigate.”

“You see, then,” he remarked, “in pausing to free her you gained the opportunity to glean useful information from one who had come before you.”

“We might have,” she retorted, “if she hadn’t been captured as soon as she set foot in the door. She didn’t know anything useful.” Stretched out on the arm of her chair, Willie opened a sleepy eye and chattered to her. “Yes, that’s true,” she conceded. “Findula is a new friend, and that’s a good thing.” Willie chittered again, causing her to sigh. “And yes, we probably would have had to risk the night’s rest anyway.”

“You spent a night in the fortress?”

“In an extradimensional pocket within the fortress, technically. We tried to clean up the bodies we’d left behind as best we could – Imperagon’s rakshasa advisor was the most problematic, as his quarters were quite near Imperagon’s, and we had no idea how often the two of them conferred, so – ”

“Wait,” Geoffrey interrupted, “you engaged a rakshasa?”

“Not by choice,” she admitted. “Corwin was scouting around the upstairs, looking for information that might aid us – and, I suspect, other more personally profitable things – and was discovered. The creature was quite self-assured – arrogant even.”

“With good reason, as I understand. They are formidable arcane opponents.”

Brin smiled coldly. “But rather soft and weak when they’ve been stripped of all their magical defenses. And, sadly for him if not us, he lacked the time to mount an offense.”

“So you rested, then continued advancing toward the forge?”

“We dispatched Imperagon’s duergar bodyguard while she was in her meditation chamber. As far as we could tell, every square inch of it was filled with traps. Lacking the time, obviously, to disarm them as she sat in the middle of the room, Vayel and Corwin charged in trusting their reflexes to see them through.” She smiled. “Ammitai was careful to pick his way in the shadow of Corwin’s nimbler footsteps. We were fortunate she was there. Sometimes, the steel predators told us, she would roam the halls for hours. Other times she would spend days in meditation. If this hadn’t been one of her periods of retreat, the rather bloody signs of our presence might have been discovered sooner. Also, she had on her person something we needed.”

“That being?”

“Not surprisingly, the closer we came to the forge, the fewer and better protected the passageways. The single flight of stairs leading down to the forge was guarded by a blade golem more massive than any we’d yet seen. One of the steel predators told us that Devastra – the bodyguard – passed by the golem unchallenged, but no one else could pass.”

“An amulet or similar item, carried on her person?” Geoffrey guessed.

“Precisely. We made our way down to the forge, encountering along the way a secret door that, we suspected, led to the remainder of the fortress and, presumably, Imperagon. And that put us on the horns of another dilemma. Should we strike at the forge, attemping to destroy the sword and free the souls in the hope we could complete the tasks before Imperagon noticed?”

“Or try to put an end to Imperagon and accomplish the other tasks at your leisure?” the paladin prompted. “Both equally risky paths.”

“But only one of them proved feasible, as it happened. Someone in the fortress – the pit fiend Lydzin if I had to guess – was mad about symbols. Death, insanity – you name it, they found floor space for it. Each one at the limit of Corwin’s ability to disarm, and although he managed it once with divine assistance, when he saw the outlines of another peeking out from beneath the secret door he was loath to make the attempt again, unaided. We chose to make our stand at the forge.”

“Unaccounted for, if I’ve kept the cast of infernal characters straight, were this pit fiend, the fallen archon, and Imperagon himself.”

Brin nodded. “And at least one other blade golem.”

“I assume the forge itself had additional defenses.”

“The heat alone was a deterrent, but we protected ourselves against that. Imperagon had staffed the forge itself with members of a race of fire-beings called azer, and a pair of dragonnes for guards.”

“And the souls of the captive smiths?”

“They were bound within some kind of fire-resistant clay.” She scowled, clenching her mechanical hand so tightly that had it been flesh she might have drawn blood from the palm. “Featureless, misshapen forms, but with exquisitely detailed hands.”

Geoffrey sighed heavily. “To better accomplish their tasks about the forge.”

“And working the blade itself was the master smith whose soul they recalled and trapped from beyond the grave – Durgeddin.”

“Of Khundrakar?” the paladin started. “But how could you tell?”

“He told me. Once we were within the fortress walls, he and I were able to communicate.”

He started to ask how such a thing was possible when a flaring in the fire threw the tracery of scars on her face into sharper relief, and the question died on his lips. In its place he said, “I am curious how, in a place so devoid of vegetation as the cubes of Acheron are said to be, they managed to sustain a fire of such magnitude for so long.”

“Corwin discovered that, to his dismay, as he scouted the forge hoping to gain us a strategic advantage. The forge wasn’t heated by fuel, per se. Imperagon retained an azer cleric who possessed a ring granting him the ability to control natives of the elemental plane of fire. The greatest of these saw Corwin, and alerted his unwanted master.”

“Forcing you into battle sooner than you intended. How did you fare?”

“The tides of the conflict ebbed and flowed. The azer and dragonnes were no great challenge – Vayel’s celestial roar killed several outright and incapacitated most of the rest in one way or another. The elementals were more problematic, although not as deadly as they might have been had we been wholly unprepared. One of them seized Dryden and dragged him back into the unsurvivable heat of the forge but Corwin, who alone among us was completely impervious to its effects, rescued him.”

She fell silent, as if her tale were fully told. Finally Sir Geoffrey prompted, “And the blade? The souls?”

“Oh. Yes. I was just thinking – sorry. Most of the souls were released from their unnatural shells at the sound of Vayel’s roar. They were free to resist the imperative to labor, though for reasons that weren’t immediately obvious they weren’t free to leave the fortress. Durgeddin, working alone in the bowels of the forge, was out of range of her cry, but Corwin shattered his binding clay at the earliest opportunity. Too late we realized the consequences of that action, which seemed at the instant wholly good.”

Geoffrey looked puzzled for a moment, then in dawning awareness said, “The forge fell silent. An alarm more potent than any sound.”

She nodded. “We were wounded, half-spent, in no condition to face Imperagon and his remaining lieutenants, the most powerful of them all. And just as we were trying to hastily regroup Zalatian – the fallen archon – appeared out of nowhere in the middle of the forge.”

“Alone?”

“Yes.”

“Fate handing you your opportunity to subdue her?”

“Except that she did something inexplicable: picking up the cast-off hammer, she began to strike it against the anvil in precisely the rhythm Durgeddin had employed.”

“How did you respond?”

“We weren’t sure how to respond. Dryden reminded me that at our last encounter she had made a hostile move toward us and, when I repelled it, a more personally threatening gesture toward me, but – even as he said the words I remembered that was all she had done – repelled us. She hadn’t attempted to injure us at the time, however angry her demeanor, and now, for the moment at least, she seemed to be positively assisting us.”

“But Ammitai – ”

She knew what he must be thinking. “Yes, Ammitai and Corwin were both certain she was evil, and they weren’t mistaken or deluded. But still…Dryden, instead of attacking, asked whether she was friend or foe.”

“And her reply?”

“She asked what we hoped to accomplish. When we told her, she informed us that the blade was already completed, and had been for some time.”

“I don’t understand,” he frowned. “If it was finished, why didn’t the spawn of Ashardalon know? Why wasn’t he wielding it?”

“He didn’t know because she hadn’t told him. They had gathered their slave labor, but they still required one ally, a master smith to oversee and guide the process – and you can be sure it wasn’t Durgeddin. But it was Zalatian.”

“Why didn’t she tell him?”

“She never did say, although we were certainly curious.”

“Perhaps,” Geoffrey mused, “even fallen there were stirrings of conscience, the knowledge of what someone like this Imperagon would do with such a weapon.”

“Perhaps,” she replied doubtfully. “Our fear was that she wished to wield it herself.”

“But if that were her intention, why wasn’t it already in her hands?”

“Whoever researched the blade’s construction was, fortunately for Imperagon, both thorough and honest. After the forging is complete, there is one final, finishing step: the weapon takes the life of its first wielder.”

“And you know this – ?”

“Because Zalatian told us.”

“A peculiar sort of fallen celestial. Had she wanted it for herself, she almost certainly could have manipulated one of you into taking up the weapon and completing its bloodthirsty ritual. Which would seem to suggest that she wanted something else.”

“Far be it for me to say I understand the mind of a celestial.” Her voice grew soft, as if she were speaking largely to herself. “But I’m not sure she knew what she wanted. It was as if – after she fell – she had no life, only an existence.” She shook herself out of her reverie. “We danced around each other with words for some little while. We feared we might be serving some hidden, evil purpose of hers. I’m not sure what she feared in us, if anything. But we knew if we angered her, or she grew doubtful of our intentions, she had only to summon Lydzin and Imperagon to her side and we would almost certainly face defeat. And so we had to pay at least some heed to her words.”

“What did she tell you?”

“That destroying the blade required great physical strength – far greater than any of us possessed. And that – and this was the point on which we were dubious – it could under no circumstances be destroyed until after its final completion.”

“So she might have been deceiving you still – planning to take up the blade herself.”

“It struck us as a very real, and very unpleasant, possibility. That caused us to hesitate in the face of the necessary sacrifice far more than the making of it.”

“Although, if you lacked the strength to destroy the finished blade, the sacrifice would be futile even if her intent was not dishonorable.”

“There was, we thought at first, one slim possibility for destroying the weapon. My staff still functions as it always did, as a collector of soul energy.” Seeing Geoffrey’s slightly raised eyebrow she said stiffly. “The smiths entered into it willingly. They must be willing. All except Durgeddin, who seemed to be prevented. It might have been enough. But it never came to that.”

“Though you said the blade was unmade.”

“Yes, but how, and by whom – ” she stared absently into the fire. “That was why I’ve come to Montinelle. Eventually, we coaxed the story of Zalatian’s fall from her. Many, many years ago she traveled with a Heironian paladin. His name was Gregorius Rayne.” Sir Geoffrey, who had been attending carefully enough to Brin’s tale all along, now grew even more alert. “They had been tasked with retrieving a stolen Heironian artifact of great value and power.”

“The Helm of the Purple Plume,” he murmured. “As the descendant, so the ancestor.”

“They followed trails both hot and cold, and eventually tracked it down. But Rayne decided the place where it was kept was too dangerous to assault, that all of them were likely to be killed, and refused to give the order to attack. Zalatian thought him craven, and anger burned in her heart. She thought he deserved punishment for his cowardice. And Lydzin the pit fiend, having occasion to hear of her wrath and her desire, offered to exact that ‘just’ punishment.”

The old paladin bowed his head and sat in silence for a time. Finally he said, “And what did the creature do?”

“He cut off Rayne’s hands, still in their gauntlets, and used them in some devilish ritual to create a perverted thing of power. Dried blood clung stubbornly to the gloves forever after.” Geoffrey’s head snapped upward. “Yes, Dryden thought of that immediately too: the gauntlets Ammitai took from the dead Tharizdunian cleric. The ones that even as Zalatian told her tale lay in Dryden’s quiver.”

“What a strange providence,” Geoffrey murmured. “But after all, why not? Two redemptions, bound together.”

“Two redemptions? Then you believe in Zalatian’s judgment? That Gregorius Rayne was a coward?”

“I believe, from what I’ve heard, that Gregorius Rayne suffered a serious lapse of faith. Faith that he was equal to the task he was set, faith that even his failure – if it came to that – might have some meaning. And I believe that Zalatian fell for lack of faith as well. Faith that if the plume were not recovered in a week, or a year, or a millennia, if the plume were not recovered by her at all, it didn’t really matter, because the plume was just a thing. For all our many yardsticks for measuring virtue and vice, perhaps in the end they all come down to faith and faithlessness.”

“I suppose one might say the faith of Antonicus Rayne was strengthened by the faithlessness of others. We couldn’t figure out why he had a toy made of Baatorian green steel. But we know now – it was given to him by Zalatian, along with his great-great-grandfather’s lance and barding. They met, sometime in the past, where he learned of his ancestor’s sin and Zalatian’s horrible vengeance.”

“And he seeded the quest for the plume anew, hoping against hope that someone would bring peace to Gregorius Rayne and perhaps Zalatian as well. And if you are here, speaking with me, I assume it was done.”

“We showed the gauntlets to Zalatian. The archon was struck dumb at the sight, and the hammer fell from limp fingers. Ammitai cleaned the gauntlets again, then put them on. Almost immediately the ghostly form of a mail-clad man appeared, superimposed on Ammitai’s own.”

“Gregorius Rayne.”

She nodded. “And on his head was a helm, and atop the helm – ”

“The purple plume.”

“The two paladins reached as one for the sword. I believe Gregorius meant to sacrifice himself on the blade, as perhaps he now felt he should have been willing to do in other circumstances all those years ago. But before he could, the spirit of Durgeddin leapt forward, taking his place.”

Geoffrey looked surprised. “Durgeddin?”

“Maybe he knew that without Rayne, we wouldn’t be able to destroy the blade.”

She smiled with what struck Geoffrey as inappropriate jocularity. “And something about that was amusing?”

“No,” she replied, “definitely not. It’s just that – in this intensely sober moment, as Gregorious Rayne did at last find peace and Zalatian stood rooted to the floor, looking as if she had no idea what path to trod anymore, we heard a tapping from inside the Orb of Storms. It was Otiluke.” She laughed nervously. “He wanted to watch the blade being destroyed.”

“As if it were some carnival event,” Geoffrey grumbled. “Archmages.”

“Within moments of the weapon’s shattering, the fortress itself started coming apart. We’d arranged for that with Tevarus in advance – he and a handful of the larger cats could create a destructive resonating frequency that would level the structure.”

“With you still inside? I thought they were your allies now.”

“We had the means to leave quickly. I asked Zalatian to come with us – said I’d argue her case in Celestia myself, for what it was worth.” She paused as if expecting him to laugh at that, but his expression remained grave and attentive. “But Otiluke had other ideas. He and the archon conferred briefly. Then even as Corwin was gathering up the last of the shards of the Blade of Fiery Might, Zalatian she hurled herself at him, her face contorted with rage, and he vanished through a portal. Then she grew black as the blackest night and what was left of her wings burned to ash and fell away.  She turned to Ammitai and tried through sheer force of will to order him to raise his sword. Sensing something peculiar in her behavior he obeyed, and she threw herself upon it.”

“She died?”

“So we thought at the time. Staying where we were was impossible, so the rest of us traveled to Celestia as planned.”

“What could Otiluke have possibly said to her?”

“I’m not sure we’ll ever know. She did meet us at Celestia shortly after we arrived, apparently not so dead after all, but wouldn’t discuss what happened. She said we had powerful enemies, who were always watching and listening. That she had done what she did for a reason, but she could speak no more about it.”

Now Geoffrey smiled. “If Zalatian was free on Celestia – ”

Brin, however, was not smiling. “Oh yes, they seem to have taken her back. But her wings are still gone. She isn’t as she was. I suppose,” she nearly spat the words, “that now she’ll have to atone. As if the separation and the suffering she’s already been through weren’t enough. The cool celestial judges delivering their one size fits all verdicts.”

“I seem to remember you offering a similar service to the lost paladin Xaod.”

“Xaod needed it precisely because he didn’t know what he had done in the past, or how he was going to conduct himself in the future. Zalatian had already borne her full measure of horror. All of her atoning, as her misdeed, was already finished. The fact that she spoke with us rather than attacking, watched us destroy what her old master would have completed, proves that.”

“And yet,” Geoffrey suddenly seemed lost in thought.

The Jasian still looked annoyed even as the paladin grew more pensive. Willie broke the silence by chittering softly to Brin for a lengthy interval, at the end of which, Geoffrey realized, she was staring at him in shock. “I – ” she stammered, “I didn’t know about you – and Khundrakar – and – ”

“Even if you were at Khundrakar then, that wasn’t yours to tell.” The paladin shook a warning finger at the weasel, but Willie’s bright eyes glittered with defiance. “Yes, child,” he finally went on, “you and I share a fate. But I was returned to unlife by the servants of Nerull, in bondage, to commit acts of great evil, even against those I loved. And after I was saved – redeemed – by others, atonement followed.”

“You aren’t going to tell me you were expected to atone for that – for something that happened entirely against your will?”

“Expected to? No. Needed to? Most definitely.” Brin tried, but failed, to hold back a snort of disgust. But instead of chastising or arguing with her, Geoffrey rose and stood before the fire, facing away and saying, more to himself than to her,

“The sky is empty,
every stretch of water
flaunts its light.
You can learn how to fly, see all the edges
soften and blur, but you can’t hold on
to the height you find,
you can never be taught how to fall.

“Hadrack gave me that poem to read, while I was regaining my health. Do you understand its meaning?” When he turned toward her again, doubt had replaced irritation on her face. “And do you know the roots of the word ‘atone’?” Without waiting for an answer he said, “It comes from at on, ‘in harmony.’ Like sacrifice, it is not always something that is done to you. If Zalatian has made her peace with Celestia, and it with her, and she with herself, it is perhaps not our place to question how.”

Paladin and Jasian stared at one another, until Brin said, “I think I finally understand.”

Geoffrey smiled faintly. “Then I think we need speak of it no more.” He refreshed her tea and handed it to her as he returned to his chair. “So what will you do with the fragments of the sword?”

“And the tome detailing its construction,” she added. “The steel predators found it among the ruins of the fortress and returned it to us on Celestia. I’m not sure – we haven’t talked about it yet.”

“And will you seek other counsel concerning their disposition?” Superficially his voice sounded pleasant, but Brin sensed some tension beneath.

“I – I don’t know,” she said hesitantly. “I’m not sure who we’d talk to.”

“You have a liege lord,” he reminded her mildly.

“Yes, but an affair on Acheron hardly seems the king’s direct concern.”

“Then you will decide for yourselves.”

She drew herself erect into a more formal posture. “Is there something you’re trying to tell me, sir?”

He sighed and leaned toward her with his forearms resting on his knees. “We don’t often speak of what you have accomplished, but we acknowledge it. Now the multiverse has barely been restored and you have already ventured out into it. The king, Hadrack and I are all men who have chosen to devote ourselves to terrestrial concerns. I myself have set foot on neither Celestia nor Acheron. Clement is bound by his duty to Dunthrane and, if all goes well, to the restored Great Kingdom. Hadrack left the company of Magnus, Bane and the others in part because he had no desire to meddle in the affairs of other planes. This will not, I think, be true of you. And so one day you will inevitably surpass us all in power. It is the way of things.”

“I don’t understand – ”

“I could order you to appear before Clement, with the shards of Baatorian green steel, with the tome, and surrender them to him. But I won’t. The time is soon coming when if your consciences don’t align themselves with our orders, if you choose to disobey those orders, there will be nothing we can do to correct you. I, for one, would rather know your hearts now than after it’s too late.” Her face reddened and her gaze fixed itself on the floor but, unlike Hadrack, Sir Geoffrey had no desire to put her at her ease. “If I had to guess, I’d say that you in particular have something you wish to do with one or both of these items, and you suspect Clement’s will would not align with yours. Acheron may not fall within the king’s jurisdiction, but you do. If you no longer trust his wisdom, then I suggest you resign from his service.”

She looked up and met his eyes forthrightly. “It isn’t just my decision. But I’ll think about what you’ve said.” Then she rose and saluted him again. “I should be going. Thank you for dinner, and – ” she trailed off, uncertain how to finish the sentence.

He took her flesh and blood hand in his. “Thank you for the news. I am glad Ammitai’s quest ended well. Although I am sorry about Durgeddin. History records him as a dwarf with honor and skill – he deserved better than oblivion, even an oblivion chosen of free will.”

“If…” Brin wiggled her mechanical fingers. Seeing Geoffrey’s quizzical glance she said, “When Durgeddin’s soul contacted the sword, there was a flash and – it looked as if something might have been absorbed into the hand. But – I don’t know. I don’t feel any different.”

“Doesn’t that concern you?” The paladin certainly looked concerned himself.

She grinned in reply. “I’ve been a vessel for something or other ever since I was less than a year old. I guess I’ve gotten used to it.”

“Back to Celestia with you, strange and unnatural child,” Geoffrey laughed.

(Poem excerpt from “Trumpeter Swan” by Robin Robertson)