Umber

The mission to retrieve the Crook of Rao is successful – or is it?

After their return from Zagyg’s isle the adventurers took a few days to rest. Brin slipped away to Blasingdell, where after making inquiries she found the person she was looking for absent. Stephan, Grendar and Sister Alonsa were uncomfortably vague on the subject, and Haissha and Lord Berrick would only say that yes, Hadrack had left after a short visit, and if she wanted more detail on his whereabouts they believed Sir Geoffrey in Montinelle would be a more useful source of information than they. Disappointed, she spent the night with Berrick and Haissha and in the morning at Geoffrey’s invitation traveled to Montinelle in time for breakfast.

The servants had just left them with their eggs, bacon and toast and the door had barely closed when Brin said, “So when did Hadrack – ”

“I thought after we ate,” Geoffrey interjected, “we could take a walk in the woods.”

Brin wasn’t in the mood for polite obliquity. “There’s a reason why everyone in Blasingdell foisted me off on you, isn’t there?”

“They sent you here as I wished,” the paladin replied. “But there are conversations not fit for servants’ ears, and they will still be bustling in and out pouring coffee and refreshing juice at intervals.”

“You could tell them not to interrupt – ”

Geoffrey smiled. “You are, I’m sure, an admirable priestess. But you have little experience, I think, in the governing of a region. If I told the servants I wished not to be disturbed, they would chatter with the clerks, who would feel obliged to speak with the petty officers, who would tell my aid, who would disturb my lieutenant, and there would soon be a small but unrelenting stream of people less easily dismissed than the servants wanting to know what was wrong and what assistance I require. Especially as you lack the bearing of one of my subjects or, say, a trader or representative from a neighboring community.”

“Not so admirable,” she murmured. “But I understand.”

“Now eat,” the paladin ordered as she picked at the food on her plate. Treating her like a child of ten he refused to let her leave the table until she had consumed enough to satisfy him, and she was too distracted to argue. But finally they left the table and the manor, following a broad, well-kept cobblestone road out of Montinelle and then a narrower, neatly kept dirt path into the woods. Once they were out of sight of the town proper Geoffrey slowed to a more meditative pace, his hands clasped behind him as he walked. “I’m not the person you wanted to see, I know,” he said.

Brin’s cheeks flushed pink. “I didn’t mean to imply earlier that – ”

“I took no offense. Hadrack intended someone else to explain, Glom perhaps, or Svengali, but I offered to undertake the task myself.”

She kicked viciously at a rock in the road. “The task of telling me that he doesn’t want to see me?”

“He doesn’t want to see anyone,” he corrected her patiently. “But he wanted you to understand why.”

“Then why isn’t he here? Why wasn’t he in Blasingdell?”

Geoffrey sighed. “I first met Hadrack when he was the age you are now. He was not a young man full of ideals. He was not particularly restless or possessed of an adventurer’s spirit. He was not interested in power or its exercise. He liked above all else to wander the world and just look at it – its existence and its beauty seemed a source of constant wonderment to him. I think he only took up the arms of Heironeous because he felt a need to use his abilities to protect that world. Now, he nearly destroyed it. And that has nearly destroyed him. He is a deeply unhappy man, Brin. The enormity of his actions under the influence of the Tharizdunian corruption is still sinking in. He wants to travel the world again, to watch it recover – to believe that it is possible for it to recover.”

“Then he’ll come back?”

“Perhaps.”

“But in the meantime we’re all supposed to meekly abandon him to his suffering. Let him walk away.”

“Sometimes, child,” the paladin’s voice grew more stern, “there is nothing more to be done. Neither you nor I can force him to be at peace. We cannot take on his guilt, and we cannot seek absolution on his behalf even,” he gave her a sidelong glance, “if the thought crossed some of our minds.”

Her face reddened to scarlet. “It wasn’t that,” she muttered.

“No?”

“I didn’t know you’d heard.”

“Indirectly. I too traveled widely in my younger days. I have friends in Veluna and – well, a Jasian taking up service to Rao causes wagging tongues in certain circles. I confess I made an inference regarding the Jasian in question but,” he smiled faintly, “it seemed no great leap of the imagination.”

“It wasn’t as if I had a choice. God of ‘reason’ my – ” Willie interrupted her with his chittering. “Yes, I know he won’t understand until I tell him. But I can’t just start at the end – it’s all too complicated.”

“I freed the morning,” Geoffrey noted.

And so she began at the beginning, telling him of their arrival at the island, their encounters with vicious animals and deadly plants, with suspicious and arrogant tribesmen and with the physical manifestation of Zagyg’s mind. It took some time, as Geoffrey had a number of questions, and though they had eaten early it was mid-morning by the time he asked, “And what happened when the shamans summoned Oonga?”

“He was like a demanding thirty foot child,” she said. “He wanted things. Gifts, baubles. Vayel gave him some trinket, the sky shaman offered the necklace he wore. But there was no reasoning with him.”

Geoffrey nodded sympathetically. “He was not as intelligent as you had hoped.”

“He was considerably more intelligent than I expected. It was all an act.”

“To what possible end?”

“I have no idea. Perhaps he would have been different – before. Or perhaps not.”

“Before the psions. They had tampered with him as well, I assume?”

Brin nodded. “Among other aftereffects, any hint of psionic activity drove him into an uncontrollable rage, as the tribe unwise enough to bring psiblades to the altar discovered to their misfortune. At least,” she said grimly, “their tribesmen didn’t need to dig graves for them.”

A thought occurred to Geoffrey. “But I thought Corwin – ”

“I reached him before Oonga did. Since Callie left I keep some psion-suppression tools handy at most times.” She grinned wryly. “Didn’t expect to be using them on a friend, though. The big ape looked confused for a moment, then took his gifts and lumbered back through the portal from which he’d emerged.”

“Leaving you in an undesirable position – take the Crook of Rao by stealth, or by force.”

“Leaving us to figure out how to reach him, first of all. We couldn’t follow through the portal – it was attuned to only Oonga. But Dryden studied the terrain on the other side, and was confident he could find the region. We set out overland – oversky, I suppose would be more accurate – early the next day.”

“And the three shamans?” He paused. “Or two?”

“Two,” she confirmed, “after Oonga’s rampage. The one whose tribe was situated closest to the altar retreated behind his walls. We took the sky shaman and his guards with us, leaving them when we turned toward Oonga’s den and they toward home.” She fell into a gloomy silence.

“And what course of action did you take when you reached Oonga’s abode?” Geoffrey finally prompted. “I would dare to hope that away from the primitives who worshipped and feared him he would, since you say he seemed capable, engage in more reasonable intercourse, but the expression on your face suggests otherwise.”

“He was different. I wouldn’t say more reasonable. We had a new audience – the dozens of apes patrollilng a respectable distance from his den – and for them he postured and threatened, apparently spoiling for a fight. I believe he understood that we wanted the Crook of Rao, and what we wanted it for, and made it fairly clear that we were going to have to take it by force.”

“Did you?”

“Vayel wanted to. I wanted to believe there was another way.” At his skeptical look she said, “We came to a world uninvited, to retrieve an item that had been bartered away by Tenser, Robilar and Merlynd for the sake of their little lives. Was it justice to regain it by violence? Was it true to the spirit of Rao?”

“Was it a fair bargain in the first place?” Geoffrey responded. “If they had died to defend it, there it still would have remained. Would you then have felt justified in violence or theft? For myself, I think Vayel was in the right. A challenge was given. There was no dishonor or injustice in accepting it.”

“Yes, Vayel was right,” she said in a tone of such bitterness that Willie chirped at her softly. “I removed my weapons and followed Oonga into the cave with only Corwin as escort, hoping we could reach some peaceful accommodation, but it was hopeless. Corwin found the place where Oonga’s – and Zagyg’s – treasures were kept. When we retrieved the Crook of Rao, Oonga fell into a kind of madness. His actions did not seem wholly his own. Even then I hoped – I wanted to use the Crook to try to heal him. Ammitai interposed himself between the ape and the rest of us, trying to give me time.”

“But if you were permitted to wield an artifact of Rao at all, perhaps your peaceful overtures were not meaningless.”

“They profited nothing. Anyone could take the staff in hand. Dryden did, before I could reach it. There was a single condition: abandon the path you walked before to serve Rao.”

“Which Dryden refused to do?”

She nodded. “It is a precious path to him. He desires no other.”

“Nor did you, I think. Why did you accept the mantle?”

“My life has been a tapestry of refusals and incompatible allegiances – your own god is a thread within it. What is one more? I argued at first, said the terms were unreasonable given the stakes, but they were the only ones Rao would have.”

“You still haven’t answered my question.”

She threw her hands in the air in frustration. “How could I let all of Oerth die in the name of my integrity? It seemed a petty thing just then.”

He studied her thoughtfully. “Did you manage to heal the giant ape?”

“I didn’t have the chance to try. Oonga grew more aggressive, and Vayel responded by calling a pillar of fire down on his head. Once that line was crossed, there was no retreating. He very well might have killed us all. In the end, I destroyed him.”

“I’m sorry, child.”

She shrugged, although the tightness of her jaw belied her apparent indifference. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t think Oonga was truly an individual. None of them were – not the apes, not the savages, not the sky shaman.”

“Why do you say that?”

“While we were still there, a kind of countdown began. To destroy the island and create it and its inhabitants anew. Zagyg’s next experiment, I expect. None of it was real. Not…really.”

“You were real,” the paladin replied mildly. “As were your decisions. And your feelings.”

Her expression softened for a moment as she looked at him. “Yes.” She laughed  without humor. “The irony was, as soon as I had the Crook, I realized it couldn’t be used to heal the devastation on Oerth.”

Geoffrey looked startled. “But the healing of Oerth has begun. How did you – ”

“Tenser must have thought the Crook was our last, best hope, not a certain one. And he was right, in a way. It had no innate capacity to heal on such a scale. But the immense knowledge it gave us, while we had it, for a time, enabled us to recognize and collect the raw materials required to effect such a healing. Herbs, from Zagyg’s island, in fact.”

“Don’t you find that a little puzzling?” he asked. “That the ingredients were all conveniently gathered there?”

“I hadn’t thought of that before, but now that you mention it…what do you think it means?”

“I have no idea. But it is – interesting.” As if they’d reached an agreed-upon turning point they began to retrace their steps along the path, back toward Montinelle, in silence until Geoffrey said, “But fortunately the disease is being purged, and Oerth will recover, and we will never need to find out what grim future might have awaited us.”

“We know,” Brin said, so softly that the paladin had to ask her to repeat herself. “Time was not fixed in Zagyg’s realm,” she said after a long pause, “nor did it flow at the same rate as on Oerth – a thing we didn’t realize until the Inevitables returned to exact retribution against Corwin for retaining the aspect of both elf and githyanki. Corwin convinced them of their error barely in time, but it was a relief considerably dampened by the realization that centuries had passed outside Zagyg’s little bubble. We had failed in our charge. If no other way to save Oerth had been found, it had certainly been destroyed.”

“An unhappy realization to endure until further temporal manipulations presumably set matters right, but not a definite vision of the future.”

“There were mysterious paths, in Oonga’s den. We had occasion to walk them. That was where we encountered the future.” She looked up at the old paladin walking beside her. “It did not come to pass. Perhaps there is no need to speak of it.”

“No need,” he agreed, “though I confess that I’m curious – if it isn’t too painful to relate.”

She nodded in acquiescence. “Ammitai came to the earliest future. He found himself among the last remnants of the House of Rayne. They had acquitted themselves honorably in the chaos that the disease brought in its wake. They did what they could to help maintain order, but Dunthrane had fallen, and Tenser was lost, and now it was all they could do to keep themselves alive. They were gathering the last of their supplies, preparing to leave for the one place they’d heard of survivors. In the Bright Desert.”

“The traitorous archmage Rary?” Geoffrey asked.

“The Bright Desert had been growing rapidly, unnaturally. Presumably Rary sought to combat the devastation of the disease with a wasteland of his own where it couldn’t flourish. For the time being, it appeared to be working, and they had nowhere else to go. Ammitai wished them well, and returned to the island, for we each had a limited time.”

“And the others?”

“Dryden’s path led to Tikka Ti’Jarra, now utterly deserted, without sign of life. He approached a snow and ice-covered statue, and as he drew near it moved. It was his teacher, the planetar archer. She was waiting for him, foresaw that sooner or later he would come. Oerth was dead, she told him. The celestials had removed as many as they could, others left under their own power. Those who already carried the disease and had no means of purging themselves were – prevented – from departing. There were individuals whose fate he wished to know but she could tell him of nothing except devastation. And then it was time for him to return.”

Her words affected Geoffrey strangely, as if the events had actually happened, as they so easily could have. “So he did not know how many survivors there were.”

“Vayel and Corwin encountered others,” she replied. “Vayel went, perhaps unsurprisingly, to the Plane of Shadow. That vast emptiness had grown considerably more crowded with refugees from Oerth. Her Catfolk had fled there.”

“But I thought they were immune to the effects of the disease? They, of all creatures, might have retained a foothold on Oerth.”

“Assuming they could find anything to eat,” Brin pointed out. “In any case, they were driven out before that eventuality occurred. By human stupidity.”

Geoffrey nodded sadly. “If I may conjecture: as misery and misfortune spread, some began to believe that the Catfolk created their own good fortune at the expense of other men.”

“Of course they did. Jealousy led to suspicion, suspicion to eventual violence, violence that spilled over even onto Shadow, as some of Oerth’s other inhabitants made their way there. A few of the Catfolk saved Vayel from a roving band of humans grown far more feral than any feline Oerth ever produced. The Catfolk helped the humans when they could, stayed out of their way when they couldn’t, killed them when they felt they had no other choice.”

“Much like Vayel herself, it sounds.”

“Yes, I suppose she did succeed in raising a race she could be proud of.”

“You said Corwin was with survivors as well?”

“Not precisely,” she amended, “although to all indications he collected them. He found himself on Limbo, on the outskirts of a giant fortress filled with gith drilling with military precision. He crept about cautiously, you can be sure, until he saw a statue of none other than himself prominently placed on the grounds.”

“A statue of Corwin?” Geoffrey eyes widened in disbelief.

“With the inscription, ‘He taught us to fight.’ He had some small difficulty teasing out what was going on, since he clearly should already know, but it seemed that as Oerth was thrown into more and more confusion, mind flayers moved in to enslave the population. Emboldened by success, they began spreading aggressively through the multiverse. Corwin organized a resistance movement.”

“And the gith would be natural, and highly effective, allies.”

“It’s odd how Corwin’s destiny keeps circling around the gith. I wonder what it means.”

“Only time will tell.” After a pause he said, “And your vision of the future?”

Her stride broke for a moment before resuming. “It was a private matter, of no consequence to anyone but myself.”

He peered into her face, then stopped her by laying a hand on her arm. “Yet it clearly disturbed you, even though it did not come to pass.”

“It has come to pass,” she replied distantly. “At least some part that was mine alone.”

“I will respect your privacy or honor your confidence, as you choose,” he said quietly.

“I was with the Lady,” she finally began. “Servants and students, priests and mages were bustling about, coming and going from observing the chaos in the multiverse. She told me that this, too, was interesting, as everything is interesting, and asked if I intended to prevent it.”

“And what did you tell her?”

“That I had to set it right – that I had duties, had made vows, perhaps I shouldn’t have but I couldn’t ignore them now.”

“Was it truly only the duties and the vows that impelled you?”

“No,” she said softly, “as the Lady well knew. She laughed and said maybe she’d raise up a paladin or two.”

“Why would she do that?”

“Perhaps so I wouldn’t feel so lonely. She said I could remain with Rao, or return to her service, as I chose.” In a lower voice, speaking mostly to herself she said, “I don’t know that I could follow Rao. But then, I’m a poor Jasian as well.”

“Because you did not deign to let the world die when you did not wish to?” Geoffrey scoffed. “You’re carving yourself a niche where you will judge your every action a failure.”

“You don’t understand. I should be more detached. What I wish is that I were different. I should strive to be more disciplined, I should – ”

“Wishing is fruitless, and certain strivings are pointless,” he cut off her budding outburst. “One can aspire to be a more or less effective warrior, but to subject the heart to the same strict discipline, to insist it conform to some ideal the intellect imposes on it, leads I think only to misery and a poor chance of success.”

“But you’re a paladin,” she protested, “how can you say – ”

“I have never been ‘a paladin,’” he interrupted. “Or I have always been a paladin.” He gave her the impish smile that took twenty years off his age, or made him seem ageless. “As you like.” She returned his smile hesitantly, but as she still looked confused he continued. “Tenser thought that Mordenkainen, for all his protestations of neutrality, was nothing like impartial. He permitted and encouraged the flourishing of great evil, in the name, he said, of balancing Tenser’s ‘excesses’ in the opposite direction.”

“And paid a heavy price for it, in the end.” The image of a battered, bloodied Mordenkainen burning on Moloch’s altar was the first glimpse of the archmage Brin had ever had, and never forgotten.

Geoffrey nodded. “Yes, when the illusions that clouded his judgment for so many years were finally stripped away. Tenser believes that once one has accumulated a certain measure of power, without sealing oneself into a hermitage beyond all human interaction one cannot help but serve the ends of good, or of evil. I tend to agree. You must know that you and your companions have reached that certain measure. The outcome of your actions will fall on Oerth like rain, like hail, or like fire. What portents will you leave for someone like Hadrack, as he travels the world for signs of hope or despair? Flowering meadows, or ashen craters?”

“But sometimes the craters are what gives one hope,” she protested. “Who wanted to see the Tharizdunian temple flourish?”

“And so will you only destroy? Or lurch between destruction and creation in the name of a neutrality you jealously guard – why? You don’t seem to believe in it. And it seems an impoverished sort of existence,” he remarked, “pulling weeds and never remaining to see the new shoots grow. Is that what it means to serve the Ruby Goddess? I think not. There is no shame in taking pleasure in the spaces you create for others’ happiness to flourish. And if the only reason you contemplate leaving her service is because you find such pleasure – permit me to be blunt, but it seems a poor reason to me.” His smile grew wicked. “Besides, I’d like you to stay just to see what kind of paladin she dreams up. I’d love to see Borch out-Borched.”

They walked on again in silence for a time, then she smiled with genuine feeling. “I’ve decided. And you may get your wish.”

“Then you will return to her? ”

“Yes. Unless another god hands me a bauble to play with, when I may leave her and then return again.”

Geoffrey looked at her with concern. “A dangerous game, some might say.”

“She is, like all the gods, dangerous. But it is what I am. And I’d rather betray her than bore her.”

“I may regret my advice.”

“As long as you are sufficiently sorrowful over the ashes of my impudence, I’ll absolve you of all responsibility for my fate.”

He stopped and bowed deeply before her. “That, lady, I can promise you.”

“Now,” she said, “I’m tired of thinking about it. Tell me about Montinelle. What are its people like? How do you find governing them?”

“Ah, administrative duties,” he sighed theatrically. “Some days I’d rather be tortured in a Hextorian dungeon. But as for the people – ”

And so they chatted as they returned to Montinelle, the sun climbing higher in the sky and Willie dozing on Brin’s shoulder.