Umber

The hunt for a gem thief widens into war.

It had been a long day, and when they stopped for the night Brin lost no time finding a surface to lean against and drifting into meditation, lulled by the familiar sounds of Vayel cleaning and sharpening her weapons while Corwin and Dryden pored over maps, and the novel sound of Keraptis muttering over his spellbook. Willie curled up on her lap but after a few minutes his mind retreated into a more remote and finally unreachable space. This was not particularly unusual and she thought nothing of it until he returned, mentally tugging at her. With a grumble of fatigue she followed where he led, until with an abrupt transition she found herself walking in tall grass by a wide, swiftly flowing stream, overhanging willows shading her from a bright sun. A man nearly seven feet tall with tigerish features and bright blue eyes approached from the opposite bank. Seeing her he stepped onto the water, which stilled to glass and bore his weight easily where he crossed. For just a moment she thought she saw the faint image of a second Willie in front of him, but couldn’t convince herself it wasn’t a trick of the light.

“To what do I owe this,” Brin paused as she looked up at Svengali, “honor?”

Willie continued to scamper down the stream bank, although they both knew that he no longer wished them to follow. “Willie seemed to think we should talk. Since there is, very much by design, nothing new with me, I assume he was thinking about you.”

Brin looked after the weasel. “Whose familiar is he, anyway?”

“Yours? Mine? Both? Neither? I’ve stopped wondering about it.”

“I suppose that’s the wisest course of action.”

“Now there’s an auspicious beginning,” he said dryly. “No one ever calls me wise.”

“Sapphire!” Willie called back as he flushed a flock of sparrows from a tree. “Army! Sword!”

Svengali gestured toward a large, flat stone that appeared near them, and when Brin sat flung himself down next to her. “So you don’t know what has stirred our mutual friend to bring us together either?”

“No, I don’t,” she admitted.

Willie dashed back with a dead sparrow in his mouth, dropping it long enough to say, “Constellations.”

Brin sighed. “This is a mental construct, Willie. Why are you eating the birds?”

“Nature is nature everywhere,” he said, picking up his image of a sparrow and darting away again.

“I suspect he meant three or four things simultaneously by that,” Svengali said.

“And an answer to our question is no doubt in there somewhere.”

“But I think he’s not of a mind to be straightforward tonight. Shall we begin at the beginning, then? What’s this about a sapphire?”

She stared thoughtfully after the weasel. “Dryden recently received word of a series of thefts. Ordinarily that wouldn’t be in his line, but these were very particular thefts: of very large, very precious gemstones. All very well guarded, by means both physical and arcane. In every instance no alarm was raised, no ward disturbed. It was as if they had vanished into thin air, rather than someone walking in and taking them.”

“A lot of bother for mere baubles,” Svengali frowned. “Smells like someone looking for spell components to me. What were they?”

“An emerald, a diamond, a black opal and a ruby. One of each, and each one of the most expensive and perfect of its kind on Oerth.”

“And a sapphire?” Svengali’s eyes narrowed. “How very…chromatic. What are they planning on doing – summoning an avatar of Tiamat?” She didn’t laugh. “Oh.”

“They don’t have the sapphire yet. Or didn’t, the last we knew. We made inquiries at the most expensive jewelry store we could find in Greyhawk.” She sighed. “Oh, the tangled webs of money and possessions. We had to go through intermediaries of intermediaries because the owner certainly wouldn’t want to be casually revealed. We sat cooling our heels in Greyhawk, waiting for word, even though his precious toy was likely to be stolen within days, if not hours. And what repercussions,” she murmured to herself, “has that had?”

“I thought you said the thieves didn’t have the sapphire.”

“Not the sapphire. I mean – you knew him, didn’t you,” she said distractedly, talking half to herself, “that is, know him – ”

“The owner of the sapphire?”

“No – well, yes,” she corrected herself, “that too – but – ” she pushed the knuckles of her hand against her thigh, “while we were waiting we chanced upon Achomed at a tavern.” Svengali was about to remark that of course he knew Achomed and to ask why she originally mentioned him in past tense, but seeing her agitation he held his tongue. “He was sitting with a man who had his back to us. When Achomed saw us he tried to wave us away, but the man with him saw the gesture and turned. It was Blastir.”

The shapeshifter started. “Blastir? But he died at – ”

She shook her head. “Yes and no. He seems to have seeded himself in the future – we’ve seen him a handful of times since then. His sanity comes and goes – ”

“Such as it ever was,” Svengali interjected.

She nodded in grim agreement. “Still, since he ‘died’ at the Nexus, lucidity seems an infrequent visitor. At the tavern, however, he seemed fully himself, as Corwin and Dryden remembered him from the brothers’ keep. He looked at us with the oddest, most calculating expression – as you’d examine powerful strangers you suspected would prove to be enemy or ally, but nothing in between. Then he laughed and ran out of the tavern. For a moment I thought Achomed might put a knife in his back.”

“You must have misinterpreted. Achomed and Blastir had their disagreements – more than I can count – but they still and always thought of each other, as you recently mentioned, as brothers.”

“But Achomed wasn’t in favor of recruiting us from Blasingdell, was he? And he knows now how it turned out. All right, perhaps, in the very end, but just barely. And look at the prices that have been paid. Could it have been done differently?”

“What price is too high,” Svengali snapped, “for the preservation of the multiverse? And the continuation of life, not just as we know it, but at all?”

She gazed at him forthrightly, with uncharacteristic humility. “You’re in a better position to answer that question than I.”

He looked away from her, picking up a nearby twig and throwing it with force into the water, and she thought she saw his paw-like hand tremble for a moment. “Not the matter at hand,” he muttered. “Anyway, it’s all over and done with.”

“It is now, I suppose, since Achomed stayed his hand in the tavern.”

He gave her a sideways glance. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“That although Blastir picked us as his champions when we were children, I think – Achomed thought – that he first learned of our existence those few days ago in Greyhawk. Knights, barely out of childhood – ”

“Wielding the kind of power that takes years to develop and that most people – even those who desire it – never manage to acquire. So he goes back in time and – ” he rubbed his eyes. “It hurts my brain trying to work it out. So here we all are – still, or again.” They sat in silence for a time before he spoke. “You said I know the owner of the sapphire as well? I can’t think of anyone – ” he snapped his fingers. “Tenser. But an assault on the Fortress of Unknown Depths? They’d have to be mad – ”

“Not if they employed an arcane suppression field.”

“But they’d cripple themselves in the process. Even a priest of any power relies on an unseen host of anonymous mages for much of his equipment.”

“I wasn’t talking about priests. You should know an alternative – you traveled with one. And they don’t seem nearly as rare as they used to be, more’s the pity.”

“Psions,” he murmured.

“And monks in the bargain, if we’re very unfortunate. We know the Scarlet Brotherhood has been cultivating the mix.”

“Did you have a chance to warn Tenser?”

She shook her head. “Mage Point was a stick-stirred ants’ nest when we arrived. Both Tenser and the sapphire were gone. The fortress’ defenses had been sabotaged.”

“By intruders, or Tenser himself?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” she said. “We’ve been acting on the hypothesis that it was Tenser himself – giving any allies who might follow after quick access to the coded notes he left behind. But he certainly left a mess for Cymria to deal with. The fortress without its arcane defenses is scarcely worthy of the name. Vayel convinced Dryden to send some agents to help, but even so…”

“Tenser has no particular attachment to people or things. If the fortress falls, and Cymria and her troops along with it, but he survives to pursue his cause another day, he’ll consider it a worthwhile, if mildly regrettable, price.”

She gave him a hard glance. “Seems to me he went pretty far out of his way to pull us all out of Crater Ridge. He could have written that off as a regrettable price.”

“He didn’t have to choose between himself and you.”

“Himself and us,” she corrected him.

“Fine, us. That doesn’t invalidate my point.”

“Isn’t that a calculus we’ve all made in the past?”

Svengali leaned back on his elbows and tipped his face up toward the sun. “I didn’t know you’d grown so fond of him.”

“No more fond of him, but no less fond of judgments formed from personal bias instead of objective reality.”

“Are you always such a model of tact?”

“I’m making a special effort,” she smiled thinly.

“I think I liked you better when you were depressed.”

Before Brin could snap a reply Willie dashed back, leaping from her shoulder to Svengali’s and back again and leaving muddy, cold paw prints even in the shared mental space. “Be nice.” Scampering away again he called behind him, “Otiluke! Vrath Keep! Drellin’s Ferry!”

“Why don’t you come back here and talk to him yourself?” Brin demanded. As she expected, he didn’t reply, and after a moment she stood up. “Let’s walk. I don’t feel like sitting.”

In a conciliatory gesture, he created a thin ribbon of solidity in the center of the stream. “A different perspective?”

She grinned. “All right.” After they had walked several yards she said, “Otiluke seems to share at least some of your distaste for Tenser.”

“That doesn’t surprise me. Recluses and crusaders seldom find common ground.”

“And mages all have egos,” she said with a sly look.

“And clerics hide their egos behind their piety – sorry,” he broke off. “How about neither of us goes there?” When she nodded sheepishly he said, “You had occasion and opportunity to speak with Otiluke about Tenser? An interesting trick, that.”

“We used the Orb of Storms that Corwin inherited from Callie. We know that Otiluke built a kind of back door for himself into it – given the gravity of the situation, I suppose, he was willing to speak to us. We could make out some of Tenser’s notes – he had sketched the geography of the Nyr Dyv, the south Flinty Hills, and the Rift Canyon near the Empire of Iuz. And certain other symbols matched the movements of orcs and goblins tracked by agents of Dunthrane.”

“Clement shares his intelligence with Tenser?” Svengali asked.

“No, he certainly does not,” she laughed. “But as the king put it to us, time and energy Tenser spends keeping up on Dunthrane’s intelligence is time and energy not spent doing other things.”

“For a paladin he seems almost tolerable.” Seeing irritation sparking on her face he added hastily, “What additional light did Otiluke have to shed?”

Mindful of Willie’s damp paw prints on her shoulder, she let the remark about Clement pass. “After criticizing Tenser’s lack of sophistication in both cryptography and the schematic representation of certain complex abstract constructs, he informed us that one drawing which had left us completely mystified appeared to be both a two-dimensional rendering of the facets of a gem and the lines of arcane force that would power a large interplanar gate.”

“Further fueling your worries about Tiamat.” She nodded. “Do you know where this gate is being constructed?”

“No. We were planning to visit each of the locations on Tenser’s map. We’ve begun with the region near Vrath Keep, but things have grown…complicated.”

“They always do,” he said without irony. “Vrath Keep? Never heard of it. What made you choose that over the Rift Canyon? Where Iuz is, there’s always trouble.”

“Given equally dark paths, follow the gods.” At his puzzled look she offered a brief summary of their stay on Zagyg’s island.

“Zagyg? I’m surprised you of all people are interested in following the breadcrumbs of a deific force for chaos.”

She shrugged, tossing a pebble she carried in her hand into the stream and watching the ripples of its sinking spread around it, cut off when they reached the ribbon of solidity where they walked. “I’ve done it before, haven’t I?”

He had no reply to that. “And did you find something useful?”

“We’ve certainly found ways to be of use. We only had a general idea of the Keep’s location, somewhere in the border lands between Nyrond and Dunthrane. We stopped at a small town called Drellin’s Ferry in search of further information. In some ways,” she mused, “it reminds me of Blasingdell. Too much of Blasingdell.” She shivered, though it was not cold.

“A small town on a collision course with big trouble?” Svengali prompted.

“And even – nearly – the same cast of characters. Perhaps that’s the way of small places. A pleasant Pelorite priest, Brother Denry, standing in for Sister Alonsa. A helpful, talkative innkeeper, Kellan Shadowbanks, for Stephan; Captain Serranis of the militia for Grendar – although the town elder is neither so clever nor the primary landowner Iormel so kind as Lord Berrick. There’s even a retired adventurer for Haissha – Delora Zhaun, a sturdy, practical woman who breeds the militia’s remarkable horses, that Dryden is convinced are from part-celestial stock. There are a few who map less neatly – a halfling wizard named Sertian, a callow druid called Averthell and Jaar, a reclusive woodsman, although I suppose if the last two were one you’d have a – ” her face darkened and she left the sentence unfinished.

Svengali let the reference to Hadrack die stillborn. “Were they already in distress when you arrived?”

“Yes, and in more than they knew. They’d been plagued with bandits recently, and goblins were an unwelcome addition to the landscape – ”

“Goblins?” he interrupted. “In Nyrond?”

“The large-scale movements of goblins and orcs westward from the North Kingdom,” she reminded him. “We didn’t know why, or where. On our way to Drellin’s Ferry we disrupted an ambush on a passing caravan. That gave us a warmer welcome in town that we might otherwise have received under the circumstances, although Captain Serranis was still suspicious of us at first, I think.”

“There’s gratitude for you.”

“Well, why shouldn’t she be? People like us are just as likely to be problems as solutions.”

“Another parallel to Blasingdell?” he asked dryly.

“Would you deny it?” she challenged him.

“I’d be a fool if I did. Or trying to make myself feel better. So how did you overcome this captain’s suspicions?”

“Through scrupulous adherence to the rule of law,” she said with a self-congratulatory virtuousness that made him want to push her into the water.

Willie jumped onto Brin’s shoulder from the overhanging branch of a sycamore she hadn’t noticed a moment before, startling her. “Trail mix deception. Not rule of law.”

“Well I didn’t do that,” she sniffed.

“You laughed.”

“Trail mix?” Svengali interrupted.

“I suppose we’re a suspicious lot, but when there are bandits in the countryside and the citizens are extolling the virtues of their own – ”

“It’s reflex to look for the rotten spot. And you found one?”

“In one Jarrett Nurth, a shopkeeper who had taken up residence about a year earlier. Not especially liked, not especially disliked – kept herself to herself, everyone said.”

“Not precisely a virtue in a shopkeeper.”

“We didn’t think so. Dryden took it upon himself to keep an eye on her while the rest of us attended to another matter. We’d captured one of the goblin raiders, and Captain Serranis was kind enough to permit me to conduct the interrogation.”

Must be a woman with a strong stomach, Svengali muttered mentally to Willie.

“Nothing happened,” the weasel replied out loud, causing Brin to look at the two of them suspiciously.

“I wouldn’t call possession followed by death ‘nothing,’” she said, “but if you mean we didn’t get the kind of information we wanted and that none of us were the cause of death then yes, nothing happened.”

“Possession?” Svengali repeated. “By what?”

“We’re not sure. We’ve pieced together something about a dragon cult – Tiamat again – and the enemies we’ve killed or captured generally have a crude representation of a hand painted in red somewhere on their armor. How all the pieces fit together – the dragon cult and the red hand, why the summoning of Tiamat’s avatar now, who managed to motivate so many orcs and goblins to work in concert – we have no idea.”

“Nothing at all to be gleaned from the mysterious possessor?”

She laughed harshly. “Just the usual ‘I’m invincible, you’re all doomed,’ sturm und drang. If they’re so damned invincible,” she snapped in irritation, “why don’t they just send along a minion with their complete battle plans so we can be on the scene prepared to be overawed and crushed?”

“Too early for battle,” Willie prompted.

“Is it? I suppose since you called the meeting, it’s your agenda.”

“Back to Erythnulite.”

Svengali looked startled. “How did we get from Zagyg, Tiamat and possibly Iuz to Erythnul?”

“Hopefully via a thread of mere coincidence. As I said, Dryden was watching this Jarrett Nurth’s store. She behaved very oddly at closing. She lives above the store, and though she went upstairs with all due conspicuousness she immediately crept back down again, with far less. She retreated into a basement and, after a time, had a visitor. Keen-eyed as Dryden is, he barely saw him coming. And when said visitor left a short time later and Dryden attempted to follow, stealthy as he is, he barely avoided detection.”

“Hardly evidence of malfeasance. It could have been some illicit tryst for all you knew – of dubious morality to some, but not worth the hangman.”

“Her visitor was too alert, too quiet,” she countered, “as if that was his trade.”

“As your companions would be, met in a dark alley.”

“And if I met them and didn’t know them, I wouldn’t trust them. As for our suspicion, it was amply verified. A tryst in a basement is peculiar enough, but trapping the stairs?”

Svengali feigned shock. “You condoned breaking into her store to search the stairs?”

She frowned. “Corwin masqueraded as a dim-witted peasant and knocked on her door asking for – ”

“Trail mix,” Willie chimed in.

“He was quite persistent, and she finally gave up and opened the store long enough to sell it to him – cheating him rather badly in the process, once he convinced her he couldn’t tell the difference between silver and copper.”

“So armed with fresh suspicions you searched the basement and found an Erythnulite shrine.”

“And blood, and body parts. We could have just reported her activities to Captain Serranis, but we were interested in unwinding the entire skein of connections in case they coincided with our other investigations. So Corwin the peasant returned for more trail mix, sniffing for information but ending up with a job.”

“Not as a store clerk, I presume.”

“No. She wove a convoluted web of words that might actually have succeeded in convincing someone of sufficiently slow mind that he was contributing to the noble cause of ‘liberating’ goods from unscrupulous caravaners. She gave him a whistle on a long string and directed him to walk a certain path in the forest outside of town, swinging the whistle as he walked. Someone would meet him there, she said.”

“Sounds like a trap to me.”

“She set her trap – of sorts – before he left, serving him a very special cup of coffee.”

“Drugged?” he guessed.

She nodded. “Not that it could affect him. Fortunately he recognized the substance and could mimic its symptoms well enough to fool her, or their tête-à-tête might have ended somewhat more violently.”

“The usual euphoria-and-craving cycle popular with slave masters everywhere,” he growled softly. “I hope you gave them what they deserved.”

“They have been captured, and will stand trial.” At his snort of disgust she said, “As it happened, they had nothing to do with this dragon cult. They were the usual sort of petty brigand who found easy pickings with the relatively naïve towns in the region and enjoyed the cover of an apparently respectable shopkeeper whose price for silence and the clandestine movement of goods was the occasional captive for her bloody rituals.”

“They deserved a good fireball.”

“Captain Serranis wanted proof, and arrests. Although the Erythnulite will certainly hang.”

“My way would have been simpler.”

“We were acting as agents of Dunthrane,” she said stiffly. “We couldn’t dishonor the king.”

“You could have not blazed in with your surplices flapping in the wind.”

“We didn’t, at first,” she sniped. “The town elder wanted to pay us to solve his bandit problem. Five hundred gold – a precious sum to the town and not, as Corwin remarked privately, enough to get us out of bed in the morning. We didn’t want his money, and we didn’t want to insult him, so we revealed ourselves as knights of Dunthrane passing through on other business and said it was our duty to assist. Once we stood so revealed, we had to conduct ourselves – ”

“Like Heironians,” he snickered. She shot him a poisonous glance, and he said in a milder but still sardonic tone, “Sounds like you were a model of restraint.”

“It’s just as well we were, because shortly, I think, we won’t be, and hopefully the townspeople will listen if they trust us.”

“More dangerous predators?”

“War.” Her face was grim and she shifted toward the shore so abruptly that she nearly fell in the water before Svengali could alter their path. “But why?” she muttered to herself. “Why there, why now?”

She sank to the grassy bank preoccupied, Svengali suspected, by both the present and the past. “How do you know?” he asked as he sat down beside her.

“We went to Vrath Keep. People in those parts say it’s haunted. Everyone stays away – it would be an ideal location for a base of operations for less credulous individuals.”

“Haunted by something more corporeal now?”

She nodded. “The buildings around the courtyard were filled with goblins and worgs. There was a manticore nesting in a ruined corner. Atop the only remaining tower, strapped to a crude scaffolding, was a dead peasant, his body illuminated by a lurid green perpetual flame.”

Svengali’s lip curled in distaste. “Effects to frighten away the curious.”

“I was careless,” she frowned. “Thinking only about the disrespect for the dead, I enlisted Vayel and Dryden’s help in cutting down the body. I should have given more thought to our strategic situation. While we were working, a force wall manifested, cutting us off from the tower below.”

“An alarm in addition to a demonstration.”

“Presumably. The encore was a spell designed to drive us all mad. We were immune, but…”

“That was nearly as bad as some of you succumbing to the effects. It told your opponents that you were something more than local thrill seekers chasing ghosts.”

“Yes. We had a good count of the goblins and the worgs, we knew about the manticore, but we had no idea what waited in the tower. Corwin suggested we retreat and regroup. It galled us all, I think.”

“Sometimes the better part of valor. Although they’d be on alert when you returned.”

“The manticore flew a search pattern for a while, but we concealed ourselves carefully. We could always hope they believed us driven away. Our more immediate concern was for the messenger that departed the keep shortly after we fled.”

“The last thing you needed was someone sending reinforcements,” he suggested.

“Precisely.” Her brow wrinkled in disappointment. “He was fast – we could barely keep up. And then we lost him in the forest. One moment he was there, and the next he was gone. We decided to go back and launch an immediate assault, whether they were still on alert or not.”

“Better the devils you know than forty more of them.”

She grimaced. “We arrived just in time to see another messenger leaving – invisibly, and not out the front gate but by the back.”

“The first was a decoy?”

“We hoped so. Corwin was afraid, I think, that chasing this one down was a fool’s errand as well, but we followed him anyway. Vayel kept him in sight while the rest of us came abreast and then passed him in wind form, disincorporating to intercept.”

“This messenger – or decoy – didn’t reach his destination?”

“He was no decoy, or a messenger, for that matter. He was some sort of commander. On his body we found a map of the region – I assume he was carrying it to safety in anticipation of our return. It was quite detailed, showing where the orcs and goblins were massing, and the route they’ll be taking to lay waste to every town and village in the area.” She sighed heavily. “Drellin’s Ferry is first on the list.”

“Do you know how soon the attack will come?”

“I can’t help but think it will be very soon. If we’re very unlucky, perhaps in the next day or two.”

Looking fatigued, she dropped her head between her knees for a moment and in the interval Willie and Svengali exchanged glances. “You mean to aid them,” he said.

“Of course we will. There is no one else. These are insignificant places, nearly forgotten by Nyrond who claims them, and with the expanse of the Flinty Hills cutting them off from help by the armies of sympathetic powers like Dunthrane.”

An image rose unbidden in his mind of battle counsel in another small town, with Magnus and Psydney and Bane, and Berrick stunned to near paralysis, and Haissha manically resolute. “These kinds of battles – ” he said softly.

“We were at Spinecastle when Moloch assailed it. We know what these battles are like.”

“The populace near Spinecastle expects war, even if they don’t embrace it. These little hamlets of yours have probably never seen it before. In that too they’re like – ”

“Like Blasingdell, I know,” she interrupted impatiently.

“It’s not easy watching people like that die,” he said in a flat voice. “Like lambs to a slaughter.”

“I don’t intend to watch them die.” She clenched her hand into a fist. “I’ve heard the stories about the strategy sessions. I’m not Haissha. If there are hills to fly to, the people of Drellin’s Ferry should take flight. If there are holes to hide in, they should hide.”

“People can be very foolish about their land and possessions, when danger and terror are too far away,” he warned.

“Then we’ll bring the terror to them before the danger has arrived.”

He shook his head. “Do you intend to frighten them away with tales of dragons and denizens of the hells?”

“No, with something much more immediate and easier to comprehend. I witnessed such a battle as a child.” She smiled bitterly. “Would you want your daughter to grow up like me?”

Svengali laughed. “But Dryden also endured that conflict,” he pointed out. “And every peasant and townsman loves a – ” Don’t finish that sentence, Willie warned him, but the word “ranger” was out of his mouth before he could stop himself.

Brin visibly stiffened, but said nothing. “Then we’ll have to avoid using Dryden as our case study.”

“Do you know what force they’ve gathered?”

“We haven’t seen its entirety with our own eyes, but between the indications on the map and what we have seen it looks formidable. After the map was in our possession we took our best guess at the first messenger’s destination – the gathering army. We failed to intercept him, but he did get a look at the advance guard. It included, besides its common marauders, several hellhounds and two dragons who between them kept constant watch over the approach. Hopefully they correspond to both the draconic names – Ozurendion and Turagarun – marked on the map, but I’m not counting on it.”

Svengali shook his head. “To summarize: you’re looking at some unknown number of dragons, some contingent of enemies courtesy of the Nine Hells and – how many orcs and goblins from the North Kingdom?”

“The map references some number of ‘tribes.’”

“At five hundred per – ”

“I’m aware of the size of a tribe.”

“– bare minimum,” he finished. “Look, I hate to throw cold water on your visions of great and noble deeds, but it seems to me the residents of Drellin’s Ferry aren’t the only ones who should consider running for the hills.”

“That,” she replied firmly, “is not going to happen.”

“So what do you have,” he challenged, “besides your own indomitable wills and a retired adventurer who breeds half-celestial horses?”

“For one, we don’t have the enmity of the area worgs. We intercepted a band of goblins hauling crates of captive pups toward the encampment. Their packs have suffered grave predation since the goblins moved in – they are unlikely to survive in the area – but they were grateful for the rescue of their pups.”

“For what they’re gratitude is worth. They’re worgs. You should know what they’re like.”

“Yes, I do. But we don’t need more enemies, and with Corwin – whom they have christened Growler – we were uniquely positioned to prevent hostilities.”

“What would your paladin king think?”

“It’s the philosophy he practices. I would hope he’d approve. And frankly, so far the products of that philosophy are all we have. The towns and villages in the area are weak, and isolated. There are other creatures in the woods – like the worgs, but few that harbor any love for their human neighbors. Any alliances we’ve forged so far have arisen from a hatred of goblins, not fellow feelings – as with the Twist Tusks.”

“Twist Tusks?” he repeated.

“A clan of forest giants. They’re the reason Vrath Keep is a ruin. Apparently this Vrath was a knight who, unprovoked, took it into his head to wipe out the clan’s presence in the area. He killed a number of them, and was quite pleased with himself until they returned with more distant relatives. They nearly destroyed themselves, but in the process they reduced his hold to near rubble.”

“The story as told by the Twist Tusk survivors?” he asked dryly.

“As told by one old giant, alone in the woods, who struck me as too old and too sick to bother with decades’-past hatreds. Corwin saw his solitary campfire and stopped to speak with him while we held our vigil for the elusive first messenger. He wasn’t your usual sort of giant. He made the boastful threats one might expect of a common hill giant, but it seemed as if he was gauging Corwin’s willingness to be cowed or even convinced by them instead of from actual brutish menace.”

“You must be in pretty desperate straits to call a single old, sick forest giant an ‘alliance.’”

“He’s not sick anymore.”

“Ah, you traded a cure for his assistance?”

“That was Vayel’s suggestion. I told Corwin to relay that I was coming, and the cure was not a bargaining chip – I would cure him freely, because he was suffering.”

“An example of empathy and selflessness for him to adopt?” He waved a hand dismissively. “Merely a more subtle manipulation.”

“All social congress is manipulation, come to that. But it’s better than force, isn’t it?”

He ignored the jab. “So to make him useful, you reversed his aging as well?”

“Of course not,” she snapped. “But he has relatives.”

“And they’ll come because of the goblins.” He shook his head in skepticism.

“There is no one else,” she insisted. “We have to try.”

He sat up and handed her a stick. “Sketch me the terrain around this Drellin’s Ferry.” Reluctantly, she complied. The more she drew, the more tightly his lips pressed together, until finally he said, “You have a river. That’s it. No walls, not even a few decorative fences. The place is indefensible, and you know it. That’s why you want to counsel them to retreat. Because if they stay, they’re all going to die.” She refused to look at him. “What, exactly, do you hope to accomplish?” He leaned forward further to peer into her face. “It’s what you think this king of yours would do. You’re trying to serve his interests.”

“It’s what I do,” she replied. “I serve Wee Jas, I serve Clement of Dunthrane. I served the Alpha.”

“Putting your faith in things out there. You’ll walk yourself off a cliff training your eyes on your ‘superiors’ instead of on where you’re going. And people weren’t supposed to serve the Alpha, they were supposed to join it.”

“Semantics,” she sniffed.

“If you don’t understand the difference between the two, you never understood the Alpha.”

“And doubtless still don’t,” she retorted.

“Understanding it or not is academic now.”

“Is it?” Willie piped up. Shapeshifter and cleric stopped their bickering to look at him. “Zagyg,” he said.

“What does Zagyg have to do with the Alpha?” Svengali asked.

“Nothing,” Brin said swiftly.

“Sword found at ruin,” Willie said. “Vrath’s. Zagyg’s.” Svengali looked at Brin expectantly.

It took grudging moments before she spoke. “After we were certain we’d missed the first messenger, we returned and cleared out Vrath Keep. Corwin and Dryden found a trap door in the floor of the tower. Beneath it we found a skeleton – presumably Vrath’s – and a sword lying on the ground just out of his reach. His bony hand was reaching for it.”

“Had he dropped it, or had it – left him?”

“Always an interesting question, isn’t it?” she smiled thinly. “Our suspicion that it was the latter grew when we tried to wrap it in some cloth and put it in a pack. It just – melted away – and reformed itself on the ground.”

“It wanted a hand to wield it.”

Brin nodded. “Corwin counseled, under the circumstances, that the hand be mine.”

“Will of iron,” Willie said proudly.

“Unlike my constitution,” she smiled at the weasel. “But better one of us dead than overcome by some irresistible, perhaps deific, force that could be turned against the others.”

“Tell vision,” Willie urged.

“When I picked up the sword, I saw in the blade a night sky full of stars. I felt the sensation of a powerful destiny, fulfillable but as yet unfulfilled. I heard a babble of voices, mostly unintelligible, but I recognized one. It spoke to me.” She shifted uncomfortably. “It was another Alpha, one even younger than I.”

“The drow – ” Svengali began, then cut himself off.

She turned toward him, her eyes intent. “You know of her. Do you know who the other Alpha were?”

Svengali shrugged.

“They were all there,” she persisted, “reachable somehow through the sword. One of them seemed to be in the Bright Desert. What’s out there, besides the archmage Rary, and Lord Robilar?”

“I’m neither an oracle nor a census-taker,” he replied stiffly. “You want an answer to that question, I suggest you go out to the Bright Desert and start asking around. Or get a better grip on that sword of Zagyg’s and see for yourself.”

“If I had my way, we’d only have that sword long enough to seal it away in some vault out of reach.”

He arched an eyebrow. “Zagyg’s destiny doesn’t suit you?”

“Zagyg’s destiny is one-size-fits-all,” she replied. “Seeing that I was easily able to lay the blade down again, Corwin took it up. His vision was similar, although instead of a night sky he was in a darkness surrounded by eyes. His ever-growing pack, I presume. He had the same sense of a waiting destiny.”

“And Vayel and Dryden?”

“Vayel declined to hold the sword. I think she is content with tomorrow’s fortune, and lets the future look to itself. Dryden saw something that plainly moved him deeply, but he was unable to communicate it to us.”

“Compulsion to silence?”

“That’s what I believe. He was the most adamant about the blade’s possible value to us, the most insistent that we carry it away. Corwin and I were disinclined to leave it at the keep, but we are both, I think, equally disinclined to retain it overlong.”

“I’m curious – why? You’ll have a difficult time convincing me that you and Corwin don’t believe in some manifest destiny awaiting you. Why discard an item that shows you what you already believe to be the case?”

She studied his expression, trying to decide if he was mocking her. Deciding that he wasn’t, she said, “This knight Vrath was an excellent cautionary tale. Even when it was intact, his ‘keep’ was barely worthy of the name – a single stable, a pair of towers. Who was he to think he had the might to conquer the region? A fool with delusions of grandeur, who paid for his misbegotten self-importance with his life. I’ll not join him, thank you.”

“Perhaps Zagyg sent you four to the keep hoping for a wielder who was worthy of their nascent destiny.”

She rose and eyed him suspiciously. “You’re as much of a demon as he is, and a demon of the same stripe. But I should have known that, shouldn’t I? I live within the confines of the law and my own abilities – I don’t overreach.”

“This doesn’t strike me as a case of overreaching, or not. I think you’re afraid.” When she glared at him he said, “I know about Ilune.”

“What about her?” she said coldly.

“You don’t want the sword because you’re afraid the rest of those indistinct voices might become clear. They might want something from you, not from a subordinate but from a leader, and you think you’ll fail them the same way you think you failed Ilune.”

“I don’t care what – ”

“Sooner or later you’ll have to stop trotting at the heels of paladins and Inquisitors and,” he knew he was being callous but spoke anyway, “rangers and let someone else trot at yours. Isn’t that also what your precious hierarchy is about? But you’d rather drain other people’s wisdom like some kind of succubus than dispense any of your own.”

She spoke very deliberately. “I’m not – going to take this – from you.” Then she was gone.

* * *

Svengali sat by the stream long after Brin had departed, staring into the water and idly skipping stones from a pile he created at his side. He was unsurprised when Willie appeared out of the tall grass, scampered over to him and perched on his knee. “Not nice,” the weasel said reproachfully.

“Was I wrong?” he challenged the familiar.

Willie’s whiskers twitched. “Still not nice.”

“You know better. So why did you do it?” he asked. “Insist that we talk tonight? Was it the battle? The sword?”

“Only a weasel.” Willie’s bright black eyes danced and his whiskers twitched again. “Don’t have reasons. Only instincts.”

“Don’t give me that,” Svengali said gruffly. “You’re still irritable about Hadrack, aren’t you? This is some kind of penance you’re inflicting on me. The fact remains that if in his heart he hadn’t wanted to go, he wouldn’t have. And she has another fire of cozy hierarchy,” he added with distaste, “to sit at and stay warm and comfortable. I saw to that much.”

Willie chattered in irritation. “Baronpaladin good. But not Alpha. Alpha makes toys in caves, wanders forests,” his bright eyes flashed, “hides in balor house.”

“The Alpha is finished,” the shapeshifter snapped. “We did what we set out to do, and far more than anyone had any business asking of us. All of that is in the past.”

“Madgod says otherwise.”

“Zagyg? I could care less what Zagyg thinks; and given his proclivities and predilections Brin, I suspect, cares somewhat less than that. In any case, I’m finished. Like I told her, nothing new happens to me anymore, by my own will and design.”

Willie jumped down and scurried away, chittering over his shoulder, “No nothing past, no nothing new, until dead.”