Umber

Captain Serranis tries to come to grips with the horrors visited upon Drellin’s Ferry.

It was after ten o’clock, and on a usual day Drellin’s Ferry would be quieting for the night. But it was not a usual day, and the night was not quiet. Under the direction of the militia the citizens of Drellin’s Ferry were packing and assembling for evacuation, preparing to flee toward Brindol with a goblin army at their heels and an uncertain future as refugees ahead of them. Some comforted themselves with thoughts of the day they would be able to return to their homes and abandoned possessions. Others took a more bitter comfort in cursing fate or, for those who needed a more tangible target, the five knights of Dunthrane who had ridden in on the wings of ill fortune and through force of arms and guile had imposed this decision on an unwilling populace. The number of naysayers had grown considerably fewer after Vayel and Brin killed a roving three-headed chimaera sowing terror on the street that afternoon, but was swelling again somewhat after Tenser’s precipitate appearance and the total destruction of the inn and concomitant loss of a dozen townspeople later in the day.

Sitting at the dozing archmage’s bedside in Brother Denry’s bright and neat Pelorite temple, Brin knew what thoughts exercised the citizenry tonight. There was a time when she would have cursed them for their ingratitude, perhaps even left them to their fate, but now she merely felt tired, sorry, and a little sad. “In storms, better to be the ocean than a ship,” Willie had murmured when she grew irritated at the complaints and delays, and she supposed there wasn’t much more to be said but amen to that. She was half mulling the caprices of fate and fear, half contemplating strategies for the enemy army’s further delay and didn’t hear Captain Serranis come up behind her. “How is he? He looks very weak.”

Brin turned to glance at her. The captain had suffered some bruises in her hasty departure from the inn at their shouted warnings, and some cuts from broken glass as Tenser’s arrival blew out many of the windows after her, but otherwise seemed merely fatigued. She was alive, at least. That was something. “He’ll be fine,” she replied.

“He looks like he’d have a difficult time traveling – ”

The Jasian sighed and rose. She hadn’t wanted to put it so bluntly, but said, “He’ll be fine in about an hour.”

“Of course.” Serranis pressed her lips together tightly, less in disapproval than discomfort. “I didn’t mean to disturb you,”

“That’s all right – I need to retire and meditate in a few minutes anyway. I’ll walk with you, if you don’t mind.” The captain nodded, and the two of them headed in silence toward the barracks. Serranis limped slightly until Brin muttered a word of divine power and touched her, after which she straightened up and moved with somewhat more ease. When the captain looked at her in mild surprise she said, “It’s not good to have you looking battered in front of the troops. But it’s not an excuse not to get some rest.” She paused at the barracks entrance. “I assume you still have questions; your conversation with us earlier ended a little – abruptly. I have a little time.”

Serranis opened the door. “I was going to have some tea before getting a little sleep. Would you like – ?”

“Thank you, yes,” the cleric replied.

There was less activity in the barracks than on the street; most of the militia was either asleep or outside organizing the evacuation. Brin sat in silence again as Serranis’ aide brought them a steaming pot and two cups and a little food for the captain, and it was only after he was gone that she said, “I’m sorry about the casualties at the inn. I didn’t intend to heal them just to have them – ” she sighed. “I tell myself that if we hadn’t come here, everyone would be dead already – or soon enough. I don’t suppose that’s much consolation to you.”

“It’s some,” Serranis said.

Brin leaned across the table and said in a lower voice, “They still might be. There may be more creatures like that chimaera on the loose, and…we know there are worg outriders in the forest. They rode in advance of the main army this morning, too scattered to be targets for our ambush. We let them pass, which means – ”

“I’m still a little unclear,” the captain interrupted, “on precisely what you did. Corwin quoted me casualty figures, and Keraptis said something about destroying that massive bridge at Skull Gorge, but – ”

Brin sketched the Skull Gorge region on the table, more to have something to do with her hands than because it was visible on the rough wood surface. “Erosion had occurred in a key support of the bridge. Keraptis hurried the process along by turning the remaining stone in the vulnerable area into mud.”

Serranis made some quick calculations. “Given the length of the bridge, that would have destroyed a single unit, perhaps two. Corwin spoke of four or five disabled.”

“There are runes,” Brin traced small versions of them with a finger, “the mere sight of which can drive creatures insane. We placed two of them on the road inside the forest. We expected the commanders to be largely immune to their effect, but many of the rank and file lost all mental control. And as the bridge collapsed, we rained fire on anyone trapped between the gorge and the symbols.”

“But once this spell of insanity has worn off and they return to normal – ”

“The madness,” the cleric cut her off, “is permanent. They will have to kill them or restrain them. Certain healing spells offer cures, and they will almost certainly restore key or powerful individuals, but we have taken our first steps in reducing the fodder they can throw against your peas – ” she stopped herself before she finished the word peasants, “your citizenry.” She didn’t bother to mention the elan and the monk who very nearly cut off their own escape with an arcane suppression field so large that it could only be generated by some kind of artifact. They were both dead, after, all, and the artifact sitting cozy in a bag of extradimensional space. And though she had little doubt that they would encounter one like it again, with a little luck Drellin’s Ferry would not.

The captain stared at her. “I feel as if we don’t live on the same Oerth, you and your friends and I.” Then she grew businesslike again. “How tough are these outriders?”

“Tough enough to worry about.”

Serranis’ full attention appeared to be focused on her cup. “I don’t suppose you – ”

“I want to,” Brin said softly, knowing what the captain wanted but couldn’t quite bring herself to ask. “I really do. But Corwin is adamantly opposed to it, and whatever my – heart – might say, my head knows he’s right. He’s not a kind man, but he’s an excellent strategist. I hoped to send an escort at least part of the way with you, myself if it came down to it, but…he’s right. We don’t have the manpower for it. We have to think about the whole region, not just Drellin’s Ferry.” As Serranis’ eyes remained downcast she added by way of encouragement, “But the guard from Brindol will meet you halfway. And you may find resources – both within and outside of yourselves – that you didn’t expect.”

“Or we might not.” The captain was blunt, but not obviously resentful.

“No,” Brin admitted. “But you may not encounter the outriders.”

“Or we may,” she replied crisply. “I noticed that none of you are talking about how long this might take, when we might be able to come back.” Studying the priestess’ eyes she said, “There’s not going to be a town to come back to, is there?”

Brin’s face was expressionless. “I doubt it. Keraptis is an engineer as well as a wizard. He’s been studying the terrain in the area. Destroying the bridge at Skull Gorge has created a delay. The surviving troops have opted to take a route through the foothills, and a clan of Twist Tusk giants we’ve befriended will meet them at a particular pass with boulders for another delay.” Serranis raised an eyebrow at the mention of the giants but said nothing. “Keraptis wants to spend the time we’ve gained changing the local weather patterns, damming and filling the river. When the army reaches this valley, we’ll try to drown out a few more of them.”

“This valley. So the enemy doesn’t need to destroy Drellin’s Ferry; you will have already done it.” Brin nodded. “How do you sleep at night?” Serranis asked. She didn’t sound angry, merely curious.

“Sometimes I don’t,” Brin replied. “But most of the time I tell myself – and truly believe – that we’re doing what we can, and that’s all anyone has a right to expect.”

Serranis grimaced as she burned her tongue on the hot tea. “Not everyone here believes that. But I do, and Delora, Brother Denry and some of the others. You deserve to be better thought of here than you probably are – ”

“Thank you for that,” Brin smiled faintly, a childlike smile that vanished almost immediately. “But it really isn’t necessary. We don’t make a habit of trying to be popular. I don’t expect people to bow down in thanks. Bad things happen where we are. It’s not fair to expect people to be grateful for that. Sometimes we’re not the cause.” She thought of Blastir’s unexpected arrival in Drellin’s Ferry, and Tenser’s. “Sometimes we are, whether we like it or not.”

The captain, a woman who looked as if her forties were fast approaching, shook her head. “You all talk so casually about the dozens of people you kill at a time, unmaking stone to destroy a hundred foot bridge, changing the weather to suit your purposes. But you look so young.” She gave a rueful laugh. “Half the time you scare me nearly to death. The other half I think I should be making you warm milk and putting you to bed.”

Brin laughed out loud. “I like you, Captain. I hope you come through this all right.”

“I’m not at all sure that I will.” Serranis’ face grew grim. “But I’d like to know what I might be dying for, what’s so important that Drellin’s Ferry,” she realized how loudly she was speaking and lowered her voice, “is finished. Tell me why this is happening. Who is that man lying half-dead in Brother Denry’s temple? Why were you talking to empty air in the inn? Who obliterated the inn, and why, and why,” she tried to keep the anger out of her voice but didn’t entirely succeed, “weren’t you there to stop it?” She calmed herself again. “I realize that compared to all of you I’m just a – peasant,” Brin winced at the word, “a pawn in a game much too big for me, but I’d like to feel I have some small understanding of the fate that I’m facing.”

If she expected an argument, she didn’t get one. “You deserve answers,” Brin said. “Ask what you will – I’ll answer what I can.”

Serranis’ first thought was to bristle at the use of ‘what I can,’ but she bit off a retort. Everyone had superiors, after all. “The wizard that you and Denry are tending – he’s a friend of yours?”

Brin had never really known what their relationship to Tenser was. She still didn’t. “We share a relationship through my liege, Clement of Dunthrane.”

The captain found her phrasing odd. “He is a knight like you, or a retainer?”

Brin laughed again. “Don’t let Tenser,” she regretted mentioning his name as soon as it was out of her mouth, but it seemed to mean nothing to Serranis, “hear you call him that.”

“He came to assist you with the coming battle?”

“He came because he needed our help.”

Serranis’ tone was more chill. “So twelve of our people died and the inn was destroyed – and it had nothing to do with this war.”

The cleric’s gaze grew cold to match it. “In fact, it had everything to do with this war. But even if it hadn’t, he was in distress and required our aid. Overlapping demands are often made on our time and resources. Preserving the populace of Drellin’s Ferry, for example, was not what we came here for. If we had continued on our primary mission,” she did not say leaving you all to perish, but trusted Serranis was clever enough to hear the subtext, “his presence would not have caused havoc in the town.” But the goblins and dragons and demons would have.

“My apologies.” The captain looked away. “But I knew those people. It was hard. I find myself asking, if I’d stayed, tried to help, hadn’t run away – ”

“Captain Serranis.” Brin leaned toward her, intent. “If you’d stayed you would have died. Our – acquaintance – is an archmage,” Serranis may not have known Tenser’s name, but from her widened eyes Brin assumed she was acquainted with the concept of an archmage, “and they very nearly killed him.”

“What did they want? Who are they?” She remembered something she had seen as she lay sprawled in the road, groggy, outside of the inn. “Who was that bald-headed, tattooed creature,” the androgyny of the thing made her reluctant to guess at man or woman, “outside?”

Brin had no intention of enlightening Serranis on the existence and goals of T’lar’s elan. “We didn’t know him – personally. And if you meant to ask what he was, it’s better if you don’t know.” She raised a defensive hand in the face of the captain’s mounting anger. “I’m sorry, but it really is. I wish that I didn’t know. To be aware of them,” she said softly, “is to make them an enemy, for they wish above all else to be undetected. And you don’t want them for an enemy. As for the others accompanying him – a cult sect requires certain items in order to perform a ritual summoning an avatar of their deity – or the deity itself – to Oerth. This war is a prelude to the same eventuality.”

Serranis grimaced again, but her anger was fading. “And I suppose I don’t want to know who the deity is, either.”

“Probably not,” Brin admitted. “Suffice to say that the last of the items they required was in the archmage’s possession. He anticipated them and managed to escape with both it and his life. He’s been fleeing from them for days now without rest, but no matter where he went – no matter how he got there – they were able to follow.”

“For days?” the captain repeated. “I admit the only wizard I know personally is our Sertian, and I’m sure there are many wizards out there more powerful than he is, but days?”

“When his spell energy was exhausted, he began consuming his own life force to sustain it. When that was nearly exhausted, he came to us.” Seeing a certain expression – something like awe – spreading on Serranis’ face she added, “Don’t look at me like that. We’re not more powerful than an archmage. If it hadn’t been for – that air you saw us talking to – we merely would have died along with him.”

“That was some – force?” Serranis asked tentatively. “That I couldn’t see?”

“That was our mentor. He devoted the better part of his life to the study of temporal forces and their manipulation. He was a man of enormous skill – beside him we are all children playing with firecrackers.”

The captain looked confused. “Was?”

“He died some years ago, but – ” she waved her hand in a gesture that conveyed her own confusion on the subject, “we continue to meet. He told us that anyone still in the inn a few moments hence was going to die. We tried to warn everyone, but you were the only one who listened and did as we instructed without hesitation or question. ” She saw self-loathing in the older woman’s eyes. “I don’t know what deity you worship, Captain, if any at all, but St. Cuthbert would say you survived because you deserved to. And not because you were a coward and fled, but because you exercised the brain the gods gave you and had the sense to leave.”

Serranis decided she didn’t want to know how the Jasian knew that with such certainty and changed the subject. “You are fortunate to have a mentor who cares for you so much.”

Brin rested her forehead on her hand for a moment, but as soon as she closed her eyes the battle in the inn replayed itself in her mind. The psionic monks – so many monks – winking into the common room one after the other and surrounding them. The elan waiting safely outside, crippling them with his suppression field. Corwin had gone down, and Dryden, and Keraptis had to flee for his life although, resourceful man that he was, he had stepped outside the field long enough to twist one spell and come raging back as a psionically-powered storm giant. Vayel working her way methodically from one monk to the next, but it was a losing battle – when the elan was confident the balance had tipped in his favor he stepped into the inn and began draining the last of Tenser’s defensive shield, all that stood between him and the final gem needed to complete Tiamat’s summoning spell.

Blastir had given them time – always Blastir’s gift – but Brin didn’t believe for a second that his motives were primarily or even secondarily paternal. He was curious, she suspected – these psions broke all the rules of engagement, and Blastir had a prudent fascination with rule breakers. And he knew the powers behind the power – T’lar and, ultimately, the Scarlet Brotherhood. She knew he hated the one, and suspected him of no great love for the other. He had given them extra time to act, he had studied the elan’s powerful amulet, he had suggested that Brin touch the Alpha staff to the device. Metamagic had countered metamagic for a moment; only a moment, but long enough for her to paralyze him, long enough for Vayel to seize the amulet and flee with it. Long enough to kill the elan.

He had given them time but not, Brin suspected, out of affection. Still, there was no need to tell the captain that. “Yes,” she replied, “we are fortunate.”

“You said he told you that no one in the inn would survive, and yet – ” she made a ‘here you are’ gesture in the cleric’s direction.

“He removed us from the place.”

The image of twelve bodies charred beyond recognition rose up in the captain’s mind. “I would have thought with the power at your disposal you would have been able to do that yourselves.”

The accusatory undertone was creeping back into the captain’s voice, but Brin tried to ignore it. “He didn’t take us elsewhere, he took us elsewhen. The – item – the archmage carried was traceable through space by our enemies. They lacked the facility to trace it – or follow us – through time.”

Serranis supposed she was being ungrateful but still said, “Couldn’t he have taken this item and your injured archmage and left you behind to deal with – ?”

“We considered that,” Brin snapped, her non-mechanical hand clenching into a fist. “I won’t bother making excuses for why we decided against it.”

“Call it an explanation, not an excuse,” Serranis suggested.

It was late, Brin was tired. She was, much as she hated to admit it to herself, worried about Tenser. They had managed to avoid destroying the sapphire, it was even now in the remains of the inn – no, not now, and that was the problem. It lay in some uncertain future, and Tenser waited on Blastir’s pleasure for it to be returned. And Blastir’s pleasure, they knew from their own experience, did not come cheaply. In the interim he faced the prospect of holding together his Fortress of Unknown Depths without its magical heart. Anyone with a grudge could teleport directly inside. The sea monsters tamed by the sapphire’s influence now roamed wild through the Nyr Dyv, and he would need to deal with protecting the shore towns from their ravages. No doubt other complications existed of which she was unaware. She often disagreed with him, she didn’t particularly like him, but he had at his core a commitment to honor and fair play, and those were commodities in short enough supply.

At that moment she didn’t give a damn about twelve dead peasants too stupid to run when they were told to run. “I don’t owe you even an explan – ” she began, but Willie’s soft chitter in her ear cut her off. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m tired.”

“As am I,” Serranis said. “Perhaps we should both just – ”

“No,” Brin sighed, “you should know at least this. You were outside, and conscious by then, I think – you saw the shaft of green light shooting into the sky?” The captain nodded. “If you should see it again, don’t investigate it.”

“That somehow triggered the fire that destroyed the inn?”

She considered how much to say. “The individual behind this portion of the war plot seems to have implanted within her lieutenants a kind of signal beacon that activates on their death. We saw it for the first time earlier in the day. A wind strong enough to nearly uproot trees preceded the arrival of a being that seemed made of light. It executed its surviving minions and then disappeared. It seems to have no tolerance for failure.”

“You described it as a being of light. How do you know its gender?”

Brin silently cursed herself for the slip. “We know what – who – it – she – is. We’ve killed her twice. Each time, without the aid of – our mentor’s – temporal manipulations, the tide of combat would have turned the other way. Each time she comes back more powerful than before. Today we were depleted, and so was he – we could not have won. And he promised us that she wouldn’t rampage through the entire town.” She stopped speaking; she had no intention of uttering T’lar’s name aloud.

“He knew that.” Serranis sounded doubtful.

“He reads futures the way you read a book, Captain,” she said sternly. She rose. “Until this storm has passed, expect to see creatures that wouldn’t populate your most wild flights of fancy – dream or nightmare. And count yourself lucky that so few people have died so far.”

The captain stood as well. “Will it pass?”

“Only time will tell,” Brin replied. She extended a hand to Serranis. “We’ll be leaving again after the archmage is seen to. I don’t know when we’ll be back. If I don’t see you before you leave – good luck.”

She accepted and shook it firmly. “And to you all.”