Umber

In a lonely stretch of desert waste a figure swathed in black tended a growing fire. The dried herbs he tossed into it at regular intervals caused it sometimes to flare in height, sometimes to spark blue and purple and green. When the flames rose a steady eight feet into the air he removed his cloak and then the rest of his garments, closed his eyes and stepped into their midst. Fingers of fire curled about him but did not sear his flesh, his feet rested steady and firm against the bed of coals. Flames erupted from his own form and fire met fire in a hissing, popping exchange of greetings. He stood there for some minutes unscathed, and only when the conflagration had subsided to nearly embers did he emerge and don his clothes and cloak again, an expression of intense displeasure on his face.

Klavicus had been wandering across the land for several weeks. He paused at oases to submerge himself in their waters, for periods of time that would have killed a mortal man, and listened to their weary gurgling. He delved deep within caverns, whose denizens had the wisdom to flee his approach or died, and heard the earth’s rumbling complaint. He climbed the highest rock formations he could find and stood unscathed while heat lightning raged in voices of sparks and thunder. In desolate places such as this he ignited his bonfires and murmured to the flames. And then, dissatisfied, he moved on, always northward from his home.

Often after such a session restlessness drove him immediately on but tonight he rekindled the fire to a more companionable blaze and watched the play of the recent past while he ate and drank a little. He watched the Urikite commander plan the dispatch of fast scouting units across the desert as his main force followed ponderously behind, watched Tyr’s commander Rikus do the same in games of cat and mouse where every rodent dreamed of being feline. He frowned slightly as Rikus’ final meeting before departing Tyr flickered by, reversed and slowed it down.

Gathered in the situation room, subcommanders and representatives of the templars and the noble guard were shaking their heads and muttering. A pair of Jura Dai stood silent and apart from the others in a shadowed corner, Quick Wenzer and two additional gladiators forming an imposing barricade between the elves and the Tyrians. Po and Saphira stood slightly behind and to the left of Rikus, and it was toward them that most of the dark glances and grumbling were directed. A map of the region between Tyr and Urik was unrolled on the long table before Rikus, a series of arcing arrows drawn across it. “It’s a good plan,” Rikus said. “We’ll go with it.”

“Units of only ten in the vanguard?” a templar complained. “It’s suicide.”

“As we already explained,” Po’s face was a mask of patience, but to Klavicus’ eye only a mask, “the advance units are scouts, not the vanguard. Each will be separated from its neighbor by only a few miles. If you encounter trouble you fall back. You can signal – ”

“Signal how?” a fat subcommander called Urvas cut in.

“Each unit will have a missive-capable psion attached to it,” Saphira put in.

“As will I,” Rikus added. “And the Jura Dai have agreed to instruct us in their smoke signaling system.”

“So you can – ” Saphira began.

“Why would they do that?” one of the noble guard interjected. “We’d have the key to their thieving ways then.”

An elf’s lip curled up in a sneer. “We would teach you only simple signals, that you’re capable of comprehending.”

“That’s enough,” Rikus hushed them both.

Saphira continued mildly, as if she hadn’t been interrupted. “So you can signal your neighbor and deal with the trouble when you’ve massed sufficient force.”

“You, you, you,” Urvas scoffed. “Tyrians take the risks while the strangers dispense their lofty ‘wisdom,’ then go their merry way and leave us to die.”

“They’ll be traveling with the advance scouts,” Rikus corrected him. “Some of them will be commanding you.”

The mutters grew to a small roar. Preposterous! was heard more than once from the templars, and Urvas, far from mollified, appeared teetering on the edge of incoherent rage. “And who are they?” he demanded. “Barely bearded or breasted strangers. They know nothing of life, let alone of Tyr.”

Rikus leaned forward, flattened his hands against the table that separated them and fixed Urvas with a hard stare. “They knew enough of life – and strategy – to escape from Kalak’s death trap with not just their own skins but a goodly number of companions of lesser health and skill. That seems a useful trait in a military campaign. As for knowing nothing of Tyr,” the scowl animating his face deepened, “these days some might call that a virtue, if it means not dreaming of the old days and dancing to the tune of treason.”

For the first time Quick Wenzer spoke. “They are smart. They are strong. The gladiators will follow.” He laid one fist within the other and cracked his knuckles, loudly.

“As will we,” the Jura Dai said.

Saphira looked over at the elves. “We haven’t assigned you a commander. Obviously we’d slow you down if any of us accompanied you.”

“Head for the hills at the first chance, most likely,” one of the templars muttered. “Never see them again, and good riddance.”

One of the Jura Dai cast him a sharp glance, but the other laid a hand on his arm. “Give us a direction and we will follow it.” He surveyed the gathering with a haughty expression, his eyes lighting longest on the templars. “We require no scorpion snapping at our heels to guarantee our word and bond.”

There was more arguing, but the back of the opposition was largely broken. Klavicus muted the sound and turned his attention to the map on the table. It was a good use of the available scouting resources, he conceded, bold without being foolhardy. “Inconvenient,” he muttered to himself, “if they’re too efficient.”

He watched the Urikite advance scouts ride away from the main body of the army and observed the Tyrian scouts do the same. He smiled grimly as the Tyrian units attached to Reign, Saphira and Zane found tracks and eagerly followed them, oblivious until too late that they were speeding into a ravine and an ambush, with javelins raining down from above and kank riders ready to charge at them from the narrow exit opposite. But Zane sent his gladiators to meet the cavalry while Saphira’s troops returned fire against the ranged attackers on one side of the ravine and Reign charged up the rugged slope to personally decimate those on the other, and in the end all the Urikites accomplished was providing their enemy with six kank mounts.

He watched Po summoned back to the army proper to deal with reports of desertion, discover that Urvas was withholding rations from his troops, ostensibly as punishment for insubordination but in fact, the paladin suspected, because the portly man missed the pleasures of his table. Po looked grimly pleased as Rikus threatened to stake Urvas out in the desert if he heard any further rumor of desertion within the subcommander’s ranks.

He watched smoke signals rising from the Jura Dai, observed Kerac summon Regan and the two of them head for the mountains to meet the elves just outside of a peculiarly lush vale. It was then that he caught a flicker of light and movement in his peripheral vision. He was already on his feet and preparing a spell before he realized that it was nothing more than a flicker of moving light and sat down again. Daimon, a familiar voice spoke in his mind.

“I have a name,” Klavicus grumbled. “Why don’t you ever use it?”

The name is not the essence.

“It’s served me well enough, all these millennia.”

The essence is not the being.

“You’re drifting again.” Picking up the cool end of a brand he flicked a shower of sparks at the Avangion.

They flitted through him like motes of dust. Would have drifted already perhaps, if not for you.

“Don’t let me keep you,” Klavicus said gruffly.

But you do.

“Is that a positive or a negative?”

It just – is.

“Hmmph,” he grumbled. “I don’t stand accused of excess sentimentality very often.”

No one would accuse you of that. The light bobbed near the fire and flickered white and yellow. Even if it were true. The war has begun?

“The first rounds, at the least.” In the flame’s vision Kerac, Regan and the Jura Dai stepped onto the clearly marked path leading into the oasis, sniffing at large, colorful flowers and wrinkling their noses at rotting fruit laying on the ground. Small, pterodactyl-like birds darted among them at will, picking their pockets and stripping bright bits off of their clothing. A pair of dangerous-looking scorpions scuttled toward them. “Hmmm, I don’t think they see their danger.”

His suspicion was confirmed when Regan and Kerac found themselves fixed in place by invisible claws, equally invisible lightning searing their flesh. One of the Jura Dai picked up a piece of the fruit and ate, and as awareness dawned he hastily urged the others to eat as well. Reality revealed, they quickly beat off their attackers and retreated from the vale. “One of the oldest tropes in the book. Beauty is the lie, foulness the truth. But its power to confuse endures.”

The Avangion’s light flared orange and red. Defiler. Twisting the land.

“Perhaps. Although in my experience,” Klavicus mused, “the land is perfectly capable of twisting itself these days, without the direct intervention of the defilers. Skarp’s brood travels with a druid. Pity they didn’t think to bring her along to assess the state of the vale.” Time skipped ahead, and Po’s scowling face greeted Kerac and Regan when they returned, asking if they really found the side trip worth the bother when there was a war to be prosecuted. They shrugged in reply and rejoined their units. “But perhaps she was too far away.”

The daimon and the Avangion watched together as an Urikite scouting unit walked into a trap laid for it by the Tyrians, the Jura Dai acting as bait at one end of another narrow ravine while the rest hid beneath and among tall thorn bushes. “Risky tactic,” Klavicus said, studying the situation with a critical eye. “Probably wouldn’t have worked if not for the fact that the Urikites couldn’t conceive of the Jura Dai allying with humans.”

Two kank cavalry units and three units of feral halflings armed with deadly slings strode into the ravine, giving eager chase to the Jura Dai as soon as they saw them. Klavicus pointed a finger at a rocky outcropping a small distance away from the thorn patches. “Personally I would have put a ranged unit there, with a melee force to defend them. But we’ll see how things play out.”

The light of the Avangion bent closer to the fire, watching the ground wither beneath the hooves of the unit commander’s mount. He bobbed closer to the daimon. Why didn’t you become a defiler?

“I think I should be insulted by that question,” Klavicus huffed.

Balor embodied destruction. Yet you learned restraint and kept the power. You could have done the same again.

“I was created as I was created,” he frowned. “Choosing is a different matter.” He leaned forward. “I know the prevailing wisdom – even among preservers – is that defilers are stronger than we are. But I don’t believe it.”

The Jura Dai bolted from the ravine as Saphira, Po and Kerac charged from the thorns to engage the Urikites and cut off their path of retreat. Po struck hard and fast, incurring the wrath of the halflings, who pelted his men repeatedly even as Kerac’s unit gnawed at their strength. Saphira’s troops bore the brunt of the defiler’s assault, and the defiler’s troops the brunt of Sugar Primrose’s as again and again the druid hurled elemental forces at them, each time drawing a small smile from Klavicus. Zane sent an unstoppable psionic creature to harry the enemy units, and Reign vented her frustration at being unable to reach the defiler in quick attacks against individual warriors while Regan remained hidden in the thorns awaiting a chance to strike at the commander.

But when the kank unit amidst which he hid was defeated, raised as undead and defeated again, he vanished from their sight. Skarp’s brood swarmed around Kerac and Regan then, eating of the fruit from the vale that they had brought back with them; revealed to their sight the defiler was easily overcome. The blighted staff he wielded straightened just a little as it fell from his dead hand; Regan picked it up and handed it to Sugar Primrose, and in the druid’s hands it straightened yet a little more.

“What will their power avail them,” Klavicus asked, “when wood and wind, stone and fire cry out for vengeance and renewal? Perhaps they can drive us to defeat. But they themselves cannot achieve a lasting victory. Oerth will not allow it.”

Spinecastle rises, the Galeb Duhr wields Oathbinder in defiance of all received wisdom, and the Preserver becomes an optimist. The thoughts in Klavicus’ head sounded distinctly amused. I believe the world might end tonight from the shock.

The daimon scowled and returned to his bread and cheese. “Did you stop by for some particular reason?”

You’re delaying.

“Have you been following me?”

Only intermittently. It is very perilous, this thing you mean to do. Are you afraid?

“Don’t make me laugh,” Klavicus snapped, and there was no hint that a lesser conviction lurked beneath his words. “It’s no great risk for me. But the outcome – ” he trailed off, brooding for a time. The Avangion waited in silence until he spoke again. “The outcome is still uncertain. Earth, air, water, fire,” he glanced at the flickering flames before them, “every communion is confused.”

But you will persevere?

Klavicus eyed him shrewdly. “Is that why you’re here? To ensure I ‘screw my courage to the sticking place?’ You needn’t have bothered. I intend to go through with it.” The vision in the flames revealed Tyrian scouts cresting one last ridge to see the full force of the Urikite army before them: not five hundred, not a thousand, but many times more. Various degrees of shock and dismay registered on the faces of Skarp’s children, then they turned away and prepared to report back to Rikus. Klavicus packed up the last of his food. “Soon it begins. Time to get a little more serious about moving on.”

Did you warn the Tyrians of the strength of Hamanus’ army? Tell them its path of approach?

“No.”

Tell them a tale of self-sufficiency to justify your silence?

“What else would I do?” Klavicus scowled. “Tell them it suits my purposes for them to spend weeks spilling one another’s blood on the desert far from their own cities? I didn’t create the war.”

But you will use it.

“Using men’s own folly against them is a time-honored tradition. I just wish I knew,” he muttered, “what’s going to happen when I try.”

Would you prefer company on your journey?

“Not particularly.” It was a statement of fact, neither petulant nor dismissive. The light winked out without another thought and Klavicus, rising and dusting the ubiquitous sand from his trousers and tunic, smothered  his fire and resumed his eccentric northward path through the desert, always in the end, as he had been for weeks, tending toward Urik.