Umber

Umber

Sea Change

December 17th, 2009

It was the largest room in Urik’s most opulent inn, and Klavicus still felt confined and out of sorts. However quietly he began his preparations, word had spread among the Veiled Alliance that the Preserver was arrived in Urik, and rather than risk discovery he instructed Mahlanda to disseminate the rumor that he was gone again and abandoned the city for the desert. He would not permit her to accompany him. Since their leader Morlac’s disappearance the Veiled Alliance had devolved into political wrangling worthy of Tyr’s merchant houses, and Klavicus’ own arrival in Urik had been like a stick stirred in an anthill: he didn’t want the mage coming to anyone’s attention and being used as a pawn.

So he made a sheltered camp alone and meditated, and watched the progress of Skarp’s brood in the flames of his fire. “They take their sweet time coming,” he grumbled as they pressed on, if not at a leisurely pace then certainly not at an urgent one, half-absorbed in their own concerns.

At great personal cost Po revitalized the Sword of Camelok – Klavicus could guess who had an intangible hand in that – and rechristened it the Harbinger of Light. Do those things still please you – Avangion? the balor mused as Po dedicated the blade to his god. Once upon a time you would have crowed from the rooftops, receiving such an honor. And laughed in delight, and forgotten it the next day. He turned the fire’s vision away from the sober, exhausted paladin. But I suppose you put away childish things the day the old archmage died. Perhaps even before then.

When not worrying about Po several of the youths clustered around Regan, who was painstakingly translating Dark Doorways. The work went slowly, not least of all because she spent some of her time trying to explain correspondences between sounds and letters to her companions. She alone of them all had learned to read. And what power would there be in books, to those who seldom see them?

He had lied to the old druid of the vale – or at the very least, been economical with the truth. When the druid insisted as price for his aid that Klavicus wait for Skarp’s children the balor didn’t bother to mention that he had no choice in the matter; he required the symbol of Earth that the young cleric carried for the ritual even to commence. He had found them all, the keepers of Earth, Air, Fire and Water. Three already awaited him in Urik, and that in itself had roused interest and some concern among the Alliance, for all of them had to be hidden and housed and if they were discovered by the Urikite authorities…well, best not to think about that.

He might have been more impatient with the delay if he weren’t still uneasy in his mind. He had told the Avangion he wasn’t afraid and that had been a simple truth, but doubts still lingered. He had roared at Mahlanda that he was a balor of the Abyss, but was it true when the Abyss was thousands of years gone? And if he wasn’t, what was he? The oldest living thing on this gods’-forsaken world, he thought with weary resignation. That’s all about myself that I know.

Sitting by the fire he worried again the subject that had for months been uppermost on his mind. Preservers opposed defilers, and defilers were the stronger. But why? The sole conclusion he inevitably returned to was that the preservers somehow acted wrongly. In the old world entropy was an aloof, independent force, and preservation was adequate to shield some things – enough things, important things – from its inexorable grip. But when a being such as the Dragon seized entropy like a whip and flayed the land before him until the flesh exposed the bone, what useful purpose would mere conservation serve?

Every book he saved seemed to be in worse and worse repair, and anything written long after the Dragon’s rise was full of error at best or more likely lies. When he saw which way the winds were blowing he had gathered as many creature comforts as he could – art and alcohol, books and good food and tobacco – and thought to weather the storm.

But millennia passed and where was he now? He, like the other preservers, scurried over the remains of Oerth like a cockroach, searching and finding only smaller and smaller crumbs because no one was left to bake the bread. That was their weakness, their ultimately fatal flaw. Someone must not merely conserve, but repair and renew. Create the conditions for creativity again.

And why should it be left to me? His own unflinching logic reflected the reason back to him: because there was no one else. The oldest living thing on this gods’-forsaken world, and the only one save the Avangion who truly remembers. The counterbalances of misused entropy were all gone now. Vir, Pendragon, K’Nayde and all the rest. Even Tenser – much as Klavicus despised the archmage, he had thought him indomitable. But in the end the Dragon destroyed him too. There is no one else.

Undo the damage, the Avangion had told him. One ritual, and you could make a beginning. The Earth’s children could paint a new picture of the world. But the canvas requires repair.

In the fire’s vision they had come upon a lone wagon now, rocking unevenly with a single mismatched wheel, belonging to the merchant Dali Fen Siri Trator. Klavicus knew of him, had spoken to him once. He was a puzzle, a merchant who crisscrossed the desert wastes without guards and yet still largely unmolested.

Perhaps it was his cargo: he accepted commissions to haul merchandise from one city to another, but his personal trade tended more toward what in centuries long gone might have been referred to as “recreational pharmaceuticals,” and in this world even more than that one momentary escape was a welcome thing.

Perhaps it was his tendency to indulge in his cargo, granting him the aura of a holy fool: already the youths were shaking their heads at one another as he stared with incomprehension at Kerac for offering to “repair” his wagon. “That would spoil the beat!” he exclaimed.

The Veiled Alliance had loaded him up with spices in Urik and sent him on his way, directly on a path toward Skarp’s brood. Entry into the tightly controlled city, never a simple matter, had grown more difficult since the war, and they hoped to provide the young people with an excuse – although why the Alliance thought a pack of heavily armed mercenaries would load themselves down with spices Klavicus couldn’t fathom.

And they might not have, if Fen hadn’t beseeched them to relieve him of some annoying, unsalable “cutlery” he’d acquired in a hazed past. Reign’s eyes widened at the sight of them: a pair of the rare weapons once known as kukri, etched with a tiger claw and a tiger fang. Kerac and Po balked at paying the single silver piece Fen requested for such a valuable weapon, but Reign and Zane were disinclined to let on its true value lest he refuse to sell them at all. As a compromise Sugar Primrose suggested purchasing his spices and sandalwood supply; to a few raised eyebrows Regan inquired into the cost of his narcotics as well.

Their transactions completed they went their way as Fen went his. That meant that Kerac and the others would arrive in Urik soon. It was time to finish gathering the remainder of what the ritual required. The ritual. New canvases. He had asked the Avangion few questions about the ritual. Fewer than he should have, perhaps, but in truth he didn’t want to know. He rose and kicked out the fire. He was a balor of the Abyss. He was no paladin. But he was also not a beggar. Or a maggot picking over others’ fetid leavings. Enough is enough.

When he returned to Urik he steered away from the Veiled Alliance faction leaders vying for his attention and found a mage called Jaggo who held himself largely neutral from the power struggles to aid his final preparations. Though human interaction was still painful for her – the grim thought occurred that perhaps he had succeeded too well at that little project – Mahlanda had offered herself as go between. “Out of the question,” he had replied. “I don’t want anyone aware of our acquaintance, for my safety,” his voice softened a little, “and for yours. If anything goes wrong, don’t tarry in the city.”

“What could go wrong?” she asked.

“If I could enumerate it, I could prevent it.” He sounded more irritable than he’d intended, but she accepted both that decision and his order to find herself a different inn until after the rite’s conclusion with no apparent ill will.

And without his prompting she found ways to make herself useful. Once he returned to Urik he was blind to events he couldn’t see with his eyes, but she contrived to keep him apprised of the young people’s movements. At the gate they paid the ten gold a head fee to avoid Urik’s peacebonding laws. Good. At Zane’s counsel they gave false names. Even better: being the heroes of Tyr would not gain them much currency in Urik. They registered as merchants at the appropriate office. They made their way to the gate guard’s recommended tavern, the King’s Sword Inn, but seemed to find it too crowded with Urik authorities for their taste and after a leisurely ale made their way elsewhere. A Veiled Alliance representative met them at their new destination in the guise of a trader. They were on their way.

It was time for Klavicus to be on his way as well, then. Jaggo assured him, using far too many words, that the passages to the ritual room had been secured with enough wards to prevent an ant from entering unnoticed. Yes, the braziers were in place, and the pedestals as he had specified. “And the invitations have gone out to – ”

Klavicus grabbed him by the throat and lifted him onto his toes. “The what?”

At first the Veiled Alliance mage could do no more than gag; the balor released his hold only enough to let him speak. “With – with – s–s-such an august p-p-p-personage, and s–s-such an important occasion – ”

“Did I ask you to send out invitations?” His voice had grown dangerously soft.

“No, but – ”

“You have ten seconds to explain before I crush the life out of you.”

Jaggo’s eyes bulged, not merely from restricted air flow. “With – with Morlac gone and the Alliance fracturing, I thought everyone could use a reminder – ”

Klavicus let go so abruptly that the mage stumbled and fell to his knees. “Don’t think in my vicinity again,” he snapped. Rubbing his throat and trembling the mage rose, bowed repeatedly and then hurried away.

Standing on the other side of the door as Jaggo made his introductions, Klavicus could hear the twin notes of smugness and fear. The Preserver had come to him for aid. Then the Preserver had nearly killed him. When the mage told the assembled company not to annoy their distinguished guest, at least it was certain that he meant it from the heart.

Klavicus opened the door and stepped through, then swore softly to himself. Too many people; there were far too many people. Many of them were milling about trading absurd rumors. Mahlanda stood apart, and Skarp’s young people had already taken up wary guard positions near the three doors to the chamber, although Regan was also glaring at the mage Alentha with a ferocity that suggested the latter had used her “orb of identification” to verify their integrity. She had tried that on him at their initial meeting, and after lecturing her in deliberately excruciating detail on the nature of its construction and the utter gratuitousness of the pain it inflicted during the identification process, smiled sweetly and asked her how well she thought it would function when ground to a powder. He was gratified to see that she gave him a wide berth when he entered.

The four clerics were eyeing the braziers and pedestals, as well they might. He had planned to explain something of what he intended, but there were too many people for that. There were too many people to even get their attention. Scowling, he maintained his human illusion – swarthy, long-haired, more physically developed perhaps than the average mage – but sculpted his shadow into his true form. Silence descended blessedly quickly when the assembled audience realized that a horned head hovered over them on the ceiling, and that massive bat-like wings spread over two of the walls. “This will take some time,” he announced. “Several hours at the least. You might want to sit down.” He gestured to the four clerics. “Except for you.”

Most everyone complied, including Mahlanda after a moment’s hesitation. Reign, Po and Regan remained standing, weapons drawn, disinterested in Jaggo’s assurances regarding wards. Zane stood by Po, humming with psionic energy, and Saphira and Sugar Primrose waited watchfully in the corner most remote from any entrance, Saphira playing her harp and singing softly. Klavicus positioned the four clerics, each at a brazier, and instructed them to withdraw their elemental amulets. Of the four, only Kerac’s was whole. The balor sighed to himself; he had been expecting as much, had provided for such a contingency, but the effort of reassembling the broken fragments was going to require energy that he suspected he would need for the ritual itself.

As soon as Kerac saw a depression to receive the amulet he fitted the symbol within it. His anticipation would cause no actual harm to the rite, but it was a bad habit to get into, and Klavicus tapped him sharply on the shoulder, growling, “Don’t presume.” The priest looked up guiltily, but the balor had already moved on, scolding the other clerics for the condition of their shattered amulets.

Moving from pedestal to pedestal he summoned the element proper to each to repair the holy symbol, ignoring the soft, astonished murmurs of the crowd. Barely more than a conjurer’s trick, he rumbled to himself. But then, they’re barely more than children.

The mending concluded, he admonished the clerics to focus their attention, not to waver or falter until the ceremony was ended. Then he paused for a moment, staring at the center point of intersection between the pedestals, between the priests. The Avangion spoke in glittering generalities of repair and renewal, but Klavicus knew damned well what he really meant. There was still time to walk away. He was no paladin, no planetar, no paragon. He was a balor of the Abyss.

With a silent snarl, he stepped forward.

* * *

Deep beneath Spinecastle, the Galeb Duhr and Opa Skarp stood on opposing sides of a stone slab on which a man lay. He was a handsome man in his middle years, softly waved brown hair touched with grey at the temples and good muscle tone. He was not breathing.

The room was lit faintly by torches and more brightly by a shimmering pattern of light hovering at the foot of the slab. This is a mistake, the Avangion spoke into their minds. The Preserver has Mahlanda. He chose her himself.

The Galeb Duhr’s voice rumbled the very foundations of the castle. “She does not understand. Not fully. Perhaps she could in time, but we have not the time. Thanks to you.”

The Avangion’s light shrank a little, but he did not immediately reply. The Galeb Duhr knew as well as he that Klavicus could be neither bullied nor tricked into anything, and if the Avangion had wrapped an unpleasant inevitability in a pretty package for the balor to ease thinking of the implications – well, he had been doing that since long before – but he shrank from the painful memories of his past life, of corporeality. If Klavicus went to Urik, then he believed there was no one else to take up the burden, and no more time to wait. He looked down with some sympathy at the naked, dead man. This is not the solution.

“It is the only one left to us.” Opa Skarp’s tone was flat, factual. “The road ahead will be difficult. The daimon will require someone who understands him as he copes with change.”

And if this one cannot cope with the changes you will thrust on him? The Avangion’s thoughts were sharp in their minds. You may do no more than saddle the Preserver with a madman.

“Does that mean you will not aid us?”

The light bobbed uncertainly, tracing the circumference of the large cavern before returning. If we fight among ourselves, if we withhold our power from one another, we do the Dragon’s work for him. I believe this is wrong. But I believe in your sincerity. I will aid you.

Skarp bowed. “Our thanks.”

The Avangion approached the lifeless body, letting his light shine upon it. He hovered still for long minutes, then his luminescent wingtips fluttered in the faintest of motions. A breeze began to stir, motes of light within it swirling about the man in tighter and tighter circles until they formed a mask above his face. His head jerked upwards. He took one breath, and another.

It is done, the Avangion said. And then he was gone.

* * *

The man awoke to the feeling that he shouldn’t be waking at all. He was warm at least, and dry. He had fallen in a cold rain, on a dark, empty street in Greyhawk…He opened his eyes. He was in a bed, in a cavernous space, with an elderly man sitting beside him. Was it a man? There was something about his face…skin almost too cragged and chiseled to be flesh. If its expression wasn’t precisely kind, at least it wasn’t hostile either. The other man was speaking now, though it took him long moments to understand the words. “Do you remember who you are?”

The man raised a slow hand to his chest, touching the region over his heart. He remembered an explosion of pain and then…nothing. “I’m dead.”

Shaking his head slightly, the rock-like man tried again. “Do you remember your name?”

Now he touched the hand to his head. His thoughts felt as though someone had removed and crushed them to a powder, then blown the powder back into his skull. But there were a few cohering fragments. “Hanen,” he replied hesitantly. “My name was Hanen.” I was – am? – was – a bard. He tried to rise on an elbow, but failed. “Who are you?”

“You may call me Opa Skarp.”

“Where am I?” He turned his head as far as the pillows would permit. “This isn’t the Grey Pelican.”

“You are at the home of a friend.”

Hanen gave him a suspicious glance. “Whose friend?”

“Yours. Do you remember one named Klavicus?”

“Klavicus? Of course I remember – ” he broke off. He did remember Klavicus. Had he been a friend? Perhaps, come to that, in his way he had. “Where is he? Where is this place?”

Skarp laid a hand on his chest. It was strangely warm, strangely heavy. “You must rest a little more.” Before he could protest, Hanen was asleep.

The next week proceeded much the same, long intervals of sleep and bouts of consciousness, during which he ate strange foods, drank strange beverages and attempted to question the individual who called himself Opa Skarp and received precious few useful replies – although he did gather the man was a cleric, there to nurse him back to health. Every day Hanen asked where Klavicus was, and every day the man replied that he hoped to see his return soon.

By the second week he felt strong enough to sit up, even to walk a little. One day when Skarp was out – gathering water, he said, and though a look out the windows made it plain that Klavicus had taken the eccentric step of relocating to the Bright Desert Hanen wondered that the balor hadn’t contrived to produce a cistern somehow – he wandered over to the elemental altars.

They at least were familiar, if much larger than the set the balor had constructed deep below the Grey Pelican, and his best hope of determining the truth of Skarp’s claims; if they worked on the same principles as their predecessors. He also didn’t know if Skarp would object to his making use of them, but acting on the old, reliable principle of asking forgiveness rather than permission he took a deep breath and concentrated.

A man was pacing in front of a fire in a large, richly decorated room. It was definitely Klavicus as Hanen remembered him, although his face was tight with strain and there were wrinkles – yes, those were wrinkles worn by worry across his forehead and at the corners of his eyes. In all the time Hanen had known him, Klavicus never worried about anything. He didn’t care enough to worry. It was not a reassuring sight. “Where are you?” he murmured to the rippling air displaying the balor’s image. “And where am I? Why am I?”

Klavicus was cocking his head as if listening to something, then caught up a cloak and left the room. He made his way to a tavern, ordered a drink from the innkeeper, left it untouched and slipped into the back. Rapping on a keg in a certain pattern revealed a secret passage, and he made a swift, stealthy way down dark corridors with an easy familiarity. He paused outside a door for a few moments, then entered a space crowded with robed men and women and half a dozen heavily armed youths watching alertly at its three entryways. Paraphernalia for some kind of ritual stood in the center of the room; from the uneasy silence that descended shortly after his arrival, the balor was a key player in the rite.

“I am not certain you should have done this,” Skarp said as he came up behind him. He had not heard the cleric return.

Hanen’s eyes narrowed in suspicion once again. “What’s going on? Where is Klavicus, and what is he doing?”

Skarp held out a hand. “You are still tired, you should – ”

Hanen slapped the hand away. “Don’t touch me. I mean to understand what’s happening here, whether you’re willing to tell me or not.”

It was a threat with no teeth and he knew it – he wasn’t strong enough to fight the sturdy cleric if the man chose to oppose him – but with another small shake of his head Skarp merely set a chair beside him and sat down.

By then four individuals stood at four pedestals, clearly channeling some sort of energy. After a long pause and a complicated play of expression on his face that Hanen didn’t entirely understand Klavicus stepped between the pedestals and stood centered in their midst.

Hanen and Skarp watched as the four clerics stood in unwavering concentration with the old balor the still point in the center. After the first hour Hanen felt fatigue tugging at him, after the fourth he was nearing exhaustion, but he couldn’t tear himself away for even a short rest. Though Klavicus had entered the room cloaked in a human illusion his demonic form was shadowed on the walls, and as the hours passed it began to change. The prominent horns began to shrink, then vanished altogether. The bat-like wings grew feathered, almost like a solar’s, though Hanen could not help but laugh at the thought. Whatever the demon was doing, it certainly wasn’t that.

He wished he knew what the balor was trying to accomplish. It was taking an unimaginably long time. He was not reassured by Skarp’s tense expression, and even less when he finally spoke aloud. “It is wrong,” the cleric muttered, Hanen’s presence apparently forgotten. “It is failing. Whatever he is or was fights the change.”

“What is failing?” Hanen asked sharply. “What is changing?”

Any reply Skarp might have been willing to make was interrupted by a burst of activity in the distant room. Every entrance boiled with armed and uniformed shapes, ordinary men and half-giants trying to force their way in and finding their progress impeded by the youths who had been standing guard. “Do not let them disrupt the ritual, children!” Skarp cried out, although they could not possibly hear him.

A sturdy middle-aged man bearing insignias of authority on his uniform – Hanen would recognize the trappings of dominion in any time or place – strode into the room with the easy swagger of an individual expecting no real resistance. He seemed surprised by the grim-faced youth who blocked his path, long sword held at a confrontational angle, but still spoke as if he were master of the situation. “This is an unauthorized gathering. Surrender and you will not be harmed.” He looked toward the four clerics. “Stop what you are doing.”

“Unauthorized?” Hanen echoed.

“Urik is under martial law,” Skarp said. “And they have no love for mages.”

Hanen was about to ask what Urik was, and why anyone would enforce a blanket ban on mages, when the young people went on the offensive. They didn’t require anyone to tell them to protect the clerics and the balor. A lightly armored man hummed with psionic energy and an astral being burst into existence before an enemy mage – apparently these Urikites didn’t dislike all mages, only the ones who weren’t theirs – but too late to prevent a projectile from leaving his fingertips and heading directly at one of the clerics.

“Kerac…” Skarp breathed as the arcane bullet struck him. The young cleric stumbled, and Klavicus with him, but with clenched jaw and a look of intense concentration the cleric regained his balance and his focus. The rite continued, but it was impossible to believe it could do so much longer. A few mages joined the defense, but they were sorely outnumbered.

A sudden burst of energy from Klavicus brought everything to a literal standstill: while the room’s initial occupants were all free to move about the intruders were all frozen in place. “Kill them!” the woman by the trap door called out; none of the youths needed much urging.

But before more than one of them could strike a single blow the weapon the officer held began to emit a sound. Hanen recognized the blade’s distinctive keening; it filled him with dread. “That’s a demon-slaying sword,” he exclaimed. He half rose from his chair as if he thought to intervene. “Klavicus!”

Klavicus’ head snapped toward the wailing as the blade struggled free of its wielder’s unwilling hand and flew toward him, but he was unable or unwilling to move. For the first time in all the years Hanen had known him the balor looked afraid. He turned his face aside; watching seemed obscene somehow.

A bright burst of light tempted his gaze back. The guards were gone. The room was gone. All that remained was a point of white light rapidly receding into the distance against a backdrop of igneous rock and lava streams. Hanen slumped in his chair. “So much for seeing him.”

“What do you mean?” Skarp asked.

The bard gestured toward the unfolding scene. “That’s Thanatos.” He expected that to explain everything, but Skarp’s puzzled look suggested that he hadn’t. What kind of cleric is he? “On the Abyss?” Still no sign of comprehension. “Surely you’re aware that when an extraplanar being is ‘killed’ somewhere other than his home plane, he is banished back to that plane for a period of some decades. Only if he dies there is he truly dead.”

No glimmer of understanding was dawning in the cleric’s eyes. “What is ‘extraplanar?’”

Hanen’s thoughts spun violently enough to make him physically dizzy for a moment. How could the man not know – ? “Oh no,” he groaned. “Not again. Mordenkainen and Crusader and the others were supposed to prevent this…how long?” He sat upright in his chair. “And what happens if a demon dies – ?” No wonder the balor had looked afraid.

He felt Skarp’s hand on his shoulder. He supposed he was going to put him to sleep again. If this was what he had awakened to, he supposed he didn’t care. Instead the cleric shook him gently. “Please focus on the children.”

“What children?” Hanen muttered, but shifted the view around until a collection of human forms came into view.

“My children,” Skarp replied, speaking the words with an odd note of detachment in his voice. “What is this Thanatos they have been taken to?”

“It can’t be Thanatos,” Hanen said irritably. “Not if you don’t know what the Planes are. Not if the World Seed has been stolen again.”

“Then where are they?” Skarp shook him again. “This is important. Tell me!”

One Response to “Sea Change”

  1. comment number 1 by: jbilsten.myopenid.com/

    Duh duh duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh *queue cliff hanger music*

    Can’t wait for next time :)

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.