Umber

Hanen cradled a glass of strange, musky wine as he watched the progress of Klavicus’ seven saviors. Opa Skarp had departed shortly after they had seen the old balor revived and on the road to recovery. Hanen’s ability to spy on the demon had failed shortly after; no doubt Klavicus had grown well enough to realize he was being watched. Skarp assumed that the daimon, as he insisted on calling him, would be returning shortly, but he assumed incorrectly; days dragged on and Hanen was left alone anxious and, over time, a little bored.

He couldn’t have left if he wanted to, as there was no discernible exit. The altars seemed fixated on the young people, and only with great difficulty could he wrench their vision away. Think of Greyhawk, see nothing. Furyondy, Irongate, Veluna, the Adri, all the same. He could get a view of Spinecastle, but it appeared to be deserted. That made him uneasy. Obviously some time had passed, and strong as Clement Vir had been he was still mortal, and heredity offered no guarantees. The Vir line might have failed in whatever cataclysm surrounded a second corruption of the World Seed, or perhaps even before. Still, it seemed a bad omen, and he shivered.

Never a great reader at the best of times, he found Klavicus’ new taste in literature too peculiar for words. He seemed obsessed with tales of a fantasy world where the sun was failing and magicians who withered the ground under their feet stalked a desiccated land. Halflings and elves were feral creatures, and the only hope of salvation from some creature calling himself The Dragon lay in the machinations of a light-infused being known as the Avangion who had left his corporeality behind in a misty past. Fiction, he insisted to himself, with increasing stridency and desperation as book after book repeated some variation of the same story. It can’t be true. It can’t be.

He drank himself into a stupor that night, and by the time he woke early the next afternoon his anxiety had receded to manageable dimensions. He was a bard, after all. He knew a fantastical, implausible tale when he saw one, and so with some measure of equanimity he set about the difficult task of preparing breakfast with a raging hangover, promising himself that the eating of it would be worth all of the pain. Water pouring into a glass was like a waterfall next to his ear. Spreading butter across toast was an avalanche on a mountainside. And the eggs…since when had cracking an egg been accompanied by a noisy burst of bright light?

A woman stepped out of the portal that had materialized mere feet away from him. She was slender to the point of gauntness, her hair was short and raggedly cut, and the gaze that fixed on him was uncomfortably similar to a hunter looking at dinner.

“Who are you?” They spoke simultaneously.

“Well as you are the new arrival,” Hanen had forgotten many things, but how to bluff was not among them. “I think first identification belongs to you.”

The woman was unimpressed. “I know whose home this is, and as it isn’t yours, interloper, I believe you should speak first.” She emphasized her belief with a dagger formerly hidden up her sleeve.

Hanen feigned – and it was feigned, the dagger looked sharp – indifference. “My name would mean nothing to you, and yours no doubt nothing to me, so that leaves us at a bit of a standoff, doesn’t it?”

“Not really,” she replied, unsmiling. “I’m armed, and you’re not. Where is the daimon?”

“I have no idea. I haven’t seen him since I – arrived.” He knew he sounded petulant but he was yet to become accustomed to the unnatural manner of his arrival, and felt peevish every time he was forced to think about it.

“How did you get in then?”

“A man named – hey, I’m not sure I should be telling you this.”

She waved the dagger under his nose. “Consider your options.”

Hanen considered them. What allegiance did he owe any of these people anyway? The man who had superintended his recovery from resurrection had been a name, a face, a non-fount of non-information. As for Klavicus, if the peculiarity of the surroundings didn’t bear the old balor’s indelible stamp Hanen might begin to believe that what he’d witnessed at the altars was a vision of events long in the past. Besides, he’d always done better with women. “He called himself Opa Skarp.”

She studied him for a moment, then the dagger disappeared back up her sleeve. “That name is known to us.” She held out her hand. “I am Mahlanda.”

He bent down with a flourish and kissed it while she watched him with hard, suspicious eyes. This one was going to be a tough nut to crack. “Hanen. Bard, by trade.”

“I know a bard.” She withdrew her hand and narrowed her eyes. “Compared to her, you seem…soft.”

“Charmed, I’m sure,” he barely suppressed a frown.

“Why are you here?” She helped herself to a piece of his toast. “Are you a new acolyte of the Great One?”

He pulled the plate out of her reach. “A what of the who?”

“I thought you said you knew the daimon.”

“I do, but – ” then he remembered those insect things, what had Skarp called them – thri-kreen? – approaching the unconscious balor on his litter and naming him by that title. “Good gods, the old demon has disciples?”

“The daimon,” she corrected his pronunciation the same way Skarp had done, “has great labors ahead of him. We should be honored to wash his feet if that is what he requires of us.” Her contemptuous glance suggested she didn’t believe Hanen capable of much more.

“It’ll be a cold day in the Nine Hells before I wash that codger’s feet,” Hanen muttered.

The remains of her toast fell to the counter and the dagger reappeared in her hand. “I do not understand all the words you use,” she said with ice in her voice, “but I can sense their meaning. If you require a lesson in respect for the daimon I will be happy to provide it.”

Suddenly Hanen had enough. Slapping his hands on the stone counter with sufficient force to cause all of his cooking utensils to jump he snapped, “Look here lady, I was summoned unasked from my rest – of the eternal variety, if you know what I mean – by persons unknown for an unknown purpose. As if to put me at my ease, they assured me they knew my old friend Klavicus – who I conveniently have not seen in the flesh to verify their tale since being stuffed back into mine. I’ve been threatened, insulted, and abandoned in a place with crappy food where apparently you have to know the secret handshake to come and go as you please. Stab me if you like and explain why my corpse is decomposing in the kitchen to the demon – daimon – whatever the hell he is now, if he ever bothers to show up. Or leave me in peace to eat my breakfast. But more lessons in civility at knifepoint? I – am – not – in – the – mood.”

To his surprise, Mahlanda put the knife away and, for the first time since she’d arrived, actually laughed. “You certainly are irascible enough to be the daimon’s true friend. Eat your breakfast then. I came here to work.”

He kept half an eye on her while he finished cooking and she busied herself among Klavicus’ books. She handled them with a reverence and care that were certainly consistent with the balor’s own; it was easy to believe they might be acquainted. And she was the first person he’d seen in, well, person, since Skarp left. Sighing, he divided his meal in two and set a plate beside her. She smiled, thanked him politely, and returned to her reading as she ate.

Hanen retreated to the altars with his food, feeling some lingering pique over the woman calling him “soft.” As if in response an image of Saphira appeared, standing with several of her companions before a massive door in the interminable desert – it’s fiction, it’s fiction, Hanen insisted to himself – as Po and Sugar Primrose approached from overland. He swung the view backward in time, retracing the pair’s steps to an inn he didn’t recognize in a city that was alien to him; in a room in the inn the two were talking to the very woman he had met this morning.

“You have a great facility with the altars.” Hanen jumped; he hadn’t heard Mahlanda come up behind him. “I find them very difficult to control.”

Now that he had the upper hand on some tiny front, Hanen had no intention of admitting that he found this particular set very difficult to control as well. “I learned the art from Klavicus. Not with these, but some similar.”

The view turned away from the inn and back to the doors in the desert before he could hear what Mahlanda had said to them. ”I do know that privacy always wins,” she smiled as she sat down beside him. “For everyone save Klavicus himself. It has been some time since I’ve looked in on the young people. How do they fare?”

Sugar Primrose, to Hanen’s eye, was faring somewhat ill at the moment. As Saphira settled into what appeared to be a lengthy ritual to open the intricately carved entry the initially placid druid began to pace, slowly and then with increasing agitation, alternately muttering to herself and clapping a hand over her own mouth in wide-eyed confusion. Finally losing whatever internal battle she fought, her eyes glowed red and she shouted words in a guttural tongue that seemed to leave Mahlanda bewildered but were familiar enough to Hanen. Saphira and the others stared at the druid as the doors slammed open. “Words of command, no doubt,” Mahlanda suggested.

Hanen failed to suppress a snicker. “In a manner of speaking.”

“Then you understand her?” Her tone was haughty.

“Loosely translated?” the bard replied. “It approximates to something like ‘Open the fucking door!’”

She frowned. “If you don’t know, have the decency to admit it.” Hanen rolled his eyes but refused to rise to the bait. “Where are they going?” she asked as they walked down a long, high hallway lined with massive statues of demons. “And why?”

“They’re looking to reclaim the kidnapped companions of a group of wandering nomads. I suppose,” he added bitterly, “it goes without saying that the nomads wander the arid wastes. As for where they’ve gone looking, into the Underdark.”

She looked at him blankly. “The what?”

Hanen sighed. Didn’t these people know anything? “I could explain, but no doubt you’d treat the explanation with all the respect you did my comprehension of demonic. So perhaps we should just watch? You’ll see soon enough.”

Mahlanda gasped as they entered the Seven Pillared Hall. “So much water!”

Hanen said nothing and carefully avoided looking at her; the exclamation pushed him too near a precipice with edges all too slippery with the pages of Klavicus’ library. It’s fiction. It has to be. To distract himself he focused on less dangerous matters: explaining drow and hobgoblins and duergar, dancing away from the subject of why the Underdark halflings weren’t vicious, feral creatures. Fiction. Instead he treated her to a detailed explanation of what he’d already gleaned regarding the politics and theology of the Seven Pillared Hall and its vicinity. Mahlanda eyed him shrewdly whenever he steered an unpleasant topic in a different direction, but never tried to steer it back.

They watched largely in silence as the young people swept through the Blood Reaver stronghold in search of slaves. The sweeping had perhaps been accidental – Saphira and Reign’s stealthy explorations were brought to an abrupt end when they came face to face with a pair of duergar chatting over a fire and not at all pleased to see them. The bard prudently retreated but Reign found herself quickly surrounded; the thorny wall thrown down by Sugar Primrose to protect the warrior also left her isolated from her companions, who themselves struggled with several waves of thugs alerted by the duergars’ roars of indignation. In the end they dispatched enough enemies to cow the remaining few into surrendering, learning from them that the captive Unspoken had already been taken by the duergar and were most likely in the Horned Hold.

The second time they set out from the Seven Pillared Hall they took guide Terrlen Darkseeker with them, as the road to the Horned Hold wasn’t easy to find. Mahlanda leaned forward intently as five individuals, four heavily armed and a short, stocky fifth wearing a tinfoil crown, approached them on the path. “Humans, dwarves – why didn’t we know about this place?”

Hanen let the rhetorical question pass as the dwarf, called Thane, demanded the obeisance due his kingly state. The young people stared at him in disbelief as his claims and demands escalated in fantasticality and belligerence; Po pressed him with some hostility until Saphira hushed him. “The ‘king’ is a joke,” Hanen observed, “but his guards aren’t. Why don’t they just toss him a few coin and be on their way?”

“Because coin is difficult to come by,” Mahlanda replied sternly.

“So is blood,” the bard retorted.

In the end neither coin nor blood were parted with, as Regan with a sly smile offered Thane the newly emptied Blood Reaver stronghold with their humble compliments to serve as his palace. “Overland that would be as good as a death sentence,” Mahlanda remarked. “Such a defensible location would not go unoccupied for long, and four mercenaries seem insufficient to its retention.”

“Oh, the Underdark is no different,” Hanen assured her. “Clever and ruthless, these ‘children’ of Opa Skarp’s.”

“I have found them quite tempered and fair in their responses to date,” Mahlanda said. “At first I thought their trust and kindness a great weakness, but it seems to have served them thus far.”

Hanen started to laugh, but the woman didn’t look as if she were joking. He did begin to harbor the suspicion that if these youths represented the pinnacle of restraint in this strange new world, he was just as glad he didn’t know the way out of Klavicus’ abode.

The youths’ progress to the Horned Hold was interrupted again, more violently this time, by massive half-lizard, half-insectoid creatures who burst from the floor and walls around them. Mahlanda looked concerned, but not surprised, and now it was Hanen’s turn to seek enlightenment. “They’re called kruthik,” she replied. “They live in groups overseen by a hive lord,” of the seven assaulting hive mates, she pointed out one brute larger than its fellows. “Nasty creatures. I don’t envy them the struggle.”

And indeed they were hard-pressed initially, as the creatures attacked with pincers and claws and caustic spit. They did their best to protect their guide, but in spite of their caution Darkseeker was caught in several acid bursts, and Mahlanda was no less surprised than the young people when with a feral cry he fell writhing to the ground only to stand again moments later hideously transformed. “What is that?” Mahlanda cried.

“Lupine muzzle, furred arms, yellow eyes staring wildly – looks like Darkseeker is a werewolf. Not very well in control of his affliction, either,” Hanen remarked, as the half-man looked poised to attack ally or enemy without discrimination.

By the time Hanen managed to finish an unsatisfactory description of werewolves to Mahlanda – her ignorance of wolves was a significant impediment – the fight was over. Kerac had calmed Darkseeker, who now sat disconsolately on a pile of rubble. “Caravans I’ve guided have been attacked before,” he muttered with his head in his hands. “Between the Blood Reavers and local predators, it’s inevitable. And I never understood why – why there were always one or two victims – injured – mauled – in ways inconsistent with the rest of the attack. I guess I know now.” He stared bewildered at his hands then set his shoulders and looked at the young people surrounding him. “You’ll be wanting your money back,” he said. “And to be finding a different guide.”

Zane and Regan shook their heads emphatically. “We don’t want another guide,” Kerac said.

Darkseeker looked chastened, but relieved. “That seems dangerous,” Hanen said as they prepared to rest and nurse their wounds in the kruthik nest. “Both retaining the were and bedding down in the midst of their enemies’ corpses.” Zane and Sugar Primrose were carefully stripping the carapaces from the bodies, setting them in a pile to take to the gnome Wrong for his damaged flying machine.

“Kruthik have an instinctive aversion to the blood of their fellows,” Mahlanda said. “In truth it’s probably the safest place they could find. As for their guide – it is, I believe, part of their code to accept him.” In a near sing-song she added, “Will you swear to protect and aid those in need of assistance, through inconvenience, through discomfort and pain, even unto death, with every resource you call your own? He certainly strikes me as a man in need of assistance.”

“That sounds like part of a paladin’s oath,” Hanen observed.

“Yes.” A shadow of unhappiness crossed her face; the bard wondered why. “Rather a remarkable thing, going from no paladins in the world to seven all at once. I attended the oathswearing with the daimon.” She added softly, “It was the first time I met him.”

“No – no paladins?” he stuttered. He waved her to silence as she looked poised to explain. Fiction. Fiction.

He focused his attention on the images before them to keep the woman from talking. Po was just pulling an ancient ring from the kruthik nest and setting it on his finger. When he staggered backward for a moment, wide-eyed, Hanen swiftly activated the air altar and uttered a few words in demonic. Overlaying Po, who had grown insubstantial to their eyes, was a man in ornate armor standing before a keep on whose walls massive ogres brandished weapons and shouted epithets as a red dragon flew overhead.

A soft exclamation escaped Mahlanda’s lips. “I didn’t know the altars could look into someone’s mind.”

“They can’t,” he said. “I tapped into the vision the ring is projecting.”

“Still,” she looked at him with new respect, “impressive.”

The man in the ornate armor drew a sword of unusual design, looking as if it had been forged of links of metal beaten flat. “Chainbreaker,” Hanen and Mahlanda murmured together.

Hanen felt a moment’s relief. If she was familiar with the weapon, then surely not that much time had passed. Still, ignoring his better judgment he asked, “Where have you seen it before?”

“I had a vision, of it and other weapons of ancient renown, at their last wieldings before they were lost forever. Chainbreaker.” She lost herself in thought for a moment. “Oathbinder. Starfire. Torment.” Hanen felt his face grow hot. Ancient. Lost. I knew I shouldn’t have asked. “And you?” she said.

“I met Xaod once. The man who forged it.” He cursed the quality of his peripheral vision; he’d rather not know that she was looking at him in confusion and not a little fear. “Well, we don’t need to watch them sleeping,” he said brusquely.

He jumped the vision forward to an image of Darkseeker skirting the edge of a deep ravine and leading the young paladins to an inconspicuous entrance to the Horned Hold, one showing signs of recent and hasty construction. Saphira’s efforts to charm their way inside met with no success. “I could have told her that,” Hanen mumbled. “Orcs have no love of humans, and the duergar are even worse.”

Po suggested finding another entrance, but their scouting sorties revealed nothing that wasn’t still more formidable to breach, and in the end they decided to smash down the gate and try to take the orcs before they could escape to give warning. With luck the sound of a nearby forge would cover the forced entrance.

And there began a pattern that would carry them safely if not always easily through room after room of the hold: creep softly to an entrance and identify all exits, leap in unannounced and block those exits, slaughter every occupant to a man. It was a calculated brutality but Hanen had to admit it was efficient. Only a smith at the forge nearly managed to escape and raise the alarm, but a burst of psionic energy from Zane knocked him dying to the ground only yards from a door behind which help lay.

Though not the slaves they sought they found three humans toiling in the kitchens who were brave enough to set a diversionary fire before fleeing to the forge and barring the doors behind them. This set into motion another ugly battle in the mess hall, after which everyone was obviously fatigued. Po and Regan leaned on their swords while the others slumped against the walls. “Shouldn’t stay, shouldn’t go on,” Regan said. “So what do we do?”

Opinion was divided but in the end they pressed forward and found the captive Unspoken, chained in pits and guarded by devils who hovered out of reach in the high-ceilinged room and pelted the party with spells. Prevailing once again and escorting the slaves to temporary safety they paused once more to consider their options.

“Only one occupied room remains,” Saphira reported after scouting. Hanen had watched the young bard’s progress with some professional curiosity and, perhaps, a twinge of professional jealousy for the unusual harp string she bore. She seemed to enjoy an almost symbiotic relationship with it, permitting it to twine around her wrists or down her throat with its own motive power and becoming ruthless assassin or cunning thief in turn as her need and desire demanded.

“Going on without rest is folly,” Zane observed.

“I think they’ll notice that we’ve slaughtered all of their compatriots,” Regan said. “We have what we came for. We could just leave.” She sounded neither committed nor opposed to the idea, only tired.

Hollow-cheeked and weary they stared at one another, argued quietly back and forth and, finally, took up their swords and spells for one last assault to clear the hold of slaver filth. It was a grueling fight. More than once one or the other would teeter on the edge of unconsciousness or death only to be doggedly revived by a comrade to fight on. “Their endurance is worth remark,” Hanen said.

“That is why the hopes of the world rest on their shoulders,” Mahlanda replied.

Fiction. Fiction, the tiny voice in Hanen’s mind trilled again. Don’t want to know.

Finally the hold fell silent, awash in the blood of the duergar and their minions. Ten of the twelve Unspoken had been recovered; two, the newly freed slaves said, had been taken by gnolls to an unknown destination and fate. “We can’t go after them today,” Regan said. “Let’s take the captives back to the Hall.”

“We can’t go back the way we came,” Kerac reminded them. And indeed just before they’d tucked Darkseeker into a shallow cave to wait for their return or to make his way back alone when three days had passed they had narrowly escaped an encounter with an ettercap, a drake and assorted bugbears – all bearing the insignia of a red eye – who had found themselves a shadowed nook from which to prey on innocent passersby.

Sitting and binding her wounds, Regan gave Darkseeker a meaningful glance. “I’ll find another way,” he assured them.

The return journey to the Seven Pillared Hall was made without incident, and the ancient kobold Chrrak – once again Hanen paused to explain the concept of kobolds to Mahlanda – awaited them with a written message.

“Your actions against the duergar are commendable, Regan read aloud. “I am in a position of power in the evil organization behind the duergar’s actions, and I wish to help you defeat my comrades. I have been seeking a way out of the organization, and I believe you can help me. Follow the attached map so that we can meet in secret.”

Hanen was already frowning even as the young people burst out chattering.

“‘Evil organization?’ Who says things like that?”

“Someone trying to lead you into a trap?”

“Why would they give the message – and a map – to a beggar well-known for his dubious sanity?”

“Who in the Hall knows that Chrrak knows who we are?”

That brought conversation to a standstill. A brief investigation led them to what they feared to find: the last survivor of the kobold race’s corpse. Regan stared down at it, frowning. “We have to bring him back. Phaledra at the temple could do that.”

“Why, exactly?” Po put in.

“Because it’s our fault he’s dead,” Kerac said.

“And because – because he’s the last,” Regan added.

Mahlanda shook her head. “That way lies madness, child.”

Hanen gave her a sharp glance. “In my time we would have called it charity.”

“A practice to get you killed. Perhaps it is just as well the daimon has not yet divulged the means to leave.”

They bore the body to the priestess of Erathis, telling her both why they suspected he died and that there was a shapeshifting imposter on the loose. Phaledra looked grave at all of the news, but especially the latter.

The kobold, restored to life if not sanity, began babbling about hearing the “voice of the dragon.” When Regan’s efforts to discern what he meant only sent Chrrak into a raving fit Po joined the effort and drew his sword, which had shown healing properties in the past. Chrrak did stop raving, falling into a deep unconsciousness more restful than his manic state but from which Kerac was confident he would not awaken soon. Their investigations, for now, were concluded. But as they were turning away to other matters Po’s weapon rang like a gong and a pair of golden wings enfolded the ancient kobold. He turned the sword back toward Chrrak.

“The Avangion,” Mahlanda murmured, and for a moment Hanen thought she was going to fall on her knees before the altar. Regan and Po stood with lowered eyes. Fiction. Fiction.

A voice spoke.

Mistake this not for mercy
For I have seen his soul
and it is blackened.

It cares not for the small things of the world
Neither those above nor those below.
Only itself.

Take him to the haven
The daimon and the stone
Will hide and protect.

The Dragon’s mortality, a flawed diamond:
He the wedge
You the hammer.

When comes the time
Hesitate not, strike hard
Mistake this not for vengeance.”

Feeling sick, Hanen rose and stumbled backward. From the altar came the sound of running feet and the Dragonborn temple guardian Surina burst into the room. Her gaze took in the prone kobold and Po’s extended blade. “Murderers!” she cried, “Treachery from the overworlders!”