Umber

“Prepare another guest room,” Klavicus called to Desverendi. “The Avangion is sending a gift your way.” The druid paused his claw cactus trimming and in the fire Klavicus had kindled some time ago saw the wings of the Avangion enfolding the ancient kobold beggar of the Seven Pillared Halls.

Desverendi studied the prone form. “It does not appear that he’ll require much sustenance. Why is he – ”

Before he could finish his sentence the Dragonborn temple guardian burst into the room where the adventurers stood. “Murderers! Treachery from the overworlders!”

Surina was too agitated to listen when Kerac protested that they had hardly just raised Chrrak from the dead only to kill him again. Regan blocked the guard’s path to Po, drawing her sword while maintaining a defensive posture. “The still center is the path to perfection for a warrior,” the avenger said to the Dragonborn. “Hasty judgments and emotional turmoil don’t serve you, you serve them.”

Klavicus steepled his fingers. “You know, that sounds vaguely pompous coming from a near-child.”

“What older, wiser warrior will say it in these times?” The druid raised a critical eyebrow at the daimon. “And yet it is refreshing to hear.”

“I suppose,” he shrugged. “But it doesn’t seem to have had much impact on the Dragonborn.” Surina was staring at Regan with a curious mix of hatred, suspicion and wondering in her eyes. “Perhaps the child needs to grow to fit into that Radiant Temple garb she so arrogantly donned.”

Desverendi sighed; some days Klavicus was more surly than others. “And who in these times would teach her what it means to wear it? She studies the tome diligently – I would think that would please you, Preserver.”

Klavicus grunted but was otherwise silent; today and in this mood the druid counted it a small blessing. Sugar Primrose, Saphira and Zane were conferring quietly and urgently among themselves while casting sidelong glances at Surina. Reaching a conclusion, Zane murmured to Kerac to keep the guard occupied and dashed away in search of Phaledra. “There’s something wrong with your guard. She is certainly not entirely herself. She appears to be – possibly – possessed.”

Phaledra’s brow creased in worry. “For some time now she has seemed odd – ” Kerac and Saphira were losing the battle of keeping the Dragonborn calm, and glancing over at the brewing conflict the priestess seized Zane’s arm. “Please, I would prefer there be no bloodshed in my temple.”

Regan had begun executing stances from her book. “Focus, Surina. Do them with me.”

Again the woman seemed torn between compliance and assault. “Or the imp  whispering in the Dragonborn’s ear might have something to do with her confused resistance,” Klavicus remarked.

Desverendi peered at the image before them. “I do not see an – ”

“Imp!” Sugar Primrose hissed. “There, on her shoulder.”  As she spoke the avenger stumbled and swore. “Now it’s on Regan’s neck – ”

The young druid immediately unleashed an attack, but Zane hesitated a moment. “Phaledra did say – ”

“I don’t think ‘no bloodshed’ included devils,” Regan snapped. “Kill it, please, it’s trying to poison me.”

The imp was quickly subdued and Kerac looked down where it lay unconscious and now visible on the ground. “It’s not quite dead,” he grinned. “We could send it to Klavicus as a present.”

Klavicus frowned as Po, shaking his head, drove his sword through the devil. “I feel nothing,” he muttered. “The sight of that creature should have enraged me, but I feel – nothing.”

The druid cast a concerned glance at the daimon. The Galeb Duhr and the Avangion had given him certain warnings, but such a mild manifestation of their fears was surely nothing to worry about. Yet.

Surina stared down at the corpse in dismay. “Two years. Two years and I never knew…It whispered the most horrible things, I was the agent of so much dissension, even to death – ”

“You had no way of knowing. And it’s over.” Regan reached into her pack and withdrew the book of kata. “Why don’t you borrow this? Study it. It might help.”

The Dragonborn was still hesitant, but her indecision now seemed born of personal shame rather than the raspings of a malign influence. Finally she reached out her hand and took the book. “Thank you,” she said softly, backing away. “I need to – think – ” And then she was gone.

Zane pulled out the map from the mysterious defector and his ‘evil organization.’ “Shall we go check out the cunning trap?”

When they arrived at the prescribed location, a day earlier than the prescribed time, they could all agree on three things. The first two were that it was a trap and that it was, the obviousness of the note aside, very cunning.

The room was large and dark, ringed almost in its entirety by a ten foot ledge, with three pillars and three boulders dotting its lower surface. A massive metal figure stood motionless behind the nearest boulder. Sugar Primrose studied the configuration carefully. “If that – thing – activated,” she whispered, making a sweeping gesture with her hand from the creature to the door, “it could push that boulder against the opening.”

“Sealing us in,” Saphira said grimly.

“What is it?” Po asked.

“A bronze warder,” Zane replied. “An arcane construct. Someone, somewhere, is wearing a controlling amulet. They give instructions, the warder carries them out.”

“Over what distance?” Kerac asked. Zane shrugged in reply.

“I don’t like it,” Regan said, and this was the third thing they agreed on. Seeing no compelling reason to walk into an ambush and with a final sour glance at the bronze warder, they retraced their steps to the Seven Pillared Hall, having decided that tracking down and confronting the author of the note would be a more fruitful activity than getting trapped in a remote cave and eventually dying of starvation, if they were lucky enough to defeat the warder and whatever else awaited them hidden on the shadowy ledges.

They began their efforts at handwriting identification in the friendliest territories they could find, asking first Phaledra, then Rendil Halfmoon and his aunt. Finding no answers there they moved onto Gendar and, with considerably more reluctance, the mage Orontor. He too said he was unfamiliar with the handwriting on the note. But unlike the others he was plainly lying.

He brushed aside their accusations. “I’ll pay you – an item of magic equal in value to the one I’ve already promised for news of Paldemar – if you return and engage whoever is waiting there.”

Regan waved the note at him. “I’d rather know who wrote this.”

“I might tell you,” he said coolly. “Afterward. Might,” he emphasized.

The avenger snarled in frustration as the others took up arguing or wheedling as suited their personalities. Klavicus smiled slightly as he watched. “I had almost forgotten how insufferably smug old-world mages were. You’re just wasting your breath,” he informed the figures in the vision. “He won’t budge. He doesn’t need to.”

“Your magic item won’t do us much good if we die trying to claw our way past a boulder,” Saphira observed.

“I have a warder of my own. I would come after a suitable time and release you if you were trapped.”

“I still think it would be prudent to find our own tools,” Regan muttered to Zane, eyeing Orontor with suspicion.

The psion nodded vigorously. “Agreed.”

And so with pickaxes and other rock-shifting equipment in hand they returned to whatever lay in wait. Saphira scrambled up one of the ledges with a rope and the others followed as quietly as they could. Rope tied around her waist, the bard inched her way toward the bronze warder, constantly on the alert for traps while Sugar Primrose fixed her gaze on the behemoth, ready to block the entrance with a thick wall of brambles should the creature move toward the awkwardly balanced boulder.

Saphira’s luck did not hold long. She identified a suspicious rock face and the trip wire that held it back, but her fingers slipped trying to disable it and only Po tugging hard on the rope kept her from falling at the feet of the warder. The noise drew the attention of two tiefling who had been lying in wait for them; the warder awakened, and battle was joined.

The bard was the unrelenting focus of their enemies’ attention; Po doggedly tried to force the bronze warder to engage with him but it invariably shrugged off the pain he inflicted for ignoring him and returned its attention to Saphira. The conflict was frustrating, and long: any time Po or Regan struck the tiefling their enemies disappeared only to manifest an unpleasantly far distance away. After Zane suggested putting as much distance between themselves and the warder as possible until the tiefling were dealt with, dazing it long enough to give everyone time to reposition, Sugar Primrose and Saphira devoted much of their time and energy to knocking it off of ledges it had just climbed or pushing it away.

Slowly, inexorably it closed the gap, crushing several of the adventurers underfoot and swiping through others with a giant axe, but by then the tiefling were dead and, though bloody and bruised, Skarp’s youths prevailed. On the corpse of one of the tiefling they found two notes and a map depicting a cleverly hidden passage to a place called the Well of Demons.

The first note read:

To Maldrick Scarmaker, Exalted Chieftain of the Blackfangs and Chosen of Yeenoghu: Paldemar offers you the corpses of these champions as a gift of ongoing friendship, that our arrangement might continue to be mutually beneficial. May you savor their blood.

Your friend and ally, Paldemar

And the second:

I don’t care how you do it, but deal with these adventurers. Take one of the bronze warders if you must. If they remain in the Labyrinth, they could disrupt my plans. Once you’ve dealt with them, deliver their bodies to our gnoll friends, along with the enclosed scroll.

Paldemar

The handwriting on the notes matched the one they had been given by the false Chrrak. “No need to ask Orontor about the handwriting,” Klavicus observed.

Desverendi was looking at the map. “Do you know this place?”

“As you might guess from the name, it’s not particularly amiable. If that’s where the gnolls have taken up residence, Skarp’s paladins will have an – interesting – time reclaiming the remaining Unspoken.”

When the youths appeared to be bedding down for a rest before returning to the Seven Pillared Hall, Klavicus jumped the view ahead until they were speaking with the mage Orontor. “Where did Paldemar get a hold of a bronze warder?” Regan was asking.

The mage spread his hands before him. “I don’t know. And I’d like to. It isn’t one of ours.”

“How hard are the components to come by?” Zane asked.

“Trivial, for us. But I was sure he lacked the skill to complete one.”

“What did they want with the slaves? How long will we have to retrieve them?”

Orontor looked grim. “Blood sacrifice, I expect. They’ll make them last as long as possible. For what that’s worth.”

“They’re trying to summon Yeenoghu,” Klavicus spat. “Fools. Ah well, what would glorified bipedal hyenas understand of natural law?”

Desverendi’s lip curled in disgust. “The appetites of demons.”

Klavicus leaned back lazily. “Blood has a repulsive odor. For myself, I would have demanded sacrifices of white truffles and saffron, caviar and civet coffee and tigerfish. Incur the same amount of violence as worshippers fought to obtain the rarities and I could eat well.”

But there was a brittleness to his tone; the druid cast a sideways glance but bit back a reproach as the image jumped to Terrlen Darkseeker, looking relieved when the young people said they were leaving him behind for his own safety. “The danger doesn’t deter me,” he said and seemed to mean it, “but – ” he looked down at his hands sadly, as if he could see the werewolf paws, “I think I need some time to understand what I am, what I – ”

The flames leapt skyward for a moment and now Desverendi eyed the daimon sharply, but Klavicus had veiled his face in shadow and would not meet his gaze. Saphira was making a careful pass across the entrance of a large room, tall pillars carved with minotaur faces and a dark well in the corner which for now she gave a wide berth. Every so often she would jump, staring intently at a pillar.

“What is the matter?” Desverendi asked.

“With the bard? I imagine she feels as if the minotaurs are watching her.” The view shifted to Po and Zane on the other side of the hallway, poking with some desperation through piles of rubble, testing the strength of some short lengths of iron bar. “With the paladin and the psion? I imagine they’re looking for something to hold up the ceiling.” Another shift, to Kerac, Regan and Sugar Primrose holding unnaturally still, their faces tense. “With the rest? I expect they’ve realized from the scuff marks and powdery rubble that the roof over their heads drops to the floor in response to some as yet unascertained trigger. Oh look,” he said as Po shifted some trash in a dark corner and both paladin and psion retreated in haste with a hand covering nose and mouth, “gnoll crepes.”

“This is terrible,” the old druid said.

Klavicus shrugged. “Not if they have the sense to retreat.”

“Knowing that tormented captives lie beyond? They will not.”

“Ah yes, the Galeb Duhr’s oath. Assistance to those in need, even unto death. He always struck me as more practical than that. Give them a single purpose and send them on their way, not some vague admonition to make the world a better place.” At the last two words his voice took on a mincing falsetto. “Perhaps Oathbinder warped his mind,” he concluded with a growl.

Desverendi sighed quietly. Definitely a surly day. He watched without comment as Po and Zane returned to the hallway and, after a short conference, all of the youths sprinted to join Saphira in the room. Klavicus shook his head. “What will happen?” the druid asked.

“That depends on – ” he frowned as Saphira’s continuing investigations took her near the well. “A bad idea, youngling.” Even as he spoke the words a shadowy claw crawled out of the water and the false ceilings at each of the three exits slammed down, shutting them in. The claw turned to dark mist and dissipated, and the daimon rested his forehead in his hand.

“What has happened?” Desverendi asked.

“They’re trapped.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s a trial. Defeat the creatures summoned by a demon from the well and the passage ceilings will rise again. Be killed by the creatures summoned by a demon from the well and the ceilings will rise again.”

“But…” The druid felt a desperate desire not to complete the unpleasant thought that was forming in his head.

Klavicus, unrelenting, finished it for him. “Yes – where is the demon going to come from? I think we both know the answer to that question. So when will the ceilings rise again? Never. The tools they brought with them won’t penetrate that much rock. No, I think this is the end of the Galeb Duhr’s champions. Killed not by the forces of the Dragon, but by the mere absence of the very thing they’ve been unwittingly tasked to restore.”

Desverendi turned his face aside; he had no desire to watch their disbelief and confusion and dismay. And so he did not see the flare of red in Sugar Primrose’s pupils or the almost inhuman contortions of her face. But he did hear the strange syllables that tore themselves from her mouth.

“Erek nogg kas umbras

Erek nogg kas dolor
Erek nogg kas rabikas

Sukak rashka liberca

Eck vas!”

Klavicus’ eyes burned with a terrible intensity that the druid knew bode ill for interruption, but he had to know. “What has happened?”

The daimon replied in clipped syllables, “She has demanded that they come.” In a similar meter but in Common he chanted softly.

“Come to me in darkness
Come to me in pain
Come to me in fury

Smash down the gate

To me!”

“Surely that will not – ” But before Desverendi could finish the thought he saw Kerac stiffen and clutch at the fragment of the World Seed.

And now from somewhere deep within the well a voice replied. Klavicus grew tense, and the old druid scanned his immediate vicinity in confusion. “Do you feel – ”

The daimon nodded. “She demanded that a demon respond. Somehow the priest’s piece of the Seed bored a conduit for a reply. The tiniest of rents in the veil that separates Oerth from the multiverse and yet…it is there.” He cocked his head as if listening to a distant sound. “And it is not repairing.”

Desverendi’s eyes narrowed. “My protégé summoned a demon.” Klavicus returned his gaze but said nothing. “In Abyssal. A language she does not speak. Or did not speak, until you…” He trailed off, continuing to glare at Klavicus. If his intent was to make the daimon repentant, it failed. “You can at least translate the reply.”

With a faint smile on his face the daimon chanted.

“From darkness, we answer
Bearing pain, we answer
With fury, we answer

We sunder the gate

Let the old world return

And the ancient trials begin again.”

The minotaur columns were calling as the daimon spoke. “Mask, bell, blade, tome.” Creatures spit forth from the well like gristle from a disdaining mouth: two cavern chokers and a tentacled phalagar native to the caverns, and a ghoul that Desverendi supposed had been a hapless challenger in a former life. If so, he felt little sympathy for the creature.

Haphazard a selection of opponents as they had seemed at first glance, as battle was joined Desverendi had to admit that they were distressingly effective in concert. To close with the phalagar was to be entwined in its deadly tentacles, an aim the cavern chokers aided by seizing victims in their unnaturally long arms and dragging them to the creature while the ghoul played its part by spewing a noxious atmosphere that left its target bent over and retching in place.

The phalagar itself burrowed about the room with ease, appearing wherever it liked and dragging hapless individuals wither it would. It did not take long for Zane and Sugar Primrose to realize that “wither it would” was likely to be the well. Not wanting to see their companions drowned and resurrected as ghouls in turn they took appropriate action, Zane manipulating psionic emanations in a field around him that confounded any efforts to displace a person by force while Sugar Primrose twined a hasty cover of brambles over the well’s opening. The phalagar could throw someone into the thorns if it wished, but they could not sink into the black depths.

Fierce as the struggle was, Klavicus was paying scant attention. His smile had grown simultaneously twisted and almost dreamy, his attention was focused unnervingly on Sugar Primrose and he murmured, “Is this what it’s like, having offspring?”

In spite of himself, in spite of the Galeb Duhr and the Avangion’s warnings, the druid clenched his stony hand into a fist as irritation seethed within him. “She is a child of nature. You will not turn her into a demon.”

“But isn’t that the delight of children? You can’t turn them into anything. It would be folly to think otherwise. They become what they would, what destiny makes of them.” Attentive to Desverendi again he waved a dismissive hand. “Oh, don’t look at me like that. I wasn’t seeking a legacy. I didn’t do anything on purpose. ”

“I do not think I find that comforting. We are playing with dangerous forces.”

Klavicus scowled. “I’ve been telling you all that. But now we are playing, and it is too late to withdraw from the game.” He stared down at his hands with much the same expression as Terrlen Darkseeker. “Too late.”

Desverendi watched as a cavern choker snatched Kerac and pulled him across the ceiling. “What will happen to the priest if the severance is undone?”

“Ask the Avangion,” Klavicus replied acridly. “No doubt he’s thought the matter through.”

“I’m asking you.”

“I have no answers, only hypotheses.” He began ticking possibilities off on his fingers. “Will he take up a normal life with the vaguely disappointed feeling that his best and most important years are behind him? Become a guardian of the broken tower made whole once again? The stone grows heavier, he feels more immovable, with every click of a piece fitting into place. Perhaps he’ll become the tower itself? Who can say?”

“This is a young life we’re talking about,” Desverendi’s gravel voice was stern.

“Yes it is. See? I’m thinking like an Avangion already.”

“Heartlessness is nothing particularly new to you,” the druid grumbled.

“Ah,” Klavicus smiled impishly, “but this is heartlessness with purpose.”

The phalagar, last of the challengers, fell. Two of the three fallen blocks snapped back into the ceiling of their own accord. The way they had come remained shut. “Why only two?” Desverendi asked.

The daimon rose and stretched. “I expect there are more trials to endure before they’ll be permitted to depart. The gnolls aren’t their only adversaries now.” With a crackle and hiss the fire extinguished. “But not tonight. I’m tired. I think I’ll take a walk in the desert before turning in to dream.” He said the last disdainfully.

“Do not go far, Ancient One. The night wind has an ill feel.”

“Doesn’t it always?” The golden-tinged eyes that met the druid’s were angry. “I still have some measure of my power. What did not drain away vis major into your pupil.” Knowing that Klavicus was baiting him, Desverendi said nothing. “Besides, will the lizards and the cockroaches not rise up to defend me in my hour of need?”

The elemental watched with a measure of concern as the daimon stalked into the desert and though he briefly considered sending one of his creatures after him to keep watch, he did not.

* * *

Klavicus did feel tired, more tired than he could remember ever feeling over the millennia of his long life, but it was a fatigue of the spirit, not of the body. Softly he spoke the words that had gushed half-unwilling from Sugar Primrose. “Erek nogg kas umbras. Erek nogg kas dolor. Erek nogg kas rabikas. Sukak rashka liberca. Eck vas!” What would happen now, now that he had taken a step on the path of transformation, if he chanted the summoning command, even if the multiverse were restored? He did not want to know. But he did know, in a deep still center that he seldom allowed voice, the seed of otherness within him that was other no longer, the cancer that he had permitted to sprout, that he himself had planted, dreams the blossoms that haunted the new sleep. He sighed heavily, fragments of a millenia-old poem drifting across his mind. “I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.”

He stared up at the twin moons, Tenser’s last, desperate effort to save himself. Klavicus and the archmage had always despised each other, even at the end of Tenser’s days when the balor was certainly no enemy and hadn’t been for time out of mortal mind. Would he still be here if he hadn’t been so reckless at that end, so intent on creating the seed of the Avangion that he ignored the discovery and destruction of his every clone, so intent on planting that seed in a place and time out of the Dragon’s reach that he strode with open eyes into a hopeless battle?

In his final moments, too late, did the old archmage regret sacrificing himself in the name of an uncertain future? What darkness, what pain, drove him to such a final, irrevocable change? “Erek nogg kas umbras. Erek nogg kas dolor.” Klavicus turned his eyes from the moons, turned his face back toward the Vale. What drove him? What drives anyone? “Eck vas!” No, never again. Too late. The closed buds of a nearby cactus burst into full bloom at his presence, a dozen many-petaled flowers glowing incandescent in the moonlight. He bent down and carefully extracted the entire plant to take back as a peace offering to Desverendi, although he suspected he could merely rip it from the ground and still it would flourish in his hands. I do not think that they will sing to me.