Umber

Klavicus was already snarling at Mahlanda as he emerged from the portal to his home. “Urgent matter? I don’t have time for this right now.” When he saw her flinch, he softened his scowl to a mere frown. “Why did you bring a raving madman here, and what am I supposed to do about him?”

Mahlanda’s head had been shaved completely bald when he first met her, but now loose brown curls fell along the nape of her neck. It made her softer, more waiflike. He wasn’t sure he liked it, especially when, as now, she looked frightened. She took an involuntary backward step, shaking her head slowly. “I sent no message – I wouldn’t have known where to send it. And there is a madman here, but I certainly didn’t bring him. I only let him remain because said he knew you, and invoked the name of Skarp –”

“Damn you,” he swore, making an impatient gesture as her face reddened in uncertain shame. “Not you. Skarp. I should have known.”

* * *

Twilight was descending on the Vale and Klavicus had already told Desverendi he would be leaving on the morrow when Opa Skarp arrived. “If you are willing, I require your eyes, Avangion,” the earth priest said after exchanging brief pleasantries.

“Don’t call me that,” Klavicus snapped, and behind the daimon’s back Desverendi raised his stony brow in warning.

Skarp was the youngest of the surviving elder beings and in spite of his youth the least adaptive in many ways. As humanity grew ever more feral it became obvious to the earth elementals that the sole way to raise up true champions would be to train their own. Skarp was the most suitable candidate because he had once been and still looked the most human; the second most suitable, technically, but Klavicus expressed in the strongest possible terms what he thought of spending even a single mortal lifetime changing infant diapers and wiping runny toddler noses and they were forced to look elsewhere for a surrogate. And so the task fell to the priest with the balor, as he often reminded them, graciously tutoring him in the art of passing among mortals as one of their own. If the lessons didn’t take very well it proved not to matter: growing up with Skarp from infancy the children took his peculiarities as the usual way of things.

None of the earthen, straightforward and plain-spoken as they were, had an easy time with Klavicus but Skarp, who saw no value in dressing simple truths in fancy costumes, had the most uneasy time of all. Especially now – although Desverendi and the Galeb Duhr had explained several times Klavicus’ likely sensitivity to being called an Avangion, in the old priest’s mind it was what the balor was now, no point in calling a spade a club. But he recognized Desverendi’s disapproval, and made a mental note to refrain from further use of honorifics.

“I assume you want to watch the progress of your urchins,” Klavicus remarked as laid wood and kindling for a fire.

“The Veiled Alliance has had no word of them in some time,” Skarp said.

“They have found their way into the Underdark,” Desverendi put in. “And found an intact stronghold.”

“The Underdark?” the old priest repeated. “But if it is still occupied perhaps we must look for…” he stared at his stony hands as he trailed off, then looked over at Klavicus.

“The whelps are already there, aren’t they?” the daimon snapped. “And no, I don’t have every surviving entrance to the Underdark mapped out in my head. It was a dreary place full of tiny minded Lloth-worshippers as likely to use books to line their nests as read them.”

Skarp and Desverendi let the matter drop. Nascent Avangion or no, Klavicus still possessed a formidable temper. They watched in silence as the daimon rapidly replayed images that he and Desverendi had already seen, slowing for dramatic effect as the youths, venturing deeper into their accidental prison, nervously followed a thin red trail broadening to a stream spilling into a pool of blood. Three ghosts oozed from the pool at their approach: a human with a half-shredded torso and a heavily armored dwarf who kept his faceplate closed whose surplices identified them clerics of Kor and Pelor respectively. They were accompanied by a robed elven woman carrying a staff. “You are come to the Proving Ground for the demon lord Baphomet,” they intoned. “Power beyond reckoning is granted to those who succeed at the trials.”

“Interesting,” Klavicus mused. Desverendi gave him a quizzical glance. “Baphomet was killed, millennia upon millennia ago, by some – tenuous – acquaintances of mine. On Thanatos itself, while serving as a kind of indentured servant to Orcus as punishment for some ill-considered scheme. That should have been a permanent extinction, I would have thought, But I admit I ceased paying much attention to Abyssal matters shortly after and –” he broke off as Skarp added his stare to Desverendi’s. “Personal curiosity,” he mumbled. “Never mind.”

“Trials?” Kerac was asking. “Could you be more specific?”

The ghosts studied the living before them with expressions suggesting they found them wanting. “Not very impressive looking,” the cleric of Kor sniffed. The elven woman nodded in agreement.

“We’re not the ones who are dead, are we?” Po snapped back.

“It might be best for you,” the dwarf said in a more kindly voice, “if you turned around and forgot you ever came here.”

“Seeing as we can’t get back out,” Zane put in, “that’s easier said than done.”

After further coaxing and a few demonstrations of skill the ghosts relented. Find four items – mask, tome, bell, blade. Once found place them on four magic runes – simultaneously. “Want to take any bets,” Regan murmured to Sugar Primrose, “that the runes aren’t particularly near each other?” The druid shook her head and sighed.

“Assuming you survive the runes,” the elf stilled eyed them with skepticism, “you must challenge and defeat the guardian.”

“Which is?” Reign asked.

The cleric of Kor grinned, a little unpleasantly. “Only a green dragon.”

“Oh, and don’t forget the crushing sphere of force that rolls through the inner chambers,” the elven woman added.

Their smugness faded a little when the young paladins asked if they had failed the trials. “Yes,” the Pelorite sighed. “And if you lack the strength of will you’re subjected to a terrible curse, to remain here forever and instruct new challengers in the ways of the place.”

They took their leave of the specters after receiving some clues as to where the items lay: one each to the north, the west and the south of the crossroads where they now stood, the book on an altar at a small shrine to the east.

After some small disagreement about the next course of action, they decided to finish clearing out the gnolls in hopes of finding the two remaining Unspoken. Instead they found two tiefling, trapped when the stone doors slammed down. Reign was happy to take them along if they could make themselves useful, although most of the party eyed them with deep suspicion. “They look able enough,” Skarp observed.

“Yes, they do,” Klavicus agreed amiably. “Which will make them all the more inconvenient to dispatch when they finally decide to turn on their new companions.”

“You do have a suspicious mind,” Desverendi said.

“I know tieflings,” the daimon shrugged.

In fact they made themselves useful almost immediately, aiding in the assault of a gnoll priestess and her troublesome demonic guardian protecting the altar on which rested Baphomet’s book. “What is Po doing?” Skarp wondered as the paladin made a dash for an altar while his companions still wrestled with the guardian.

“Impulsive little man, isn’t he?” Klavicus remarked dryly.

Kerac was less sanguine in his response. “How about we wait?” he snapped at the paladin. Po grumbled but stopped his advance; just as well, since Saphira indeed had some work to do before the book could be safely removed.

Rather than the slaves they hoped for, the youths found themselves accosted by an imp offering to answer three questions for a suitable price – blood or gold, their choice. Sugar Primrose wrinkled her nose and held out coins, receiving in turn information about the rooms where the three remaining items could be found. “What kind of twisted game is this?” Skarp asked.

“Demon’s game,” Klavicus replied. “The more baroque and pointless the better.” He passed quickly through the imp’s smug, smirking recitation. “Hall of Mirrors, Hall of Howling Pillars, Hall of Blood, yes, yes, yes,” he grumbled. “Let’s see them in action.”

Cautiously the young people made their way further into the trial chambers. Wherever they went whispering voices followed them and trails of ghostly blood appeared underfoot and then faded again, setting them all on edge. Saphira opened one room and jumped back, startled, at finding a cowering man in leather. Though she quickly realized it was another spectral visitation it was no easier to watch as three carnage demons came upon him. One of the evil creatures uttered a guttural incantation, though the feat should have been beyond him. The discovered man gave a hideous cry as his femur ripped itself from his leg, shrieking still as the other demons swarmed him and carried him away. The living eyed one another uneasily, all too aware that soon their fates could be written in ghostly ink within these walls, then shrugged and set their shoulders. “Only one way out,” Desverendi murmured sympathetically, “and that is through.”

They explored the central rooms before retrieving the remaining items, finding a deeply pitted oval track where the force ball would doubtless materialize and discovering that as they expected the runes were isolated from one another. “How quaint,” Klavicus growled as the young people discussed each room’s peculiar features. “One for a rogue, one for a mage, two for the religious types. Such originality.”

“New to them, it seems, and no less deadly for all of that,” Desverendi suggested.

“Still, makes one ashamed to be a – ” he snarled and cut himself off and once again Desverendi and Skarp exchanged worried glances.

It was in the room that housed the Bloodhorn Blade that the tiefling turned. It was tailor made for betrayal: filled with a blood toxic to humans but a balm to demons, guarded by two giant, mechanized statues of gnolls wielding chains, their prize tantalizingly out of reach at the far end of the room. While the brawnier among them set to breaking the statues the casters whittled away at a trio of dangerous carnage demons. In the chaos Zane found himself alone, and in his moment of apparent vulnerability the tiefling struck. “Hoping to reduce the numbers to something more favorable,” Klavicus said.

“The children will not permit it.” With a note of pride in his voice and a slight smile Skarp watched as Kerac, Sugar Primrose and Saphira turned on their erstwhile allies with a ferocity that surprised even the tiefling in their last remaining moments of life.

Although once again calls went out reminding the eager to wait for Saphira to retrieve the blade, the worst moments – in this room, at least – were behind them. And though the others were eager to escape the poisonous, bloody pools Sugar Primrose virtually danced through them and seemed loathe to leave. “It feels nice,” she said. “What’s wrong?”

Desverendi’s expression was no less suspicious than Sugar Primrose’s companions as he turned a wary eye to Klavicus. “What is the meaning of this?”

The daimon returned his gaze all wide-eyed innocence. “They have obtained the book and the blade, and require only the –”

“That is not what I meant.”

“Who can say? Well, let’s skip ahead to the next morning, shall we?” Klavicus said in a breezy tone.

“Let us not,” Desverendi rumbled, stone and ice in his words, and though Klavicus grumbled he let the scene play out a little longer.

Sugar Primrose paced long after her companions had fallen into deep, exhausted sleep. Strange lights flickered in her eyes, now red, now silver, now gold. “Well, why not?” she murmured. Highlights of blue and purple and red glinted in her hair. She slipped away into the blade room and cupped the dark blood – pain to her friends, life to her – in her hands. “I don’t have to be evil. I won’t.”

“A tiefling,” Desverendi muttered.

“It’s all over but the changing now,” Klavicus said, jumping ahead in time to the party’s arising. Her companions were not subtle in their surprise at finding their demure human druid transformed into muscular bronzed creature with sharply pointed teeth, horns and a five foot long tail. “Oh look, she has my eyes,” he observed, studying the solid golden irises set in a face framed by midnight blue hair.

“I am not amused,” the old druid’s voice grew colder still. “What have you done?”

“I am sure,” Skarp interjected mildly, “that the Preserver would not interfere with a protégé of yours on purpose.”

“I might,” Klavicus said with a note of insolence. Desverendi’s eyes narrowed. “But I’d be gloating if I had.”

Desverendi clenched a rocky fist, then relaxed it again and sighed. Through the long, delicate dance of negotiations the Galeb Duhr and the Avangion conducted to win the ancient balor to the preservers’ side no one pretended he would be easy to deal with. Desverendi had been, in truth, opposed to courting him, but the Galeb Duhr insisted he was too powerful to ignore. Still, at moments like this the old druid could wish that the daimon spent more time at Spinecastle and less at the Vale. “Continue,” he finally said. “Doubtless Skarp would like to see how his students fare.”

In the Hall of Howling Pillars the impatience Po had exhibited ever since the youths were sealed into Baphomet’s trial chambers would no longer be denied. Perhaps it was the atmosphere; certainly the agonized, hateful grimaces of the faces adorning the posts did not encourage tarrying even if they might reward caution. And so when the paladin saw one of the artifacts resting unattended toward a back corner of the hall he acted without waiting for counsel. “I’m going to get that bell,” he announced, springing toward the pedestal.

“Po!” Saphira called out. “I don’t think you should – ”

Her warning was drowned out by a cry of pain. Skarp winced and Desverendi frowned, but Klavicus chuckled. “Does the boy have the bell, or the bell the boy?” The old druid had no idea what the daimon could find amusing. For when Po seized the bell spikes shot out from the handle, impaling his hand. The clapper struck with a force belying the bell’s size and from seemingly nowhere demons appeared in response.

Po pried the bell handle from his hand and gamely joined a combat complicated by the room’s logistics and its occupants. “The pillars are enchanted with a variety of effects triggered by standing too close to them,” Klavicus pointed toward the image. They watched as Kerac and Zane tried to advance past a pillar only to disappear and reappear some distance away, and Sugar Primrose and Reign wince as some noxious vapor shot toward them when they remained too long in one place. “None of them have gone mad yet, that’s something. But of course the temptation is to huddle at the periphery,” he clucked his tongue as a pack of carnage demons closed in on Reign and Po and, bolstered by the proximity of their fellows, redoubled their attacks, “and that causes problems of its own.”

In the end they prevailed, and with only some small interference from the pillars managed to flee the room, but once again their resources were exhausted and they were forced to rest. “You’d think they weren’t trying to free the last of the Unspoken,” Klavicus observed.

“Do they still live?” Desverendi asked.

In reply a room flickered briefly within the flames in overlay above the young people. Two disheveled captives stood paralyzed within a glowing rune, lines of power emanating from them to a gnoll chanting before an idol of Baphomet. “Behold the captive’s imminent future. The priest was exploring the back chamber when your whelps,” he pointed a lazy finger at Opa Skarp, “activated the trials. Now he need only wait for some other rube to engage all the risks and he’ll claim the reward.” He smiled thinly. “To the cheaters go the spoils.”

“But why,” Skarp asked, “if they were only exploring, did they have the Unspoken with them?”

Klavicus shot him an amused glance. “I’ve always said your childlike innocence is what makes you such a delight, Skarp. If you possessed the twisted empathy required to understand the mind of a gnoll you would realize that to them, traveling into a space of worship without suitable sacrifices at hand would be like a human deep sea diving without breathing apparatus or a hiker taking to the high trails without gorp.” The two elementals stared at him blankly. “Never mind,” the daimon muttered, returning to the youths’ progress through the trials.

Because they were cautious, the room containing the mask did not tax their energies. The imp had warned them about the hall of mirrors. Three kinds, he said, ones that hurt you, move you, trap you. Best not to look at any of them. And so they blindfolded themselves and moved together but spread out, always touching a wall. And though the curtains behind which the mask was hidden were shredded in yet another demonic attack, they emerged mostly unscathed.

“And now the runes,” the old priest murmured.

The youths spent some time brooding over who to put where. It was obvious enough from their initial investigations that Zane, Saphira, Kerac and Regan needed to be separated each to deal with a challenge uniquely suited to their talents; where to place the supporting players was a more delicate question. In the end Po stood with Zane in a room with four colored pools; Sugar Primrose and Saphira readied themselves beside one of two ceiling turrets in a space otherwise unadorned save for a scattering of pillars carved with minotaur faces; Kerac and Reign waited in a small room containing an altar and a pair of idols; Regan stood alone amidst skeletons twitching in chains on the floor. On a prearranged count the four placed the relics on the runes. As they expected gates in the entryways slammed down and most rooms’ occupants were isolated from the larger chamber. Except for Kerac and Reign. “Why do the occupants of the altar room have the run of the region?” Skarp asked.

“An interesting question,” Klavicus said. “One possibility comes to mind.” Though Skarp and Desverendi waited for him to reveal his thoughts he pursed his lips and said nothing more.

If the trial played out less optimally than it might have, yet it was not as deadly as it could have been. Zane and Po had the easiest time of it: they expected some manner of being to spawn from the pool of blue water and a water elemental obliged them. It made every effort to hurl them into a nearby pool of bright, noxious yellow liquid but was foiled by the psionic anchor Zane slapped down around himself and the paladin.

“They should have put the druid with the psion,” Klavicus snorted as Po’s blade passed through the elemental doing about as much damage as one might expect to a being formed from liquid. “And the paladin with the bard,” he added as Sugar Primrose discovered that her druidic powers were of little use against the turrets; she could do little more than hide behind pillars as Saphira dodged bolts and disabled the devices.

“But they could not have known,” Desverendi interjected.

“I’ll give you the water elemental, I suppose,” the daimon said grudgingly, “but not knowing that fire and ice were unlikely to harm a mechanical object? I think your affection for them has softened your head.”

Regan was making slow, only intermittent progress at soothing the now animate skeletons, and eyeing them nervously as every failure increased their agitation, but it was perhaps Kerac and Reign who had the worst of the trial. The moment the runes flared a glowing ball of force the width and height of the central hallway flared into existence and began tracing rapid orbits. “And now,” Klavicus snapped his fingers as both the priest and the fighter stared with horror at something on the altar only they could see, “flee.”

Unable to control herself, Reign ran directly into the path of the giant sphere, which knocked her flat and then rolled on its way. Kerac was more fortunate and managed to recover his wits in time to duck into an alcove near where Regan struggled with the skeletons. “They were still trying to fight their way back to the altar when Zane and Po finished dispatching the elemental. All of the gates opened, but before the youths could converge a new threat reared its literal head: the green dragon emerged from the heart of the larger chamber and descended upon the psion and the paladin, and if Po had been more idle than he liked during the conflict with the elemental he had plenty to keep him busy now.

Sugar Primrose, frustrated with her impotence against the turrets waited for the force ball to pass and then hurried to join Zane and Po; Saphira disabled the second turret and did the same. Regan finished off skeletons and she and Kerac managed to fight off their fear and disable the altar. And then…sphere and dragon vanished and the youths looked around in confusion. Klavicus laughed softly. “All of the fear and challenge of confronting a dragon, with none of the reward.”

They had no time to reflect on their disappointment – or relief – however; an ornate door beyond the chained skeletons swung open and screams emerged from farther in. “The Unspoken,” Skarp breathed, nodding in satisfaction as they ran down a passage.

The scene that confronted them played out as Klavicus had earlier displayed it for Skarp and Desverendi: two disheveled captives stood paralyzed within a glowing rune, lines of power emanating from them to a gnoll chanting before an idol of Baphomet. They were clearly the remaining Unspoken. “Knock them out of that rune,” Regan called over her shoulder as she, Reign and Po made for the gnoll and his guards, and the ranged attackers made ready to oblige.

Aside from a moment’s panic when Reign stood too close to the rune and was knocked into it, becoming briefly the gnoll’s conduit for power, the conflict was relatively straightforward. Searching the bodies and the surrounding area they found the manner of news regarding Paldemar that they sought: the rogue wizard stumbled upon some demonic items, sacrificed them to Vecna, gained lordship over a stronghold with a hidden power Paldemar believed he could, with time, bend to his own uses. “Another defiler,” Desverendi said, a certain weariness in his ancient voice.

Klavicus’ expression was unreadable, but Opa Skarp seemed not to have heard. His dark eyes glittered attentively as the youths found a silver key, ornate and glowing with divination magic, and a note: Use the key for our next meeting. “They’ll be taking that back to Orontor,” the daimon said. “And then I suppose he’ll promise them some other bauble to take care of his problem for him.”

“A foe tapping into the energy of Vecna could be very dangerous,” Desverendi said. “And what is this ‘hidden power?’”

The daimon skipped the view ahead. The grateful, reunited Unspoken were preparing to leave the Seven Pillared Hall and return to the surface, the youths were having their usual irritable discourse with Orontor. “I couldn’t say. This is the present.”

“Thank you for your time, daimon,” Skarp said, rising abruptly.

Klavicus extinguished the fire. “I should go with you.”

Trying as the daimon could sometimes be, Desverendi still could not help but be impressed by the fruits of his long millennia of pure observation. Take away his elemental viewing, he mused, and the old balor could probably still predict the future with more perfect accuracy than the rest of us. What ending does he see for us, for the world?

Skarp bowed his head in acknowledgement. “We tend the bones, you the flesh. All is as it should be. And I do not mean to join them. Not yet.”

“I may not be a demon anymore,” Klavicus scowled, “but I still understand infernals – and by extension, defilers – better than all of you stone heads put together.”

“We do not doubt that,” Desverendi rumbled quietly, “but –”

Before he could finish his sentence embers in the fire flared up and a woman’s voice was audible faintly through the spitting. “Madman…dwelling…urgent…”

* * *

Klavicus had designed his residence for a single occupant so it was difficult for Mahlanda not to hear every word exchanged between the daimon and the bard. Hanen seemed doubtful of Klavicus’ true identity and peppered him with questions regarding people and places she had never heard of; the Preserver answered for a time but she thought that Hanen persisted long past the point that prudence would dictate. And when the bard demanded that he reveal himself as a balor Mahlanda decided that perhaps he was a madman. Certainly her own few moments in the presence of that towering, enflamed form convinced that nothing but death awaited her left her with no desire to see it again; anyone who would court it must be of questionable sanity.

She edged closer to the portal, thinking she might flee if faced with that terrible vision again, but all that emerged from the niche where Hanen lay in his delirium was Hanen himself, not on his feet and at a considerably more rapid velocity than a man would naturally move. Only the opposite wall stopped his advance and he lay there dazed as Klavicus followed after, mercifully no larger than man-sized and not on fire but still with a dangerous look in his golden eyes. “I have neither the space nor the time for a mewling coward,” he snarled as he stood over the bard. “Find your feet in this world or crawl out into the desert and die.”

Mahlanda expected Hanen to cower or cringe, but instead he rubbed the back of his neck and looked up at the daimon thoughtfully. “Maybe you are Klavicus.”

The Preserver picked him up by the front of his shirt. “Say ‘maybe’ one more time and I’ll throw you through one of these windows.” But he set him on his feet.