Avenger

NINETEEN

27 Alturiak, the Year of Deep Water Drifting (1480 DR)

For days, Geran, Hamil, and Sarth rode as hard as they dared to push their mounts, hoping to outdistance any possible pursuit from Myth Drannor. Geran didn’t believe that the coronal’s warriors had any special reason to pursue them with a vengeance, but he couldn’t rule out the possibility that the Disarnnyls would make every effort to keep him from escaping justice. If he allowed himself to be recaptured, there would be no leniency from the coronal-of that much he was certain. Ilsevele might have been able to arrange matters with the Council of Justice given time, but he couldn’t see that she’d entertain any pleas for understanding after he’d gone to such lengths to flee her authority. Deciding that it would be better all around to leave Myth Drannor as swiftly as possible, Geran urged his companions to the best speed they could make, hoping that no guard companies were in position to intercept them.

Early on the morning of the third day, they emerged from the great forest of Cormanthor into the open lands along the southeast coast of the Moonsea. These lands had been settled long before, but large parts of the countryside had fallen into ruin in the last century, pillaged in wars between the surrounding cities and finally swept clean by the Spellplague. Sarth reined in and rubbed at his back with a small groan. He was not a good rider, and the last few days had been a sore trial for him. “I would not have believed it possible, but we seem to have gained our freedom,” the tiefling said. “Which way now? To Hillsfar?”

Geran brought his horse to a halt alongside Sarth. “I’m afraid we can’t slow down yet. Myth Drannor might not claim any land beyond the forest, but that doesn’t mean her warriors wouldn’t pursue us beyond the woods.”

“Do you really think they’re chasing us?” Hamil asked.

“The coronal doesn’t have a choice. She has to show that she won’t play favorites, and letting us go when she might still catch us wouldn’t look good at all. We might have fooled them by coming through the woods, but I think it’s wisest to assume they’re close behind us until we know they aren’t.” Geran glanced at the dark line of forest behind them.

“So, as Sarth said a moment ago: Which way now?” Hamil asked. “Do we head for Hillsfar anyway, or do we ride around the Moonsea and strike for Phlan?”

Geran thought it over for a moment. “Hillsfar. But let’s stay off the roads and stick to the countryside as much as we can.”

They continued on their way, heading northeast across the empty countryside. Keeping the dark edge of the forest a few miles to their right, they rode through long-abandoned fields divided by crumbling stone walls and hedgerows, and a little before noon the next day they spotted the walls and rooftops of Hillsfar. Geran allowed himself a long sigh of relief; Myth Drannor’s agents might soon learn where they’d gone, but taking them into custody would be another matter altogether-the city’s authorities would never permit the elves to arrest fugitives who hadn’t broken any Hillsfarian laws. Geran and his friends went to the city’s docks and booked passage on the first vessel bound for Thentia, then returned to the city’s mercantile district to sell their mounts and await their sailing in a comfortable inn.

With a day and a half to pass before their ship sailed, Sarth retired to one of the inn’s private rooms and made a careful study of their Infiernadex fragment, something he’d been unable to do during their brief rests during the flight from Myth Drannor. Geran left him to it for several hours, busying himself with several minor errands around the city. When he returned, he found Sarth busily copying the fragment to fresh parchment.

“What have you learned from Aesperus’s spellbook?” Geran asked him.

“First of all, it is not Aesperus’s spellbook,” Sarth answered. “Rather, it is an older spellbook that was in Aesperus’s possession for a time. Much of what I know about the complete manuscript comes from the writings of mages who had an opportunity to examine the tome before it fell into Aesperus’s hands. That is what led me to Hulburg in the first place. In any event, the Infiernadex is the work of one of my forebears from ancient Narfell, recording several rituals and spells not found anywhere else. Many of those are diabolic in nature, and too dangerous even for one of my blood to wield safely. Others are simply rare and powerful; those I hoped to master.” The tiefling managed an awkward shrug. “I have spent most of my life in search of greater command over the arcane arts. Perhaps I have not given much thought to the question of what I intend to do with such power once I hold it.”

“You’ve chosen to save Hulburg at least two or three times in the last few months. That seems a good use for the power you wield.” Geran looked over Sarth’s shoulder at the cryptic pages spread out before him. They meant little to him; he’d been schooled in the elven tradition of magic, and the Infiernadex was based on another tradition, written in another language altogether. Even if he could read it, it might not make much sense to him. “Can we safely give it to Aesperus?” he asked.

The sorcerer looked down at the old parchment, thinking. “Yes,” he finally said. “I am not happy about the prospect, but I’ve learned all I can from this. What does it matter if this knowledge is perilous? Aesperus is a perilous power already. But I must warn you, Geran, that the day may come when the King in Copper must be dealt with.”

“I hear you,” Geran replied. He set a hand on Sarth’s shoulder, and left the sorcerer to finish copying the manuscript.

They sailed for Thentia aboard an Iron Ring tradesman the next day. The crossing was much easier than their last one; the westerly winds were on their quarter instead of their bow, which made for a swifter and easier trip. On the evening of the 6th of Ches, the ninth day since their escape from the coronal’s tower, Geran and his companions set foot in Thentia again. For the first time in a tenday he allowed himself to believe that he wouldn’t spend the next decade or two as a prisoner in Myth Drannor, and began to breathe easier.

They hired a coach to drive them out to Lasparhall, and arrived in the Hulmasters’ manor an hour after sunset. Geran was pleased to see that things looked much as he’d left them. He allowed the guards at the door to relieve him and his friends of their sparse baggage, and went straight to the family’s private hall to see if anything remained of dinner. While the three of them helped themselves to a late supper laid out by the kitchen staff, Kara Hulmaster appeared in the doorway. The Hulmaster captain threw off the heavy mantle she wore over her armored shoulders and hurried in to catch Geran in a bone-cracking hug. “Geran!” she cried. “I was worried about you. Where have you been?”

“Well met, Kara,” he replied. “We landed in Thentia a couple of hours ago. As for the delay, well, I’m afraid we ran into some difficulties in Myth Drannor.”

“We managed to get pinched, he means,” Hamil said. “We spent a charming seven days as guests of the coronal before escaping her jail and absenting ourselves from the realm as quickly as possible. Fortunately Geran had friends willing to help spring us free, or we’d be there still.”

“I should have known that you’d find trouble wherever you went.” Kara released Geran and moved on to Hamil, leaning down to give him a warm embrace before moving on to take Sarth’s hand. “Did you find the tome that Aesperus asked you to retrieve?”

The swordmage nodded. “Yes, we’ve got it.” He glanced out the window; the evening was already well on. “I’ll go out on the Highfells and summon him tomorrow night. We’re tired from days of hard travel, and I want to be well rested and clearheaded when we speak again, just in case there’s some misunderstanding. But right now I need a hot meal and a few hours of sleep in a warm bed before I do anything else.”

“That much I think we can provide,” Kara said with a smile. “It’s good to have you back, Geran. All three of you, in truth. It seems that every time I turn around there’s something else that needs the Hulmaster’s attention, and while you’ve been away, that’s been me.”

“How are things proceeding here?” Geran asked. “Any more trouble with spies or assassins from Hulburg?”

“Some trouble with spies. We’ve caught a few of Rhovann’s creatures lurking about. And I suspect that some of the drivers and provisioners in Thentia are paid to report on what they see of our encampment or hear from our soldiers.”

That didn’t surprise Geran. There were simply too many keen-eyed folk in and around Thentia who wouldn’t think twice about taking a few coins to tell stories. He hadn’t really imagined that he’d be able to keep all their preparations secret from Marstel and Rhovann. “Will we be ready to march when we planned?”

Kara hesitated. “We’re as ready as we can be, I suppose. Another month of drilling and stockpiling supplies wouldn’t hurt, but it would sorely stretch our treasury and we’d lose some of our sellswords. But there’s troubling news from Hulburg. I’ve heard reports that Marstel’s struck a bargain with the Warlock Knights. He’s granted the Vaasans a trading concession, and it’s rumored that strong companies of armsmen will soon arrive from Vaasa to reinforce his Council Guard.”

“The Warlock Knights?” Geran muttered. The Vaasans had allied themselves with the Bloody Skull orcs a year previous. He’d briefly dueled a Warlock Knight in the Battle of Lendon’s Dike, trading blows with the human sorcerer before the tide of battle had swept them apart. And there’d been plenty of stories of Vaasan magic playing a crucial role in the orcs’ attack on the town of Glister at the northern margin of Thar. The Warlock Knights had disappeared quickly enough once the threat of the Bloody Skull horde had been smashed, and as far as Geran knew they’d played no role in the Black Moon troubles or the Cinderfist unrest … or had they? Had his traitorous cousin Sergen sold out Hulburg to the Vaasans after he’d failed to sell out the town to the merchant lords of Melvaunt and Mulmaster? “What’s their concern in this?”

“If you’re asking for my guess, I’d say that they put the Cyricists up to their mischief with the Cinderfists,” Kara answered. “Before we were driven out of Hulburg, I’d turned up a few hints that the priests of Cyric were paid in Vaasan gold, but I never caught them at it. The Black Moon troubles drew all of my attention. What exactly they hope to gain from meddling in Hulburg, I couldn’t say.”

“How many Vaasans are coming? When will they arrive?”

Kara shook her head. “I’ve got scouts ringing the Highfells and the moorland now. They haven’t run across any Vaasans yet, but then again, the Galena passes are still snowed in and likely to stay that way for another month or more. I doubt we’ll see any large numbers of Vaasan soldiers in Hulburg before the end of Tarsakh, at the earliest. Even then, it would be a hard crossing.”

“That is another argument for striking at Marstel soon,” Sarth observed. “It would seem better to attack before Vaasan soldiers reinforce the Council Guard.”

As if we needed another reason to move with haste, Geran reflected. He didn’t like the idea of the Vaasans choosing sides, but he couldn’t see that it changed the essential facts of their situation. Every day that went by with Marstel in control of Hulburg was another day for the usurper to tighten his grip on his stolen realm, another day for Rhovann to devise arcane defenses and create deadly new soldiers, another day for the foreign mercenaries and brigands to plunder the honest folk of the town. “We should see to it that High Lord Vasil knows what we know about the Vaasan meddling,” he mused aloud. “Thentia won’t want to see another power gaining influence in Hulburg. It might buy us some additional help.”

“I’ll have Master Quillon speak to his counterpart in the high lord’s palace,” Kara said. “Now, for more important matters … what in the world did you do to end up in the coronal’s dungeons? Other than you, Geran, of course I expected you to be imprisoned. I want to know how Hamil and Sarth got on Ilsevele’s bad side.”

“You expected me to be imprisoned?” Geran protested, but he was too late; Hamil was already embarking on the story of their brief sojourn in Myth Drannor. Instead, he shrugged and sat back to listen to his friend’s version of the tale, which featured more than a few colorful exaggerations.

That night, he slept soundly for what seemed the first time in months. The following day was bright, clear, cold, and windy-a typically raw early spring day in the Moonsea. Geran spent it doing his best to catch up with scores of important details and decisions that Kara and her officers had settled on during his absence, but ultimately he simply concurred with everything that had been done already. He saw no reason to second-guess a decision arrived at over hours of dedicated thought with his own quick impressions, and he knew that his next task waited for him on the Highfells after sundown.

Late in the day, Geran took an hour to refresh his wardings and arm himself with the most powerful spells he could manage. A little before sunset, he rode up to the Highfells again, with Kara, Sarth, and Hamil at his side. The howling wind drove the moorgrass first one way and then another, an invisible serpent writhing and hissing its way across the landscape. The four riders huddled closer within their heavy cloaks against the biting cold and the sheer wild loneliness of the empty hills.

An hour’s ride brought them to the line of barrows on the broad hillside where they’d met the King in Copper before. “This is the spot,” Hamil said. He shivered. “The sooner this is over, the better.”

Geran nodded. He closed his eyes, searching for the words to summon the lich, and began to recite:

Dark the night and cold the stone,

Silent grave and barren throne,

Empty halls, a crown of mold,

Deathless dreams the king of old.

Long the dark and brief the light,

An hour’s play, and then the night,

Beauty fails and all grows cold,

Still awaits the king of old.

The wind grew stronger as he spoke, seeming to snatch away his words even before he spoke them. A chill began to gather in his bones, and he shivered; he could feel the King in Copper’s presence. In the barrow’s entrance, windblown mist began to stream and sink into the low doorway, pooling like water poured into a basin. From the gathering mist, the tattered robes and tarnished crown of Aesperus took form. An evil green light kindled in his black eye sockets, and his yellowed bones with their copper rivets took shape within his robes of black. Despite himself, Geran retreated a couple of steps; Sarth and Hamil did likewise.

“Have you brought the rest of my book?” the lich hissed.

“Aye, I have it,” Geran replied. “I wouldn’t have summoned you without completing my part of our bargain, King Aesperus.” He drew the scroll tube from Myth Drannor from under his cloak, opened it, and carefully drew out the old parchment within. The wind, which had been howling with such bitter fury only a few moments before, had fallen still with the lich’s arrival. With a conscious act of will he forced his feet forward and extended the pages to the lich.

Aesperus took them with surprising care, immediately turning his attention to the parchment in his bony hands. His jawbone worked silently as he read, examining the prize. “Ahhh, so I thought,” he murmured to himself. “At last the ritual can be completed …” The lich’s voice trailed off as he eagerly read on, studying the ancient pages with his eyes burning brighter.

Hamil gave Geran a sharp glance. Remind him that we’re waiting? the halfling suggested.

“Is that everything you expected us to find, King Aesperus?” Geran asked.

The lich ignored him, reading further. Geran felt his companions’ eyes on him, but he forced himself to keep his peace a little longer. He did not want to annoy the King in Copper, of that much he was certain. He waited until the lich raised one hand and began to chant in his horrible, cracking voice. For a moment Geran feared that Aesperus was simply going to enact whatever spell had been interrupted four hundred years earlier, or teleport away without another word … but instead the pages glowed briefly with a violet light, and vanished. “The manuscript is complete,” Aesperus finally said. “I have sent the pages you brought me to rejoin the tome from which they were torn. I have much study ahead of me now.”

Geran took a breath. “How do I defeat Rhovann’s runehelms?”

“With the proper weapon, of course.” The lich stretched his hand over the bare ground and rasped the words of another spell. There was a burst of mist from the spot beneath his hand. Then a black, dull shape seemed to rise up out of the ground in answer to his magic. It was a sword, long and straight, a double-edged broadsword with a blade of some unreflective black metal Geran did not recognize. Its hilt was wrapped in dark, pebbled leather, and its pommel was a flat disk in which small glyphs were inscribed around a large onyx gemstone. “This is Umbrach Nyth, the Sword of Shadows, forged of shadow to dispel shadow. Long ago I enchanted this black steel for your ancestor Rivan. He later attempted to slay me with it, the ungrateful fool. You will find that it carries a bitter sting for creatures infused with the power of shadow-and most others, for that matter. The runehelms will not ignore its bite. Take its hilt.”

Trying not to flinch, Geran reached for the sword’s hilt and drew it clear of the ground. It was lighter than it looked, not much heavier than his Myth Drannan backsword, and it was balanced quite well. He could sense the potent enchantments on the weapon as he brandished it. A matching scabbard appeared from the ground; he took it in his left hand, and sheathed the dark blade. “I can believe that this would be a better weapon against Rhovann’s constructs than my own sword,” he said, “but am I supposed to personally defeat each and every one of them? There may be hundreds by now.”

“You forget what I told you about Rhovann’s enchantment the last time we spoke,” Aesperus replied. “A single animus unites the runehelms, equally present in each one of the constructs. A pearl of shadow lies within each of Rhovann’s creatures, linking it to its fellows-and to a single great pearl or stone, a master sphere from which the others are drawn. Destroy the master stone, and all of the shadow pearls created from it will be destroyed. Without their shadow pearls, the runehelms are bereft of intelligence, purpose, resilience … they are little more than unthinking automatons. Your warriors will easily sweep them aside.”

“Where would we find this master stone?” Hamil asked.

“It almost certainly lies in the Plane of Shadow. It must constantly draw in the energies of the Shadowfell to empower the runehelms, especially if this elf mage is creating many lesser pearls from it.” Aesperus shrugged, and the copper bands of his shoulder blades creaked in protest. “Unless Rhovann is a great fool, it will be well guarded. Look for a place of strength in the Plane of Shadow’s analogue of Hulburg. The runehelms will be stronger the nearer they are to the master stone, so he will not scatter them far.”

“We’ve only seen the runehelms in Hulburg itself, so it seems likely that Rhovann keeps the stone somewhere in or near Griffonwatch,” Sarth observed in a low voice.

Geran frowned, digesting Aesperus’s advice. He had little personal experience of the planes of existence that echoed Faerun’s mundane landscape, but he’d studied them in his arcane training. The Shadowfell was a sort of dark twin or duplicate of the daylight world, an echo of reality that was only a step away-if one knew the proper magic to employ. With a little study, he thought he could manage it when the time came. But there was something else that Aesperus had said that caught his interest. “King Aesperus, how far can the runehelms go from their master stone?”

The lich considered the question for a moment. “It depends on the nuances of their maker’s skill and the power he draws upon,” he finally said. “I doubt that the minions of Rhovann can go more than a few leagues from the master stone without suffering degradation.”

A few leagues … Geran’s eyes narrowed in thought. That meant the runehelms would serve as a potent defense for the city proper, but they couldn’t contest the Shieldsworn march. The beginnings of a plan took shape in his mind. “Does Rhovann have any other defenses?” he asked. “Besides the runehelms, how else could he strike at us with his magic?”

“Such knowledge was not part of our bargain.” Aesperus laughed softly, his voice rasping in his empty throat. “You asked for the weapon and understanding necessary to defeat your enemy’s magical constructs, and my promise to stay my hand against Hulburg. These I have given you. Do not presume upon my generosity, Geran Hulmaster. I find your circumstances interesting … but I care little whether you succeed or fail. In the end, your struggles are meaningless. All come to my realm in time.” The lich folded his arms across his empty chest, and the wind began to blow again, a wild gale that tore at their cloaks and drove the four of them back several steps. Aesperus laughed scornfully, his ragged robes flapping around his yellowed bones, before he seemed to erode away like sand driven before a storm. In a moment the oppressive dread of the lich’s presence was gone, leaving nothing but the bitter wind howling over the dark hillside.

“I take it our discussion is complete!” Hamil said, almost shouting to make his voice heard above the wind.

“So it would seem,” Geran replied. He looked down at the black sword in his hands, and shivered with more than cold. “No prophecies of doom no matter what we do this time. I take that as a good sign.”

“Does this change your plans at all?” Kara asked.

“Yes. It sounds like I’ll need to slip into Hulburg and shift into the shadow to deal with Rhovann’s monsters,” Geran replied. He thought for a long time, ignoring the bitterly cold wind as it arose again and whipped his cloak behind him. “I wanted an answer to the runehelms before we risked meeting the Council Guard in open battle. Now I’m not so sure. If the creatures can’t go very far from their base, we could bring the Shieldsworn to the outskirts of Hulburg before we’d have to worry about the creatures. In fact … I’m sorely tempted to see if we can lure them out, and then cut their strings with one swift stroke.”

“There’s something else,” Hamil pointed out. “The threat posed by the Shieldsworn might serve as an excellent distraction for any skullduggery in Rhovann’s shadow redoubt, wherever it is.”

Despite the wild wind and the bonechilling cold, Geran smiled. It could work … it would work, if he could arrange it. “Come on, let’s be on our way,” he said to his friends. “This is no good place to linger, and we’ve got a lot to do in the next few days.”