Blackstaff

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Feast of the Moon, the Year of Lightning Storms (1374 DR)

Sandrew the Wise still could hardly believe his eyes and ears. All around him, the ground steamed and smoked, unleashing belches of olive-green smoke and ground fog. At various times, lightning bolts scored the ground and set it alight, though there was little heat from the flames. Sandrew had been praying for understanding of the previous day's encounters with Khelben when light filled his private chapel.

Oghma's glowing scroll appeared before him, its fore-edge shaped like a stairwell. Without hesitation, Sandrew answered the call of the Lorebinder and stepped boldly onto the scroll. Within him, Oghma left a simple message: You are called. Be my hands to mold old magic and lore into a new future. Sandrew continued his ascent and found himself joined on the stairs by Shaynara Tullaster of Candlekeep and Loremaster Cadathlyn of the House of Many Tomes, two other high-ranking priests among the Binder's faithful. Once all three greeted each other, they reached the end of their journey. Sandrew the Wise stepped onto the High Moor from the curving menhirs of Malavar's Grasp. Foremost among the people before him were the Blackstaff-restored and whole, though oddly wearing the green gem he had given his apprentice-and Raegar Stoneblade. Soon after, Sandrew accepted a golden circlet and donned it, fervently wishing his friend could accompany him. When he arrived atop a small rise, he looked around to find Raegar and the black tressym-which resembled Khelben, strangely- clambering or flying up the hill toward him. "Good to have you near, Raegar," Sandrew called. "Oghma wishes witnesses to this historic event." As he spoke, a lightning bolt struck the ground very near the three of them. An explosion of choking, poisonous smoke engulfed Raegar and the tressym, knocking them down. Sandrew slid down the gravel embankment and pulled them away from a vent of noxious gas.

Neither seemed to be breathing and both had a sickly olive pallor to them, their eyes a blackish-green. "Lorebinder, allow these beings to learn more yet. Do not close their books. Erase their names from the scrolls of the dying." Sandrew prayed earnestly, pouring healing energies into both of them at once. Their eyes returned to normal, as did their skin, and both revived, only to spend their waking moments vomiting black and green bile from their lungs and throats. Nameless thanked Sandrew by rubbing his head into his palm, while Raegar clapped his hands on the priest's shoulders in thanks. "I don't know if I'm worthy of this much of the Binder's attentions and energies within one tenday, sir." Raegar demurred, but Sandrew dismissed that notion by responding, "You may yet find your service increasing in the church, young Stoneblade." The trio climbed back atop the hillock, only to find the landscape around them filling with the horrid stench and deadly gases. All around, poisons cloaked the High Moor as the Killing Storms rose from slumber. "I thought we had it bad, but it looks worse at the center there." Raegar pointed at Malavar's Grasp, over a mile away and only visible as a tall pillar of flame and lightning brighter than the other flames and lightning bolts around it. The Second Circle had just become twelve pillars of lightning, and their storm ignited the ground scrub near them. They saw the gold flames of the Second Circle engulf the areas and grow outward, like a wildfire across the hills. "I hope Tsarra's all right in there,"

Raegar muttered. Nameless trilled in agreement, with just enough doubt to make the rogue worry. Sandrew said, "His hand is in this, as well as other gods, and we may have some amendments to the Coda soon, Lorebinder willing." Nameless swooped near one of the small silver ground fires and landed. He sniffed at them, purred curiously then leaped into the flames. Raegar and Sandrew leaped forward too late to stop him, and he barreled into them, his fur wreathed in fire. Despite Raegar's efforts to keep him at bay, the tressym batted both men with his wings. He tagged Raegar's head and the small of his back, leaving small silver flames burning on the man. As Nameless batted at Sandrew's robes as well, the flames coalesced into an aura of light flames around Raegar and eventually Sandrew. The priest gasped as the fire partly brought him into the links among the central circles.

"It's all right, Raegar. The golden fires unleash the poisons, while the silver fires protect us from them. The toxins are drawn to the center." Sandrew spoke aloud, as he doubted Raegar could hear the magical voices without his circlet. "They make of the lich a forbidden binding-a repository for all things foul, vile, and corrupted."

Sandrew marveled at the ideas and thoughts in his head, shared from those already in the working. "Just as we might have once bound a corrupt man in with his own lies or books of evil intent and set it afire… The Frostrune will be forced to take on the blight that was the Killing Storm and the venoms it left behind." "Fascinating, but what am I supposed to do?" Raegar asked, while Nameless enjoyed setting small bushes aflame and fanning the flames yet higher with his wings. "Or him, for that matter?" "I think your role here is to bear witness," Sandrew replied. "It's too early for me to say. When the full flames reach us, I should know more. The circlet lets me communicate with the score and three others of the Third Circle. They know through us of the healing silver fires." It took just under two bells' time by Raegar's guess before the flames had reached Sandrew and his fellows of the Third Circle. As the flames roared over and past them, the circlets they all bore linked them mind to mind and shared with them the visions and intents of the core Circles. The Central Caster sparks the flame. The First Circle lights the pyre. The Second Circle uses that flame to restore warmth and light. The Third Circle uses the flame to awaken understanding. Sandrew found himself more fully linked in mind with others, sensing they stood in a vast circle around Malavar's Grasp. All steeled themselves to be worthy of the work and the Art, and all of them heard the words when they rang in their ears. Your knowledge educates the restored. What you know shall help all within the risen land discover a world they long left behind. Share with us your wisdom, and learn ye will so much more in the process. Children we all are before the Weave, but share with the Weave and we shall be siblings all. For unknown hours every member of the Third Circle stood, their circlets glowing white with magic. From the surrounding flames, Raegar got a reassuring feeling that all was working as planned and that the flames were restoring the moor to its original state, pumping life across the High Moor and burning off the venoms long dormant in it. He had never been exposed to so much magic before, but he barely felt a thing. In fact, he realized that the pounding headaches teleporting usually gave him were gone. He even watched as an old scar across his knuckles began to fade. Nameless settled to the ground. He purred and moved his head as if Tsarra were there stroking his neck. Raegar couldn't understand him, but the tressym certainly sounded happy.

Yaereene stood alone and ill at ease atop a tall spindle of rock.

In a deep trench below and around her were a large number of sharn that hewed away at the rock. Miles to the west, she saw the plumes of energy rising into the sky-the central casting. "So I am to be of the Fourth Circles… what shall our tasks be?" Behind her was the vast Highstar Lake, a sight she'd not seen in over a century. She clutched the gold seal given to her by Khelben as she looked at the golden ring on her finger. She knew this was a ring for an acolyte of Windsong Tower in fabled Myth Drannor. Were the secrets in play once held by that fabled school of magic? Her reverie ended as three others glinted into view around her, forming a circle. The chalk-pale Nain Keenwhistler she knew, and she nodded at him, raising an eyebrow at the blackstaff he carried. Of course she recognized her cousin Kroloth Ilbaereth, who bore her family's dead moonblade at his right hip, and her adolescent maiden niece Ynshael Ilbaereth, whose talents for magic outstripped her own. "So this is how it is to be-each family and its sacrifice standing with an agent and a seal of the Blackstaff's making? All this in a minor circle leagues away from the center? I smell deception," Kroloth grumbled. Nain, his voice never more than a loud whisper, replied, "You sense it from yourself, young Ilbaereth.

Would you trust this if Malchor Harpell stood here rather than me?" "I would," Kroloth said, "for he is a friend of Neverwinter's elves. He and I have spilt blood together and shared honors. I trust him, yet I know not you. I am here as honor demands and at my cousin's request.

You shall pay for that slight, pallid-" Yaereene interrupted him. "No he shall not, Kroloth. He plays a role just as we do, and he too has reason to mistrust the Blackstaff. Yet there he stands, ready as called. Tel'quessir dare do no less." As she spoke, light sparks rose between the seal she carried and the rings on everyone's fingers.

"Place the seal at the center of our stone pedestal here, osu'nys,"

Ynshael said. "I think I see the pattern that is to come, both from my studies and from the ring… and this." She stooped and picked up a rusted and shattered sword, its pommel gone as was much of the blade's point. It too crackled with energy due to the proximity with the rings. "Are you sure we're not supposed to wait for those fires to reach us?" Nain asked. "Khelben's workings tend to be rather stingy where it comes to bending the rules." The three elves all said simultaneously, "Magic happens in its own time, and it is never anything but the right time." They smiled, and Yaereene placed the thick gold seal on the ground. A light shimmer made each of their rings glow and chime, sending shivers down everyone's spines. Ideas lit inside their eyes, and they relaxed into their individual work.

Ynshael and Nain surprised each other by saying, "The staff goes next…" Nain raised the blackstaff and stabbed it down hard upon the gold seal. The staff suffused with light and energy, and magical power lanced upward. "Now, the blade," he whispered. Kroloth unhooked the moonblade-still scabbarded-and looked at his cousins. "For the People." Nain, Yaereene, and Ynshael corrected him, "For all people."

For the first time in nearly two thousand years, an Ilbaereth drew the family's moonblade from its scabbard, its dead blade cracked instead of rune-marked. Kroloth swung the sword toward the glowing blackstaff, but energy erupted when his blade hit the surrounding light. The sword and the scabbard were wrenched from his grasp, and both hit the blackstaff from the top, shattering it into four long pieces. Each piece fell as a shower of energy and engulfed each of the four assembled there. The blade seated itself in the scabbard magically, and both buried themselves hilt deep into the center of the stone pillar on which they stood. Magic coruscated from the entire circle, and Ynshael yelled above the roar of ancient power, "Once I add this to the pillar, we must all grasp hands!" Ynshael picked up the rusty shard, kissed it once, and tossed it into the conflagration. She grabbed for Nain's and Kroloth's hands as thunder slammed into them all and the powers boomed both above and below. The power among them was contained by their hands, and they all watched as some magic rose from the shards of the blackstaff and focused into a tiny gem. The gem swirled about in the maelstrom of magic then quickly flew off to the west, faster than a rage of dragons. The casters knew that gem had something to do with the central casting, but their rings told them to concentrate on the pommel of the blade. As they focused on the embedded sword, the earth shifted beneath them. They kept their balance, as where they stood was stable and rising. All four knew the legends of Cormanthor and recognized it as a variant ritual to summon a tower beneath them. They were only barely aware that the shift had dislodged the stone walls that made their location a peninsula. The waters of the lake were no longer held back, and it began flooding the trenches carved around the pillar where the quartet stood. Nain smiled as Highstar Lake swelled into a new lakebed. Earlier, he had asked Malchor what work Khelben had him doing with Sememmon and Ashemmi, and the elder wizard grumbled, "I've had to build a lake bed without letting a lake into it. Hard enough working with that former Zhent, no matter what Khelben says, but harder still as he and his mistress challenge each other with creative uses for earthquake spells…"

Nain saw their work at hand as his vantage point rose. He guessed that by the time they were done with the tor and the waters settled, Highstar Lake would be at least a mile wider and longer, a tower in its midst left inaccessible by land. The magic merged with the casters as the tor grew. They drew apart as the tower grew wider, but stony duplicates of their own forms linked hands with them as the width of their circle grew. By the time they stopped rising, twenty figures linked hands atop the tor. The merlons and crenelations looked like five duplicates of each caster forming the upper battlements here.

Kroloth had a personal vision. He knew that his destiny would be to command this outpost that rose with them. In his mind, he saw the moonblade purified into a crystalline broadsword. He knew it and its eight brethren sacrificed at the other eight Sentinel Tor sites would be called hope-blades. Kroloth beamed-it was his duty to wield the hopeblade of Tor Arsuor as its commander. Ynshael had never before left the safety of Neverwinter Woods. She responded to Yaereene's call when it intertwined with a vision from the Moonbow herself. She gasped as she realized the mate for whom she had prayed to Sehanine stood near. He was a human and had shining dark hair long past his shoulders, and hair on his face and chest. His build was elfin-whip-strong and wiry, but not as muscular as some humans.

Ynshael realized that she had seen his eyes-a pale green like the snow lettuce growing in her garden-and she found those same eyes in Nain Keenwhistler. Stranger still, Ynshael saw what Nain didn't seem to notice-his restoration. His hair grew within the fiery magic, darkening to a chestnut brown and becoming more lustrous. Nain's scraggly beard thickened and lengthened down to his chest, and all that darkened as well. The only white hair he kept were twin stripes of white along his temples and in his beard where sideburns would be in a clean-shaven man. Ynshael smiled and gripped his hand harder. Her patron goddess had shown her a path, and while she never expected to live beyond Neverwinter's boughs, she believed her home to be with that man. The both of them, often underestimated by themselves and others, would come together to fulfill destinies they dared never dream of before.