Blackstaff Tower

CHAPTER 17

11 Nightal, Year of the Ageless One (1479 DR)

Osco stepped off the staitwell and gaped. Whatever he'd expected to find inside Blackstaff Tower, it wasn't this. He stood at the top of a staircase opening into a large ten-sided antechamber, corridors leading off in eight different directions, magical green torches flickering every twenty paces or so. The only other feature was a stone statue of a tearing griffon directly opposite the stairwell against a blank wall. At the center of the room stood Vajra, her back to him.

"Vajra?" Osco asked. "Where'd everybody go?" Vajra turned to him, a lone tear running down her cheek. While she looked in his general direction, Osco knew her eyes didn't focus on him. "I'm sorry, friends, for what we now must endure. I thought it safe, but the tower seeks to prove us worthy to walk its halls." Her form shimmered as she sobbed. "I'm sorry… and may Tymora bless you with good luck." As her voice wavered, she faded into a wispy miasma of green mists, leaving Osco alone to contemplate which direction to follow.

"Parharding wizards," Osco swore under his breath. "So… we do this by the numbers, as if it's any other place we're casing." Osco started on the first corridor on his left, scanning carefully for any traps or hidden dangers. After he'd gone thirty paces, he discovered doors on alternating sides of the corridor every six paces beyond the first green torch. Scanning down the seemingly endless corridor, he noted seventeen doors before he stopped counting.

Shaking his head, Osco returned to the original antechamber. He chose the next corridor that arced off in a slightly different direction, and repeated the whole process. His eyebrows rose when he found the exact same dimensions and features in that corridor. He looked, but did not spot any of his own footprints, as these corridors were suspiciously devoid of dust. "Hmph. So much for the easy way of tracking."

Curious, Osco took out a small hunk of chalk and marked the first door on his left with an O beneath the lock. He retraced his steps back to the antechamber and chose the third corridor. All the details remained the same as the first two, though Osco growled when he approached the first door to find no mark on it. Scratching his head and scanning further down the corridor, he spotted his mark on the third door on the right. "So, you want to play games with me, wizard? Send me down the same corridor and shuffle the doors? Fine." Osco rubbed his hands together, then unbuckled his lock picks from the back of his belt, and said, "Let's see what's behind our marked door, then."

The lock appeared clean, unlocked, and without any traps, so Osco opened the door to find himself in a small room, a cot against one wall, a rug at the room's center, and a set of shelves holding a handful of books. Atop the shelves was a statue of a cat made of ivory with sapphires for eyes. Osco's own eyes widened, and he carefully scanned for traps around it before picking it up and slipping it into his backpack. He muttered, "Well, after all, the biglings always take from the hin, so we're due a donation on our parts."

Osco walked around the room, tapping the stones in the corners.

He found no hidden doors there. He flipped up the edge of the carpet to expose the trapdoor he assumed would be there. It was.

Osco opened the trapdoor, only to find his view blocked by a cloud of greenish mist. He poked a dagger through and stirred it around, making the mists swirl but not dissipate. He dipped the dagger lower and lower, and his hand felt no shift in temperature or other danger. He leaned his head in, but mists blocked his sight. He whistled low. From the sound he could tell he was in a larger room than before, but could not tell how big. He whispered a prayer to Brandobaris, the halfling god and Master of Stealth, and dropped a copper, counting the ticks before he heard it stop. When it hit a solid surface, Osco knew it had struck stone and it wasn't more than a typical corridor's height. He rolled himself through the trapdoor, holding onto the edge and dangling uncertainly within the mists. Another whispered prayer of, "Brandobaris, may the risks I undertake in your name lead only to great rewards," and Osco let go. He dropped into the mist, and his stomach lurched when he realized he'd dropped farther than expected; Just as he started to shout in surprise, he landed outside the mists Back in the original antechamber.

"Parharding wizards," Osco grumbled, and he stalked into the fourth corridor.

Osco wiped the sweat from his face, then rubbed his hands dry again on his cloak. This lock was tricky, and it was his third attempt at picking it. He'd spent what he thought was at least two bells opening doors, finding hidden doors, and picking the locks on chests. The locks were getting more and more difficult, but Osco liked the challenge almost as much as he liked what he'd filched so far from those locked chests and secret rooms. His pockets, pouches, and bag all bulged with easily fenced goods and gems he'd found along the way. What drove him to distraction was his constant return to that ten-sided room.

Osco had found this room through a series of six locked and hidden doors, though they all shared similar locks, which made them progressively easier to pick. In fact, he actually found that when he looked closely, the lock itself started showing scratches from his own picks before he even started working on the locks.

"Hmph." Osco smiled. "Any advantage given is one step up a hin needs to get eye-to-eye with the biglings, who take advantage of us." With the latest lock picked, Osco pushed the door open into the largest chamber he'd yet found.

Green flames flared from the tops of crystalline pillars almost twice his height, six of them placed around the octagonal room in front of each wall save the one through which he came and the wall opposite that entry. The chamber held two statues, and Osco smiled when he realized this seemed to be a chamber honoring two halflings, rather than the usual human-scaled statuary. The bases were at least as tall as the statues themselves, their plaques identifying the statues. He walked up to the marble statue on the right and gasped. The figure was clad in wizard's robes cut for a slender halfling, and he held a staff also cut to his size, the staff crowned by the carving of a lion's head. He'd seen paintings and drawings of this broadly smiling hin, but never such a lifelike representation, complete down to a dimpled chin still carried by his familial line. Osco's hand rubbed his own dimple as he read the tall base of the statue: Pikar Salibuck. Friend of Two Blackstaffs. Tamer of the Three Fires ofHarlard. Vanquisher of Huillethar the Devourer. He Stood Tall in Art and Life.

"Thank the gods the Blackstaff remembered to honor me great-grandfather," Osco said. "Too bad we only get some backwater chamber buried deep away from everything else. No respect, really."

He turned on his heel and gasped as he saw movement. The marble statue he now faced was far less friendly. A dark scowling grimace seemed to darken the marble from which it was carved. Here was a halfling with long hair bound behind his head and an eye patch over his left eye. He wore older-cut leathers and a cloak and a hin-sized scimitar at his belt. Osco's eyes widened when he realized the statue's details even included the bulges and hints of daggers in both boots and sleeves. Around the statue's feet were bulging stone bags of carved coins, a pile of gems, and, oddly, a penguin. The living Osco read the inscribed plaque as the first line recarved itself anew with two words added to the end of that line. It now read: Osco Salibuck the Elder. Agent of Khelben. Ampratines' Friend. Infiltrator Extraordinaire. No Fear Hindered Hin.

Osco groaned at the pun on the plaque, but smiled as he liked the idea that two members of his family-including the man after whom he was named-were remembered by the bigling wizard everyone remembered. As he stared up at the statue's dimple, his hands fell against the bulging pouches on his belt, and he paused. He looked at both statues and how they had been remembered.

"Stlaern it!" Osco yelled, and he began pulling all his treasures out of his bags, pockets, and pouches. He threw them on the ground in front of the one-eyed halfling's statue, which made the honor plate glow green. From out of the plaque stepped an identical phantom image from its statue. The ghost of Osco Salibuck the Elder dusted its arms off and smiled at the very startled Osco, exposing thtee missing teeth with his grin.

Osco fell back in shock, and then scrabbled backward on all fours like a crab, his breath caught in his throat. He didn't mind ghosts, when he didn't know who they were, but family was anothet story.

The grizzled and much-scarred face chuckled, "Heh. You done better than I did, lad, the first time I darkened Khelben's door and helped meself to some of his things."

Osco felt mote weight in the few pouches in his cloak, and he fished out four small cat's heads carved out of onyx. He tossed them at the ghost, as if to ward him off, and the ghost held his distance. The one-eyed halfling stalked over to the opposite statue and stepped through it, saying, "Wake up, son. Family's come a-visitin'."

The ghost trailed greenish smoke, but it drew out more smoke that soon collected into the visage of Pikar. While Osco still hated the fact that he was trapped in a room with two ghosts, Pikar s smile comforted him a little.

"Great," Osco said as he stood. "I realized that the test is in not stealing from a friend, rather than taking what's owed me. That's not going to have me haunted now, is it? You'll back off, now that I've thrown all that away."

The one-eyed ghost crouched down by the ivory cat statue and raised his eyebrow over his eyepatch. "Ye sure ye want to just toss this away?"

Osco the Younger nodded vigorously, and the elder ghost let out a low whistle. "Worth a fair piece, all this stuff."

"So're friends, and I lost one already today." Osco sighed. "Don't need to lose another. And I sure as sunrise don't want to be a ghost down here the rest of my days."

Pikar's ghost floated closer and put an ephemeral arm around Osco, saying, "We're proud of you, great-grandson. It is tough being friend to the Blackstaff, but the road's an exciting one, and one filled with treasures vastly more valuable than gems."

"Oh joy," Osco muttered. "Lessons from me family what died helping the Blackstaff. That'll motivate me to keep helping Vajra. What'll it get me at best but a statue down here with you ancestors?"

"What makes ye think we're family, boyo?" Osco the Elder's ghost chuckled, and it began to morph, his features and clothes shifting to greenish hues and growing. He grew to twice his original height and the eyepatch dropped away. His long hair unfurled, and his hair grew slightly longer and darker, a widow's peak forming at the top of his forehead. His mustache and sideburns grew together to a full beard with a recognizable lighter patch at the chin. Osco saw the similarities between the Nameless Haunt and this ghost and nodded.

"S'pose I'm to be honored that the oldest Blackstaff chose to test me?" Osco said, placing his fists defiantly on his hips and looking up at the phantom's impassive face.

His only answer was one slightly cocked eyebrow as the wizard-ghost conjured up a pipe shaped like a loredragon, placing it in his mouth and lighting it with a jet of flame from one finger.

"So are you wondering how I knew?" Osco said, nervously pacing about the chamber, kicking now errant-gems into the corners. "Simple. Nobody but nobody puts gems in chests where you can find them. They hide them in plain sight if they've loose gems. Seen some in vases with dried flowers, others in a fish tank. Best place I ever saw were emeralds slipped into tubes set into the legs of a table-those were tricky to find."

Osco realized he had paced around the chamber while he talked, and the ghost did nothing more than puff on his pipe and remain facing one direction. His eyes did trail on Osco when he was in front of him, but he never made any move to turn and watch him when he walked behind.

"Say something, ye patharding spook!" Osco threw a handful of the gems through Khelben's head. Each made a small hole in his features, trailing wisps of green smoke. When the mists coalesced again, the ghost's front had shifted toward him. Osco found it even more unnerving to have the ghost of an archmage smile at him.

"Silence always makes hin nervous, I have found," the ghost said, with a wink, "and they tell more than they should. That seems the same since my time. When did you realize this was merely a testing, not an actual looting of Blackstaff Tower for your benefit, Osco Salibuck?"

"Well," Osco said, "Vajra'd said something about the tower testing me, and it didn't stop me. Not all hin're greedy and stupid- count on dwarves for that. I figured the only way to help myself is to not help myself, and when I saw those statues, I figured out that all these temptations were just that-to tempt me away from where I'm supposed to go."

One eyebrow rose over the wreathing cloud of smoke from his pipe. "Oh really? And where is it you are supposed to go, little halfling, filcher and spy?"

"This way," Osco said, walking directly through the green ghost with a wicked grin. He felt the wall a moment befote ttiggering the secret door, and stepping through. Where the door deposited him was unexpected, windy, bitter cold.

And Osco wasn't alone there.