Bladesinger

Chapter 19

The Year of Wild Magic

(1372 DR)

The Old One sagged within his bonds.

More than a year of captivity, twisted and tortured by Yulda's arcane ministrations, had reduced the ancient wizard to an almost insubstantial physicality. He was nothing, a shadow, a burning ember of power wrapped in a decrepit and decaying body-which was just as she wanted it.

Yulda gestured and the shimmering funnel of energy that connected her to the dying wizard spun away into nothingness. Her body brimmed with arcane energy, stretched, it seemed, to its limits with the pulsing eldritch power that raced through her very veins. For a moment, she feared that she had taken too much, had sucked the Old One dry, reducing him to a powerless lump of flesh.

He stirred, however, moaning softly into the shadowy cavern, and her fears subsided. The old man couldn't hold out much longer. Despite what had seemed like an inexhaustible reservoir of arcane might, the Old One's strength had begun to fade. Yulda knew that she had been drawing too much power from the wizard, depleting his reserve too quickly, but it couldn't be helped. Her plans were moving forward, and she needed every ounce of eldritch might to keep her servants in line. Soon she would be able to rest, and the Old One would have a chance to regain the precious power that was all that kept his heart beating.

Soon.

But not now.

Another storm beat hard upon the rocks from which her demesne was forged. The wind moaned and shrieked with a bitter voice-one that she could hear even in the heart of the cavern. It mixed with the piteous sounds of the Old One as he wept and panted through his suffering.

"You… you," he said through great gasping breaths, "you shall never succeed with your plan. The very heart of the… the land rises up against… against you."

"Shut up, old man," Yulda spat back, tired of his endless prattling. "I have already succeeded. You and those blind crones are just too stupid to realize it."

The Old One began to laugh, a great wheezing gurgle of a sound that reminded the witch of someone drowning. "Even now," the wizard gasped between great bouts of laughter, "Rashemen moves against you. You will… will fall, and your name will be but a passing shadow, soon forgotten and never uttered on the… lips of future generations of our people, you-"

"Enough!" Yulda shouted, smacking the wizard's face with the back of her own gnarled hands.

She felt the brittle bones of his nose shatter like dried tinder beneath the blow. With a single moan, the Old One slumped forward, bereft of consciousness; blood spurted from his face, pooling beneath him on the frozen stone floor of the cave.

The witch spat in disgust and moved away from the unconscious wizard. He was a frail and bitter man, she knew, choking beneath the shame of his defeat. His words were like flies; they buzzed and hummed around her head but could not bite. Still, Yulda thought for a moment, she probably should check in on the fate of the erstwhile intruders she had banished to the wyverns' cave.

She turned to find Fleshrender lying comfortably on the stone floor, tearing apart the corpse of a mountain hare. The telthor looked at her calmly as it ripped the rabbit's soft flesh from its bones. Despite herself, Yulda couldn't suppress a shudder at the creature's actions. Telthor, she knew, did not require sustenance to live. The beast simply enjoyed the taste of death.

Careful not to disturb her feasting companion, the witch walked toward the back of the cavern, where an uneven hunk of blue-misted ice sat on a simple stone pedestal. She knelt before the pedestal, gazing deeply into the colored ice. Almost immediately, a dim light began to pulse within its heart, growing stronger with each beat, until an unearthly blue gleam radiated throughout the entire cavern.

Shadows began to emerge in the ice, silhouettes and suggestions of a scene that resolved quickly into a clear picture at a single word from the witch. Looking in the ice, one would think it a mirror, reflecting the interior of the cave in which it sat. Yulda, however, saw with deeper eyes. The cave she gazed at stood several hundred leagues from her demesne. With a sweep of her hand, the picture began to move, searching the lair of the wyverns.

At first she thought the cave empty, for there was no sign of the wyverns or her guests anywhere. Then she caught sight of a large shape almost completely hidden as it lay slumped against a cavern wall. Yulda smiled, thinking it the collected remains of her would-be assassins, but her smile soon changed to horror as she saw the hacked up corpses of the wyverns, bloodied bodies and slashed tails intertwined as they lay still and cold in a cave somewhere beneath her citadel.

How could those gods-blasted fools have escaped their fate, Yulda raged. The meddlesome intruders could be anywhere now! She extended her arcane senses deeper, pouring her newly regained strength into the scrying spell, bridging the great distance between her and the citadel with the merest thought. She scanned the tombs and lower dungeon of the citadel to no avail. With a frown, she went even deeper, magically peering into the depths beneath Rashemar. Through empty tunnels and echoing chambers her mind ranged, skimming over the rude consciousness of half-sentient creatures slithering through the subterranean realm, until at last she found her quarry-and something else.

Something of great power.

It beat against her senses with a wild, almost uncontrolled strength, shining like a beacon in the dark. She withdrew her mind, not wishing to alert whatever power was present. This, she thought, changed everything. Could those fools have been foolish enough to bring the Staff of the Red Tree right to her doorstep? Yulda's craggy face cracked into a twisted, gap-toothed smile. Such a powerful item would only insure her success if she could bring it under her sphere of control.

It took only a few moments for the plan to coalesce in her mind. She sent an eldritch message to Durakh then called Fleshrender away from his dead plaything. Stepping into the mystic circle inscribed to the left of the stone pedestal, she disappeared.

Her last thought before the spell of teleportation activated was of the Iron Lord's citadel burning.