Fistanadantilus Reborn

CHAPTER 9

259 AC

For a long time he had done nothing, been no one. This was his protection as it had been in ages past, a tactic for use when those who sought his life for crimes real and imagined became too powerful. And so he had escaped the vengeful, had given pitiful humankind the false notion that he was finally and irrevocably slain.

He recalled the fateful casting, the mighty spell that should have yielded passage to the Abyss, allowed him to challenge the Dark Queen herself. Instead, the enchantment had erupted in violent convulsion, tearing him to pieces, destroying him.

Indeed, by now the whole world must believe that he had been killed.

But he had only been hiding.

How long had he lurked here, so far beyond the ken of humankind? He didn't know, really didn't care. As ever, he trusted to certain truths, knowing that the nature of human, dwarf, or ogre would eventually accomplish his task. The folk of Krynn tended to be violent peoples, and he needed their violence to give him flesh and blood and life.

Finally violence had been done, and the gift had been given. Again his essence was cloaked in flesh, the blood pulsing through a brain that, while it was not his, had been given to him to use. He could not discern immediately whether it was a human or perhaps a dwarf or even an ogre that had bestowed this gift upon him. Nor did he particularly care. He could make any of these peoples his tool, use whichever body was offered him until he could exert full control, reclaim his rightful place in the world.

So he had been content for a measureless time merely to rest within this mortal shell, to absorb the life and vitality of the body that gave him home. He did not need to take control, at least not yet, for he was still weak, still unready to reveal himself to the enemies who, experience had shown him, always lurked in the eddies of time's great river, waiting for his reappearance, for a chance to hurt or kill him.

Such enemies waited with vengeance and treachery in mind, and they sought him out whenever his presence became known.

And always he had killed them. He won because he waited until the time was right, and the same wisdom that had guided him then told him now that the time was too soon. He was content to let his host wander this far-flung corner of Ansalon, and the timeless one paid little heed to that body's travels or to its intentions and pleasures. For all this time he, the spirit of the ancient archmage, would grow stronger, would wait for the right moment to strike.

Gradually his vitality returned. He began to feel warmth, to sense desires such as, initially, thirst and hunger. And then later he knew stronger, more deeply ingrained lusts, cravings for power, for lives, and for blood, and these desires confirmed for him that he was ready once more to plunge his life back into the great river's flow.

Finally the time had come for him to emerge from hiding, to once more claim the prizes-in treasure, realms, and lives-that were rightfully his. He would take a new body, find the flesh of a strong young man, as he always had before. And he would once again claim the world of which he had once been master, in fact if not in public knowledge.

He shifted then, steeling his essence toward the mind of the man-or dwarf, or ogre-who was his host. He was ready to seize control, to destroy the host's intellect, to make the mind, the body, the life of this person his own.

But something was wrong.

The will of Fistandantilus surged more strongly, and he sensed the host body's agitation, its ignorance and its fear. This was the time it should begin to respond, when the will of the archmage would vanquish the hapless individual who was doomed to become fodder for his future life. Again he surged, twisting, driving the force of his mighty presence, the vast power of his magic, the full awareness of the hundred or more souls he had devoured during the long course of his rise to power.

And once more he failed.

His host was not responding to his will. He could sense the coil of mortality, the flesh and being of a person. But there was a capricious, free-spirited mentality in this host that would not yield to his great strength- indeed, it seemed to delight in thwarting his attempts to assert control.

His immortal essence had come to rest, as always before, in someone who could bear it, unawares, through the world. But now he desired to claim the host for his own, to consume him in the process of restoring himself to might.

Yet the host would not respond.

There were times when the power of the ancient arch-mage would reach out, seeking with ghostly skeletal ringers to lodge in the brain, or the heart or guts, of this unsuspecting person. But at best those grasps were fleeting, with the stuff of control always slipping away.

The essence of Fistandantilus settled back in frustration, and inevitably the knowledge that he was being thwarted brought a rising sense of rage, a murderous intent that should have erupted in a burst of magic, sizzling the flesh and searing the brain of the unwitting host.

But now he lacked the power, the means to work that arcane might. And as he struggled and railed against the fate that had imprisoned him in such a place, he began to consider the reasons. Any human, dwarf, or ogre, or even an elf should have yielded to the overwhelming force of great magic. The archmage would have preferred to have mastered a human, for that was the state of his normal, his original form, but he knew that he could make any of the others feel his power if need be.

The answer seemed to be that his host was none of those victims, those earlier targets of his will. It was a being of capricious habits, carefree and fearless sensibilities, and a life of confusion and chaos that at last allowed Fistandantilus to perceive the truth.

And it was a truth that filled him with horror and fear, for his spirit, his essence, and his desires for the future had been imprisoned in the body of a kender.

For a time, he could only shiver with uncontrolled fury, but gradually he came to the realization that he would have to change his tactics. And he was not without tools, without alternate plans.

He reached out first toward a distant skull, but all that he could see through the lifeless eyes was a barren and abandoned underground.

But when he sought for another talisman, a stone of blood and fire, he felt a more powerful, vital presence. There was a dwarf there, and dwarves had been known to yield to the archmage's power. The archmage strained to see while he felt the pulse and ultimately the perceptions of the one who carried the stone. A cursory study showed that this dwarf would be of only limited use: He was a cackling maniac, wicked but weak.

Still, Fistandantilus had a place for his power to take hold. The dwarf was a fool, but he was a malleable fool. The archmage felt the power of the stone, used it to penetrate the simple mind.

The dwarf would carry the bloodstone for a while longer, but ultimately he would bring it to someone who could be put to better use.

And the wizard's path would open, leading him once again toward the enslavement of the world in past, present, and future.