Son of Thunder

CHAPTER 10

Sprites fell like hostile rain. The Antiquarians, Leng, Ardeth, and Gan held their ground against waves and waves of them. The sprites were joined by grigs playing their dreadful fiddles, gossamer-winged pixies, and even some of the seldom-seen nixies. The fey climbed the trees, dived down on the party below, and launched their arrows. The battlefield rang with the grigs' discordant music.

"If we were to surrender," Ardeth shouted through the cacophony, "do you suppose they'd stop playing?"

Amid a duskwood grove carpeted in damp moss, the fey ambushed them and pressed the attack, seemingly unconcerned about their massive casualties. Each swing of Gan's greataxe killed five of them at a time, and the blades of Nithinial and Royce swung unceasingly, slicing the small, fragile creatures with ease. Ardeth crouched with her crossbow and targeted the pixies with her deadly bolts, while Gunton used a net to trap them, then finish them with the point of a short spear. Fey blood pooled on the forest floor. Bessick swung his chains, snagging wings and ripping sprites apart with their cruel spikes. Vonelh blasted the creatures with huge gusts of wind that blew their arrows astray and toppled the smaller sprites, their wings beating hopelessly as the air funneled them hard against the trees.

"If only I could drop a fireball and let them all burn away," Vonelh said, but he knew the danger to the trees was far too great.

Leng was responsible for the most damage. Laughing and cackling with the dark energy of an asylum inmate, he took perverse glee in killing his attackers slowly and painfully. Deep blue bolts of cold erupted from his hands that withered the sprites at a touch, their wings shriveling until their desiccated flesh seemed to slide off their bodies. Leng released dark waves of despair and grief that set some of them weeping. Walls of thorns erupted to rip them apart, and he conjured disembodied black claws that tore into the tiny grigs and pixies as a cruel child might torture a butterfly, plucking off wings and ripping bodies apart.

A flail hung at Leng's waist, and many magical items were concealed in his clothing. But he had no interest in fighting with anything but his spells.

The Antiquarians watched Leng's depredations in awe. He wore an expression of joy as he went about his vile work; his face showed no concern that they were fighting for their lives. This was sport for him; his companions even suspected that Leng could readily kill all the fey with much greater speed, but instead he was drawing out the pleasure, challenging himself to find new and crueler ways of slaughtering them. He almost seemed disappointed as the number of fey around them declined. Whether the large folk were really killing the small ones or if some had decided to flee-fey being notoriously fickle-they could not tell.

"The pixies may be waiting for us to let our guard down," warned Gunton, skewering one on the end of his short spear.

Although equally as small as the grigs, the pixies were far more dangerous foes. Leng and Vonelh tried to wipe out the creatures' invisibility with spells, but the small folk easily crouched unseen in the distance and fired their arrows.

No fewer than ten grigs sprang cricketlike from various places at Vonelh. They all struck his upper body, prodding him with their tiny dagger-points. The surprise was enough to knock the wizard off his feet and disrupt the spell he was casting. Nithinial rushed over to help him, but not before five pixies took wing and buzzed over Vonelh's prone body.

A well-placed sweep from Bessick's chains tore most of them out of the air with cruel accuracy, but as Nithinial rushed to help Vonelh to his feet, he noticed the mage was in a strange state. His eyes darted wildly, and he looked at his companions as if he'd never seen them before. At the same time, all of the pixies, grigs, and nixies hovering on the battle's edge seemed to turn tail and vanish into the forest.

Vonelh opened his mouth and began to chant some arcane syllables.

"Their magic has scuttled his mind!" shouted Leng. "Stand clear." He spun to face Vonelh, took a few steps, and laid his hand on the wizard's exposed forearm. As soon as he made contact, all life left Vonelh. His face and body went slack and he fell to the ground without ceremony or grace, his lifeless eyes staring up at his companions.

"What have you done?" howled Nithinial, standing only inches from Leng.

"He was going to drop a fireball on us all," Leng said calmly.

Nithinial swung at Leng's throat with his dagger, but he never made it. A few words from Leng, and the half-elf was paralyzed, a mask of anger frozen on his face. The dagger was nearly at Leng's neck, but the priest did not flinch.

For a few moments, silence fell over the group as everyone tried to come to grips with the scene. Leng took a few steps back from the others.

"You didn't have to kill Vonelh," said Royce, stepping around his corpse and the living statue that Nithinial had become. The leader of the Antiquarians stepped forward, his sword lowered in a subtly threatening posture. "You could have dissolved the magic on him."

"Or perhaps I would have failed, and we would all be dead," said Leng.

"You have ruined this mission," Bessick shouted, stepping next to Royce with his chains ready. "If you hadn't killed that treant, we wouldn't have every damned fey in the woods on our trail."

"Oh," Leng replied. "No, there's a different reason for that. Is there not, Ardeth?" He bent over to pick up the blue-tinged corpse of a nixie, took a few steps, and tossed it down at the young woman's feet. "Let's ask Geildarr's official representative among us. Why are we really on this mission? Nixies don't stray far from their waters. So tell us all," he spat as he looked into her dark eyes, "just how close are we to the Unicorn Run?"

Ardeth showed no reaction, only matched Leng's steely gaze. But Gunton, Bessick, and Royce all let out gasps of surprise.

"Your hobgoblin's dedication is admirable," Leng went on, sending Gan a glare that made the hobgoblin grip the axe more tightly. "But his thespian skills leave something to be desired."

Gunton rooted through Vonelh's robes and found the silver coin Geildarr had provided. It was glowing slightly. "Are you saying that this is a lie?"

"Deliberately designed to mislead us, to send us off track, yes," said Leng. "You may as well acknowledge your deception, Ardeth. Geildarr isn't here to protect you now." On cue, Gan stepped between her and Leng.

Leng only laughed. "Do you require further demonstrations of my power?" he asked, turning to face Royce. "Perhaps this one should fall next. Maybe that would be the best way to show for certain who leads this expedition now."

"Are you saying that we were never meant to go to the Star Mounts?" asked Royce.

"Perhaps you, but not I. As it happens, I don't care what's at the Star Mounts," Leng hissed. "This Sanctuary, Netherese magic, big lizards-there's a much more tempting prize on the way. Geildarr counted on me thinking this way. He expected me to go to the Unicorn Run and die." He craned his neck and peeked at Ardeth behind Gan, smiling. "Isn't that the case?"

Leng rambled on in an arrogant tone. "Perhaps all of you together could defeat me. Perhaps not. Myself, I'd prefer that you live. You're useful to me, every one of you. There's no reason we should be enemies now. Why do you perform Geildarr's tasks for him? For gold or power? Why not choose a greater glory? You can carve yourself a place in legend if you fight by my side."

"That's not what we do," said Royce, knowing his words would have no effect. "We're mercenaries and treasure-seekers. We're not crusaders."

"You're nothing but Geildarr's errand boys. This is a chance to become something else. Warriors of myth, maybe. Every child knows of the Unicorn Run. Perhaps soon they will know of the brave men who invaded the loathsome bastion, crippled it, and polluted it beyond repair."

"It won't work," said Ardeth.

"The sweet maid speaks!" Leng shouted. "What has Geildarr's pet to say?"

"You will die," she said. "You overestimate your powers, Leng."

"Don't you mean 'our powers'?" Leng asked. "But fear not. I feel quite certain that when I challenge the forces of the Run, my god will stand behind me and make me a vessel of his full power."

"What god is that?" asked Ardeth. "Bane or Cyric? You are a traitor to every god you've served."

Leng scowled. Apparently, he had no idea that anyone knew of his conflicted loyalties.

"I think," he spat, "if it means the end of the Unicorn Run, the two will find a common ground, and all the other gods of darkness besides. I will enjoy all their favor, and I shall have my victory."

Leng spoke with mad credibility, and the Antiquarians did not know what to make of his claims. Could this be possible? What was certain was that Leng was a terrifying enemy. In some ways, Vonelh was the strongest of their group, and Leng had killed him with a simple touch. Already lacking one member, they could not afford to lose any more, or it might prove impossible to escape the High Forest alive. Perhaps it was best to do as Leng ordered.

Royce locked eyes with Ardeth, trying to communicate his confusion.

Nithinial's paralysis ended abruptly. Still trembling with rage and clutching his dagger, he prepared to lunge at Leng again. Wildly, the half-elf squeezed his dagger's hilt until his hand bled, waiting for the word.

It came from Ardeth. "We should move on before the surviving pixies return."

"Where are we heading?" asked Leng, folding his arms across his chest.

Ardeth lowered her head in a false gesture of deference. "The Unicorn Run, of course."

Leng ripped off his brown robes and let them fall among the dead fey. Beneath were the purple and silver robes of a high priest of Cyric. He wore them proudly as he led his reluctant troops toward death or glory.

A great white goose ascended out of the High Forest, the trees swaying beneath her. Lanaal, transformed, carried Vell and Kellin on her back, each of them gripping feathers to stay in place. Above the tree canopy, the immensity of the High Forest sprawled below them. Their destination, the squat green mounts called the Lost Peaks, was a familiar visage from some vantages north of the forest's edge. Vell found his attention turning south to another group of mountains, a range he'd never laid eyes on before. Immense and towering, they were an arresting sight even to one raised in the shadows of mountains.

"What are those?" Vell asked Kellin. He could not take his eyes off them.

"The Star Mounts," Kellin told him. They looked out of place somehow-mountains in the most unexpected of places-as if some god had dropped them there on an odd whim.

"That's where it is," Vell said.

"Where what is?" asked Kellin.

"The place we're bound for." He didn't understand the words even as they came out of his mouth.

"How do you know?"

Vell looked deeper, harder at the mountains, staring into them. "I just know," he said.

Soon they alighted on a grassy plateau in the Lost Peaks, at the foot of a rocky peak that revealed a series of caves. The plateau was high and the air crisp. A fresh breeze was blowing. Dozens of pools with pristinely clear water dotted the plateau, undisturbed by any breeze. Lanaal flapped her great wings, and as she folded them, she transformed into the familiar shape of an elf. The trio could see more pools just inside the caves, illuminated from within by some sourceless light. These were the Fountains of Memory.

"So?" asked Vell, walking over to one of the pools. "What do we do?"

"Hala Spiritwalk said not to do anything until a korred guide arrives," Lanaal explained. "Most especially…" she reached over and grabbed Vell around the middle, dragging him away from the pool, "she said not to look into the pools till he gets here."

"Aye, good advice that is," came a voice. Vell, Kellin, and Lanaal all turned to find a little man standing directly in their midst, the top of his head barely reaching their chests. How he had arrived, none of them could say, though as soon as he appeared, a strong animal stench filled the air. His chest was covered with brown curly hair, and he walked on goat's legs with cloven hooves in place of feet. A small bag dangled at his waist, and a brown loincloth scarcely concealed his crotch.

"Welcome, friends," he said. He danced a circle around them, kicking and twisting those ungainly legs with strange grace. His dancing seemed as natural as walking. "My name is Tylvis, First Terpsichorean of the Clovenclan." He gave a little bow and stopped before Vell.

Looking to the others for confirmation, Vell bent his knees slightly and extended a hand, which the korred grasped in his hairy palm.

"Thank you for letting us come. I am Vell of the Thunderbeasts. This is Kellin Lyme of Candlekeep, and Lanaal Featherbreeze, late of Evereska."

"Lovely ladies both. Human and elf, one of yellow hair and one of dark." He winked at Vell. "The best of all worlds. Welcome to the Fountains of Memory!" Tylvis declared with a robust smile. "Many come seeking this sacred spot, and we don't usually mind. They come seeking knowledge, for this place remembers everything that happens in this world of ours. Mostly we let them slip by and stay unseen. No idea whether they find what they're after."

"What are they?" said Kellin, looking into one of the pools. It did not reflect the blue sky above, and when she craned her head out over it she could not see herself. The pool showed only an impassive, shimmering blueness. "How did they come to be?"

"Nobody knows for sure," Tylvis said. "We think our god Tapann made them, but he's not telling. They show images of other times and places. There's no predicting what they'll reveal. Sometimes the past, sometimes the present. But be wary-we've seen weak-minded humans, and even one or two elves, decide to jump into the pools. They never come out. Maybe they're swept away to the place they see, but we sure never see them again."

"Maybe they die," said Vell. "Drown."

"Could well be," said Tylvis. "I'll feel bad if you decide to take an unplanned swim. Otherwise, look! See what they have to say. Maybe nothing, maybe something. But look. Look and see."

"Those pools in the caves?" asked Vell. "Are they different from the ones on the plateau?"

"Hmm." Tylvis stroked his bearded chin and made an odd little hop on his goat legs. "Don't know, 'cept that of all those who vanished into the waters never to be seen again, the bulk vanished in there."

"That's where the most intense visions occur?" asked Lanaal.

"You could say that," said Tylvis. "Myself, I don't know."

"What do you see when you look in the pools?" asked Kellin.

"Oh, I never look in them," said Tylvis. "Nothing in there I need to know. The past, the present… what do such things matter to the Dancing Folk?" His smile was mysterious, unreadable-did Tylvis speak the truth, or some merry joke only he understood? "But you three go ahead. Make sure you stay on this side of the pool."

"That's all you have to say?" asked Lanaal.

Tylvis smiled a trickster's smile. "What more would you have me say, elf? So many have come here seeking wisdom-I don't know if they get it or not. So good luck. Hope you don't see anything you'd rather not have known." With that, the korred turned and hopped away down the plateau.

"Do we trust the goat man?" asked Vell. "If this place is sacred to his god, then why leave it so accessible-and why doesn't he treat it with more reverence?"

"Korreds are an irreverent kind," said Kellin. "Not all religions regard their sacred places in the way the Uthgardt do."

"Better yet" Lanaal added, "it may be that this place isn't sacred to Tapann at all. Rumor has it that his followers keep their own sacred fountains secret, and encourage all others, even their allies, to believe that these are the sacred ones."

"I wonder what they are then." Kellin found a pebble at her feet and cast it into the nearest pool. The stone sank, but not a ripple disturbed the pristine surface. "More clear than any mirror."

"I've never looked into a mirror," Vell said. He remembered a time that a foreign merchant in Grunwald presented a mirror to Gundar as a token of his generosity. Gundar accepted it in gratitude but refused to look into it, and later turned it over to Keirkrad to be destroyed as an affront to Uthgar.

"Vanity is one of civilization's primary flaws," Kellin admitted.

"Mirrors don't always reflect the whole truth," Lanaal cautioned Vell. "They can mislead. I spent my early life looking into mirrors and seeing an elf staring back."

"I will look into the pool alone," said Vell. Acknowledging each of the ladies with a nod, he walked into the cave, to the pools within.

When he was out of earshot, the two women stood alone together for the first time, silently assessing each other.

"In some ways, you are more a mystery than Vell," Lanaal said. "I can't understand what compels you to keep the company of barbarians who disdain your very existence."

"The Thunderbeast chose me," Kellin answered.

"It called you, perhaps, but you chose to answer. Uthgar is not your god-what is his summons to you? When you set out from the halls of learning, did you truly feel a personal interest in this particular barbarian tribe?"

"Yes… no…" Kellin rubbed her eyes. "My father…"

"Memory," Lanaal said, as if the word contained all the answers, and she spread her arms wide to indicate their setting. "It can be clear or faulty. It can tell the truth or deceive."

Taking a deep breath, Kellin walked to the nearest pool and gazed down into the water. And what she saw made her flush with embarrassment, and feel rage in her bones.

The caves had a light of their own, shimmering out from those strange pools. It cast eerie rippling shadows over the low cave ceiling, though Vell could not see any movement in the water itself. This was the kind of mystical place that alternately repelled and attracted the average Uthgardt-repelled him because of unknown magic, yet attracted him for the warm intimacy of the mystery, and the feeling of being wrapped in history. Vell bent over the nearest pool and found himself staring into his reflection.

So that's what I look like, he thought. He was not so different from any other Thunderbeast, and even his brown eyes did not distinguish him. All faded, and only his eyes remained as the water shimmered and he was looking into another time. It was another face, but somehow he knew it was his, or rather, that of an ancestor who remained tied to him from the spirit world. The sun was shining brightly behind him onto a spectacular white city, and he was garbed in robes of gold marked with ornate symbols.

A wizard. He was descended from a wizard.

The vision told him something else. This scene was surely not one of Ruathym, the rocky isle that was the home of Uthgar's mortal line. More likely, it was an image of his ancestry from his other line, stretching back to the Empire of Magic. Often he wondered if his brown eyes marked a stronger concentration of that blood. Most Uthgardt tribes denied that history, the Thunderbeasts included; it was a matter of shame to believe that they were spawned by those decadent magicians.

Vell leaned closer. The wizard melted away, and his eyes were set instead into the sunken sockets of a great lizard, one of the Thunderbeasts or behemoths that the tribe used in their art, or occasionally to tattoo upon themselves. It was the creature Vell had become. There was no human intelligence in those eyes-this was an animal, nothing more. It looked closely at him, as if staring through time back at Vell.

It turned and lumbered through a thick forest. The great beast planted a foot next to an oak sapling, struggling to grow within the dense underbrush. Vell realized with a shock that this must be Grandfather Tree. He knew it. While all of the other trees that stood around it, much greater trees, had died and gone, it remained. What force blessed it with such permanence? Before his eyes, it sprouted higher and higher, spreading its limbs wider and wider until they blocked the sky.

Now ripples disturbed the pool, each beginning at the center and bringing with it a new image. The scenes passed with such speed that Vell could not inspect each one closely. He saw images of heated battles, of a wide-shouldered man with coal-black hair. The dark-haired warrior wielded a greataxe and hacked at a shaggy demon on a mountainside. Then came a scene of that same axe cutting the neck of a behemoth on a vast green hill, but in the hands of a warrior with yellow hair and a bright yellow beard.

The axe! Vell recognized it immediately. It had been the weapon of the chiefs of the Thunderbeasts, both Gundar and Sungar. Sungar had disposed of it some years ago after he learned it contained arcane magic. Vell did not know what to make of this-he was not in the Fallen Lands when it happened-though many took this as a signal that Sungar was an unfit leader.

"Tell me more," Vell said to no one. As if on cue, a new image unfolded-one he knew well. It was Morgur's Mound on Runemeet. Vell saw himself, the bones of the beast hovering above him. He saw his lips move, and though he had no memory of the event, he knew the words: "Find the living."

Another ripple, and the axe appeared again. It was in a different hand, an inhuman hand-the hand of one of the huge goblinoid beasts, a hobgoblin, decked out in armor. The pool revealed a purple-robed man and four other men, humans all, together with a small human woman dressed in tight black leather. He knew her. The man and the beast in him both knew her.

Vell clenched his fists in anger. He wanted to jump into the pool. Perhaps it would transport him there and let him crush the woman who had kidnapped Sungar, and who had eluded him on a hippogriff's wings. But he remembered Tylvis's words of caution and held his ground.

The party of seven was walking along the banks of a river with forest all around. More water, he thought, as he saw the pristine flow rippling in the sunlight. He recognized the high mountains towering over them as the ones Kellin had named the Star Mounts.

For a long time he stood there, staring at the water which now showed nothing, not even his own reflection. He wondered if he would ever see himself again.

When he stepped outside the cave, Kellin started like a child caught in a forbidden act. She was in conversation with Lanaal, but they both silenced at the sight of him.

"Vell," Kellin said, trying to appear calm, though her eyes were red and her cheeks stained. "Did you see anything?"

"Yes," he said, walking over to her. "So did you."

"No, I…"

He stopped near her. "Tell me," he said.

"It helped explain why I'm here," she said, casting her eyes to the ground. "My compulsion to help your tribe."

"What do you mean?"

"She's atoning," Lanaal supplied. Her hand stroked Kellin's shoulder. "Atoning for a wrong she didn't know of until now."

Vell shook his head, not understanding.

"I saw Morgur's Mound in my vision," Kellin said, her throat becoming dry. "And my father. He read a counter-spell that cut through the magic protecting the place, and he took a piece of the dinosaur bone." She looked up into Vell's eyes. "He lied when he said he bought it in Baldur's Gate. He stole it. He was a-" she choked, "-a vandal and a desecrator."

"But you're not," Vell said.

"But my father…"

"Apparently the blood of mages flows in my veins, but I am no mage," Vell said.

Kellin looked into his brown eyes.

"Sometimes ancestry is something to be overcome, not embraced," Vell continued. "All the same, I don't recommend you tell Keirkrad about this."

"I should say not!" cried Kellin. She wrapped her long arms around him, something he didn't expect. He could feel the warm trickle of tears onto his shoulder. "Tylvis was right," she said. "The Fountains of Memory can show you things you don't want to know." Forcing a smile, she asked, "But what did you find?"

"I was fascinated by what I saw," Vell said. "Few answers and many more questions, but at least now I have seen the faces of our enemies."

"Truly?" Lanaal asked.

Vell broke his embrace with Kellin and nodded to the elf. "One of them is the woman who abducted Sungar. She travels with a group of companions, and from what I saw, they're much closer to our destination than we are." He pointed south to the horizon, to those incongruous mountains.