Thanks for the kudos, guys. I thought that scene came together nicely, but it's nice to see others agree.
Today's installment drops a bomb onto our heroes, one that will be felt through the next several books and will culminate in a huge twist in Book IX (how's that for a teaser?). Tomorrow's post will be the finale of Book VII. Book VIII is already pretty much done, even though I haven't written much in the last few weeks, so I'll launch right into that starting on Monday. "Foundations of Flame" will see utter disaster strike, and no one or nothing will be the same for the people of Cauldron, and its Heroes...
Consider this an early cliffhanger, with the final payoff tomorrow:
* * * * *
Chapter 318
A brisk wind tore down Obsidian Avenue, tugging at the long cloak that Zenna pulled tighter around herself. The chill in the air didn’t bother her, not really, but it was an indicator that winter was on its way back to Cauldron.
A man passed her on the street, a sandy-haired elf clad in unassuming but well-crafted garments of dark cloth. For some reason, seeing him reminder her not of Dannel, but of Fellian. She felt a twinge as she thought of the young—for his people—Strider of Shaundakul, and his slain friend. Fario... somehow, though it had only been a tenday, she had difficulty conjuring up the image of his face in her mind, as though Vhalantru’s disintegration had not only destroyed the physical embodiment of the brave half-elf, but all memory of him as well. She shuddered, and it was not due to the chill in the wind.
Jenya Urikas had possessed the power to bring Fario Ellegoth back to life, even with only the dust of the man trapped in the folds of his clothes all that remained following his destruction. But Jenya’s recent
raisings had depleted the temple’s stock of precious diamonds that were needed as a focus for the spell, and while some of the rare stones could be found in the city, they were nowhere near enough to conduct the powerful ritual.
Fellian had not hesitated; he took the urn containing the remains of his friend and departed for Almraiven, walking away from Cauldron and its troubles. Zenna could not blame him; even lacking such a noble motivation, she wanted to flee the city as well.
Her thoughts drifted back from Fellian Shard to Dannel, as they often did, no matter what the original course they had started down. She hadn’t seen Dannel much over the last tenday. Getting his petrified body out of Vhalantru’s subterranean fortress had been a monumental undertaking, even with three muscular dwarves to do the heavy lifting, but after doing battle with the transformed beholder none of them had wanted to linger there, not even for the half-day needed for them to rest and recover their spells. It had taken Zenna two days of attempts for her to finally break the enchantment holding Dannel, and to return him to living flesh. The restoration had not been without cost; the elf’s magical bow, its slender shaft and string made much more fragile by its transformation into stone, had not survived the strain of Dannel being hauled out of the dungeon.
Somehow, even as she’d broken the spell, bringing Dannel back to life, her own heart had hardened within her. She felt as though her emotional world was under constant siege, and she fell back on her usual defense, putting up walls in a vain effort to protect her from the pain. The arcane archer had not taken the time to batter down those walls, instead disappearing for days at a time on his own private business. Arun spent a good deal of time training his new recruits at the Temple of Helm, with Beorna at his side. Hodge spent much of the tenday comatose from drink. Mole... well, Mole seemed to be the only one immune to the dark cloud that had crept up over their company, from the strain that had driven them apart. They were all conscious of being in great danger, still; despite Vhalantru’s defeat the Cagewrights were still a dire foe, working on their plots to destroy the city and cast the region into the chaotic shadow of Carceri.
They’d gone back to Oblivion—they now knew the name of Vhalantru’s hidden stronghold—once... after. The deepest level of the dungeon, beneath the tier where they’d battled the beholder, was vacant, with empty rooms behind the sealed beholder doors. They found signs of recent occupancy, however, and an empty treasure vault that drew more than a few creative curses from Mole. But the most disturbing sign they found was a small room furnished as a comfortable bedchamber, with a wood floor and paneling installed over the bare stone burrowed by the beholder’s disintegrating ray. The place had been recently used, and a clear sign had been left for them: a wire latticework, the sort used by noblewomen to dress up their hair in elaborate fashion for social events.
The kind they’d last seen worn by Thifirane Rhiavati.
Zenna nearly stumbled as the clatter of a wagon rumbling up one of the steep alley streets that linked Cauldron’s four major avenues shook her out of her reverie. She jumped back, flattening herself against the wall of the nearby building on the side of the side street until the four horses and the trailing wagon had negotiated the transition onto Obsidian Avenue and continued on its way.
After everything... to be crushed by a wagon in the street, she thought. Her musings were morbid today, she thought to herself as she caught sight of her destination ahead.
The two-story building was intimately familiar to her, with its lower story of mortared volcanic rock, and the upper of weathered timbers so dark as to seem nearly as black as the stone. There was a shop or manufactory of some sort on the first floor; oddly she’d never bothered to discern exactly what, as its entrance was on the far side of the structure. She hesitated for a moment on the covered walk that fronted the building, then opened the door that led to the private stairs that rose up to the second story of the structure.
She hadn’t been here for quite some time. The last time she’d walked these steps she’d been consumed with anger and shame, after she’d learned that Dannel was a Harper, sent by her parents to monitor her activities. What had made the revelation so humiliating was that she’d just slept with the elf for the first time... had thought that he loved her, and had convinced herself that she loved him as well. The sting of the betrayal came back to her, and she had to crush the simmering wave of emotion that threatened to undo her. She needed to be in control, now. While Esbar Tolerathkas had done a great deal for her, had in fact guided her onto the path of the mystic theurge that she now followed, she had more than a few pointed questions for him regarding Dannel, her parents, and just how much he knew about her.
Esbar’s rented flat occupied the entirety of the second floor; there were only two doors on the upper landing, and one, she knew, led only to a supply closet. The other opened easily to her touch, revealing the living room more or less exactly as she’d remembered leaving it. The furnishings hadn’t changed, with the antique desk, the soft couch before the fireplace, the bay window with a nice view of the city. It was all so familiar, but somehow now it felt sterile, empty, even though Esbar’s note indicated that he’d returned to the city two days ago. A hall led back to the laboratory where she’d spent hours engaged in magical research, and also to the bedroom, where she’d engaged in some other activities...
Her skin turned crimson at the memory, followed by a niggling thread of sharp red anger. She squashed both emotions as she head a faint clatter from beyond the swinging door to the combination pantry/kitchen to her left.
She pushed the door open. Esbar was there, sitting at the compact round table, drinking a cup of tea from a small porcelain cup. It was part of a set he’d been gifted with upon graduating from the academy of magic at Alaghôn, he’d told her.
As she stepped into the room, she felt a sudden sense of unease, a tingling sensation that started at her skin but seemed to culminate in a tight knot of vertigo deep within her gut. She stumbled slightly, and as one of her boots scuffed slightly on the polished wood floor Esbar turned from the small window that fronted the wide boulevard outside and looked at her.
His appearance caught her off guard. Her mentor looked gaunt, almost emaciated, and while there was a burning fire in his eyes, it looked as though whatever passion that consumed him had fueled itself by stealing his vigor. It had been less than a year since they’d last seen each other, but he seemed to have aged ten in that interval. He was clad in a simple robe of soft blue cloth, and there was a small gemstone apparently embedded in his forehead, a multifaceted sliver that sparkled slightly in the diffuse sunlight shining through the window.
All her questions and recriminations fled, replaced by new ones about the changes that Esbar Tolerathkas had clearly experienced since he’d departed, leaving his home here in Zenna’s care.
“Zenna,” he said. “It is good to see you again.”
For a moment, she was too surprised to mount an effective response.
“Please, sit down,” he said, as he gestured toward the vacant chair. “Tea?”
As he poured her a cup of the hot brew, wisps of steam rising like sinuous tentacles from her cup, she finally rallied enough to speak. “What...
happened to you, Esbar?”
“Ah, Zenna. Long have been the roads I have traveled, since we last met. Much has happened, and much yet remains to be done... But more to the point,
you have changed, that I can see plain.”
She shifted uncomfortably in her chair, and did not touch the cup that Esbar slid across the table toward her. “These have been difficult times, since you left. Cauldron has been under siege, and a great evil works to destroy the city.”
“Yes, I know,” he said calmly, taking a sip of tea.
“Is that why you’ve come back?” she asked.
“In a matter of speaking,” he said. “But in truth, I have never really left Cauldron, even when my roads diverted temporarily from this place. I have been monitoring your progress, and I must say, you’ve far exceeded the expectations that I had set for you. Truly, your accomplishments in so short a time have been incredible. The power you command... indeed, were these different times than they are, you could have been among the greatest workers of magic to walk the forgotten realms.”
Her eyes shot up. “Could have been? What do you mean by that?”
He did not flinch from her gaze; rather he held her pinioned with his stare. “I truly am sorry, my dear. But
you are the key, the last of the thirteen, and the most important; a Shackleborn possessing the twin gifts of arcane and divine magic. I molded you, encouraged you, but deep down it was always your potential, and the unalterable reality of
who you truly are...”
Realization struck her like a fist slammed into her gut. Her blood pounded in her veins; she suddenly could not breathe.
“You...” she gasped, the single syllable deep with meaning, beyond recrimination.
“You struggled so, against your destiny,” he went on, outwardly unruffled, as though they were having just another one of their philosophical chats over tea. “It is in your nature, to question what life gave you, to take nothing at face value. But—and I share this with you as your final lesson, Zenna—such a trait does not make you stronger. For your refusal to trust was easy to turn against you, easy to redirect your natural suspicions outward, while the true threat was the closest of all.”
Her gaze shot desperately back and forth: the window, the door. The former was out; the iron crossbar that held the four panes in place was thick, too damned thick, she saw now. She edged back in her seat. But one thing kept her from flight, one burning question that she
had to have answered.
“Dannel?” The word was barely audible, a prayer.
Esbar—if that was his name—leaned forward, a sympathetic look on his face. “He knew nothing. He believed me to be what you believed me to be... a soldier in the eternal war against the Dark. Given what I already knew about you, it was easy to co-opt him into helping me, especially since we shared the same objective at that point, keeping you safe and alive.” He shrugged. “Like you, he had no inkling of my true vocation.”
“A Cagewright.”
“You say the word with so much venom, yet you have no understanding... no
true understanding, of what that word means. I am sorry that I will not be able to show you, but maybe you will gain some insight, before...” he trailed off.
“I’ll not go easily,” she spat. But in truth, she knew that he had her; too late she’d identified the strange feeling she’d felt upon entering the room, too late she recognized that the disorientation she’d felt was the magical effects of her protective items fading, leaving her as she’d been when she first came to Cauldron. When she’d believed that she was the one controlling her own destiny.
But whatever the source of the
anti-magic field that filled the room, it couldn’t be
that extensive. Without turning, she gauged the distance to the door...
“I know,” he replied. “I would expect nothing less.”
He didn’t move to block her as she slid back her chair, and rose toward the door. He lifted his cup to his lips, unconcerned, as she paused before the swinging portal. She pressed her hand against the polished wood...
Before she could apply pressure, the door pushed inexorably toward her, backed by a force of strength far beyond anything she could have countered, without her magic at her call. As the door opened, a charnel reek drifted into the room, and a...
monstrosity filled the room, the bulging, muscular form of a shator demodand.
Zenna dove for the narrow gap between the shator’s legs, but it easily buffeted her back into the room to land in a heap at its feet.
She drew her dagger, turning toward Esbar, but before she could rise to attack, or do anything else with the weapon, those huge hands came down over her, overshadowing her thin form.
The blackness came quickly.
