Blackstaff (16 page)

“Later for those answers,” Khelben said, as they approached one of the guest chamber doors. “We must look in on a wounded friend and kinsman.”

“Can’t he wait until you give me some answers? I thought we were in a hurry!” Tsarra grabbed her mentor by the
shoulder and held him back from touching the door. Once she felt her anger rising, she knew she couldn’t stop her next words. “You can’t keep me in the dark here, Khelben. My life is tied to this as well, just like the injured man in there. I feel like I’ve died twice in less than a full day with no real answers from you. Tell me what’s going on. What happened last night? Answer me!”

Khelben glared at her. To her credit, Tsarra squared her shoulders and did not budge, unlike other recipients of what many believed was a spell called “the Blackstaff’s Baleful Glower.” The moment stretched for eternity until Khelben exhaled softly, his eyes and face relaxing.

“ ‘Tend to one’s wounded, for one never knows from whence the next attack comes.’ Forgive me, girl. I forget we too are wounded as much as his excellency in there.” He looked up and away and said, “Laeral, see to Gamalon. We’re in my library.” Khelben’s eyes wandered a moment as Laeral apparently responded, but Tsarra did not hear the reply. The archmage’s eyes darted back to Tsarra. “Now, come along, if you would have your answers. Just remember that you asked for this information, and know that the burden to carry it may prove heavier than you realize.”

Khelben walked up the stairs of the tower with Tsarra in step behind him. He reached back and touched her shoulder with his right hand, and his left hand traced a pattern on the mortar of the stone stairwell.

“Yuhiurlemn,”
he whispered.

Tsarra felt the familiar
whoosh
in her stomach as they accessed a level of the tower she had never visited. They continued a few steps upward, and Tsarra smiled.

Khelben removed his hand as he said, “You’ve never seen my true library, have you? You’re only my eighth apprentice to see this chamber. Truth be told, I think Elminster visits this place more often than I get the chance to do so.”

Unlike the usual levels of the tower, the library remained one open room all the way around with no intervening walls, the only interruption of the floor being the stairwell. Against the wall opposite their landing was a massive fireplace, the
logs blazing instantly at the snap of Khelben’s fingers. Four overstuffed chairs arced in front of the fire, each with its own footstool, side table, and a softly glowing globe that hovered overhead. When Tsarra and Khelben stepped onto the granite floor, two globes increased in brightness and floated over to hover a few feet above their left shoulders. The tressym angrily took flight and batted at the globe to keep it away from his mistress, but it remained tantalizingly out of his reach.

Everywhere else she looked, Tsarra saw floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lining the walls, with shelves intermittently jutting out perpendicular to the walls between two other bookshelves to allow more shelf space. On the ends of those shelves were glass cabinets holding curios, glowing objects, crystals, and other items. She realized she’d caught her breath, and as she inhaled again, the scent of light dust and the tiniest hint of mildew proved comforting to her. Even though she was a half-elf, she had never seen an elven library other than what few books and records her mother kept. She wondered if the fabled Lost Library of Cormanthyr looked something like Khelben’s.

At rough count, Tsarra guessed there were at least fifty bookshelves and more than a dozen cabinets of priceless books and artifacts within the chamber. She saw books chained to the shelves, two full shelves of massive tomes bound in white dragon hide that chilled her even from a distance, and a set of books with wings on the covers, thwarted from flight by the light chains that anchored them to their shelf. Tsarra’s eyes followed the fluttering books then spotted what might be Khelben’s library guardians—golden statues standing in niches near the ceiling, looking like elf archers, dwarf crossbowmen, or even one golden bugbear shouldering a massive axe. She wondered about the magic used to animate the statues.

Khelben walked around to the left of the stairwell, tapping the globe slightly to increase its light. Tsarra followed at a distance, her eyes distracted by seven huge spindles of crystal levitating inside the glass cabinets and large
incunabula lying on open shelves. The writing looked only vaguely familiar. Behind the stairwell and opposite the fireplace was a long row of work tables covered in large disheveled piles of manuscripts, scrolls, and massive tomes.

“The events of the past day took me by surprise, not so much unexpected as they were unraveling in an uncontrolled manner. My dreams have also been occupied of late with portents from Mystra, though in my haste, I have misinterpreted some of them.” Khelben spoke with his back to Tsarra as he rooted among the piles, seeking various sheaves of parchment and books. “Ah! Of course. There it is.”

Khelben pulled a slim green leather folio from one of the piles and held the book out to Tsarra. She found an empty spot on the table and set the book down, opening to its title page.

“ ‘Rhaelnar’s Guide to Legacies Lost, Volume the First, of which there are to be Volumes Four
,’ ” she read aloud. “ ‘A gift to our most esteemed Warlord Laroun to commemorate the completion of the great Castle of Waterdeep and to honor a new legacy founded on this eighth day of Ches in the Year of the Bent Coin.’ ” She looked up and asked, “Why haven’t I heard of this book before?”

“It’s a rare tome, and I have the pleasure of owning both volumes—’tis the most complete set outside of the Vault of the Sages. Rhaelnar died before ever completing the third volume, let alone the fourth. I have the notebook of his incomplete third volume as well.”

“What did you do? Steal it from the castle’s library when you were a lord?” Tsarra asked.

Her only answer was an upraised eyebrow immediately obscured by a flash of flame from one finger as Khelben lit a pipe. He gestured, the finger still ablaze, for her to continue reading aloud.

“ ‘This be the accounting of lands and lords, lights and loves, luminaries and legacies, all lost to the sands of time. Herein I shall unveil many mysteries lost from histories,
though not in the order of the stars or by geography. Nay, of these matters I shall speak in the orders that my patrons demand them. Thus,
Volume the First
contains the heritages known and lost from those human realms of Jhaamdath and the Shoon Imperium.’ ”

Tsarra turned the page, shaking her head. “This fellow is more long-winded than Kappiyan Fluyrmaster.”

“Pray, continue silently and spare yourself needless tortures. He belabors endlessly on the trinkets and trysts of many a noblewoman before he gets to anything of substance. The information you need is at the mark,” Khelben said, his nose buried in three other tomes that floated in the air before him.

Tsarra touched the small face painted onto the silk strip jutting out above the pages toward the end of the book. The face puffed its cheeks and blew, making the pages rustle briskly until the book opened at the marked place. She smiled at the panting, caricatured face then began reading “The Screed of the Scroll.”

T
sarra stood, stretching her back and shoulders after sitting too long over the book. “Khelben, this is the worst doggerel you’ve ever subjected me to in sixteen years of study. Did he write this way to punish people?”

Khelben coughed and closed the last dusty tome before his eyes. He kept his back to her, so she couldn’t read his face. He levitated the books back to their resting places on various shelves before he answered, “Rhaelnar’s ears may not have been good for poetry, nor obfuscation really. Still, from what we’ve already discovered and discussed today, what leaps to mind? What might Rhaelnar’s Legacy be?”

Tsarra didn’t have to reread the poems. Her ability to instantly recall what she read allowed her to recite from memory. “ ‘Gilded lore of Netheril’s
pride,’ is fairly obvious. He’s talking about finding one or more of the Nether Scrolls. Even Volo could see that one!”

Khelben snorted loudly. “No, I’m afraid Master Geddarm yet postulates that Rhaelnar’s Legacy is some form of magical potion, the poem an elaborately disguised recipe.”

Khelben and Tsarra blinked at each other a moment then burst out laughing.

“Never underestimate the power of misdirection, Tsarra. You know this from hunting, if you want to distract a predator. True as well when tracking prey through written words,” Khelben said. “Now, can you identify any of the items of the Legacy from the poems? We’ve already found a few of them, though regrettably we don’t hold them all.”

Tsarra repeated the eighteen stanzas in her head, shuddering at the awful rhymes but focusing on what they said. “That man I saw outside the tower! He had one of them, obviously. Wait—do you have a copy of
Selchant’s Catalogue of Swords Enchanted
here? I want to check a hunch.”

“Fourth row of Shelf G, red leather binding—the only one without singe marks on it.”

Tsarra hadn’t noticed before but each massive set of bookshelves was marked by an Elvish letter, and the G sigil glowed faintly to show her where to look.

After a few moments of page flipping, Tsarra grinned. “I knew it! He’s carrying Rhoban’s Diamond Blade, isn’t he? That’s the first ‘dream’ in the sixth stanza!”

“Indeed. Congratulations on your deduction. So few of my students bother to learn the Vilhon Reach histories, let alone its prehistories in the Twelve Cities of Swords,” Khelben said. “Not one of the twelve ruling blades, you know, but certainly a blade of distinction. One wonders if its current bearer is as noble as Rhoban himself.”

Tsarra put the catalog aside and looked again on Rhaelnar’s book. “ ‘Dream next of the forceful hand that wrested hope for a waveswept, deepwater land?’ I’d guess the seventh stanza refers to Raurlor’s Ring, here in Waterdeep?”

“Indeed.” Khelben muttered, searching through the piles on the table for something.

“The tenth stanza refers to a glistening girdle, so I’ll just take a wild stab in the dark and suggest it’s this belt I’ve worn for two days now.”

Khelben nodded, his brow knitted in concentration as he blew smoke shapes. She’d seen him do that with Elminster, whose facility with it created elaborate murals of smoke with moving figures. Khelben only managed to create a smoky image of the belt she wore.

“I don’t suppose you could tell me what it is? My knowledge of elven artifacts is lacking, despite my blood.”

Khelben shook his head and said, “Another time, we’ll look into it together and you can prove to me you can do research. Now, what of Rhaelnar’s Legacy? What else do we know?”

Tsarra continued, thinking aloud, “The next stanza that makes any sense to me—‘Sleep again to see your goal apparent. In the laughter of the lyre can one find the Legacy penned.’—is an awful stretch for a rhyme. The context of the earlier stanzas, though, hints that we’re looking for a golden scroll. ‘Laughter of the lyre?’ Are we looking for music written on gold? That’s not a topic I know much about.”

“Neither do I, and I’ve had more time than you to learn. That item, I believe, is close at hand, but we must wait until late tonight to retrieve it, lest we disturb too many pious brethren. Continue,” Khelben said, still searching for a parchment.

“What is it? You know where it is?” Tsarra asked.

“I know where
all
of these sundries are, Tsarra. I would hardly be the archmage of Waterdeep if I did not. The question remains how much you have gleaned of all this.”

Tsarra felt her pulse jump in anger, and her exasperation seemed to infect her familiar. The tressym, having grown bored with chasing the glowglobe, alighted upon a pile of tomes, which quickly collapsed beneath him, and he tumbled off the table. Correcting his fall and taking to the air again, the tressym flew up atop one of the nearby bookshelves and settled in, as if he’d planned that all along. Tsarra felt his surprise and embarrassment but her horror
at his disturbing Khelben’s research overshadowed that until she saw his eyes never left her face.

Khelben steepled his fingers and said, “Tsarra, as your teacher, I need to test your understanding of the situations and my edification as to how well you will do without my tutelage. After all, you need to graduate beyond Blackstaff Tower, and it seems this current emergent situation presents itself as your final examination.”

“You’re forcing me to leave the Tower? Because I’m losing my patience over too many unanswered questions?” The tressym’s growl and lashing tail audible from across the chamber underscored Tsarra’s irritation.

“Calm down, Tsarra, lest you slip into another vision. Your temper sets off those visions, doesn’t it? Whenever you lose your focus on the immediate, Dantha’s gift for visions taps into my memories. Whereas I already remember my experiences and dismiss the memory, Dantha’s visions force-feed you the whole experience from the briefest flashes of my recall.”

“So what I saw—that battle in the Eightower …”

“Yes, that was a memory. In fact, that was the place we were to visit last night, before your vision and our side trip to Rassalantar changed our path.”

“But I’ve met Tandar, the so-called Green Wizard of Sea Ward, and he’s over a century old! How could you know him as a young man?”

“After all you’ve learned here, do you truly still believe me to be the son of Lhestyn and Zelphar?” Khelben’s eyes went wide with surprise. “You’re smarter than that, even if I do keep up that pretense at all times for the emotional comfort of the common folk. Zelphar was
my
son.”

“So you’re really Khelben the Elder?”

“Among other names I have worn, yes.”

“Why tell me your secret now?”

“Because you already suspect it, and thanks to this mishap of bound souls and that gem, will always know it. Even if I manage to save Danthra’s soul after dealing with Rhaelnar’s Legacy, I suspect my memories will remain
with you in that
kiira
forevermore. Still, our conversation wanders onto paths best trod later. Do you have any other deductions on the poem?”