Blackstaff (23 page)

That rattled him enough to shout, “Boy! You will fear the Fro—No. Very good, Raegar. Very good indeed. You’d almost wheedled my name from me. No, I want Khelben to go mad wondering who brought his plans down around his ears. Not until I am assured of victory will I face the Blackstaff again.”

More hours passed, and the only sounds in the chamber were the lich’s incantations and the whistle of the wind in the upper chamber around the broken masonry and skylight. The lich’s robes stopped directly in front of Raegar, and he continued a particularly complex incantation for a few moments. Raegar turned to look up at the creature, breathing through his mouth so as not to smell the dusty and pungent smell that came off the lich. He almost wished the wizard would reactivate that harness, if only to mask the creature’s smell and horrific looks.

“Why are you smiling, Raegar?” the lich inquired. “Thinking up petty revenge? Well, you shall soon be free of my skeletrap and back in the City of Splendors. All I need do is temporarily reset my newest portal to link with Kerrigan’s Gate that we used earlier. But first, a few preparations.”

The undead wizard knelt by Raegar’s left hand and placed
a ring on it—the one that had sparked when close to the Diamondblade. Raegar got a good look at it when the lich walked away. The crude iron ring had an intricate silver emblem—a rack of antlers framing a tiny sword with a crescent moon for the sword-haft on the hilt. Raegar could not remember where he had seen this symbol in the past. He wondered why the lich would part with such a powerful item.

The lich returned with a pair of chain-mail gloves forged from four different metals. He cast a quick spell and touched Raegar’s forehead twice, then stood up. He said one odd syllable, and the bone-cage around Raegar clattered into an inanimate pile.

The thief knew better than to leap up, given how cramped and chilled his muscles were from lying on the cold marble all night and day. Raegar shook the bones off of him, never taking his eyes off the lich, and knelt while he stretched his arms and legs. The lich laughed his hollow laugh and tossed the metal-link gloves at him. Raegar let the gloves fall to his feet rather than catch them.

“Put them on, puppet,” snarled the lich.

Raegar’s stomach wrenched when his body obeyed without hesitation, slipping the metal gloves onto his hands. The rogue felt them clench into his skin. Raegar shot the lich a look of fury and hatred and mouthed another silent stream of invectives at him.

“Yes, yes, be angry if it helps,” the lich said. “You’ll still fulfill my direct instructions and be unaware of why you’re doing what you’re doing. The enchantment preventing your speech will also last a goodly time. Those gloves are yet another Shoon relic—the Gauntlets of the Syl-Vizar Tnarrak. They will remain linked to your hands until your death or until they hold my specified item—another Legacy artifact. Once they do, the gauntlets will come to me along with all they touch. Then you’ll be your own man. Of course, more likely you’ll also be dead at the hands of Khelben Arunsun.”

Raegar sidled over to his equipment, taking up his daggers and pocketing his two silver rings. He cast a wary eye
at the poor black boots he found with his equipment. His own magical boots were missing.

The lich stared at him and pulled his hood back around his fleshless head as he said, “You’ll have to do without your boots, as I’ve another agent who deserves them. Now, stop delaying, Raegar, and walk across the mosaic. Oh, one thing to note—the sharn will detect magic on you from the Legacy artifacts once you use this portal. My suggestion when you arrive back in Waterdeep is to run quickly. We shall not meet again, little thief.”

Raegar, standing, noticed subtle differences in the chamber. What was once a smooth marble floor had magical runes etched into it by the lich’s spellcraft and powders. An intricate knotwork pattern encircled the center of the room. Inside that circle, the floor wavered with tremors of energy. Raegar didn’t want to step anywhere near it but found himself a passenger in a body that stepped forward as ordered. As he felt a magical tingle crawl up his legs and the portal enveloped him, he gestured rudely toward the lich, glad to have at least managed that small act of defiance.

Raegar stepped from thin air into the tunnel near New Olamn, and his head ached as it always did from teleporting. The pain wasn’t reduced by the scream of a startled horse, rearing up and away from this obstacle suddenly appearing in his path. Raegar dodged out from under the horse’s flailing hooves and noticed his body was wreathed in greenish sparkles as his arms came up to guard his face.

As Raegar broke into a light jog toward Swords Street, he watched the color of the strange light shift to blue. By the time he broke into a full run, the remaining sparks glowed purple.

Raegar had ignored the oaths and yells of passersby objecting to his magical arrival, but he dared a brief look back when the screams began. The rosy color of the setting sun illuminated the tunnel’s exits on both ends, but
Raegar could still see lingering footprints glowing purple where he’d stepped. The shadows along the walls and ceiling dripped together around those sparkling prints. Familiar four-clawed hands reached from the shadows. The hapless horse Raegar had startled screamed as a toothy mouth erupted from the wall and savaged its hindquarters while other claws slashed at the horse’s rider.

Raegar ran as fast as he could from the tunnel and into the streets. He raced east, skirting the back of Shukar’s Chandlery, the Preening Peryton Inn, and the collapsed corner of masonry and wood that used to be the Pharraoth Alchymistary. His feet seemed directed toward Zelphar’s Walk until they slid out from under him, and he scraped to a halt against the outer wall of Soonymn’s Finecrafts. His head screaming with pain, Raegar looked up into the hate-filled eyes of Kemarn Darkthrush of Nesmé.

Raegar tried to push himself up but found the ground beneath him more slippery than ice. I thought only Damlath used that grease spell effectively, he mused.

He grabbed a dagger from his belt and threw it hard at Kemarn. The dagger hit the man in the arm, and the action as well as his grunt of pain was enough to disrupt the new spell Kemarn had been casting.

Screams closed in behind them as well as the screeching wail Raegar had heard at the Sleeping Dragon. He used the slippery spell to his advantage, spinning on his back then kicking hard against the stone wall to slide quickly across the street and away from Kemarn. When he skidded out of range of the spell, Raegar tucked into a backward somersault and drew his dagger from its sheath, rolling onto his feet in a defensive crouch.

The mage growled at him, “I owe you pain, thief!”

Raegar barely saw the gestures before four purple pulses of energy rocketed from Kemarn’s fingers. He gritted his teeth against the pain of the spell and scurried backward. Kemarn paused for a crucial second. Raegar sheathed his dagger and ran as he saw the sharn looming at the opposite end of the alley.

“Coward! The Darkthrush of Nesmé wants revenge!” Kemarn shouted, oblivious to the danger behind him. “You can’t run fast en—”

Kemarn’s taunting threats ended with a wet crunch and a muffled scream upon which Raegar had no wish to turn. He was too busy fighting the impulse that had his feet crossing Swords Street and mounting the stone steps leading up into the Font of Knowledge, Oghma’s great Waterdhavian temple.

Raegar took the steps two at a time and vaulted through the open doors into the Hall of the Binder, the three-story-high temple entry chamber. Dominating the stone-walled chamber was a massive green marble statue of Oghma as an unclad male with exceedingly long hair and a beard. The god’s muscular form was posed as if in flight, his left arm stretched out ahead of him and its fist more than twenty-five feet from the floor below it. In that fist was a golden scroll, long held by rumor to be either simple gold sheeting or some hidden secrets of the gods. Raegar remembered that Khelben the Blackstaff had donated the statue to the temple during its construction and claimed that it once blessed the grounds of the Binder’s temple in Myth Drannor. Behind the statue on either side were the two-stories-tall sets of double doors leading into the Great Library of the Binder, a four-story scriptorium and library that rivaled houses of learning centuries its senior.

Raegar’s mad rush into the building scared a number of yellow-robed priests and attendants, and his refusal to either stop or speak to them caused many to crowd around him, demanding explanations. Raegar felt ill as his body shoved aside pious monks he knew as friends and punched worshipers who blocked his path. He couldn’t stop himself from forcefully making his way to the back of the chamber. Ahead of him were the doors leading into the Great Library, but Raegar halted at the foot of the massive statue set between the doors.

Raegar found himself clambering up the statue, shouts of “Blasphemy!” and “Shame!” rising among the faithful below
him. Raegar’s body knew what to do to climb the unwieldy construct, even if he didn’t command it, and he was surprised that the chain mail gauntlets on his hands didn’t hinder his sense of touch or his grip. He confidently grasped each handhold and foothold, clambering through Oghma’s stone tresses and up his back and shoulders. He thanked Tymora for his luck that not more spellcasting priests were on hand to see him and smite him rightfully from this perch. Then the screams of terror began below.

The sharn’s massive black form glided into the temple, and what few people resisted its entry paid for their actions with their lives. The sharn retained a simple teardrop shape save for two heads glistening with fangs. Purple shimmers surrounded its form, and purple energy flared on both sides of Raegar as well. He threw himself flat against the statue to avoid four flailing claws launching from the sharn’s portals. Raegar climbed, hoping to dodge the sharn’s attacks, but the purple shimmers kept flanking his path. Just as he reached the statue’s left shoulder, he realized that blue sparks crackled around his left hand—as did the massive scroll in Oghma’s left hand.

Raegar, still mute, begged forgiveness from his god for his blasphemies as he began to walk out along the stone arm toward the scroll. As he reached the elbow, the claws flashed out again from the left. From the right, a third sharn head roared through the portal, its teeth gnashing at him with savage intensity. Raegar felt his legs collapse beneath him and wondered if the lich’s control included unwitting suicide. Instead, his legs looped around the arm, and his body used the momentum to swing forward and grapple the statue at its wrist with his hands. The blue sparks on his hand and the scroll grew into small, stinging lightning bolts, and Raegar wondered what would happen once the magic of the gauntlets came into play when he touched the golden scroll. The only lucky thing at that moment was that the blue energy seemed to be holding the sharn’s attacks at bay.

Raegar wrapped his legs around the statue’s hand. He
smiled as he noticed the hand with the Legacy ring held him in his current position, so he couldn’t make an immediate grab for the scroll without falling. He clung to the underside of Oghma’s wrist and tried to twist his torso forward, straining to reach for even the edge of the golden scroll, which was awash in crackles of blue lightning bolts. Unfortunately, the spot his right hand tried to reach was occupied by an angry, jet-black tressym with its claws and fangs extended. At the same time, Raegar heard a booming voice exclaim, “That’s quite far enough, young man!”

R
aegar knew the voice of the Blackstaff without even looking. Khelben’s shout boomed over all the noise, including the keening shrieks of the sharn.

One thing at a time, Raegar, the thief said to himself. Your only foe right now is the little winged tomcat. Nothing else.

The tressym growled deeply and launched toward him, all claws extended. Raegar couldn’t backhand the creature aside, as that would throw his balance and grip off, causing him to fall. The black-furred creature lunged for his eyes and face, but his hand held the creature off, getting a good clutch of fur around the tressym’s chest. The lich’s control over him made him more brutal than Raegar might normally have been, and his right arm slammed the tressym hard against the statue. Raegar expected it to be stunned at least, but the
winged cat all but roared as it slashed its wings at Raegar’s face. Some feathers jabbed hard into the thief’s eyes, and Raegar felt his arm fling the creature hard away from him. The tressym recovered almost instantly, even avoiding the black-robed mage floating a few feet off the floor.

The mage looked up at him, splitting his attention between Raegar and the sharn. Raegar watched Khelben’s eyes dart to the thief’s hands, the lightning bolts, the scroll, the tressym, back over to the sharn, and back to his eyes at long last.

“Tsarra,” he said to someone out of Raegar’s eyesight, “stay back, but get him off the statue. Once the lightning is quelled, we have a chance to calm this sharn down enough to talk.”