The Floodgate (4 page)

As the silence stretched, Vishna studied the young man’s face with growing concern. “This unfinished business must be grave indeed.”

“No more than that before any jordain,” Matteo said shortly. “I seek truth.”

“Ah.” The old man’s wry smile acknowledged the reproof. “The search for truth can take unexpected paths. Yours has put distance between you and the jordaini order.”

The man’s insight startled Matteo. “Why do you say that?”

“I have known you since you left the nursery to begin your studies. Never have I known you to give evasive answers. That speaks of faltering trust.”

Matteo could not disagree. “If I offend, Master Vishna, I beg pardon.”

“No need.” The wizard patted his shoulder. “The wise man does not trust easily or speak freely.”

“True, but suspicion wears at the soul, and so does silence. I miss the days when we could speak our minds plainly, without subtlety or hidden layers.”

“A child’s privilege, Matteo. You are no longer a child.” Vishna’s smile took any possible sting from the words. “But let us indulge each other. What wears away at my former student?”

This time, Matteo chose his words more carefully. “We jordaini are considered the guardians of Halruaan lore, yet there is much we haven’t learned.”

“Ah. I suppose you have something specific in mind.”

“Several things. Why did we not learn the history of Halruaa’s elves?”

“There are no elves to speak of,” Vishna pointed out.

“Precisely. Yet there were once many elves in the Swamp of Akhlaur and in the Kilmaruu Swamp. It seems odd that two such places-neither of which are ancient swamplands-should develop on the graves of elf settlements.”

Vishna gave him an indulgent smile and repeated the jordaini proverb about the Kilmaruu Swamp existing to keep the number of Halruaan fools down to manageable levels.

“Andris is no fool,” Matteo stated, “and for that, Halruaa should bless Mystra. Haven’t you noticed that Kilmaruu’s undead rest easier?”

“Now that you mention it,” the wizard said thoughtfully, “the farms and the coastlands bordering the swamp have been quiet of late. And this is Andris’s doing, you say?”

“He prepared a battle strategy to rid the swamp of undead, and he presented it as his fifth-form thesis. I’m surprised you hadn’t heard.”

“Hmmm.” The wizard considered this, his wrinkled face deeply troubled.

“The Jordaini College is less forthcoming with information than its reputation suggests,” Matteo continued. “I have seen with my own eyes evidence that many elves once lived in Akhlaur’s swamp. Why were we not taught this?”

Vishna spread his hands, palms up. “Such things are difficult to study. Where elves are concerned, there is always more legend than fact. You might as well to try to fathom the truth of the Cabal!”

His tone was light and teasing, as if he named the ultimate example of futility, but Matteo was in no mood to be humored or indulged. He folded his arms and returned the wizard’s smile with a level gaze.

“Perhaps both studies have merit.”

Vishna’s smile faltered, and his eyes took on a shuttered expression.

“You do not agree,” Matteo persisted.

“No. The elves are gone, but for a few here and there. That is the way of nature. Before their time, dragons ruled. Their numbers are greatly diminished, yet they would not take it kindly if you attempted to harvest their eggs with the purpose of tending them until they hatched. Likewise, the elves would not thank you for interfering in their lives, and they would not welcome you if you tried to inquire into their history.”

“What of the Cabal? I’ve heard of it all my life, but we never learned anything about it”

“With good reason. The Cabal is a particular kind of legend,” Vishna said slowly. “The sort that take shape over time, fashioned from whispers repeated so often that they begin to seem true.”

“Some say it is a deeply hidden conspiracy.”

Vishna snorted. “Conspiracies are useful things. They distract shallow, lazy minds from the labor of true thought. Such people see dire warnings as proof of wisdom. We’ve both met Halruaans who would regard a cheerful sage as a blasphemer, or at best, a charlatan.”

“As the saying goes, never confuse a sour disposition with deep thought.”

“Just so, lad.” The wizard looked relieved by this return to familiar ground. “So when are you off on the queen’s business?”

“Tomorrow morning, at first light,” Matteo said. “I will ride with Andris to Azuth’s temple.”

The old wizard gave him a quizzical look. “But Andris has left already.”

“What?”

His sharp tone startled Vishna. “It’s true,” he asserted, as if Matteo had challenged his veracity. “The headmaster’s window commands a clear view of the back kitchen gate. I saw Andris slip away while I was in conference with the headmaster. Why is this so strange? He has permission to leave, and the Temple of Azuth is expecting him.”

Matteo could not answer. He felt as if his throat was gripped in an iron golem’s fist. He could accept that some of Halruaa’s wizards kept dark secrets. He could fathom, just barely, that his beloved jordaini order might have had a part in keeping these secrets. That Andris, his dearest friend, could have told him a direct lie-this was beyond comprehension.

He spun on his heel. Vishna seized his arm. “Don’t, Matteo,” he said quietly. “For the sake of your friend, pause and reflect I can’t tell you why Andris went off alone, but this I know: You don’t always need to understand your friends’ choices, but you should honor them. Go back to Halarahh, and leave him to follow whatever destiny the goddess has given him.”

Matteo gently pulled free. “Thank you for the lesson, Master Vishna,” he said, speaking the traditional words between jordaini student and teacher. “Your words hold great wisdom, as usual.”

Relief flooded the wizard’s face. “Then you will return to court?”

“That is not the conclusion I drew from the lesson,” the young man said softly. “What I heard you say was that it is not necessary to understand a man’s choice but to honor it.” With a quick bow, Matteo turned and sprinted for the stables.

He snatched up tack and travel kit at the door. “I’m taking Cyric,” he announced to the startled groom. “I’ll saddle him myself.”

The lad’s sigh of relief was almost comic. Cyric, a black stallion of uncommon speed and vile temper, had been named for an evil and insane god. The horse was nearly impossible to ride, but his temperament precisely suited Matteo’s mood and purpose.

He set to work saddling and bridling the horse. Cyric must have sensed the jordain’s urgency and found it to his liking. For once the stallion stood docile, and even opened his mouth to accept the bit and bridle. Matteo had barely settled into the saddle when Cyric shot out of the stable like a ballista bolt, thundering toward the gate and whatever misadventure waited beyond.

In his watery lair, Akhlaur bent over his table, scrawling with feverish haste as he etched runes into delicate, faintly blue parchment. After much experimentation, he’d found that a triton’s hide yielded the finest parchment for his current purposes-long lasting and water resistant, not to mention its pleasing azure hue.

A trio of magic-dazed tritons, for the moment still wearing their blue skins, huddled in one of the cages that lined the vast coral chamber. Akhlaur favored these creatures and considered them nearly the equivalent of elves in terms of usefulness. Except for their coloring, their astonishing beauty, and their seal-like flippers, they resembled humans and were thus excellent test subjects. Their innate magic, however, provided some unexpected and interesting possibilities.

Akhlaur did not limit his studies to tritons. Each cage housed creatures whose lives and deaths contributed to the necromancer’s art. Their moans and cries provided a counterpoint to Akhlaur’s frenzied thoughts.

“An interesting spell, this,” he muttered as he scrawled. “Wouldn’t have thought an elf could manage it. Can’t be necromancers, elves. Bah! Whoever said that obviously hadn’t met my little Kiva.”

A note of pride had crept into the wizard’s musings concerning the elf woman. He shrugged aside Kiva’s years of captivity and torment, choosing to regard her as his “apprentice.”

“Apprentices challenge their masters. That is the way of things. You’ve done well, little elf-” he broke off to concentrate on shaping a particularly clever and lethal rune-“but you’re not ready to face Akhlaur in battle.”

The wizard finished the spell with a flourish. He rose and stroked his scaled chin as he stalked past a row of cages.

He paused before the bone and coral dungeon that housed the laraken. The monster instinctively lunged toward the life-giving magic surrounding Akhlaur, then cringed away when it realized the source.

Akhlaur considered his pet for a long moment. He needed a subject upon which to test the difficult spell he’d just transcribed. The laraken had survived this spell once, but Akhlaur could not be entirely certain that it would do so again. Most of the wizardly enchantments drained from Kiva passed through the laraken whole and with full detail; this one came to Akhlaur as the mere shadow of a spell. The laraken had absorbed the general shape and form during the casting, and passed this imperfect report along to its necromancer master. Akhlaur had filled in some gaps. Most likely he had improved the spell, but with elven magic, who knew?

“Too risky,” he decided. “Let us send another beast first, and see how it fares.”

The necromancer strolled past his collection of monsters. One, a fierce, four-armed fishman that reminded him of a mutant sahuagin, caught his eye. These creatures were common enough in the Elemental Plane. Should the experiment fail, it would be a simple matter to acquire another.

With a nod, Akhlaur shook out the parchment roll and began to read aloud. The spell he’d taken from the laraken-which in turn the laraken had taken from Kiva-rang through the living water. Bubbles rifted from the necromancer’s lips and drifted off to encircle the caged beast. They spun and dipped and glowed, bringing to mind elves dancing beneath a starlit sky. Akhlaur ignored the elven flavor of Kiva’s spell and concentrated on the sheer ingenuity of it.

As the chant continued, the bubbles began to merge, growing in size as they united. When Akhlaur pronounced the final, keening word of power, the bubbles converged into a single sphere that surrounded the monster.

For a moment the necromancer merely stood and watched as the creature threw itself from one side of its prison to the other, gasping in the thin and unfamiliar air. The scent of its terror was as intoxicating as a greenwitch’s herb garden. Akhlaur drew in long draughts, taking time to savor its pungency. When at last he felt pleasantly sated, he took a small coral circlet from a spell bag and placed it between him and the entrapped monster. It hung like a round, empty frame on an invisible wall, or perhaps a peephole such as the powerless and suspicious often carved into their doors.

Again Akhlaur began to chant. A wall of power began to leech from the edges of the coral circle, gleaming with weird greenish light. When the wall spanned the vast chamber, the wizard took a tiny metal token and hurled it at the coral frame, shouting a single word.

The token disappeared with a burst of light and sound. The bubble lurched toward the coral circlet. It clung, and the air it contained rushed through the hole in a whirling spill of bubbles. The monster, too, was sucked toward the opening. Its form elongated weirdly and flowed through the opening like a genie emerging from a narrow-necked bottle.

In moments the giant bubble was gone, and the monster stood but three paces from Akhlaur. The wizard dispelled the wall of force with a single gesture and smiled into his captive’s hideous face. The monster bared its fangs and snarled like a cornered wolf.

“Attack me,” Akhlaur invited. “This day has been lacking in diversion.”

For a moment instinct warred against instinct as the creature weighed certain death against continued captivity. A tormented roar ripped from its throat.

Akhlaur shrugged. “Indecision is its own choice,” he observed. He nodded, and the bone gate of the monster’s cage yawned open. A flick of the necromancer’s fingers created a miniature vortex that sucked the beast back into its prison and slammed the door behind it.

Not giving the monster another thought, the necromancer set to work affixing the coral frame to one of the cage’s bars, securing it with wards and trigger spells.

“A gift for you, little Kiva,” he said, gazing toward another tiny opening-the imperfect gate, a leak that spilled water and magic into Halruaa. “You sent me the laraken. When you touch the waters of the spring, I shall respond with a messenger of my own. Given the trouble you’ve taken on my behalf, it would be rude to ignore you. The proprieties, after all, must be observed.”

The necromancer chuckled, envisioning the elf woman’s surprise when the four-armed beast leaped from the gate. It was a small ploy, a mere feint in the opening moments of battle. But oh, how marvelous was the prospect of a worthy opponent!

Akhlaur let himself drift into pleasant dreams of vengeance. His thoughts dwelt not upon the little elf woman, but on his oldest friendshis most hated foes.

The Nath, the northeastern corner of Halruaa, was among the wildest and most desolate places in all the land. A few trade roads transversed it, but they were narrow and lightly traveled. Barren, rock-strewn valleys twisted among foothills honeycombed with caves, and often covered with dense forest. Monsters and bandits laired in these hidden places, but more dangerous still were the slim gray figures that moved like shadows through the smoking ruins of a trade caravan.

All were female Crinti, an elf-descended race who were gray of hair and skin and soul. Their leader kept over to the side, mounted on a dusky horse and directing the activity with an occasional gesture of her slim, gray hands. More infrequently, she snarled out a command in a language that once, long ago, had been that of the drow. Shanair, a chieftain among the Crinti raiders, took much pride in her dark heritage.