Conspiracy

Chapter 5

Lord Ikavi Garkim looked up from the interrogation. The man seated before him had been trembling and sobbing, spewing out an endless string of half-truths and untruths, never approaching the fact his mind shouted: the pirates had eaten like kings at this very pub just yesterday.

"If spies had been here, I would have poisoned them-"

"All right. Shut up," Garkim interrupted with a chopping movement of his hand.

There was something else beckoning to him, an odor on the wind. It smelled like a beached leviathan, the stench of something once hidden in black brine but now exposed to sun and air. It was an odor of death.

The mage-king. Always, Aetheric remained in contact with his right-hand man, as though Garkim were but another stone golem. Sometimes he could feel the mage-king gazing out through his own eyes, speaking through his own mouth. But almost never did Aetheric send his summons this way, a pungent and piteous scent. It was as though the mage-king himself were poisoned and dying.

Garkim released the barkeep's shoulder, only then realizing he had grabbed hold of it. He stepped toward the door, though the motion was more a stagger. Whatever black humors coursed, paralyzing, through the mage-king coursed through Garkim, as well.

He has made me, Garkim realized. His death would unmake me, just as surely.

The clatter of an overturned plant stand broke into Garkim's reverie. He stumbled out the door, calling to the proprietor: "I go now. The mage-king is finished with you." He turned and shambled away.

Behind him, the man's piteous laments only increased, as though Garkim had just pronounced a death sentence. If the mage-king truly were poisoned, it would be a death sentence for all Doegan…

The palace. It was there, just there, above the rankling horizon of adobe and timbers. It was visible from every alley and court of the city. If only his legs would carry him that far.

Garkim knew this city-every shop window and alleyway and secret door-but it suddenly seemed alien to him. It was not a city anymore-not his city-but an endless maze of mud and dun. Garkim moved along the street as if in a dream. The midday sun was gray despite the clear sky.

The city usually knew him, too. Today, though, it recoiled from him. It knew something was terribly wrong. Mar and Ffolk alike disappeared in the lane before him, draining into whatever niches presented themselves. Hovels leaned away from the staggering lord. Bleached awnings hung dead still in the dread air. Even the mud street sucked in its belly as though shying beneath a creeping scorpion.

What could it be? Was the mage-king dying? Had his body endured the final assault from the bloodforge? Had the paladins returned with some cursed hammer of Tyr that could smash through the wall of the mage-king's abode?

If the mage-king fell, all Doegan would fall.

He could hear nothing. Lips moved in the shadows of drawn curtains, wagon wheels tumbled hastily out of sight, but he could hear not a whisper. There was only a strange, omnipresent groan, as of the world itself rolling over in restless sleep.

The city fell away in ten thousand numb steps and at last, suddenly, Garkim staggered into the blue shadow of the palace.

He crossed the stair bridge above the dry moat and bulled his way past the gate guards who had stepped in to bar his way. There was a touch of Aetheric's own strength in this melancholy that had settled over Lord Garkim; one of the guards went down clutching cracked ribs, and the other was knocked unconscious by an errant elbow.

Seeing what had happened to the first guards, the second pair let Garkim through without requesting a password. He took no notice of them. They were like roaches clinging to the curved belly of the tunnel he walked. The very stones were warped by the Mage-King's deep, horrific sorrow.

How could the guards not sense it? How could they be so oblivious to this recursive dread?

The curvature seemed greater with each step, until individual stones stretched in eerie shapes around Garkim. It was as though he were walking within a glass globe. The world outside was bent into utter absurdity. His eyes could not tell him whether he stood in the crescent hallway before the audience chamber or on the highest parapet atop the tower. But he didn't need eyes. The same putrid imperative that gagged his gills told him which direction to walk.

Curved glimpses of windows and sunlit stones receded behind him like water down a drain. A vast cold blackness loomed up. The audience chamber. In silence, he was swallowed.

Come farther, Garkim. Come farther.

He did. In the void, he glimpsed a tiny form, wriggling with thousands of dim fingers. A sea anemone. The creature's tendrils stretched outward into worms, into thin tentacles, into encircling bands of wet muscle. Still Garkim continued. The coiling, ropy lines thickened, slowly squeezing out the darkness, the air. In two more steps, the ever-grasping creature encompassed the whole of creation.

One last step, and Garkim stopped. In that final movement, the infinite intertwined tentacles resolved into smooth, clean flesh. Human flesh. A man. Aetheric III. He floated in darkness before Garkim, a huge muscled man with dense golden curls atop his head, piercing blue eyes, a nose slightly curled like the beak of a sea hawk, and sad-edged lips. His naked skin was as golden as his hair. This was how he wanted Garkim to see him.

Beautiful. Tragic. Glorious. Powerful.

It is time for you to know our mind, Ikavi Garkim.

Unsure what else to do, face to face with the mortal image of his master, Garkim knelt and bowed his head. "As you wish, Mage-King Aetheric. Speak, and I will know."

The rich voice filled his mind, consumed him with its words.

We brought Lady Eidola here. It was no other. Not Waterdhavian nobles. Not the Fallen Temple. Not the Unseen. It was we. We used our bloodforge to conjure warriors and gate them into the chapel of Piergeiron's Palace.

A chill ran down Garkim's spine. It dismayed him that he had not even guessed this.

There is much more you do not know about us, little one. Some of it we tell you now.

In an effort to silence his thoughts, Garkim asked, "Why? Why did you kidnap Lady Eidola?"

We kidnapped her for this, very hour. The hour of our deliverance-or our demise. Have you not seen how our people are ill, languishing beneath this oppressive contagion?

"I have more than seen, Your Highness," Garkim replied, peeling down the edges of his collar. "I, too, am infected, though I have not yet grown weak, like the others."

The disease is brought on by the bloodforge. You knew that. The disease first attacked only us. We have, these many decades, absorbed all the twisting evil of the bloodforge into our own body, so saving our people.

"Praise be to thee, Your Highness."

But it is too much now. The bloodforge has grown ravenous. It has eaten holes through us, and its terrible teeth gnash outward upon our people. Its poisons creep into their blood, slowing them, filling them with fever, transforming their flesh. We know what it does to them, to you, for already it did these things to us.

"We have spoken of this already, my king," Garkim said. "I know what has brought the Gray Malaise, and what has, for that matter, brought the very armies of hell to batter our gates. I know that only with the bloodforge can we fight the tanar'ri, though its very use makes us weaker." He had grown as pale as a sea slug. "So, then, why use the bloodforge to steal away Eidola of Neverwinter? Did not that only worsen the artifact's cravings, and bring more fiends?"

It was meant to bring us new armies to fight our old foes. It brought us paladins and pirates.

As long as Eidola of Neverwinter remained in my dungeons, beneath this very tank, more warriors would have arrived in these lands, armies of them. They would have fought the fiend war for us. In time, the fiends would have been slaughtered. Then we would have relaxed our defenses, and the bloodforge would once more have grown quiet. Such was my plan.

"What has gone wrong?"

The Paladinson has fallen into a deep coma. Were he awake, he would have mustered the greatest fleet in Faerun to come here in search of his lost bride. They would have come and fought fiends for us and driven them all back to the Abyss. Instead, the loveless mage Khelben Blackstaff has sent only one small group, whose number was nearly halved before they even arrived- two dead, and Paladinstar remaining to tend her father. Now even the foolish youth Kastonoph has left them. We cannot throw back the fiends with such pitiful numbers as these. The Blackstaff does not prize his master's bride as he ought.

"But surely when these paladins fail, the Blackstaff will send this fleet you speak of-"

We have not time to wait for these Tyr-kissers to fail. The fiends have found another route into the city, through a deep and ancient labyrinth of dwarf tunnels. To close all of them off would require a use of the bloodforge that would be instantly lethal for every creature in Doegan. The fiends will find their way into the city, and soon.

You will muster all of our forces and array them to protect the palace. Already our energies are so strained that we cannot keep track of these paladins and pirates. They are the least of our worries, inconsequential now. They are nothing beside these armies of fiends.

The fiends will not reach you, Highness." You guard not us, but the bloodforge. If it is lost, all is lost. We ourselves will fight to our death to defend it. "When will the fiends arrive, Highness?" Before dusk, tomorrow.

"Then this truly is the hour of our deliverance, or our demise."

There was something unutterably mournful in the mind of the mage-king, the sort of sweet, quiet, bitter reflection of a monarch dying even as his warriors won the war. It is the apocalypse. If the bloodforge is stolen, it will be gained at the price of our own life, of your life, Ikavi, and that of every citizen in Doegan.

Let there be no more Ffolk, no more Mar. We, Aetheric III, are Ffolk, and yet we could not have ruled without your aid, Ikavi Garkim-and you are Mar. Let there be no more Ffolk, no more Mar, but only warriors of Doegan. We shall triumph together, or die together.

But warriors are not enough. For the fiends to be beaten back and defeated, we will have to become far more than ever we have been. We must be transformed. We must emerge from this poisoned chrysalis into new, winged life. We must transcend.

Either way, Aetheric III, mage-king of Doegan, will forever cease to be.

Interlude

Congratulations

So much for being mesmerized.

All right, all right, so you got the girl already. You two could be a little quieter in the next room, so the rest of us could get some sleep. Of course, Rings and Belgin are making as much noise with their snoring, and In-grar's probably asleep, too.

Congratulations, Entreri. I doubt she'll be getting a new heart from you.

And what the hell is it with these dried sponges for pillows? I feel like I'm sleeping on the bottom of the damned sea.