Storm of the Dead

CHAPTER 1

"Where are you going?"

At the sound of the voice, Q'arlynd froze. The words had come from a distance, carried on the wind. They held a note of alarm, even panic. Warily, he looked around but saw nothing. The moon was a mere sliver, but it provided ample light for his drow eyes. The moor stretched flat in all directions. The low jumbles of stone that dotted it-the ruins of ancient Talthalaran-offered little concealment, except to someone lying prone. The shifting mists were another matter. Even with summer approaching, they rose from the ground every night.

"Where are you going?"

There it was again, but from a slightly different direction. It sounded like the same voice: high and squeaky, not recognizably female or male, with a strange gulp between each word. Like the words were hiccupped out.

Q'arlynd reached into his belt pouch and drew out a pinch of gum arabic. As he rolled it between his fingers, he spoke the words of a spell. His body shimmered and vanished. He teleported away from the spot where he'd stood, materializing a good hundred paces from the foundation of the ruined tower he'd just searched.

"Stand and fight, you coward!" the voice gulped.

"I will," Q'arlynd breathed, unfastening the ties on his wand sheath. "If you just show yourself."

The wind shifted, wafting a foul odor from the direction of the voice.

"Stand and…"

The voice came closer.

"Coward!"

Closer still.

"Stand and fight, you. Fight you."

Almost there…

"Coward!"

There! It wasn't a drow, but a surface creature-one Q'arlynd had never seen before. Fast as a hunting lizard, it hurtled out of the mist toward him. It was enormous, its torso almost twice as long as Q'arlynd was tall. It had four legs that ended in hooves, a body covered with short brown hair, and a tufted tail that lashed behind it as it charged. Its wedge-shaped head had triangular, erect ears, and eyes that glowed a dull red. Drool streamed from its panting mouth. Despite Q'arlynd's invisibility, the creature charged straight for him. Into the wind. It must have picked up his scent.

Q'arlynd leaped into the air and was borne upward by his House insignia. Its magic would hold him above the monster while he blasted it from a safe distance.

The creature was fast, with powerful legs. It sprang after Q'arlynd with a leap that would have made a hunting spider envious. By scent alone it found him; jagged teeth clamped onto the hem of Q'arlynd's cloak. The creature hung for a moment, eyes blazing, dragging Q'arlynd down with it. Then the cloak tore, sending Q'arlynd tumbling upward. The creature fell to the ground, a now-visible chunk of the cloak in its teeth.

It spat the material out, then circled below Q'arlynd, nostrils flaring as it tried to pinpoint his scent. Q'arlynd wondered how it could smell anything over its own stench. The monster stank like a catch of blindfish left to rot.

He drew a fur-wrapped rod of glass from his pouch and aimed it at the creature. As magical energy crackled to life at its tip in a haze of purple sparks, the creature halted, cocked its head to the side, and gulped out more words.

"Where? Are you? Eldrinn?"

Q'arlynd completed his spell. Lightning streaked into the creature and blasted it. The beast staggered and twisted its head back to stare at the blackened, oozing wound in its flank. Then it glanced up at Q'arlynd, who was no longer invisible. Though staggering on its feet, it still snarled.

"Take a good look," Q'arlynd said as he sighted along the rod a second time. "It'll be your last."

A second streak of lightning smashed the creature onto its side. It quivered for a moment, legs stiff and trembling, then collapsed.

Still levitating, Q'arlynd reached into his pouch for a piece of leather stiffened with beeswax. Touching it to his chest, he cloaked himself in invisible armor. Only then did he drift to the ground. He stood, braced and ready, half expecting another of the creatures to come hurtling at him out of the mist, but all was quiet. At last he walked to the fallen creature and nudged it with his boot. It was dead.

Q'arlynd tucked the glass rod back in his pouch and ran a hand through his shoulder-length white hair, combing it back from his forehead. When he'd passed this way three months ago with the priestesses of Eilistraee, neither Leliana or Rowaan had mentioned creatures like it. They'd warned that the High Moor was home to orcs and hobgoblins, as well as the occasional troll, but they hadn't said anything about four-legged predators that could talk.

Though perhaps "talk" wasn't the word for it, exactly. The creature had uttered the same phrases over and over, sometimes in fragments, as if repeating something it had heard. Q'arlynd suspected it was imitating the panicked voice of someone shouting for a companion who, it would seem, had left that individual behind to become the creature's next meal.

Q'arlynd decided to see if his guess was correct. He drew his dagger and sliced open the monster's belly. He had to pinch his nose shut as he worked-whatever the creature was, its flesh oozed an oil that stank. A moment later, his guess was confirmed. A severed foot spilled out of the creature's stomach with the rest of its recent meal. Not yet fully digested, the foot had skin as black as Q'arlynd's own.

The creature had eaten a drow, and not too long ago. Someone else had been out on the moor that night.

One of Eilistraee's priestesses, en route to the Misty Forest with a petitioner? The foot offered no answers: it might have belonged to a male or a female. Q'arlynd hoped it wasn't Rowaan or Leliana who'd been eaten-that it hadn't been one of them who had been calling for the missing Eldrinn. Q'arlynd hadn't seen them since his impulsive departure from the Promenade. He'd spent all of his time on the High Moor since then, searching-aside from brief teleportations away to raid surface towns for supplies.

He glanced back at the foundation he'd been inspecting for the past three nights. It was identical to the ruined foundation he'd seen during his trip across the moor with Rowaan and Leliana three months ago. Like that other ruin, this one was also the base of a wizard's tower; it had the same arcane symbol on the floor. Q'arlynd had decided that it must have once been a teleportation circle. The amber that had filled the grooves in the floor had been destroyed millennia ago, when the killing storms had been unleashed on ancient Miyeritar, turning it into the blasted wasteland that was the High Moor.

Q'arlynd sighed. Two months of searching through the ruins of Talthalaran for even so much as a magical trinket, but without success. He'd searched the first ruined tower thoroughly, working outward from its foundation in a careful spiral, but found nothing. No secret passages leading below to hidden treasure troves of ancient wizards. This second tower, on what had been the outskirts of the city, had looked just as promising but was proving equally unfruitful.

He reminded himself that it had taken Malvag nearly a century to find the scroll that had opened a gate between two rival gods' realms. Yet Q'arlynd couldn't help but believe he'd come full circle. He'd learned much-that a male could seize power on his own terms, rather than by standing in the shadow of a powerful female-but where had that gotten him? Scavenging in the ruins, just as he'd been doing before he left Ched Nasad. The difference, of course, was that now he scavenged for himself, and not for a noble House that regarded him as little better than a common lackey. At first, this sense of independence had sustained him, but the end result was the same. Though he might be able to keep everything he found, the sum total of what he'd found, so far, was nothing.

Q'arlynd had, of course, known full well that there would be little left to pick from the bones of the ancient city; it had not only been blasted flat by the Dark Disaster, but had lain in ruins for more than eleven thousand years. Yet he'd been hopeful-and vain enough to think that only he had spotted the symbols in the ruined towers' foundations which marked them as belonging to wizards. He realized that others would have been drawn to that spot, too. Come to think of it, the foot he'd just found might have belonged to a fellow wizard, a rival in the scavenging game.

There was one sliver of hope. Eldrinn, whoever he-or she-might be, had probably run off, judging by the words the surface creature had mimicked. But the body of Eldrinn's companion, minus its foot, likely still lay on the moor. If that companion had unearthed anything and been abandoned in a hurry by Eldrinn, those spoils might still be with the body.

Q'arlynd wiped his dagger clean and sheathed it. He didn't have much skill at tracking, especially up on the surface, but the dead creature's feet were cloven, like those of a demon-sharp enough to leave a recognizable pattern.

He followed the creature's trail. In places where grass grew it had left a swath of crushed stems. In other spots, it had knocked stones loose from the crumbling foundations. The drifting mist caused Q'arlynd to lose the trail once or twice, but he persevered and eventually spotted what he'd been looking for: a drow's body, missing the lower portion of one leg. It was a male. The stomach had been chewed open and intestines were strewn across the ground. Flies droned into the air at Q'arlynd's approach, buzzing about in lazy circles, then settled again.

The dead drow was large for a male-nearly as tall and well muscled as a female. He wore an adamantine chain mail shirt-the creature had dragged it away from the stomach to feed-and a simple bowl-shaped helmet. The white hair that splayed out from it was crusted with blood. The back of the helm was gone, snipped neatly away. So too was a large part of the scalp beneath. The monster had bitten right through the metal, perhaps knocking the male down before he could use the sword that lay on the ground near his feet. He'd managed to fire his wristbow, though: the bolt had torn a furrow in the ground, a few paces away.

Q'arlynd shook his head. The fellow should have spent more time aiming and less time shouting after his companion.

He passed his hands over the body and whispered an incantation. A weak aura sprang into being around the piwafwi, a stronger one around the sword. Both items were of drow manufacture.

Q'arlynd rummaged through the dead male's pack. It contained nothing of interest. Just a half-eaten loaf of spore-bread, a flask of wine, and the usual gear a House soldier carried: whetstone, spare boots, extra gut for his wristbow, and a vial of sleep-poison for the bolts. The male's clothes were of a plain cut, and he wore no insignia: a commoner, then, despite the magical sword.

Q'arlynd's stomach growled, reminding him that he'd gone the night without eating. He'd tried hunting after his latest batch of supplies ran out, but the few birds and rodents he'd managed to blast with his magical missiles had been bony and unappetizing. Right then, even sporebread looked good.

He ate the loaf, washing it down with wine. When he finished, he circled the area, looking for the tracks of the companion who'd fled. The ground was a confusion of mashed grass. It looked as though the pair had camped there for a day or two. Footprints led off in several directions-and back again. Nothing was immediately obvious as a trail someone might have had made while fleeing.

Q'arlynd sighed. "'Where are you,' indeed?" he repeated. It was possible, he supposed, that the dead male's companion had used magic to escape. Or that he'd bolted down a hole into the Underdark.

If there was an entrance to the Underdark nearby, it was well hidden-possibly concealed by magic. Q'arlynd had an answer for that. He pulled out his quartz crystal and held it up to his eyes. He turned slowly, searching the nearby ground. Anything magically hidden would…

Wait a moment. What was that, off in the distance? It looked like another drow. Another male, judging by the figure's height and build. He was standing several hundred paces away, leaning on a staff and staring at the ground.

Q'arlynd lowered the crystal. The figure vanished. He raised the crystal again, and saw that the hitherto invisible male still stood there. Staring at the ground. Not moving.

Paralyzed, perhaps?

No, not paralyzed. The male began walking in a slow circle, head down, as if searching for something on the ground.

Q'arlynd stared at him. "Lost something else besides your nerve, did you?"

Whatever the male was so intent on finding, it must have been valuable enough to warrant his full attention. He never even glanced in Q'arlynd's direction, even though Q'arlynd was plainly visible; all of his attention was focused on the ground.

Q'arlynd smiled and rendered himself invisible as well. When the male halted again, Q'arlynd teleported to a spot a few paces to his rear. The grass rustled slightly as Q'arlynd's feet touched ground. If the other male heard it, he gave no sign. He resumed walking, head down, staring at the ground, the tip of his staff dragging behind him. Q'arlynd studied him through his crystal.

Eldrinn-if that's who it was-couldn't have been more than three or four decades old. A mere boy. He wore an ornately embroidered piwafwi over pale gray trousers and a shirt that shimmered like spider silk. His waist-length, chalk-white hair was gathered in a silver clip at the small of his back. His skin was a lighter shade than usual; he probably wasn't pure drow. Q'arlynd could see a smudge of something black on the boy's high forehead that glistened like axle grease.

Q'arlynd's quiet divination revealed several magical items. The boy's staff glowed, as did his piwafwi, his boots, his hair clip, and the ring that must have been sustaining his invisibility.

By the look of him, the boy was a noble. Probably the son of a wealthy House, one with plenty of coin to purchase expensive magical items. That staff, for example, had a potent aura that spiraled up then down the length of pale wood, alternately filling, then draining from the tiny hourglass-shaped diamond suspended between the forked top of the staff. Q'arlynd fairly itched to get his hands on the thing. A staff with that level of magical potency must be worth at least a hundred thousand gold pieces. Two hundred thousand, even. A fortune, in one hand.

When the boy completed his circuit and turned in Q'arlynd's direction, Q'arlynd let his invisibility drop. When the other male spotted him, Q'arlynd would bow and offer the services of a simple spell that might prove useful in the search. If that didn't work, well… the glass rod was concealed in his hand, ready for use.

Eldrinn, however, paid Q'arlynd no heed. There seemed to be something wrong with him. His eyes looked flat, lifeless. His mouth hung slack; spittle dribbled from one corner. He stumbled slightly, then stopped and shook his head like a surface elf who had spent too long in Reverie. Then he began walking again, plodding along, still staring at the ground.

Every few steps, he mumbled. Q'arlynd could just barely make out the words.

"Bag," the boy slurred. "Mus' geddid bag.'"

Q'arlynd had no idea what it meant, but he was certain of one thing, the fellow posed no threat. If startled, he wasn't in any condition to blast Q'arlynd with a spell.

Q'arlynd dispelled the invisibility that cloaked the other male. Then he lowered his crystal and said in a soft voice, "Eldrinn?"

The boy blinked. He briefly lifted dull eyes to Q'arlynd, then dropped them again and resumed his shuffling. He brushed past as if Q'arlynd wasn't there.

The boy looked like the victim of a feeblemind spell-something only a cleric's prayers or a magical wish could cure. Q'arlynd had neither at his disposal just then.

Q'arlynd stroked his chin and watched the other male tromp circles in the grass. The boy wore an amulet around his neck. Q'arlynd walked beside the boy and lifted the adamantine disc from his chest, curious to see if it bore a House glyph. It didn't. There was, however, an arcane symbol on it that Q'arlynd immediately recognized: "Divination."

Q'arlynd let the amulet fall back against the boy's chest. He understood, now, the lack of an insignia on the dead soldier. The boy-and the soldier who had accompanied him there-were from Sshamath, a city ruled by a conclave of wizards rather than the matrons of noble Houses. The amulet was the College equivalent of a House insignia in a city where House names were seldom used.

Q'arlynd shook his head, not quite believing the coincidence. Sshamath was the city where he hoped to make his new home. Maybe-and this was a disturbing thought-his finding Eldrinn had been more than mere coincidence. Had one of the gods arranged this meeting? Q'arlynd couldn't think of a single deity who might take an interest in him, however. He'd failed to attract the attention of Mystra's Chosen and had betrayed instead of aided Eilistraee-though that had led to the death of Vhaeraun. And yet…

Something on the ground caught Q'arlynd's eye. A crystal, winking at him in the moonlight. It was about half the length of his little finger. Hexagonal in cross section, it tapered to a point at each end. Pale blue at one end, it darkened along its length to blue-green. The crystal had fallen into tall grass; but for the moonlight glinting on it, Q'arlynd never would have spotted it.

He waited until the other wizard had walked past the crystal, then cast a divination. The crystal shone with an aura that was almost blinding-a magical radiance that made even the staff's aura seem dim in comparison. Q'arlynd whistled softly as he realized what the crystal must be. A kiira. A lorestone. He wet his lips nervously. The gods only knew what ancient spells it might contain.

The lorestone had to be what the boy was looking for. It had probably been the cause of his mental affliction. A damp black smudge on the side of the crystal matched the one on the boy's forehead.

Q'arlynd levitated the crystal into his pouch and tied the pouch shut. He wasn't about to touch the crystal with his bare hands-not after what it had, in all likelihood, done to the boy.

His prize secure, Q'arlynd drew his dagger and halted the boy by grasping his shoulder. Then he touched the point of his dagger to Eldrinn's chest. One quick push to drive the dagger home, and the staff, the piwafwi, and all the other magical items would be his. Yet for some reason, Q'arlynd couldn't bring himself to do it. Perhaps because Eldrinn's eyes looked so trusting-they reminded Q'arlynd of the look his younger brother had given him, just before Q'arlynd betrayed him.

Q'arlynd lowered his dagger and sighed. Just a short time on the surface, and he was going soft. That's what keeping company with Eilistraee's priestesses did to a male. Made him soft.

But perhaps it was just as well, he told himself. Killing the boy could have brought unwelcome consequences. Though Eldrinn was young, and likely just a novice, someone from his College might come looking for him. If evidence was found of his murder… well, a master of divination would quickly uncover the drow who'd done the deed.

Q'arlynd sheathed his dagger and let the boy trudge in a circle again. As Eldrinn passed him on his circuit, Q'arlynd reached out and plucked the staff from his hands. The boy let it go without protest. Easy as that.

Resting the staff against his shoulder, Q'arlynd waited for Eldrinn to circle back again. He'd remove those magical items, one by one, then leave the boy for the creatures of the High Moor to finish off, he thought. But then he realized that idea, too, had its drawbacks. Monsters didn't carry off magical items; they left them scattered about next to the kill. Any master of divination worthy of the title would take one look at the ravaged body and immediately search for the missing items. Especially for something as powerful as the boy's staff.

Q'arlynd let his hand fall. No, there was only one thing to be done. Teleport Eldrinn back to Sshamath, his magical items unpilfered.

Except, of course, for the kiira. It was a safe bet that Eldrinn hadn't reported finding it to his superiors at the College of Divination. If he had, other wizards would have shown up to claim it. It was likely, therefore, that only Eldrinn knew about the kiira. If whatever afflicted him proved too powerful to dispel, the lorestone would be Q'arlynd's. He could return to the High Moor and "find" it at his leisure.

And if Eldrinn did recover, and guessed that Q'arlynd had pocketed the kiira, perhaps a deal could be struck. Q'arlynd could agree to hand the lorestone over in return for a share of whatever knowledge it held.

He smiled. After two months of fruitless searching, not one but two prizes had dropped into his lap. A kiira-and a mind-damaged wizard, ripe for rescue, whose return to Sshamath might just warrant a reward.

For the time being, he would tuck the kiira away in a place where it would be impossible to find: in a certain cavern with no natural entrances or exits, completely lined with dark-stone crystals that would block all scrying and detection attempts. Only three drow, besides Q'arlynd, had known of the cavern's existence. Two were dead-their bodies had been lying on the cavern's floor when Q'arlynd had briefly returned to it a month ago. The third was unlikely to ever visit it again.

Q'arlynd teleported to the cavern, deposited his prize amid the darkstone crystals, then returned to the High Moor. The journey took only a few moments. Eldrinn still stood where Q'arlynd had left him, staring vacantly at the ground. He leaned forward, as if about to trudge in circles again, but Q'arlynd caught his arm, stopping him.

He turned his thoughts to Sshamath. He'd visited the city only once before-on a trading mission, decades ago-yet he still had a clear memory of its main point of entry: the cavern at the top of the Z'orr'bauth Pillar. He let this fill his mind. Then, his hand gripping Eldrinn's shoulder, he teleported them both to it.