Charon's Claw (Neverwinter #3)(6)

Gromph looked up at him and nodded. “Indeed,” he agreed as he reached for a corked, smoke-filled flask. He brought it before him, directly between him and Andzrel, and pulled off the cork. A line of smoke wafted up.

“You are no commoner,” Gromph agreed. “But you are dismissed.” With that, Gromph blew at the smoke, sending it toward Andzrel. In so doing, he released a sequence of spells in rapid order.

Andzrel looked at him curiously, startled and very much concerned, even afraid. He felt his very being, his corporeal form, thinning, becoming less substantial.

He tried to speak out, but it was too late. He was like the wind, flowing away and without control. Gromph watched him recede from the room, then waved his hand to throw forth a second burst of wind, a stronger one that not only sped Andzrel’s departure, but slammed the room’s door closed behind him.

Gromph knew that Andzrel wouldn’t regain his corporeal form until he was far away from this wing of House Baenre.

The archmage didn’t expect the annoying weapons master to return anytime soon. That brought a frown to Gromph’s face, though, as he considered the expression he could elicit on Andzrel’s face with the other little secrets he kept. For among Tiago’s entourage on the expedition was one of Gromph’s oldest associates, an old wizard-turned-warrior-turned-blacksmith drow named Gol’fanin, who carried with him a djinni in a bottle, a phase spider in another, and an ancient sword design, one which had eluded Gol’fanin for centuries because of his inability to properly meld the diamonds and metal alloys.

If the destination of the Xorlarrin expedition was as Gromph and Matron Zeerith and Matron Quenthel all expected, and if the cataclysm had been wrought of the rage of a primordial fire beast, then Andzrel’s current state of outrage would seem utterly calm by comparison when Tiago returned home.

That thought pleased the old drow archmage greatly.





PART I


OLDGRUDGE





I am past the sunset of my second century of life and yet I feel as if the ground below me is as the shifting sands. In so many ways, I find that I am no more sure of myself than I was those many decades ago when I first walked free of Menzoberranzan—less sure, in truth, for in that time, my emotions were grounded in a clear sense of right and wrong, in a definitive understanding of truth against deception.

Perhaps my surety then was based almost solely on a negative; when I came to recognize the truth of the city of Menzoberranzan about me, I knew what I could not accept, knew what did not ring true in my heart and soul, and demanded the notion of a better life, a better way. It was not so much that I knew what I wanted, for any such concepts of the possibilities outside the cocoon of Menzoberranzan were surely far beyond my experience.

But I knew what I did not want and what I could not accept. Guided by that inner moral compass, I made my way, and my beliefs seemed only reinforced by those friends I came to know, not kin, but surely kind.

And so I have lived my life, a goodly life, I think, with the power of righteousness guiding my blades. There have been times of doubt, of course, and so many errors along the way. There stood my friends, to guide me back to the correct path, to walk beside me and support me and reinforce my belief that there is a community greater than myself, a purpose higher and more noble than the simple hedonism so common in the land of my birth.

Now I am older.

Now, again, I do not know.

For I find myself enmeshed in conflicts I do not understand, where both sides seem equally wrong.

This is not Mithral Hall defending her gates against marauding orcs. This is not the garrison of Ten-Towns holding back a barbarian horde or battling the monstrous minions of Akar Kessell. In all Faer?n now, there is conflict and shadow and confusion, and a sense that there is no clear path to victory. The world has grown dark, and in a dark place, so dark rulers can arise.

I long for the simplicity of Icewind Dale.

For down here in the more populous lands, there is Luskan, full of treachery and deceit and unbridled greed. There are a hundred “Luskans” across the continent, I fear. In the tumult of the Spellplague and the deeper and more enduring darkness of the Shadowfell, the return of the shades and the Empire of Netheril, those structures of community and society could not remain unscathed. Some see chaos as an enemy to be defeated and tamed; others, I know from my earliest days, see chaos as opportunity for personal gain.

For down here, there are the hundreds of communities and clusters of farms depending on the protection of the city garrisons, who will not come. Indeed, under the rule of despot kings or lords or high captains alike, those communities so oft become the prey of the powerful cities.

For down here, there is Many Arrows, the orc kingdom forced upon the Silver Marches by the hordes of King Obould in that long-ago war—though even now, nearly a century hence, it remains a trial, a test, whose outcome cannot be predicted. Did King Bruenor, with his courage in signing the Treaty of Garumn’s Gorge, end the war, or merely delay a larger one?

It is always confusion, I fear, always those shifting sands.

Until I draw my blades, and that is the dark truth of who I have become. For when my scimitars are in hand, the battle becomes immediate, the goal survival. The greater politic that once guided my hand is a fleeting vision, the waving lines of rising heat showing rivers of sparkling water where there is only, in truth, dry sand. I live in a land of many Akar Kessells, but so few, it seems, places worth defending!