Waterdeep (26 page)

“It’s not our right to judge our fellows,” Adon said softly, still holding off the fighter. “Any more than it was the right of the Harpers to condemn you and I to death.”

Kelemvor frowned at that memory then sheathed his weapon. During the Battle of Shadowdale, Elminster had disappeared. The locals had leaped to the conclusion that someone had murdered the sage then falsely accused Adon and Midnight of the crime. Had Cyric not broken them out of jail, the pair would have been executed.

“This is different,” Midnight insisted. “He betrayed us, and he played me for a fool.” She reached for Kelemvor’s sword.

The warrior placed a restraining hand on his hilt. “No,” he said. “Adon’s right.”

“If we kill him,” Adon said, waving a hand at Cyric’s helpless form. “We’re murderers - just like he is. Do you want that?”

Midnight pondered that for a moment then jerked her hand away from the sword. “Leave him, then. He’ll die anyway.” She turned and started up the road.

Kelemvor looked to Adon for instruction.

“We shouldn’t kill a helpless man,” the cleric said. “But we don’t have to help him, either. He can’t do us any more harm. He’s lost his men and if we hurry, we’ll put some miles between us before he wakes up.” He started after Midnight. “Let’s hurry, before she disappears again.”

They caught Midnight quickly then Kelemvor asked, “Where are we going?”

Midnight paused.

Though just barely, she was still within Cyric’s earshot. Had she looked at the thief, she might have noticed him turning his head to hear her answer.

“I’m going to Dragonspear Castle,” the raven-haired mage said, her hands on her hips.

“Then we’re all going to Dragonspear Castle,” Adon noted calmly. “Are Kelemvor and I going to have to split the watch to keep you from sneaking off, Midnight?”

“The gods themselves are against me,” the magic-user warned, looking from the cleric to Kelemvor, then back again. “You’ll be risking your lives.”

“We’d be risking more by leaving you alone,” Adon retorted, a smile growing on his face.

Kelemvor caught Midnight’s elbow and turned her so he could look straight into her eyes. “Gods or no gods,” he said firmly, “I’m with you, Midnight.”

Midnight was warmed by the devotion of her friends, but still was not ready to accept their offer. Though she was talking to both Adon and Kelemvor, she looked only into the warrior’s eyes as she spoke. “The choice is yours, but you’d better hear me out before you decide. Somewhere below Dragonspear Castle, there’s a bridge to the Realm of the Dead.”

“In Waterdeep?” Kelemvor cried incredulously. He was thinking of the city’s famous cemetery, which was properly known as “The City of the Dead.”

“No, the Realm of the Dead,” the mage corrected. Then Midnight looked at Adon. “The other tablet is in Myrkul’s castle.”

Kelemvor and Adon stared at each other in dumfounded silence, hardly believing that she meant the resting place of souls.

“Don’t feel bad if you choose to go home,” Midnight replied, interpreting their astonishment as hesitancy. She gently removed her elbow from Kelemvor’s grasp. “I really don’t think you should come anyway.”

“I thought the choice was ours,” Adon said, snapping out of his shock.

“Aye! You’re not going to lose us that easy,” Kelemvor added, taking Midnight by the arm again.

It was Midnight’s turn to be astonished. She had not allowed herself to hope that Kelemvor and Adon would want to accompany her. But now that they had declared their intention to do just that, she felt less lonely and immeasurably more confident. Midnight threw herself into Kelemvor’s arms and kissed him long and hard.

The rise was so gentle Adon hardly knew he was walking uphill. Halfway up, the cleric stopped and shifted the saddlebags with the tablet to his other shoulder. It was the most exciting thing he had done in almost four hours.

Along with Kelemvor and Midnight, Adon had been traveling along the desolate road for five days. To the west, coarse stems of tall golden grass rose from a prairie of wet, slushy snow. A mile to the east stood the dark cliffs of the High Moor. Ahead, running mile after mile was the straight and endlessly boring road to Waterdeep. Adon had never thought he would long to feel a steep mountainside beneath his feet, but right now he would have gladly traded a mile of easy road for twenty miles of precarious mountain trail.

Despite a hard morning’s march, Adon’s toes were shriveled and numb. Three inches of slushy snow covered the road, soaking through even the well-oiled boots High Horn’s quartermaster had provided. Judging from the pearly complexion of the sky, more snow would soon fall.

Even accounting for their northward progress, the season had changed early this year. A white shroud already blanketed the High Moor, and sheets of ice crowned the streams that poured from the wild country’s heart.

Adon felt as if the nature gods were conspiring to make his journey difficult and cold. It was far more likely, he realized, that the unseasonable cold was a reflection of the absence of those gods. Without their supervision, nature was running rampant, randomly changing as one mindless force gained supremacy over another.

The unpredictable weather was just one more reason he and his companions had to succeed in their quest. Without an orderly progression of the seasons, it would not be long before the farmers lost their crops and whole populations starved.

As Adon pondered the importance of his mission and the dreariness of completing it, a sharp bark sounded from the other side of the rise. He immediately turned and waved Kelemvor and Midnight off the road, then began searching for a hiding place himself. The land was so barren he finally had to settle for kneeling behind a scraggly bush.

A band of gray appeared at the top of the rise. The cleric squinted and looked closer. Twelve wolves were walking abreast in a straight line. Another rank followed the first, and then another and another, until a whole column of wolves was marching down the road in perfect step.

As the column advanced, Adon wondered whether he should run or continue hiding behind his pathetic bush. One of the wolves barked a sharp command. The first line drew abreast of the cleric’s hiding place then each wolf snapped its head to face him in a perfect dress left maneuver. Each succeeding line repeated the drill as it passed.

Adon gave up hiding and returned to the roadside, shaking his head in disbelief. Kelemvor and Midnight joined him.

“Nice parade work,” the fighter noted, observing the wolves with a critical eye. His voice was as casual as if the trio had been watching an army of men instead of animals.

With studied disinterest, Midnight asked, “I wonder where they’re off to?”

“Baldur’s Gate or Elturel,” Kelemvor observed, turning and looking to the south.

“How would you know that?” Adon demanded, frowning at the warrior.

“You haven’t heard?” Midnight asked. She lifted her brows to indicate incredulity at Adon’s ignorance.

“The sheep are revolting in the south,” Kelemvor finished.

The cleric put his hands on his hips. “What are-“

Both Kelemvor and Midnight burst into fits of laughter.

Adon flushed angrily, and turned toward the road.

“There’s nothing funny about the breakdown of Order,” he snapped.

Midnight and Kelemvor only laughed harder.

Adon turned away, but after five minutes of watching the column pass, he chuckled. “Sheep revolt,” he muttered. “Where did you come up with that?”

“Why else would you need an army of wolves?” Kelemvor asked, grinning.

Finally, the last rank of wolves passed, leaving the trail black and muddy. Kelemvor stepped back onto the road and sank past the ankles in cold muck.

He cursed then said, “We need horses.”

“True, but what can we do?” Adon asked, stepping into the road. “We’ll never find horses out here, and if we stray off the road, we’re likely to get very lost.”

In five days of marching, they had met only one small band of six hardy warriors. Although the small company had been kind enough to confirm that Dragonspear Castle lay ahead, they had refused to part with even a single horse.

“At this rate, the Realms will be dead a year before we make Dragonspear Castle,” Kelemvor complained, his humor now completely drained.

“Don’t be so sure,” Adon responded. “We should be close. It might be over the top of that rise.” The cleric was determined not to let the fighter’s sudden bad mood infect him.

Kelemvor snorted and kicked at the mud, sending a black spray toward the roadside. “Close? We’re not within a hundred miles of the castle.”

Adon stifled an acid reply. Despite Midnight’s return, the cleric still found himself serving as company leader. It was not a position he enjoyed, but Kelemvor had shown more interest in keeping Midnight company than in assuming command. As for the mage, she seemed content to let someone else guide them, though it should be her, by all rights, who was the group’s leader. Adon didn’t understand why the magic-user shirked the responsibility, though he suspected the reason might concern Kelemvor. Perhaps she feared the fighter could not love a taskmaster. Whatever the cause, Adon was left to play the captain. He felt distinctly uncomfortable in the role, but he was determined to do his best.

“I’m sure Dragonspear Castle is close by,” Adon said, hoping to buoy Kelemvor’s spirits. “All we’ve got to do is keep putting one foot in front of the other.”

“You put one foot in front of the other,” Kelemvor snapped. He turned to Midnight. “You got us away from Boareskyr with a wave of your hand. Why don’t you try again?”

Midnight shook her head. “I’ve thought of that. But it’s risky to teleport - especially with magic so fouled up. I only did it because we would have died anyway. We’re lucky we didn’t appear in the middle of the Great Desert.”

“How do we know we didn’t?” Kelemvor muttered.

Midnight stepped onto the edge of the muddy road and started up the rise. “I’m sure,” she said.

Midnight was relieved that the teleport incantation had worked, and not only because it had saved their lives. It was the first time that her magic had worked correctly since High Horn. In Yellow Snake Pass, her wall of fire had resulted in harmless stalks of smoke, and at the ford she had animated the ropes by accident. Even at Boareskyr Bridge, her first incantation had failed pathetically, producing a ball of light in place of a lightning bolt.

The mage had feared that she misunderstood the change in her relationship to magic. When she summoned an incantation, only words and gestures appeared in her mind - never any indication of the proper material component or what to do with it. At first, this had disturbed Midnight and she had feared that she was misinterpreting something. But each time she tried to cast a spell, there was never a need for material components. The magic-user had finally decided that, because she tapped the magic weave directly, no intermediary agent - like a spell component - was required to transmit the mystical energy.

The horizon suddenly seemed distant and Midnight realized that she had reached the crest of the gentle rise. She paused to look around. Even though it was barely noticeable, the rise was the highest ground nearby and afforded a view of the terrain ahead.

Twenty yards behind the magic-user, Adon was still trying to encourage Kelemvor. “For all we know, we’re only ten miles away from Dragonspear Castle.”

“Actually,” Midnight interrupted, studying a sprawling ruin to the right of the road, “I’d say we’re closer than that.”

Adon and Kelemvor looked up then rushed to her side. Nestled against the base of the High Moor, atop three small hillocks, stood the deteriorating walls and toppled spires of an abandoned citadel. From this distance, it was difficult to say how large the castle was, but it might have rivaled the fortress at High Horn.

“What have we here?” Kelemvor asked. He was looking down the road, but neither Midnight nor Adon noticed.

“Dragonspear Castle, what else?” Adon replied. He had no way of confirming his guess, but he suspected there were no other ruins of such size on the way to Waterdeep.

“Not the castle,” Kelemvor snapped. He pointed down the road, where, over a mile away, ten caravan drivers had just left the trail. They were slowly fleeing toward the ruined castle, pursued by a dozen sluggish attackers.

“Someone’s attacking a caravan!” Midnight exclaimed.

“The battle’s not moving very fast,” Adon said, watching the two groups. “Maybe the attackers are undead.”

“You’re probably right,” Kelemvor said, turning to look at the cleric. “And the drivers are moving slowly because they’re probably tired after a long chase.” The warrior’s eyes betrayed his desire to intercede.

Adon silently cursed his companion. While the trio could easily destroy one or two undead, there were a dozen attacking the caravan. Even with Midnight’s magic, they could not defeat so many creatures. He wished Kelemvor would consider the value of their own lives, as most men would. But the fighter was no longer a common man if he ever had been. A common man would not be looking for the entrance to the Realm of the Dead, nor would he have undertaken a mission that made such a journey necessary.

“We can’t get involved,” Adon said thoughtfully, pretending to think aloud. “If we get killed, the Realms will perish.”

Adon suspected that Midnight would not involve herself with the caravan if he said not to. But Kelemvor would resent an order to abandon the drivers. Therefore, the cleric wanted the fighter to make the decision for himself. Besides, Adon had no wish to let the burden of abandoning the caravan rest upon his shoulders alone.

Midnight studied the scene for a full minute, weighing Adon’s words against her desire to help. If they abandoned the drivers, she would feel guilty for the rest of her life. But the mage also knew that helping could endanger the tablet.

“We can’t interfere,” she said, turning away. “There’s too much at risk.”

Adon breathed a sigh of relief.

“I don’t know about you two,” Kelemvor grumbled, eyeing his companions with disapproval, “but I can’t abandon innocents to their deaths. I’ve done that too often-“