THE QUALINESTI MAGE HAS FOUND ME. GUARD MY SCROLLS AND BOOKS WITH YOUR LIFE. IF I FAIL TO RETURN WITHIN A MONTH, YOU MUST TAKE THEM TO LADONNA, MISTRESS OF BLACK ARTS IN THE TOWER OF HIGH SORCERY AT WAYRETH. YOU WILL FIND THEM BEHIND THE OLD DOOR. GO INTO THE TUNNEL AND TURN LEFT AT THE FOURTH PASSAGE. WALK TWELVE PACES AND LOOK UP. MY STAFF AND THESE DWARVEN GLASSES OF TRUE SEEING WILL REPAY YOU FOR YOUR PAST AND FUTURE KINDNESSES. DO NOT TRY TO READ THE OTHER PARCHMENTS! THEIR POWER WOULD DESTROY YOU AND ATTRACT MY ENEMIES.
DALAMAR
Lodston removed the enchanted glasses, only to see the magical writing encode itself again in his mind. He experimented with them a few more times, feeling the message swim in and out of his awareness each time he donned and removed the spectacles. He also noticed that he could see his surroundings perfectly whenever he was wearing the magical lenses.
' 'Glasses of True Seeing,' huh? Now that's some piece of sorcery!' he exclaimed aloud. 'Healing an old dwarf's eyesight and teaching him to read secret spells all at the same time!' Lodston could not have known that the 'healing' effects were accidental. The lenses, which some unknown dwarven wizard had used to fashion the enchanted spectacles, just happened to have the right angle of refraction to improve Lodston's failing vision.
The jubilant hermit unbolted the inner door and ran into the tunnels, following Dalamar's directions to the letter. At the twelfth step in the fourth passageway, he looked upward, using the lamplight and his wondrous new glasses to study the shadows of the ceiling. The small chest was wedged between the tunnel roof and a loose timber, just as the parchment had promised. He quickly pried it loose and scurried back to the antechamber to study his newfound treasure.
Lodston opened the unlocked lid of the chest and dumped its contents on the table in the lamplight. Dalamar's voluminous robe tumbled onto the rough wooden surface, forming a black cushion for dozens of small parchment cases and several slender books covered in purple silk and bound with leather straps.
'So he traded me his fine black robe for my old cloak, huh? Sorcerers might be brainy, but they're short on common sense,' Lodston muttered to himself. The hermit picked up each scroll separately, weighing it in his hands and examining it with his powerful new spectacles. Still he saw nothing unusual about any of them.
'Why didn't he put labels on them?' mumbled the curious dwarf. 'What good are enchanted glasses if there's nothing to read with them? At least they should have titles so I'd know what I'm guarding 'with my life.' '
For several minutes of agonizing temptation, Lodston stared first at the scrolls, then at the note from Dalamar. Finally, he snorted and started returning the cases, one-byone, to the chest. He held the last one in his hand a moment too long, letting curiosity win the battle with judgment. With a muffled growl of surrender, he squinted behind the tiny glasses perched upon his huge nose and opened the scroll case.
Once again, the magical glyphs on the parchment writhed into a meaningful form, the words of an incantation in some unknown language forcing themselves from the dwarf's throat.
'Drish Fetts, Drish Fetts, Lorgon Trits,' he heard his own voice pronouncing, but he could not understand what he was saying.
Lodston found it difficult to recall which of several things happened first at the instant he uttered the last syllable of the strange incantation. The scroll itself flared with a yellow light, then disintegrated into fine ashes in his hands. At the same time (it seemed) a huge sphere of orange flames formed itself from the yellow glow of the scroll and shot forward, away from the hermit. In a blinding, deafening explosion, the fireball struck the pantry wall with such stunning force that Lodston was slammed to the rock floor of the antechamber.
'Great Reorx!' he swore when he was able to stagger to his feet. The pantry, with its dirty dishes and utensils, plus some sacks of food, had been completely destroyed! The nearest comer of the ancient mine chamber was charred and bare of everything. The wooden shelves had disintegrated into smoking embers on the floor. Lodston looked at the pile of seemingly harmless scroll-cases in the chest and slammed its lid shut with a fearful cry.
'I won't touch another one of the damnable things!' he vowed in a ringing shout, as if he were promising the absent Dalamar that he would never disobey him again. 'You and this 'Ladonna' can have these evil things to yourselves!'
The old dwarf's dreams that first night were filled with images of black-robed sorcerers who were fighting him with deadly magic. He had no way of imagining Dalamar's enemy, this 'Qualinesti mage,' but his mind constructed a spectral figure in a hooded white robe, the face hidden by the cowl except for terrible red eyes gleaming from its shadows. Lodston woke from his nightmare with a shudder and lay awake staring at the dying embers in the fireplace.
'What am I supposed to do if this mage from Qualinesti comes for your scrolls and books?' he cried in a hushed voice, as if Dalamar could hear and advise him. 'I don't know anything about magic. I wouldn't even know which spell to read until it was too late. Why should I have to fight your enemy when you ran away from him yourself?'
The silence that followed his desperate cry for help offered no solace. Lodston fumbled in the darkness for the staff and the glasses. When he had found both magical items, he crawled to the door. The only thing he could do, it seemed, was leave this business to Dalamar and the mage from Qualinesti, whoever he was. He remembered stories from his childhood about the Kinslayer Wars between different elven clans and wondered fleetingly if that was the 'war' that Milo Martin had mentioned.
'It's none of my business, any way you look at it!' he muttered at the door. Then he slid the wooden bar aside and stepped into the darkness outside his dwarf-made cave. By the silver light of the white moon, he could see the curious inscription on his front door which he hadn't been able to read before. The runes flowed together under the power of the Glasses of True Seeing, startling the hermit with their stark warning.
DEATH TO TRAITORS AND TO THOSE WHO HIDE THEM! it read.
Lodston felt his skin prickle with fear as he read his own death sentence. He whirled around and probed the darkness with the aid of his new glasses, hoping to spot one of Dalamar's enemies in the thick shadows of the cliff side bushes.
'And death to you!' he shouted into the darkness with a shake of the quarterstaff. 'This is my home! Leave me alone! I want nothing to do with elven squabbles!'
The old dwarf tensed himself, prepared to fight anyone who responded to his challenge, but the stillness remained unbroken save for the steady gurgle of the Meltstone River below him.
'Well, if magic's your game, then that's what you'll get from Nugold Lodston!' the hermit shouted into the night. With that burst of bravado, he darted back inside the mine chamber and bolted the door behind him. Then he opened the chest and looked at the mute wooden scroll cases. Finally he shut his eyes behind the wizard's spectacles and reached inside for another parchment.
He was more cautious this time. The gnarled fingers shook as he unfurled an inch or two of the scroll's top edge and examined its surface carefully with the aid of his enchanted spectacles. A single line of glyphs began to twist themselves into a meaningful phrase in his mind.
TISNOLLO'S WONDROUS INCANTATION OF SUGGESTION read the parchment's title.
Encouraged by the fact that nothing dangerous had happened, Lodston unrolled another few inches of the scroll and continued to read.
'To win powerful control over the thoughts and body of one's subject, the adept must focus his occult energies upon the…'
Aha! Wait until I spring this one on Milo! he thought gleefully. Lodston's childish excitement stifled his immediate curiosity. He re-rolled the parchment tightly and returned it to its case. Then he made a small mark on the polished wood with a charred stick from the fireplace. He couldn't write, but he might at least mark the scrolls to distinguish those which seemed safe from those which were more dangerous. Then he reached for another of the powerful parchments.
By sunrise, the would-be wizard had catalogued each of the scrolls into one of four categories: 'tricks,' which meant (he thought) harmless spells he wanted to use on people he knew, such as Milo Martin; 'guard spells,' which seemed to protect their caster from harm; 'attack spells,' whose titles suggested more aggressive results; and 'unknown spells,' whose results the untrained hermit could not predict even by reading and understanding the first few lines.
A sorcerer needs a sorcerer's robe, Lodston thought, delighted with the promise of new and unusual powers.
