truly awesome foes who lay dead upon the ground.
“I do not understand it!” said Zat in tones of cold fury. “She is just a githzerai female.”
None of her servants or sycophants had the courage to point out that Zat herself was “just a githzerai female.”
“I have been trying to slay the githyanki foundling for almost five years,” she continued. “Every single assassin and every single creature I have sent should have been able to accomplish its task. What is it about this Charybole? There is nothing in her childhood, nothing in her past, to imply that she should be able to withstand such assaults. Nothing! So how does she do it? Who has trained her to slay our greatest assassins, our most frightening creatures, with nothing but the primitive weapons she has created herself? Not only that, but she defeats them even when I send them in teams, even as she is protecting the githyanki child! How is it possible?”
There were no answers, of course, because no one knew how it was possible.
Zat sat perfectly still, staring into space, for five minutes, then ten more, then another twenty, until her retainers thought she had gone into some kind of trance, or perhaps even turned comatose. Just before they considered calling the wizards to see if they could bring her back to the here and now, Zat stood up.
“I had not wanted to take this measure,” she said coldly, “but I will not be thwarted again!”
Charybole sensed it before she could hear it, and she could hear it before she could see it.
They had found a cave that was free of all other life forms; even bats seemed uninterested in it. It had been a hard trek and a long day, and the exhausted Malargoten lay asleep deep in the cave, free from prying eyes, and safe from whatever was approaching.
Charybole sat on the ground, her weapons laid out before her: a dagger, a sword, an axe, a spear, a bow, and twenty-seven arrows, half of them dipped in poison, half in things that were worse than poison. She was every bit as mystified as Zat that she had emerged victorious from her various conflicts. Still, whatever was approaching, she would not flinch, would not give an inch. She was ready for it, ready to once again defend the foundling who had captured her sympathy and her heart.
She didn’t know what it was, but she knew it had to be big, bigger than anything else she had yet faced, because its approach actually made the ground shake. The wind changed, and suddenly she could smell it. It smelled like nothing she had ever encountered before.
The ground trembled even more, the acrid odor became stronger still, and suddenly it was standing there in front of her, its single angry eye glaring balefully at her. It was an astral dreadnought, Zat’s ultimate weapon, a gargantuan creature whose gaping mouth was filled top and bottom with razor-sharp teeth. Its single eye was black, its tongue a dark blue, its armored scales reddish brown. Its strong arms ended in pincered claws that looked as though they had evolved for the sole purpose of holding githzerai helpless in them. Its lower body was serpentine, but it moved with speed and grace, and even the lack of legs did not stop the ground from vibrating as it undulated across it. Charybole stared at the dreadnought’s body, trying to see how huge it truly was, but there was no end to it; its tail seemed to extend to infinity.
“And you are from the Astral Plane,” whispered Charybole. “How did my race ever survive there next to creatures like you?”
She shot six, seven, eight arrows into it. It paid them no mind. She hurled her spear at it. It buried itself three feet into the dreadnought’s chest. The dreadnought ignored it. She fired two more arrows. They had no effect.
Somehow she knew this wouldn’t be like the other encounters. There was no way she could live through this. She wanted to check the cave, to see if Malargoten was awake yet, and if so to convince him to stay hidden, but she knew if she paid any attention at all to the cave’s entrance the dreadnought would know where the foundling was, and it was for the foundling that it had come.
She picked up her sword and her axe and edged to the right, hoping that the creature would follow her. Once she had moved away from the cave’s entrance, it paid her no further attention, and she quickly positioned herself between the dreadnought and the cave once again.
When it was within arm’s reach she buried the sword in its side. She knew from the arrows and the spear that she couldn’t kill it; her only hope was that she might somehow be able to cripple it. But though the sword plunged deep into the creature’s scales, it had no more effect than her other weapons. She swung her axe, but the dreadnought reached out its pincered claw, caught her head in it, and squeezed. It was over in a fraction of a second.
The dreadnought uttered a scream of triumph and cast her lifeless body aside. It couldn’t know it, of course, but that scream spelled its own doom, for it woke the sleeping foundling.
Malargoten walked to the cave’s entrance, briefly rubbing sleep from his eyes. He saw the lifeless body of his adoptive mother, then turned to face her slayer.
The dreadnought saw its prey and roared. The foundling showed no fear, and stepped out of the cave. The creature reached out a pincered claw to grab him.
“No,” said Malargoten softly, but with authority.
The dreadnought’s claw seemed to strike an invisible barrier, and bounced off.
The foundling stared at the creature, his expression a mixture of fury and contempt. Finally he waved a hand and snapped a finger, and the dreadnought collapsed, convulsing in agony, and died.
Malargoten paid it no more attention. Instead he walked over to Charybole’s body, stared at her crushed skull, and wondered what his people did with their dead.
Zat sat alone in her quarters. She was troubled, and she was confused. The reports had come in: She knew that the dreadnought had killed the annoying female who had withstood so many of her minions… but she also knew that the dreadnought itself was dead, though there was not a sign of violence on its body. And there was no trace of the foundling. Probably the dreadnought had eaten it, but she felt uneasy not knowing for certain.
Suddenly she became aware of another presence in the room, not a physical presence, but a presence nonetheless. She looked around, and saw a shimmering in the air, a shimmering that suggested something tangible, something more.
“Who are you?” she demanded.
You know who I am, a voice said inside her head. And you have made a serious blunder. For all of my life you have hunted me down like an animal. I was never in danger, of course, and until this latest attempt I was always able to protect my mother, even though she was not aware of it.
“You are githyanki!” spat Zat.
I could have been one of you, continued the voice calmly. Until now I bore you no ill will. But now you have killed my mother “Your false mother,” interrupted Zat.
The only mother I have ever known. You are safe for the moment, Zat. I will do nothing to you today, or this week, or this year. I will wait for my powers to mature, powers that could have served the githzerai. I wash my hands of your race, and my own kind will not have me after I have lived with yours. I will live apart from all living things until the time is right. And when it is, when I am invulnerable to the combined might of all the githzerai, I will return-and you, Zat, will be the first to know it.
She was about to reply, but before she could she sensed she was alone again.
She considered what she had heard.
Isn’t it ironic, she thought bitterly, that by defending the githzerai race, I may have doomed it?
Well, then, was there a way to soften his attitude? Zat smiled ruefully. Would she give up plans of vengeance were their positions reversed? Of course not.
Finally, was there a possibility, however slim, that he was wrong, that a five-year-old githyanki child was not the most potent and invulnerable force within the Elemental Chaos?
She didn’t hold out much hope for that-but suddenly she knew that she would spend as much time as she had before his return trying to find out. .
THE FORGE OF XEN’DRIK
A T ALE OF EBERRON
