the world in and around your physical location, as I once could with my other lesser selves in Stardeep, before it was destroyed.'
Raidon said nothing for a moment as he wrestled with the implications of the golem's last words. Finally he replied, 'Do you try to provoke me? What do you mean? Certainly Stardeep can't be destroyed, else the traitor would be freed or dead. Either way, that would have ushered in a disaster.'
'What other word would you use to describe the Year of Blue Fire?'
Raidon flinched and said, 'You suggest that the prisoner of Stardeep, the Traitor they called him, the high priest for some forgotten group of aboleths, was released, and the Spellplague was the result? Not true. It was the goddess of magic's murder that collapsed the Weave and initiated the damned Spellplague. So I confirmed in Nathlekh while I searched for…' The monk trailed off, his concern over Stardeep eclipsed by the hollow recollection of his daughter's fate.
Raidon slid down the boulder's rough side until he sat once more, his ears filling with an inchoate roar.
Cynosure was talking. 'Many threads were pulled when Mystra died. Most accept the goddess of magic's death touched off already unsteady zones of wild magic. But in the past, when the previous goddess of magic perished, no Spellplague resulted. I believe other factors contributed to the virulence of what finally occurred. I believe the Traitor's escape, timed uncannily close to Mystra's murder, was an additional constituent that co- generated the Spellplague.'
Raidon heard the words, but their meanings did not distract him from an image of Ailyn playing in the courtyard with a passel of tame city cats.
The golem's voice droned on. 'On the other hand, the disaster the Keepers of the Cerulean Sign most feared, the appearance of the Abolethic Sovereignty, never materialized. But perhaps our error was in assuming the Sovereignty would immediately return. Perhaps the Spellplague was a necessary ingredient, required to condition reality enough to permit the great old aboleths' return. Perhaps the Year of Blue Fire was so virulent that it reactivated previously dormant fossil dimensions…'
'Raidon, are you listening?' demanded Cynosure.
The monk followed Ailyn through several more happy memories, a path that concluded at a clay marker with his daughter's lonely name stenciled on it.
'Leave me, Cynosure,' he murmured. 'I grieve.'
No further word emerged from the air. Raidon was alone with his loss.
CHAPTER TEN
The Year of the Secret (1396 DR) Green Siren on the Sea of Fallen Stars
What infantile game is Behroun playing, wondered Japheth.
A porthole leaked watery daylight into the warlock's cramped cabin. A ratty travel duffel lay next to him on the cot. Japheth's things lay scattered from the duffel's open mouth. Empty vials, elixirs, crushed essences of this and that, and his other tools littered the rumpled blanket. A large travel chest sat opposite the cot and took up a majority of the cabin's floor space. He'd had it delivered from the hold to his room, claiming it was his own. The chest's side was stenciled with the Marhana crest.
No one had connected the 'ghost attack' with the bulky piece of luggage open before him.
No one except Japheth. He had watched the altercation of a few hours earlier unfold in a daze, but that was normal when walking the crimson road. It was just that detachment from reality that enhanced a walker's sensitivity to psychic and spiritual phenomena. Thus he'd seen the shadowy figure rise out of the hold. He'd observed when it was struck down by Captain Thoster's war wizard.
When the apparition shriveled beneath Seren's magical attack, his augmented vision noted a spark of blue fire zip away from where the shape disintegrated. Despite Seren's spell of seeing, she missed the fleeting movement. But Japheth saw the flame plunge into the side of a large chest in the hold.
Once the hubbub, inquiry, and heated recriminations by fearful crew died down, Japheth descended into the hold to see into which chest the spark had fled.
The chest turned out to be the property of Marhana Shipping.
Behroun hired Japheth to aid Captain Thoster, but also to gather intelligence about Thoster's privateer enterprise to make certain the pirate wasn't cheating Behroun out of more than could be overlooked. Lord Marhana had also apparently sent along a second spy, this one to keep tabs on Japheth himself.
Oddly, the spy Behroun had selected was Lord Marhana's own sister.
The warlock gazed into the open chest at a sleeping girl's features, loose and smooth as she lay nestled amid clothing and waterskins. Bits of food and other detritus lay in the chest with her-she'd obviously been living inside for several days.
Japheth would never have guessed the girl… what was her name? Anusha! Japheth wouldn't have guessed Anusha had the proper mental mindset to become a spy. Impossible as it seemed, he couldn't deny the evidence of his eyes: Anusha possessed the same shape as the dark, burning silhouette he'd seen three times now, the last just hours ago when Seren had somehow discorporated the menacing image. If Anusha was its source, he supposed it was lucky she hadn't died in the psychic backlash. On the other hand, perhaps she was hurt in some mental fashion Japheth couldn't overtly observe; he hadn't been able to wake her by saying her name aloud or shaking her.
The warlock had vaguely noticed the girl around the Marhana estate over the last few years, without really paying her too much mind. Lately he noted she had started dressing more like a woman than a child. And why not? She had grown. She must be at least twenty years, come to think of it. An adult, despite how Behroun seemed to treat her. Looking back, he supposed she was held back from the rights and responsibilities of true adulthood, as the children of the privileged often were. If she had been born into the circumstances most faced across Faerыn, she would already be about her chosen trade in a journeyman's capacity, possibly even married and caring for children of her own.
Japheth said, 'Anusha, wake up!' She stirred slightly, but did not open her eyes.
She wasn't unattractive. Now that he thought back, he remembered she had essayed a few awkward attempts to engage Japheth in conversation. He'd always cut those moments short. The warlock disliked Behroun so much that he'd instinctively backed away from any interaction with the man's younger sibling.
When he'd thought about her at all, he'd assumed she was a lonely girl to be pitied for her isolation, nothing more. He'd been proved wrong. Her apparent role at Marhana Manor must have been an elaborate ruse to fool anyone who had business with Behroun that Anusha was harmless.
Japheth continued to study her.
He never suspected Anusha might be spellscarred.
'Time to see what you have to say for yourself,' he muttered as he snagged a blue vial from the litter of eccentric objects on his cot.
He popped the vial's stopper and poured its fizzing contents into the girl's mouth. The scent of honey and orange blossoms filled the restricted cabin. He was unconcerned she would choke on the fluid, despite her slumber. It was an elixir of healing; he could not harm her with the fluid even if he wanted to.
Anusha's eyes opened, bleary and wincing away from the light. She blinked a few times, and then tracked around until she focused on Japheth. Her brows knit, as if someone had just posed her a riddle she couldn't quite solve.
Japheth said, 'Hello in there. Anusha, isn't it?'
'Uh…' she said, her voice cracking with disuse.
'I must admit, you fooled me. I am in awe of your theatric skill. Still, the job Behroun set you in this ship to accomplish is done. Now that I know you're aboard, you'll not catch me unaware of your scrutiny again. Not that I had planned on double-crossing Behroun… though his mistrust wounds me.'
'W-what?'
Japheth plunged forward. 'What I find far more intriguing is how you pursue your spycraft. How long have you been spellscarred? I didn't think you were caught in the initial wave-of course, if you had been, you would be grossly disfigured, I suppose.'
