Highlord Verminaard. Specifically, there is some reason to believe that one of the great artifacts of Fistandantilus may have found its way to that chaotic city at some time following the creation of Skullcap and preceding the arrival of the dragonarmies.
Of course, the fall of Haven and the occupation of Abanasinia, Qualinesti, and the Plains of Dust have been well documented in the official histories, not to mention the detailed military accounts available in the rolls of Solamnia and the Highlord Ariakas. It would be presumptuous, and wasteful, of me to attempt to improve upon that body of work.
Rather, my patriarch, I shall strive to clarify several pertinent facts.
It is known, for example, that most of the Seeker priests were thrown down by the arrival of Verminaard's army. Some (the weakest and least influential, it seems) were allowed to maintain their holdings and congregations. Most were incorporated into the ranks of the dragonarmies, and a few-the most powerful, those who were perceived as a threat to Takhisis-were cruelly executed, their cults violently disbanded.
There is a strange tale regarding a red dragon rider, one Blaric Hoyle. The officer was sent to destroy a sect created for the worship of a false god, a faith dedicated to the archmage Fistandantilus. This temple was one of the more successful of the false faiths, reputedly because the high priest had demonstrated some small measure of immortality. At least, many witnesses claimed that he had lived in the city for perhaps a century, but during all this time had remained a very young man.
The hapless dragonrider apparently did not fully grasp the lethal intent of the order. He confronted the Seeker priest and closed the temple as he had been instructed. However, he then allowed the false cleric to leave the city of Haven before the executioner arrived.
Blaric Hoyle was tried by a military tribunal presided over by Highlord Verminaard himself. Apparently the officer was unable to offer a very good defense of his actions; the notes indicate that he seemed confused, even forgetful, about the circumstances of his confrontation with the false high priest. However, he made several references to a 'sparking stone,' and once claimed that he saw 'sparks within the gemstone.' These were vague perceptions, related without specificity, but they aroused my suspicions.
Hoyle did not know why he allowed the false priest to leave, but his responses to the question imply that the mysterious stone had at least something to do with his disobedient choice.
Alas, we hear no more from him. (As usual, he who failed to please his ruthless highlord master was granted only a very short appearance on history's stage.) However, it seems at least possible to me that the stone referred to could have been the bloodstone of Fistandan-tilus.
I know that all previous reports have indicated that the stone was destroyed during the convulsion that created Skullcap. However, Haven is not terribly distant from that place, and there was a strong belief that the 'priest' of this faith came from the south (the direction of Skullcap) when he arrived in the city to establish his sect. And, too, there is the previously mentioned business about the man's strange propensity to resist the effects of aging.
The fugitive Seeker and his few remaining followers are believed to have made their way into the Kharolis borderlands. There it is reported that he established a camp as rude as any bandit's. They survived by preying upon weakness, plundering from the local citizenry, even stealing from the dragonarmies when they could find a detachment or supply center that was weakly defended.
The arrival of the dragonarmies in Haven and the closing of the Temple of Fistandantilus began to draw the threads of history closer together. Another occurrence, pertinent to future events, also happened during this interval:
The Heroes of the Lance, on their epic journey toward Thorbardin, visited the mountain of Skullcap, where it is rumored they discovered an artifact, the skull of Fistandantilus, which had lain untouched in the depths of that place for more than a century. It is possible that they brought it near to the surface, though certainly they did not take it with them.
In any event, while I have been unable to confirm everything that has happened in regard to this story, it can be deduced from subsequent events that the skull was no longer languishing in the deepest depths of that horrid fortress.
As Always,
Your faithful servant,
Foryth Teel
CHAPTER 14
356 AC
Mid-Yurthgreen
Time is a highly subjective reality. Hours, days, weeks, and years all mean different things, are held to different values by the many versions of mortality. For example, two days might encompass the entire lifetime of a certain bug, and for that creature, the ricking of a minute is an interval for great feasting, or for traveling a long distance. To a human, a minute is a more compact space- time, perhaps, for a sip of wine, a bite of bread, a phrase or two of conversation.
Yet to a truly long-lived being-an elf, for example, or a dragon-minutes can pass tenfold, a hundredfold, without arousing interest or concern. A single such interval is space for a slow inhalation, or an idle thought. It is certainly not time enough for serious cogitation, never enough for the making of an important decision.
And, by extension, the counting of months and years by such entities can also assume insignificant proportions. When compared to the more frantic pace of humanity's existence, very long times may pass in nothing more than a haze of quiet reflection.
Or in the case of a dragon, an extended nap.
It was thus for Flayzeranyx, who awakened in the cool depths of his cave with no awareness of the season, nor even of the number of years that might have passed since he had commenced his hibernation. Even the red dragon's return to consciousness was a gradual thing, an event spread over the span of several weeks.
Only after he had lifted the crimson, heavy lids that completely concealed his eyes did the great serpent notice the gradual increase and decrease of light from the direction leading toward the mouth of his cave. Through the gauzy inner lids that still cloaked the slitted yellow pupils, Flayze realized that these shifts in brightness represented the cycles of day passing into night, and then merging into the following dawn.
Idly he counted the cycling of five such periods of dark and brightness. By then he began to notice a nagging thirst, a dry rasp that cracked around the base of his tongue and made his mouth feel as though it were full of dust. And then, very vaguely, he noticed the first traces of hunger rumbling in the vast depths of his belly. There was still no real sense of urgency to his awareness, but he realized that it was time for him to move.
Slowly Flayze rose, pressing with his four powerful legs to lift his serpentine body, supple neck, and sinuous tail from the floor. A few old scales snapped free, chips of scarlet floating to the floor. The dragon wriggled, a violent shiver that rippled the length of his body, and many more scales broke loose. Those that remained, at last bared by the sloughing of the ancient plates, gleamed with a bright slickness suggestive of fresh blood.
Climbing toward the dimly recalled cavern entrance, Flayze ascended a rock-strewn floor, slinking with oily ease over steep obstacles, relishing the grace of movement, the power incumbent in his massive body. He sniffed the air, smelling water and greenery, and he was glad that he had not emerged during winter, when the hunting- and even the quenching of his thirst-could be rendered much more problematic by the presence of snow and ice. The odors from outside became more rich, and he smelled the mud, the scent of migrating geese, and he knew that it was spring.
And then the sun was there, shining into the mouth of the cave as it crested the eastern horizon. Flayze lowered his inner eyelids and hooded his vision with the thick outer membranes as he squinted into the brightness. He ignored the momentary discomfort, feeling the hunger surge anew, fired by the tangy spoor of a great flock of the waterfowl he had earlier scented.
