Realms of Valor

winded as he was from the fight. 'You can change what you see here.'

The duke raised his head and stared into the mirror. 'Don't you think I've tried?' he demanded, grimacing at the image. 'It's impossible!'

'No, it isn't.' Adon kept the shield in front of Lord Gorgias. 'You have to face this, like you're doing now. Then we can get help.'

'Help?' Lord Gorgias asked. He used a filthy-clawed finger to scratch at the image in the glass. 'Who can help me escape that?'

'Our Lady of Mysteries.'

'No!'

The duke lashed out and plucked the mirror away, then swung his legs around and swept the cleric's feet from beneath him. 'The gods are the ones who did this to me!' Lord Gorgias yelled, throwing himself on Adon.

'Not Mystra,' the cleric gasped. 'She wasn't even a goddess then.'

Lord Gorgias smashed his bony forehead into the cleric's nose. Adon heard cartilage snapping and his cheeks exploded into pain.

'Have a look at yourself!' snickered the duke, holding the mirror over Aden's blood-smeared face.

The patriarch had no choice but to do as Lord Gorgias commanded. His nose had been broken and lay spread across his face, and both eyes were already turning black.

But it was what he did not see that astonished him. The ugly scar on the left side of his face was gone. Yet, when he reached up to touch it, he felt the same cord of rough skin that had been there since the Time of Troubles. It simply was not visible in the mirror.

'Mystra?' the cleric gasped.

Lord Gorgias brought the mirror down. Adon barely managed to throw his arm across his eyes, then his entire face exploded into agony as the glass shattered against him.

A fiery streak shot from across the street, where Corene had been watching the battle with Myron and Sarafina. A magical arrow of flame buried itself into Lord Gorgias's ribs. The shaft continued to sputter for an instant after it struck, filling the air with the acrid stench of burning flesh. The duke cried out, but didn't even glance in the direction from which the attack had come. Instead, he closed his fingers around Adon's throat and began to squeeze.

A dark curtain began to descend inside Adon's mind. He thrust a hand up, sticking his fingers into the smoking hole that Corene's fire arrow had opened. Lord Gorgias tried to pull away, but Adon hung on tight, at the same time uttering an incantation. A wave of unimaginable cold ran down his arm and directly into the wound. With a sizzle, a cloud of red steam shot from the puncture, making the duke scream in agony. He threw himself off the cleric and rolled away, clutching his stomach.

Adon stood and, after wiping the blood from his eyes, retrieved the largest mirror fragment he could find. It was about the size of his hand and shaped like a squat triangle. He walked toward Lord Gorgias cautiously, at the same time enchanting the shard with one of his most powerful spells. The duke struggled to his knees and glared at the cleric.

'Your hatred has consumed you,' Adon said, holding the blood-smeared shard toward the duke. 'That's what made the monster you see here, not the gods.'

'But they abandoned me-and my village! They did this to me! They refused to answer my prayers!'

Lord Gorgias sprang.

Adon tossed the mirror fragment at him, at the same time speaking the command word that triggered the spell it contained. The shard struck the duke's arm and sank deep into his flesh. A silver light flashed from the wound, and Lord Gorgias's anguished voice rang off the castle walls. In the next instant, he vanished.

The mirror triangle tumbled to the ground.

When Adon picked up the shard, it felt so cold that it stung his fingers. No longer was it possible to tell that it had once been part of a mirror, for its smooth surface had become as hard as polished stone. In place of the cleric's reflection was the image of Lord Gorgias, his shadowed eyes glaring out at the world, his tusks gnashing in anger.

The patriarch studied the shard for a long time. He felt a great sense of relief and hope, but also of loss and fear. Today, he had vanquished a monster, but he had also vanquished something even more terrible-something that he'd been afraid to face for many years.

Just before Lord Gorgias had smashed the mirror against his face, Adon had seen himself without his scar. It was then that he had realized why Mystra had sent him to Tegea. The power to remove the scar always lay inside him, just as the ability to defeat the duke had been his all along-if only he turned his gaze outside himself, focused his thoughts on something other than his own petty concerns. The clerics of Chauntea who'd abandoned the village had done so because their own selfish interests had stopped them from breaking the silence the duke had imposed upon their souls. And all the spells that had failed Adon in the last few days had done so because he'd cast them, not to help others, but to prove himself a worthy servant of Mystra.

By the time he realized where he was, Adon had walked back to the center of town. Myron, Corene, and Sarafina were trailing along behind him, keeping a respectful distance from the pensive young patriarch.

Finally Myron came forward. 'I didn't believe anyone could banish the duke, but you have.' He paused for a moment, then pointed at Castle Gorgias. 'Corene and Sarafina are already talking about making a House of Mysteries out of that.'

'You'll have plenty of help,' Sarafina said from beside the crowded pool in the center of the square.

'Yes, when our husbands return from the fields this evening, they'll be so glad to see us without veils that they'll have it converted before morning,' said another.

Dozens of women were filing into the street, all without veils, all smiling broadly. Some had big noses and some double chins, while others were missing teeth and had cheeks as leathery as saddles. Nevertheless, Adon would not have called any of them unattractive. Too him, they were all as beautiful as Corene.

'Well, Corene,' Adon said, turning to the novice, 'are you looking forward to seeing Arabel again?'

“I’ll be going back with you?' asked Corene, stepping to Adon's side.

'Not exactly,' the cleric replied, looking down at her. Her button nose had returned to its normal size, and her pale cheeks had begun to shine with their old radiance. I’ll be staying here. I don't think the spell the duke cast to shield the village from the gods has been lifted entirely. It'll take someone of the right temperament to maintain contact with the Lady once the church is established here.'

Corene kissed Adon's cheek. Then, wiping the blood from her lips, she said, 'I don't know if it will work, but I could try to heal your nose and those cuts.'

'Fine, but leave my scar alone,' said Adon.

Sarafina, still hidden behind her veil, stepped up to Adon's side and slipped a slender arm around the patriarch's waist. 'I've thought from the start that it gives your face character.'

'Maybe you're right,' the priest said, laughing. 'But I'm not going to spend any more time worrying about it. My concern now is how to help Tegea.'

Sarafina lowered her veil and smiled at him. It was the most beautiful thing Adon had ever seen.

DARK MIRROR

R. A. Salvatore

Sunrise. Birth of a new day. An awakening of the surface world, filled with the hopes and dreams of a million hearts. Filled, too, I have come painfully to know, with the hopeless labors of so many others.

There is no such event as sunrise in the dark world of my dark elven heritage, nothing in all the lightless Underdark to match the beauty of the sun inching over the rim of the eastern horizon. No day, no night, no seasons.

Surely the spirit loses something in the constant warmth and constant darkness. Surely there, in the Underdark's eternal gloom, one cannot experience the soaring hopes, unreasonable though they might be, that seem so very attainable at that magical moment when the horizon glistens silver with the arrival of the morning