Slowly, on shaking legs, he made his way to the sealed portal of the cellar vault. A hundred thoughts besieged him — approaches to explaining what he had found, to formulating apologies for such an unthinkable disappearance, to the wording of a plea for clemency — but none had any merit.
There was only one thing for him to do. He must simply report the disappearance of Vat Nine's wine and pray for the best.
'Wizardry,' the second warder muttered, staring into the empty vat. 'Evil and chaos. Mage-craft. Spells.'
'Mischief of some sort,' the high warder agreed, 'but
… wizardry? Within the very temple itself? How could that be? There certainly are no mages here… save one, of course, but he is sanctioned by the Kingpriest himself. The Dark One would use no such mischievous spells. All the other wizards are gone-driven to far Wayreth. All of Istar has been cleansed of their foul kind.'
'Then how can you explain this?' a senior cleric from the maintenance section insisted. 'An entire vat of wine — four hundred and, ah, eighty-three barrels' count, by yesterday's inventory — it certainly didn't get up and walk out by itself, and there has been no cartage below the third level for the past week, not even porters.'
'Thieves?' a junior cleric suggested, then turned pink and looked away as scathing glances fell upon him. It was well known that the Temple of the Kingpriest was inviolate. In all of Istar, in all of Ansalon, there was no edifice more theftproof.
'Only dregs,' the second warder muttered, still staring into the drained vat. He prodded downward with a long testing rod. Its thump as it tapped the bottom of the vat was muted. 'Waist-deep, drying dregs. How could this have happened, unless…' He lowered his voice. 'Unless by magic? Dark and infidel magic.'
From below the catwalk a curious voice asked, 'Brother Susten, are you aware that you are wearing only one sandal?'
'I can't find the other one,' the chief warder snapped. 'Please concentrate on the matter at hand, Brother Glisten. This is no time to count sandals.'
Far in the distance, beyond the vault doors, a loud, exasperated voice roared, 'I'm tired of this game, you bubbleheads! I want to know who took it! Now!'
Heads turned in surprise. Several clerics hurried away toward the sound, then returned, shaking their heads. 'It's nothing, Eminence,' one of them said to the chief warder. 'A captain of temple guards. He, too, has lost some part of his attire, it seems.'
Again the irritated voice rose in the distance, 'This has gone far enough! What pervert took my codpiece?'
'Gone,' the second warder muttered, staring into the emptiness of Vat Nine as though mesmerized. 'All that wine, just… just gone.'
'Sorcery?' The keeper of portals rasped, staring in disbelief at the assembled clerics before him. 'Magic? Don't be ridiculous. This is the Temple of the Kingpriest. Mage-craft is not allowed here, as all of you very well know!'
'Our accumulated pardons, Eminence,' the chief warder said, shifting his weight from sandaled foot to bare foot and back, 'but we have given this matter the most serious of study, and we can arrive at no other explanation.'
The keeper of portals glared at them in silence for a long moment, then spread his flowing robes and seated himself behind his study table. He sighed. 'All right, we shall review it once again. One: Even if magic were somehow introduced into the temple — and what mage would dare such a thing? — what purpose would be served by draining a vat of blessed wine?'
'Evil,' someone said. 'The purposes of evil, obviously.'
'Two: His Blessed Radiance, the Kingpriest himself, oversaw the evacuation of the Tower of High Sorcery in Istar. Every last mage and artifact was removed, and every magic-user of any degree driven away — not just from Istar but from the nine realms. The tower is empty, and its seals are intact.'
'Dire evils have their way,' someone said.
'There is the… Dark One,' someone else whispered, then blushed and lowered his head, wishing he had not spoken.
'Three.' The keeper of portals continued grimly, pretending not to have heard. 'It is patently impossible for that wine to have disappeared — ' He stopped, scowled, and blinked.
' — by any device other than sorcery,' the chief warder finished softly, trying to look pious rather than victorious.
'Wizardry?' the master of scrolls whispered, shaking his head. White hair as soft as spidersilk trembled with the motion. Here in the shadows of his deepest sanctuary, where few beside the keeper of portals — and of course the Kingpriest himself — ever saw him, he seemed a very old man. Very different from the dignified and reverent presence who sat at the foot of the throne when the Kingpriest gave audience in the sanctuary of light.
Again the master shook his head, seeming very frail and sad as long as one did not look into his eyes. 'After all these years… evil still confronts us in Istar.'
'There is no other answer, August One,' the keeper of portals said, sympathetically. For more seasons than most men had lived, the master of scrolls — next to the Kingpriest himself, the very epitome of all that was good and holy — had born upon his frail shoulders the weight of righteousness in a world far too receptive to wrong. Now he looked as though he might break down and weep… until he raised his eyes.
'Evil,' the old man whispered. 'After all we have done, still it rears its vile head. Do you know, Brother Sopin — but of course you do — that my illustrious predecessor, my own venerated father, died of a broken heart, realizing that even his strenuous efforts as advisor to His Radiance had not stamped out evil forever. He truly believed that such had been done, first with the Proclamation of Manifest Virtue, and subsequently by sanctioning the extermination of evil races everywhere. He believed, for a time, that we had succeeded, just as the third Kingpriest and his advisors believed that THEY had stamped out evil for good the day this temple was blessed in the names of all the gods — of good, of course,' he added as an afterthought.
The master of scrolls raised rheumy old eyes — they seemed so at first glance — to gaze at his visitor. 'He once even believed the tenet of the first Kingpriest, that by bonding the might of Solamnia with the spiritual guidance of Istar, the forces of evil could be driven from the world.'
'It is regrettable, August One,' the keeper said sorrowfully.
'Yes. Regrettable. I have said it before, good Sopin. Evil is an abomination. Evil is an affront to the very existence of the gods, and of men. Yet how to eliminate it, finally and forever?' His question was rhetorical. He obviously had the answer.
'Yes, August One?'
'We know now — the Kingpriest himself must know as well — that evil cannot be conquered by unifying states and building temples. Neither by driving away practitioners of chaos, nor even by eliminating evil acts and evil races… though that has yet to be thoroughly tested, I understand.'
'Such things take time, August Brother. Even the vilest of races resist extermination. As to the practices of evil men, when they believe they will not be found out…'
'Time,' the master of scrolls rasped, in a voice as dry as sand. 'There is so little time, Sopin. This business of the wine missing, this willful and arrogant exercise of a sorcerous spell, right here in the holiest of places in this entire world… Don't you understand it, Sopin? Don't you see what it means?'
'Ah… well, it might be…'
'It is a challenge, Sopin. Worse, it is a taunt. Evil is gaining strength in the world, because we have yet to kill it at its source!' The rheumy eyes blazed at the keeper, and now he saw the fire in them, the eyes of a zealot.
'August Brother! Do you mean — ?'
'Yes, Sopin. As has been argued before. It is time to go to the root of evil. The very minds of men.'
The keeper went pale. 'August Brother, you know that I agree, but is this the time for so drastic a policy? People are — '
'People are children for us to lead in the true path, Brother Sopin, at the pleasure of His Radiance, the Kingpriest.' The master of scrolls gathered his robes around him, shivering. He was often cold, of late. 'The Grand
