reach?
Together they lowered the boat into the water. Albanon clambered down into it, then held the boat steady as Kri stepped in. Albanon wrangled the oars into position and pushed off from the quay, out into the dark water.
“Do you suppose there are demons in the water?” he asked Kri.
“Use your senses.”
Albanon blinked in surprise. “I didn’t even think of trying that outside the Feywild.”
“Magic flows through the world as well. It might not be as strong or as vibrant, but it’s there.”
Albanon stopped rowing and closed his eyes. He felt it immediately, a current of power that ran through the river, as real as the current of rushing water. Kri was right-it wasn’t as strong as what he’d felt at Sherinna’s tower, but with a deep breath and an effort of will he was able to sense the weave of magic and the bright spots that marked his place and Kri’s in that weave. No dark tangles of demonic power stood out in his view, but he noticed something different about Kri’s brightness, a different hue or tone to it that he couldn’t quite define.
He opened his eyes and found Kri staring at him.
“What did you see?” the priest asked.
“I believe the river is safe,” Albanon said, looking away from Kri’s penetrating eyes.
“Not if we go over the waterfall.”
Albanon looked around and saw the torches lining the Five-Arch Bridge much closer than they had been. He started rowing again, fighting against the current to take their little boat away from the bridge and back on course toward the island.
“Can you see the island?” Kri asked.
Albanon nodded.
“That’s good. I can’t see a thing out here.”
“Eladrin eyes.” For some reason Albanon started thinking of the mural’s depiction of Sherinna in her power and grace, the opalescent blue orbs of her eyes shining with wisdom. “Kri, who inducted you into the Order of Vigilance?”
“I had two teachers. The first was a paladin of Pelor named Channa. She was killed while trying to reclaim Gardmore Abbey from the orcs that hold it now. So a knight named Harad completed my training. The members of the order were more numerous then, so it was not difficult to find a new teacher.”
“How many generations of teachers and students have passed down Sherinna’s legacy?” Albanon asked.
“That’s not easy to measure. Sherinna, along with Brendis and Miri, taught eight disciples, the founding members of the order. One was an eladrin who taught an eladrin student who only died a decade or so ago-so that’s only two generations. Traced back through Harad, my lineage is more like six generations.”
“I wonder what she was like.”
“Sherinna?”
“My grandmother, yes.”
“Well, I would imagine that she was something like your father and something like you.”
Albanon tried to imagine what such a person might be like, searching for the qualities he most admired in his father-his magical power, his authority-and what he thought were his own best qualities, his adventuresome spirit and his loyalty to his friends. He decided that Sherinna had led her little adventuring band with a firm but compassionate hand, that her magic had proved the decisive factor in their many battles, and that Brendis had harbored a deep but forbidden love for her.
Smiling at the image he’d constructed, he steered the rowboat into a little cove on the island. He handed the oars to Kri, picked up the coil of rope, and jumped for the shore, falling a few feet short and landing with a splash in ice-cold water up to his hips. Bracing himself against the cold, he waded to dry land and pulled the boat close, coiling the rope around a large rock. He held out a hand to help Kri to shore, then worked a simple magic cantrip to dry his clothes.
“Welcome to the Tower of Waiting,” Albanon said.
“Excellent. I hope the demon is still here.”
Albanon remembered the demon’s strength when, in the form of a halfling even smaller than Uldane, it had grabbed and held Tempest, digging its fingers into her neck. He remembered the cracks around the halfling’s eyes where the red liquid oozed and glowed, and the terrible wounds all over the body, filled with the same substance. And he remembered the demon flowing out of Tempest’s nose and mouth as she lay dying. He could not echo Kri’s hope, as much as he longed to be the kind of hero the priest had described.
Albanon conjured a light at the tip of his staff to illuminate their path to the tower’s gaping entrance, knowing it would attract attention to them but unwilling to consign Kri to stumbling in the darkness. An overgrown gravel walkway led from the cove up to the crumbling tower. Swallowing his fear, Albanon led the way, holding his glowing staff high. Shadows seemed to flit at the edge of his light, sinister shapes manifesting in the darkness but never venturing close enough to be clearly seen.
“They say the Tower of Waiting is haunted,” Albanon said.
“Do they?”
“It was a prison once, more than a century ago, a place where the Lord Warden would put members of noble families who were too powerful or important to be killed. Supposedly some young princess was arrested on charges of demon worship and locked up here, but she hanged herself-or some say the demon she served appeared and killed her himself. Come to think of it, I’ve heard a lot of stories about her, most of them pretty sordid.”
“And hers is the ghost they say haunts the tower?”
“Yes.”
“There is often a nugget of truth to such stories, Albanon. But there is rarely more than a nugget. Vigilance demands discernment, the ability to sort the truth from the exaggerations and elaborations.”
Albanon frowned, feeling puzzled. “But we are not here to deal with a ghost.”
“Aren’t we?”
“Well, I did wonder if perhaps the demon has used this place as a lair long enough to be the nugget of truth behind the ghost stories.”
“Exactly. That kind of reasoning will get you far.”
Albanon shrugged. “I’m not so sure. The demon broke into Moorin’s tower looking for the vial of the Voidharrow that Moorin inherited from the order. If it had been in Fallcrest long enough to start ghost stories, why wait until this year to attack Moorin?”
“One way or another, there are three hundred years during which the demon’s activities and whereabouts are a mystery, between the time that Sherinna first encountered it and when it appeared in Moorin’s tower. If it was not in Fallcrest, where was it? Wherever it was, why did it wait until this year to recover the Voidharrow from Moorin’s tower?”
“What have you learned about the Voidharrow, Kri? What is it?”
“Another time, young wizard.”
Albanon stopped and turned to face Kri, his feet crunching on the gravel. “No,” he said. “Moorin kept information from me all the time. ‘You’re not ready, my apprentice,’ ” he said in a mocking singsong version of his old mentor’s voice. “No more secrets. I’m ready for whatever knowledge you have. You have to share it-both our lives could depend on it.”
Kri looked taken aback by the passion of Albanon’s appeal, and Albanon almost apologized out of reflex. But he held his ground, trying to look confident and mature, ready for whatever terrible secrets the priest might decide to bestow on him.
Finally Kri nodded. “I apologize for giving you the impression that I was trying to shield you from any of the reality of what we face. In truth, I was just thinking that this was perhaps not the best spot for this particular conversation, and the urgency of our errand makes it also not the best time.”
Albanon felt his face redden. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I guess I’m a little sensitive about that.”
“Of course you are,” Kri said, clapping his shoulder. “Moorin held back your growing power in so many ways. Please know that I don’t want to do that to you. You deserve all the power you can claim-and the knowledge that will help you attain it.”
