The Ring of Winter

Artus stepped forward and grabbed Rayburton's shoulders. 'The Ring of Winter,' he said, his eyes gone wild, 'You have it. That's how you made it snow. It kept you alive all these years.'

With one solid shove, Rayburton freed himself. 'I don't have the ring.' For the first time, anger showed on his kindly face. 'If that's what you're here for, you'll go back to the society empty-handed.'

Artus felt the world fall away under his feet. Before he knew it, he was sitting on the floor next to Byrt. The little gray wombat looked him in the face, worry in his vague blue eyes.

'But you must have the ring,' Artus whispered. 'You're still alive. It makes the wearer immortal…'

Rayburton kneeled beside the younger explorer. 'The ring didn't keep me alive,' he said. 'It was the magic in this place. Mezro has quite a lot of wonderful things in it.'

'Mezro?' Artus managed to gasp. 'I discovered the lost city of Mezro?'

Rayburton's gentle laughter filled the library. 'It's hardly lost to the people who have lived here for four thousand years,' he noted. 'But if you want to put it that way, the Mezroans probably won't mind. I said the same thing when I stumbled across the place, and they haven't thrown me out yet.'

He looked into Artus's glassy eyes and mentally catalogued the cuts and bruises on his arms and face. 'You've had a time of it, eh?' Helping the younger man to his feet, Rayburton added, 'The thing for you now is rest, and maybe a surgeon's attention. After that, we can talk about how you managed to 'discover' Mezro.'

Ten

From The Eternal Life of Mezro by King Osaw I, called 'the Wise' by his beloved subjects: ruler of all Mezro, negus negusti, and bara of Ubtao. Translated to Cormyrian by Lord Dhalmass Rayburton, advisor to the king.

There is no exaggeration in the bold claim that Ubtao founded Mezro. The great god of the Tabaxi built the core of the city himself, the temple and amphitheater rising first from the chaos of the jungle. Mezro was to be the place where all the people of Chult could learn how to pass through the maze of life, how best to reach the heart of all and discover the true nature of the world. It became that. Yet Mezro also became a place where thieves and charlatans preyed upon pilgrims, where men and women and children came to beg Ubtao's help with the most insignificant of problems.

Ubtao created the barae to help him deal with those distractions, to resolve the petty demands of the throng. The seven barae were chosen from the citizens of Mezro and gifted with special powers. Over time, the barae became the rulers and defenders of the city, as well, but that was after Ubtao left the Tabaxi to find their own way in the world.

For it is also true the Tabaxi tried to make Ubtao a household god, a god who had to prove his worth by healing old men of aching joints, by settling arguments over the ownership of goats, by proving each and every day that his power could be used to make life easy. But Ubtao, who created the labyrinth that is this earthly world, made the Tabaxi to live there. He stayed in Mezro to teach them how to best pass through the maze, but he would not destroy the everyday trials that were its walls.

Finally there came a day when Ubtao said, 'If the people wish to cry and complain rather than listen to my wisdom, then so be it, I will leave them to wander the halls of life without my guidance.' Then he returned to his home in the sky and refused to speak to his people again while they were mortal.

And that is why a Tabaxi must die before he may meet his maker.

The exceptions to this rule are the barae. These seven, the mighty paladins of Ubtao, live forever unless they are murdered or lose their life on the battlefield. Their wisdom and faith in Ubtao shield them from old age and sickness. In return, they must protect Ubtao's fair city of Mezro from all harm.

If a bara is killed, another must take his place within one day. That is the only time a mortal may enter the barado, in the great Temple of Ubtao itself. In the barado, the supplicants gather so Ubtao can choose his new paladin. The one the god chooses is granted some magnificent power. Ras Nsi, one of the first seven raised up by Ubtao, was given the power to muster the dead. Mainu, she of the golden eyes, was granted control over the waters in the Olung River, which flows through the city to this day.

When I became a bara, on that terrible day when three of the paladins were slain in defense of Mezro, I was given the power to remember everything I see or hear. 'These memories are safe from time, never to be like the banks that hold a fast-flowing river, worn away more and more with each passing year. What I know and what I learn remain with me always, as clear and sharp as the eyes of a jungle cat on the hunt.

It is thus I remember the coming of Dhalmass Rayburton, a lord of the distant land of Cormyr, as if it were yesterday. In truth, he arrived six hundred years ago. He was like all the other explorers who had come to Ubtao's jungle, certain we were savages who had somehow wrested our great library and our fine buildings from some more civilized nation. Unlike the others, he soon saw how blind he was to the accomplishments of other peoples. And when he accepted the truth of the matter, he found he had no desire to return to Cormyr. Within ten years of becoming a citizen of Mezro, Rayburton placed himself in Ubtao's hands and asked to be made a bara. He was chosen.

And that is how Dhalmass Rayburton became the first paladin of Ubtao not born of the Tabaxi…

Artus rested the heavy book on his lap and looked over at Lord Rayburton. The expatriate nobleman returned the puzzled stare placidly. 'I suppose you're wondering about the time frame,' Rayburton said after a moment. 'I mean, the book says I arrived here six hundred years past, right? Well, King Osaw wrote the history six hundred years ago. There are more volumes, taking the thing right up to the present, if you don't believe me.'

'Oh no,' Artus replied quickly. 'It's not that at all. I… er, it's just so…'

'Amazing?' Rayburton smiled and nodded, making the silver triangle hanging from his right earlobe bob up and down. 'Mezro is that and more. It didn't take me long to discover how astounding this place is. Once I did, I couldn't bring myself to leave.'

Artus put the book aside, propped himself up in the bed, and glanced around the large room that was presently serving as his hospital quarters. It was clean and filled with light from the open window and the three glowing globes that stood at various posts around the room. A tri-bladed metal fan spun briskly overhead, night and day. Aside from the wide, comfortable bed, the room held a nightstand, a larger table, two chairs, and a chest wrought of some fragrant wood. Colorful paintings of abstract designs-squares and circles and triangles in subtle and intriguing arrangements-hung on the walls.

'Thank you,' Artus said in Tabaxi, leaning close to the light globe standing upon the nightstand. The radiance dimmed. Then the globe went dark.

Inside the opaque sphere, a complicated arrangement of gears and levers ground silently to a halt, and the four tiny creatures that worked the device sat down. The light makers, or so Rayburton called them, resembled elves in their slender forms and graceful movements, but they had no faces or other features to distinguish one from another. All the globes in Mezro were powered by them.

'Are you sure these things aren't prisoners?' Artus asked.

Rayburton shrugged. 'Whenever someone builds a globe with the proper works inside, they just show up, ready to work. They don't eat, don't sleep. They make light and wait to make light.' He stood and peered into the globe. 'Near as I can guess, they're some sort of quasi-elemental, and the mechanical setup must summon them or act as a gate to their home plane somehow. Damned useful, whatever they are.'

Picking nervously at the corner of the book, Artus turned to Rayburton once more. 'So you've lived this long because you are a bara of Ubtao.' He sighed. 'You never found the Ring of Winter…'

The kindness fled the older man's eyes. 'No, Artus. I don't have the ring.' Rayburton paced to the window and glanced outside, squinting against the late afternoon sunshine.

'But the society's histories say you were searching for it when you disappeared from Cormyr,' Artus pressed. 'Can you tell me anything-'