Nimessa glanced up to him, sensing his hesitation. Deliberately he reached past Nimessa to push the half-open door shut, and kissed her again. Closing his eyes, he banished Mirya’s ghost from his memory, abandoning himself to the moment.
NINE
21 Hammer, the Year of Deep Water Drifting (1480 DR)
Little was left of the Cyricist shrine. The thick masonry that comprised its outer walls had survived the fire intact, if somewhat blackened and burned, but it was only a shell now. The wooden beams supporting the building’s roof had given way, leaving a mound of smoking rubble in the temple’s interior. Several black-robed acolytes supervised gangs of guards and Cinderfist loyalists as they sifted through the ashes and ruin, searching for anything that might be salvaged from the destruction.
“So passes the Temple of the Wronged Prince,” Rhovann murmured to himself, amused by the irony of it. Followers of Cyric claimed that their god was misrepresented by other faiths and treated with a shameful lack of respect-a divine martyr who suffered the jealousy and resentment of all other gods. He’d always felt that the Cyricists were overly quick to claim insult and injustice from those who failed to bow to their demands; their credo, such as it was, made it easy to rationalize any sort of setback or obstacle as the action of a petty, hostile world determined to deny them their due. But here he stood in the ashes of Cyric’s house, and he had to admit that the followers of the Black Sun for once had a wrong for which redress was due.
Captain Edelmark emerged from a blackened archway, his fine cloak streaked with soot. The soldier paid it no mind. Edelmark was a Mulmasterite of thirty-five years or so, not very tall, with the buff features and coarse manners of a common driver or woodcutter. He was a seasoned mercenary who’d fought for every city in the Moonsea at one point or another in his long career. “Lord Rhovann?” he said. “I think we’ve found him.”
“Very good,” Rhovann replied, even though nothing about this catastrophe was good at all. The tall moon elf absently adjusted the hood of his cloak with his hand of silver, shielding his fine-featured face from the freezing drizzle-not quite snow, and not quite rain-that sifted down from the sky. He noticed that his boots of fine gray suede were now almost black with wet ash, and sighed. His clothes would smell of the fire for tendays, no matter how many times he had them washed.
“Come, Bastion,” he said, motioning to the golem that waited silently at his side. The mage followed the Council Guard’s commander into the ruin, wrinkling his nose at the thick smell of smoke that hung over the place. The hulking golem in its vast brown cassock and hood padded after him, the rubble shifting and crumbling under the weight of its footfalls.
Some of the interior walls still stood, while others had collapsed. Edelmark led him through the doorway that had once separated the public shrine from the priests’ quarters and down a short hallway-there were two bodies here, guards in blackened mail and charred harnesses-to what might have once been a large suite. Rhovann had never set foot in the place before, so he had no real idea of whether this room had been Valdarsel’s living space, his office, a secret shrine, or a bordello for the privileged initiates. Regardless, several Council Guards and underpriests stood around a pile of masonry near the center of the room. From beneath the debris jutted a blackened, skeletal arm, its bony fingers clutching a tarnished medallion. Rhovann leaned closer and recognized the skull-and-sunburst design of Valdarsel’s holy symbol, but there was no way to be certain otherwise.
“Stand back,” he warned the others nearby. “Bastion, remove these beams and uncover this body-carefully, if you please.”
The golem stepped forward and seized an eight-inch-square beam that must have weighed the better part of five hundred pounds. Without a sound it lifted the fallen rafter, swiveled, and tossed it to the other side of the room, where it raised a great puff of ash amid a horrific clatter. Bastion took a step, selected another beam, and discarded that one as well. Then the golem stooped to pick up a large section of charred roofing, stepped back, and threw it aside. Rhovann sensed the humans around him shrinking from the pure physical power of his unliving servant, but he paid it no mind; he knew exactly what Bastion was capable of, and was no longer surprised by such demonstrations.
Beneath the roof section, the rest of the body was revealed-burned, crushed, but not incinerated as Rhovann had feared. He could still make out Valdarsel’s distinctive robes, although the face was unrecognizable. Still, it was intact enough for his purposes. He motioned at the guards and lesser priests standing about and said, “Leave me. I do not wish to be disturbed for the next quarter hour. Edelmark, you may stay.” The others withdrew.
“Your satchel, Bastion,” Rhovann said. The golem shrugged a large leather bag from its shoulder and set it down at Rhovann’s feet. Frowning as he kneeled in the ashes, Rhovann opened it and quickly found the implements and components he needed. Working swiftly, he set several black candles in a ring around the dead priest’s body, and then sprinkled a carefully mixed oil over the corpse with a small aspergillum. Then he took a small black book from the satchel, opened it up, and began to read the words of a long and somewhat involved spell.
The skies, already gray and dark, seemed to darken even more, and the air grew still. Edelmark shifted nervously, uncomfortable in the presence of Rhovann’s magic, but Bastion simply watched impassively. Rhovann rarely had reason to perform this particular spell, but Valdarsel’s mysterious death presented an ideal opportunity. As he neared the end of his invocation, he sensed an intangible doorway of sorts taking shape in the air above the corpse. With his left hand he made a beckoning motion. “Valdarsel, return! I have questions for you!” he called into the cold stillness.
A spectral shape-a simple outline of pale mist, hardly visible even to Rhovann’s magically attuned senses-slowly emerged from the doorway and sank down into the corpse. It stirred sluggishly, its burned tendons creaking and skin crackling. “What do you want of me?” the corpse said in a thin, hissing voice. “Let me rest!”
Does Valdarsel enjoy the eternal rewards promised by his god, or is he disenchanted with how Cyric keeps his promises? the mage wondered. The dead priest was of course beyond his recall, but Valdarsel’s soul was not required for the ritual; the minor spirit he’d summoned out of the deathly realms had nothing whatsoever to do with the dead man. It was merely an animus for the priest’s remains, a way to give the dead body a voice. Only things known to Valdarsel in life could be drawn out with this spell. Rhovann considered the questions he desired answers for, then addressed the corpse. “Who slew you?” he asked.
The dead jaws worked in silence before the answer came. “Geran Hulmaster.”
Geran? Rhovann had to force himself to stay silent despite his surprise. If he spoke aloud, the spirit animating the corpse might take it as another question, and simply repeat its answer. So it was no common sellsword or assassin his runehelms had pursued the night before-it was the impudent swordmage, his most bitter nemesis, challenging his power in a brazen act of mayhem! Not only had Geran visited Hulburg in defiance of his family’s exile, he’d murdered a high-ranking member of the Harmach’s Council and a useful, if somewhat unreliable, ally of Rhovann’s. The elf ground his teeth together and mastered his anger before proceeding to his next question. “Who was with him?”
“The tiefling … Sarth Khul Riizar,” the corpse groaned. “No others that I saw before I died.”
“I should have known,” Rhovann murmured to himself. He’d known that Sarth was almost certainly a Hulmaster sympathizer, given the amount of help he’d provided to Geran when Geran was hunting the Black Moon corsairs. I should have driven him off too, he fumed. But the sorcerer had simply kept to himself and hadn’t done anything to provoke suspicion, at least not until the attack on the Temple of the Wronged Prince. Rhovann believed he was Sarth’s better in the arcane arts, but he hadn’t been so confident that he’d been willing to directly confront Geran’s friend without evidence of conspiracy. Clearly, Sarth’s participation in the attack on the Cyricists changed that; as soon as he finished here he’d see to Sarth Khul Riizar. But he suspected that he’d find nothing more than an empty house if the tiefling wasn’t stupid.