"Shut up, old man," Yulda spat back, tired of his endless prattling. "I have already succeeded. You and those blind crones are just too stupid to realize it."
The Old One began to laugh, a great wheezing gurgle of a sound that reminded the witch of someone drowning. "Even now," the wizard gasped between great bouts of laughter, "Rashemen moves against you. You will… will fall, and your name will be but a passing shadow, soon forgotten and never uttered on the… lips of future generations of our people, you-"
"Enough!" Yulda shouted, smacking the wizard's face with the back of her own gnarled hands.
She felt the brittle bones of his nose shatter like dried tinder beneath the blow. With a single moan, the Old One slumped forward, bereft of consciousness; blood spurted from his face, pooling beneath him on the frozen stone floor of the cave.
The witch spat in disgust and moved away from the unconscious wizard. He was a frail and bitter man, she knew, choking beneath the shame of his defeat. His words were like flies; they buzzed and hummed around her head but could not bite. Still, Yulda thought for a moment, she probably should check in on the fate of the erstwhile intruders she had banished to the wyverns' cave.
She turned to find Fleshrender lying comfortably on the stone floor, tearing apart the corpse of a mountain hare. The telthor looked at her calmly as it ripped the rabbit's soft flesh from its bones. Despite herself, Yulda couldn't suppress a shudder at the creature's actions. Telthor, she knew, did not require sustenance to live. The beast simply enjoyed the taste of death.
Careful not to disturb her feasting companion, the witch walked toward the back of the cavern, where an uneven hunk of blue-misted ice sat on a simple stone pedestal. She knelt before the pedestal, gazing deeply into the colored ice. Almost immediately, a dim light began to pulse within its heart, growing stronger with each beat, until an unearthly blue gleam radiated throughout the entire cavern.
Shadows began to emerge in the ice, silhouettes and suggestions of a scene that resolved quickly into a clear picture at a single word from the witch. Looking in the ice, one would think it a mirror, reflecting the interior of the cave in which it sat. Yulda, however, saw with deeper eyes. The cave she gazed at stood several hundred leagues from her demesne. With a sweep of her hand, the picture began to move, searching the lair of the wyverns.
At first she thought the cave empty, for there was no sign of the wyverns or her guests anywhere. Then she caught sight of a large shape almost completely hidden as it lay slumped against a cavern wall. Yulda smiled, thinking it the collected remains of her would-be assassins, but her smile soon changed to horror as she saw the hacked up corpses of the wyverns, bloodied bodies and slashed tails intertwined as they lay still and cold in a cave somewhere beneath her citadel.
How could those gods-blasted fools have escaped their fate, Yulda raged. The meddlesome intruders could be anywhere now! She extended her arcane senses deeper, pouring her newly regained strength into the scrying spell, bridging the great distance between her and the citadel with the merest thought. She scanned the tombs and lower dungeon of the citadel to no avail. With a frown, she went even deeper, magically peering into the depths beneath Rashemar. Through empty tunnels and echoing chambers her mind ranged, skimming over the rude consciousness of half-sentient creatures slithering through the subterranean realm, until at last she found her quarry-and something else.
Something of great power.
It beat against her senses with a wild, almost uncontrolled strength, shining like a beacon in the dark. She withdrew her mind, not wishing to alert whatever power was present. This, she thought, changed everything. Could those fools have been foolish enough to bring the Staff of the Red Tree right to her doorstep? Yulda's craggy face cracked into a twisted, gap-toothed smile. Such a powerful item would only insure her success if she could bring it under her sphere of control.
It took only a few moments for the plan to coalesce in her mind. She sent an eldritch message to Durakh then called Fleshrender away from his dead plaything. Stepping into the mystic circle inscribed to the left of the stone pedestal, she disappeared.
Her last thought before the spell of teleportation activated was of the Iron Lord's citadel burning.
Chapter 20
The Year of Wild Magic
(1372 DR)
The Staff of the Red Tree shuddered in her hands.
To Marissa, it felt as if she were holding a living thing-an animal shivering in the chill cavern air or quivering with rage. The voice of the Staff of the Red Tree buzzed in her mind like a swarm of angry hornets and had done so ever since they had left the steaming pool. It was difficult to concentrate with the presence of the Staff of the Red Tree looming over her internal senses, but the druid managed to mark their journey from the spring-fed cavern to their current location-a quarter candle's sojourn-well enough. Yurz had turned to say something to her at several points during that time, but Marissa could not distinguish the goblin's voice from that of the staff's angry hum.
She had simply nodded, hoping the creature hadn't asked her anything important.
Now she and her companions gazed out at the vast expanse of a cavern. The druid shook her head, mentally forcing the voice of the staff to the back of her mind so she could examine her surroundings. Stone and shadow stretched out before her, well beyond the limits of arcane illumination and elf-sharp vision. What small portion of the giant cave Marissa could see resembled an ocean of petrified waves, their undulating crests and troughs stilled by the eyes of a giant medusa, fixed forever in this subterranean world-a world which tumbled down into the depths below her feet as much as it soared to the heights above her. The slightest sound, whether the soft scuff of boot on the rocky ground of the passage or the rhythmic exhalation of Cavan's panting, reverberated wildly in the vast chamber.
Standing at the entrance to this massive cavern, Marissa felt as if she stood upon the edge of oblivion. Normally such a precipitous location would have spun her head with dizzying fury. It wasn't so much the height that bothered her-she had spent time enough scaling high-trunked trees and outthrust cliffs-but rather the enduring sense of nothingness, as if one step would teleport her to a place where nothing existed, neither time nor physicality. The very thought unsettled her.
Thankfully, a wide-shouldered expanse of natural stone broke up the cavern's emptiness. Dark rock, nearly as black as pitch, arced over the cave's shadow-filled depths, presumably linking their passage with the entrance to the citadel's tombs. In places, great stalactites reached down from the ceiling like giant teeth, almost touching the bridge's uneven expanse. Here and there, Marissa could make out thick stalagmites thrusting upward from the bridge toward the cavern's hidden roof. It seemed to her like a maze of hard black rock, difficult to navigate at any speed. That thought sent a frisson of unease up her spine. Anyone crossing the bridge would find it almost impossible to retreat if they faced an overwhelming attack.
The others had gathered around her, each of them casting a professional eye toward the bridge. Marissa took that opportunity to voice her concern. The others agreed.
"I was just thinking the very same thing myself," Roberc affirmed. "Perhaps one of us should go ahead and act as a scout."
"Not necessary," Yurz interrupted. "Me know quickest way across bridge. Friends follow Yurz."
Marissa caught the looks that the others cast among themselves. Clearly they still mistrusted her enchanted companion. She sighed. "Thank you for offering, Yurz, but I can send Rusella ahead," she said, indicating the raven perched upon a gray stone ledge.