Only Kaz hesitated, not because of any fear, but because he still heard the voice of the dreadwolf.
I am wherever you go, minotaur!
“You’re dead,” Kaz grumbled unconvincingly. “You’re dead!”
Kaz was alone. Whatever it was-ghost, illusion, a phantasm of his own mind-it was gone. Kaz turned toward the library. The others stood near the door, anxiously awaiting him. Gritting his teeth and holding his battle-axe ready, the minotaur raced across the open area.
No storm of arrows came streaming down on him, no horde of mad knights charged him. Despite the light of the torches and the relative quiet that made each of his steps sound like thunder, he went unhindered. He nearly slipped in his haste to be up the steps. Darius covered his back as he completed the last few yards of his run.
Kaz huffed and snorted. “Well? Where is this all-knowing benefactor that you’ve supposedly led us to- or are we supposed to wait out here all night?”
“I am standing in the doorway, minotaur, and I would suggest that you and your companions enter immediately. The night is young, and you have seen only the first signs of the madness.”
The voice was very calm, almost matter-of-fact in its tone. How he had come to open the door and be there, none of them could say. In the glare of torchlight, their benefactor looked like little more than dark, swirling cloth and a long head of hair. There was something else in his voice that Kaz felt he should recognize, but what it was he could not say.
Delbin obeyed the suggestion almost instantly. Not to be outdone by a kender, Darius followed, one arm protectively guarding Tesela. Kaz reluctantly followed, pausing only when he thought he heard laughter coming from the darkness out beyond the library. When it did not recur, he tried to convince himself that it was just the wind.
The door was bolted behind them, and they got their first good look at Delbin’s friend and their rescuer. He was tall, almost as tall as Kaz, and he wore robes of silver and gray. Strangely, his hair, stretching long past his shoulders, was silver, with a patch of gray in the center, as if the clothing had been designed to match. The face was inhumanly handsome, with slightly delicate features. It was a young face, until one studied the eyes, green eyes that burned with an age almost unbelievable. Then one realized that this was no human, but an elf.
The elf folded his hands, almost as a cleric would do. His expression held only a hint of emotion, a slight, upward curling of the mouth, which Kaz gathered must indicate a smile.
“Welcome, my friends, to a haven in the midst of insanity. My name is-”
“Argaen Ravenshadow!” the minotaur finished abruptly.
Looking a bit amused, the elf nodded and said, “I think I would recall meeting a minotaur. We have not met before.”
“No, but I did meet one of your kind who knew you well. His name’s Sardal Crystal thorn.”
A stream of emotions flashed quickly across the elf’s visage. “Sardal. How odd to hear his name-to hear any name-after these past three years here.”
“What is going on here?” Kaz almost bellowed. “What’s happened to Vingaard Keep and the Knights of Solamnia?”
Argaen’s face was once more an emotionless mask, but his tone hinted of dark things. “Minotaur, you cannot imagine what you and your companions have walked into, and the odds are against you ever walking out again-at least sane.”
Chapter Eleven
Once it appeared, this room had been a place where knights could come and pore over the records of their own past. There was still a wall of shelves containing specially preserved scrolls. The rest of the room, though, had been taken over by the elf and his work.
“There. Do you see it?”
Kaz followed Argaen Ravenshadow’s gaze. They stood on the upper floor of the library at a window that faced into the center of Vingaard.
“I see it. That’s where the Grand Master lives and commands from, isn’t it?” Over five years might have gone by, but Kaz doubted his memory was that hazy.
“It is where he now sits in a world of distorted visions, commanding an ever-decreasing band of men, each as mad as himself, and unconsciously protecting what I suspect is responsible for the insanity and the sorcery you have witnessed so far.”
The elf stepped abruptly away from the window. Kaz remained for the moment, staring out at the circle of torches now surrounding the sanctum of the Grand Master. Darius, who, along with Tesela, had been watching from another window, followed the elf. “What is it? What has the power to turn the Grand Master himself from the path of Paladine?”
Argaen walked over to the single table in the room, where a number of unusual and malevolent objects rested. He picked up the most ordinary, a stick that curled inward at the end, and seemed to contemplate it. He seemed to have forgotten the knight’s question. “Did Sardal mention why I was here, minotaur?”
“With all that’s happened, I can’t really say. I don’t think so.” Kaz looked at the objects on the table. “I’m not sure I want to know.”
“You may not want to, but you have to now that you are here.” The elf held up the stick, still examining it. “Harmless-looking?”
“Since you ask, I doubt it.”
“You would be correct. I will not go into detail, but I can tell you that this tiny item was used by some to distort the weather during the war.”
‘That thing?” Kaz recalled the unpredictable weather during his early days in the war and the terrible storm traps created by the dark mages in the final months. He recalled the one great storm that had preceded the darkness, in which the dragons of Takhisis and the monsters of Galan Dracos had passed the tattered remains of a vast Solamnic campsite. The knights themselves had been in full retreat, in what some termed the worst disaster in the history of the orders.
“Galan Dracos either created or stole the spell to make this. It is far stronger than any I have heard of. Fortunately-or perhaps unfortunately-the only one in existence-this one-was sealed inside one of three vaults.”
The elf was playing games, Kaz knew. It was a trait of the elder race.
“Tell us of these vaults, Argaen Ravenshadow, and what they have to do with Galan Dracos.”
The bell tolled again, but the elf ignored it. “The citadel of Galan Dracos, the master renegade who planned to turn even those sorcerers who followed the dark path into slaves of his ambition, was originally situated on the side of a peak in the mountains between Hylo and Solamnia.”
“Really?” Delbin, who had remained unusually silent, perked up. “There’re ruins of a sorcerer’s castle in Hylo? Can we go there sometime? I wonder if any of my family’s been there. I should write this down!” The kender reached into his pouch for his book and instead pulled out a tiny figurine. “Where do you suppose this came from? Isn’t it neat?”
“Give me that!” With a ferocity that stunned Delbin into silence and made the others stare wide-eyed, Argaen stalked over to the kender and tore the figurine from his hand. While the party continued to look on in shock, the elf thrust the tiny item into a pocket of his robe and glared down at Delbin. “Never touch another thing in this room! You have no idea what you might accidentally unleash! I promise you, even a kender would regret it!”
Delbin seemed to shrivel up before Argaen’s burning eyes. Argaen took a deep breath, and for the first time, he seemed to notice the effect his tirade had had on the others. The elf put a hand to his head and frowned.
“My… apologies to all of you! For over three years have I labored here, and while three years is not much in the physical life of an elf, it can be an eternity in other ways. Over three years of struggling to maintain sanity while those around me, already mad, have sunk ever deeper. Over three years of knowing how close the possible solution lay but being unable to do anything about it. Each day I wait for the madness to overwhelm me while I seek in vain for some way to reach the vaults and solve the secrets of the locks. Each day…” Ravenshadow closed his eyes.