“Years,” he said tersely. He paused-calm down, he thought, she’s not picking at you. “It’s … an interest of mine.”
Thankfully, she was quiet after that, as was Tam, and Dahl could put the both of them, the Harpers and the Oghmanytes, Netheril and dragons and the wheat waving in the sea breeze, well out of mind as began the quiet chant of the ritual.
He poured a thin line of ground silver into a rectangle around the ink bottle, added the cross-line of powdered bluefoot mushrooms, and dipped the end of a bone-white feather into the prepared ink. He brushed the mixture over his eyes. The liquid turned icy and he flinched.
“Give me the paper,” he told Farideh.
Dahl felt the magic of the Weave settle over him, broken strands of magic knitting themselves around his eyes. He opened them and looked down at the sheet she slid across the table. The tapered strokes of the runes seemed to shiver and reset themselves, forming letters and then words and then phrases his eyes recognized, and his thoughts parsed out. His mind began to move more quickly, skimming along like a fleet skiff on a calm sea.
“ ‘… the final secrets of … Tarchamus,” he read. “Whose name is the Unyielding, whose strength is mighty. Who tears out the ssheratith”-some organ, he thought, drawing a line to mark it-“of the volcano. The heart of the world faljar anaresh”-misremembered, he thought, or some damned ancient turn of phrase? — “against the light of day …”
A gap there where she’d forgotten the letters. “Look upon halaris enjar despair of unminded fellows. Such comes peril to Netheril,” he finished. “And peril to the Weave. All contained within.’ That’s all of it.”
Dahl frowned at the transcription. “That’s enough to be interesting. Parts of it don’t really translate. But it’s angry and it’s definitely talking about a wizard.”
“Arcanist,” Tam said mildly, his eyes on the transcription. “So it’s Tarchamus the Unyielding, not Attarchammiux, the Terror of the Silver Marches.”
Dahl shook his head. “Draconic implies some vowels. Loross doesn’t.”
“So that’s the author of the page? Heard of him?”
“Never,” Dahl said. “But then Shade’s not exactly sharing all its historical documents.” He pointed at the last untranslatable bit, which was coming clearer by the moment. “This means something like ‘his works of power.’ Spells, maybe. Or enchanted items.”
“Or weapons?” Tam said. “Is that what the page shows?”
Dahl shook his head. “No way to know. Not without watching the changes.”
“Ashenath,” Farideh said, and Dahl startled. “Enjareen nether pendarthis. That’s what it’s saying. What’s that mean?”
Dahl bit back a curse. He should have remembered that. “Say it again.” She repeated the string of Loross. “ ‘Brought through rock and flood …’ and something like ‘and this is what we get.’ Maybe ‘Brought through rock and flood to this?’ Are you sure you’re remembering it properly?” Farideh shrugged, but didn’t answer.
“The runes were broken,” Tam said. “It’s a piece of something larger. Something that’s sealed away a peril to Netheril. And there’s a fair chance half the people in that square read it too.”
“They’d have to speak Loross,” Dahl pointed out.
“Many Netherese do,” Tam said dryly. “And the page is just a part, a piece of some larger text.” He cursed again and straightened.
“Stay here,” he told Dahl. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.” He scooped up his cloak and the chain that hung on the chair. Farideh looked up at him.
“Where are you going?”
“If I wanted you to know,” Tam said, pulling open the door, “I’d have told you. Stay here. Don’t follow. Either of you.”
The Fisher’s not the only one who doesn’t use his resources well, Dahl thought.
Whatever he’d hoped would be true of the Harper priest, they weren’t partners. Dahl might have found the fragment, might have done the hard work of translating, but he wasn’t even on Tam’s mind when it came to sorting out the looming threat associated with it.
After all, why else would the priest have taken the chain?
He glanced over at Farideh, still sitting in the opposite chair, staring at the door. At least Tam hadn’t taken her along instead.
It isn’t her fault she speaks Draconic, he reminded himself. But she could have been a little less rude about it. How was he supposed to know, anyway?
She turned and eyed him for a moment, before she raised her face … and he realized she’d been staring at his ritual book with those odd, focusless eyes and not at him.
“Have you been casting rituals for long?” she asked.
“Some years,” he said. Seven to be exact-when Dahl had sworn himself to Oghma in Procampur, they’d started him on rituals almost immediately, seeing as he had a knack for magic. Had is the important word, he thought glumly.
“Where did you learn them?” she asked.
“In another life.”
“Have … have you ever taught anyone? How to do them?”
“No.” He wished she’d leave, stop asking these questions. Bad enough Tam had left him behind, he didn’t need to be reminded of Procampur. “I have to write a letter, if you don’t mind …”
“Sorry,” she said. “Yes. But … could you? Would it be too hard?”
Dahl scowled. She probably didn’t even know what it took to cast rituals. What was involved. It was serious magic, whatever she or others might think. “It’s not simple,” he said.
“I need someone to teach me,” she went on. She pulled the loosely wrapped package she’d carried out from under her chair, and took out an expensive-looking ritual book. “I’ve got this. Someone … That is, it came with some spells already in it. But I don’t know-”
“You should ask Master Zawad,” Dahl said.
“Master Zawad doesn’t have any more time for me than he does for you.” She fell quiet a moment. “Besides, it seems as if you’re better at this than he is.”
Dahl shut his ritual book and ran a thumb over the worn bottom edge of the cover. “You said you had a few already? What are they?”
She handed over the silk-bound tome. Gods’ books, it was a good quality-heavy pages, tight binding, crisp printing on the frontispiece. He frowned at the depiction of a moonless sky over bucolic hills. He leafed forward to the rituals, and skimmed what was written there. Oghma, Mystra, and lost Deneir, he swore.
“Where,” he asked after a moment, “did you get this?”
She didn’t answer right away, but pursed her lips, and try as he might, he couldn’t divine if she was annoyed or embarrassed or worried.
“Does it matter?” she finally said.
“A great deal.” He turned the book around. “This first spell is fairly minor. Puts all the lights out.”
She wrinkled her nose. “That doesn’t seem like much use. Why not blow out the candles?”
“You can set it to finish at a later point. If you’re preoccupied,” he said dryly, and she flushed at the implication. “It’s used more often by people calling creatures that can pass through the shadows,” Dahl said. “It’s not difficult, but it takes some … uncommon components. Unpleasant components.
“The other two,” he said, “aren’t better. This one makes phantom restraints. The other …” Despite himself, he blushed as well. “I don’t know you well enough to tell you what it does,” he said stiffly.
“Oh.”
“And they are all rituals sourced from casters I don’t want to associate with.”
She wrapped her arms around her chest and made a noise under her breath that might have been a curse. “The book’s ruined then?”
“No. Of course not. That isn’t the point. Who gave it to you?”
“A man,” she said after a moment. “I met him in a shop and”-she rolled her shoulder as if trying to shake something loose-“he’s just … he decided to help me.”