“I was awake,” Tythonnia whispered, “waiting for you to come back.”
“I didn’t ask you to stay awake for my benefit,” she replied as she turned away from Tythonnia.
“I won’t worry about your safety again,” Tythonnia said. “I promise you that. And I won’t say anything to Par-Salian, but when this is done, you’ll answer to the conclave.”
“I look forward to it,” Ladonna said with a smile. “Aren’t you on watch? Mm?”
“No, I’m not,” Tythonnia said. “You left your post, which means you can have my shift too.”
Ladonna stopped herself from muttering an insult. She didn’t feel much like sleeping anyway. Thus she rose and began her vigil anew, feeling the Red Robe’s gaze on her back. She silently chastised herself; probably she should have cast a deep sleep spell on her companions before leaving. The rain descended even harder.
The three Blödegeld horses shifted around nervously, but Hort kept a strong hand on their reins. Whenever they got too nervous, he clucked gently and managed to calm them again. Dumas and Thoma surveyed the destroyed buildings and examined the bodies. Perhaps more perplexing, however, were the nearly two dozen small dolls scattered about in the mud, their bodies torn and burned.
“What happened here?” Thoma said as he leaned against his longbow. Runes along its length glowed ever so slightly.
Dumas shook her head. “I’m not certain … not yet at least. But I suspect …” She closed her eyes and rested her hand on the tome she carried. She mumbled the incantation and heard the pages flip open even though the cover remained unmoved beneath her palm. The words in the book slithered as she uttered them, as though suddenly uncoiled and slippery.
The spell began slipping away, and Dumas regrouped, trying to grasp it again. She managed to pull it back into her before it eluded her completely, and she felt her eyes warm to the spell’s touch. Her eyelids opened to reveal silver irises, and her sight suddenly beheld more of the world. She saw the dead bodies, the destroyed buildings, and the strange dolls. More, even, appeared as the faint echo of magic became visible to her: Crimson threads that materialized and were devoured from one end to the next; black, thorny ribbons like the tendrils of some dark plant; and finer threads that shifted hues like oily water. There were more colors, too weak to distinguish properly, shifting in and out of being.
Dumas tried concentrating on what spells might account for the echoes, but her mind refused to cooperate. She felt lost in her own dreams, one turn behind in a maze of her own making. Whatever had happened here, however, magic was at its root.
The three renegades, her thoughts whispered. The notion was unfounded, and yet it rang with certainty. Not Dumas’s own convictions, but the whispered beliefs of someone else. Who? One of the three masters? The voice almost sounded like Diremore’s, Yasmine’s, Astathan’s, and-perhaps most strongly-Belize’s voices all rolled together.
No, Dumas thought as she corrected herself. Belize wasn’t there.
It hurt to fight the voice in her head. It took too much from her to resist it. So she allowed its truth to worm its way into her heart and was rewarded with a clearer head. She suddenly felt better, as though broken of a fever.
The three renegades did this, Dumas thought and again felt better, rewarded. In fact, it seemed silly that she questioned the truth of it at all in the first place. Of course they did it; that was the only possible answer.
“The three renegades,” Dumas said, “they’re responsible for this.”
Thoma and Hort exchanged glances.
“You sure about this?” Thoma asked.
“I’ve been told to expect this,” Dumas said, taking the reins of her horse from Hort.
“We should send word, no?” Hort said, his brow furrowed.
“No,” Dumas said, mounting her Blödegeld. “We were told to stay hidden. It’s more imperative than ever that we find the renegades and kill them before they can murder anyone else.” She nodded to the ruin around her. “Before they can do this again and cast the name of the wizards in disrepute.”
CHAPTER 7
The High Clerist’s Tower stood snugly in the valley between the peaks of the Vingaard range. Beyond its walls lay the Knight’s High Road, a canyon trail and the only direct route through the foreboding, snowcapped mountains to the coastal city of Palanthas. To travel around the mountains was to add months to the journey.
Even before Par-Salian, Tythonnia, and Ladonna reached the rolling grasslands of the Wings of Habbakuk, they could see the tower. It was an impressive monument to the gods of old and the clerics who served them-one of the more imposing structures to have survived the Cataclysm that split and flooded the lands three centuries earlier.
Travelers, pilgrims, and merchants clogged the road leading to the High Clerist’s Tower. Small tents of weary travelers dotted the shores of the nearby stream, though a couple of garishly painted pavilions appeared more permanent, at least while the seasons remained favorable. Signs proclaimed their services, from offering drink and warm food to selling supplies for the journey ahead.
With each step forward, the structure seemed to grow taller and far more impressive. It was, in fact, two separate buildings, and the road split on its approach to both. The first and most imposing was the tower itself. The ground-level battlement was octagonal with giant ramps leading to a trio of portcullises on the three sides facing the grass fields. The road split further into a trident, each approaching one of the ramps. On each corner of the eight-sided wall stood a tower bristling with arrow slits, while between them hung a string of ramparts. The central spire itself lay behind the curtain wall. It rested upon a giant octagonal base with a ring of turrets that rose higher than the battlements themselves. They, in turn, were dwarfed by a one-hundred-fifty-foot tower that surpassed them all as it rose like a spear into the heavens. It seemed a worthy companion to the surrounding mountains.
The second structure was an adjoining keep, a later addition to the High Clerist’s Tower. Built by the city of Palanthas itself, the keep was blocky and relatively squat but imposing nonetheless. Where the tower rested against one side of the Knight’s High Road, the keep extended to the other canyon wall. A stream ran to a portcullis gate at the foot of the keep, while the second road approached a stone ramp leading up to the main gate.
As the road split between the tower and keep, so, too, did the traffic and caravans. Pilgrims and the sick traveled to the High Clerist’s Tower. Although the gods had been quiet since the Cataclysm, many followers still made the journey to worship at its temples. Some prayed for good fortune for their businesses or families or crops, while others made the journey for one last reprieve against whatever illness had struck them or their loved ones. In fact, Tythonnia could see a leper caravan moving slowly toward the tower. The other travelers steered clear of the carts that bore the yellow banners.
Merchants and others journeyed straight for the keep and, presumably, the city of Palanthas. To the chaos of that road was added the traffic leaving the pass and heading into the Plains of Solamnia. The human flow added considerably to the din of baying animals, loud voices, creaking carts, and the clop of hooves against the cobblestone road. People argued over right of way as caravans tried passing one another and carts grazed each other.
Over the chaos presided a handful of Knights of Solamnia, a token force to orchestrate the traffic. They allowed pilgrims to enter the High Clerist’s Tower to worship at the temples-for a fee, of course-but nobody was allowed to venture beyond the second level, at least according to the knight who stood upon a wood platform, shouting information over the noise and answering questions from the dozen people standing below him.