The old druid came round the bier and stopped before Berun. He placed his free hand on Berun's arm and squeezed. "My heart rejoices to see you, Berun. Truly."
"Master Chereth… I…" Berun didn't know what to say.
Chereth smiled at him. "Many, many questions, yes?"
"Yes, Master."
"Our time is short, my son," said Chereth. "But tonight, all your questions must be answered. I have long waited for your coming, and the rest of this night I give to you. All must be made clear before we finish what we began."
Berun felt suddenly weak. He feared his legs would not hold him, so he sat back on the bier. "Finish what, master?"
"That should be your last question, I think," said Chereth. "Better for your understanding if we begin at the beginning, yes?"
"I… I don't know where to begin, master."
"I should begin before you came to me," said Chereth. "Before you were Berun. Before you were even Kheil perhaps, for I have walked this path many long years. It began when I was not much older than you are now. As a child of the Oak Father, I served among the Masters of the Yuirwood for many seasons. We saw many victories and many defeats. Many defeats, both in the Yuirwood and in other places where my service to the Oak Father took me.
"Always I saw blight, corruption-both natural and arcane-assaulting the woods so beloved to our god. Every year I saw the forests grow a little smaller-if not in one place, than another. Villages, towns, cities… as they prospered and grew they dumped their filth into our rivers, our lakes. They fill the air with their smoke and stench. They cut and destroy and do not replant. Kings and their nobles hunt for sport, leaving animals to rot where the hunters' arrows take them.
These nobles will retrieve their arrows, but they leave bears, foxes, and wolves to rot, their death meaning only a moment's amusement for pampered fools.
"I swore my life to the service of the wild. To communion with all living things. Yet year by year I saw the wild shrinking. Saw it polluted. Defiled. And so the Masters of the Yuirwood and other Circles sought to heal, to repair, to foster the wild. But over the years, after so many defeats, I saw this for what it was-a long defeat. For every grove we preserved or fallow field we filled with trees, ten groves were cut and the wild grew ever thinner.
"I began to search for an advantage. What the assassins of this place might call 'an edge,' something that would allow our efforts to go on the offense for once. Traveling through many lands, I sought lore, artifacts, relics, items of power of any sort, and allies to aid my work. 1 met many whose wisdom added to my own. I found the ancient works of the Imaskari, who were masters of the portals, using them to travel vast distances as if crossing the room. But they also used them to travel to other worlds-some strangely similar to our own, and others different beyond our imagination. Such… power this offered.
"The ancient histories all agreed that one of the greatest of the Imaskari wonders lay in the Endless Wastes. My studies led me to believe that this was none other than Sentinelspire itself, and all the scrolls I studied and tales I gleaned spoke of a fortress hidden on the mountain. And thus I first began to learn of the Old Man of the Mountain and his… cult of assassins.
"Perhaps two years before Kheil and I first crossed paths, I found some of Alaodin's contacts in Glarondar. Unlike most who approached Alaodin, I did not want anyone murdered. I requested an audience with the Old Man of the Mountain, for I greatly wished to come and study the Imaskari lore at Sentinelspire. Why he granted my request I don't suppose I will ever know. Nor do I care. He probably thought he could find a use for whatever knowledge I unearthed, or perhaps he saw me as a potential contact within the Yuirwood.
"Alaodin sent an escort for me-a quiet, secret thing that most of his blades did not even know. Using the portals, they brought me to the Fortress, and I spent many long days and nights studying in the vaults and libraries of the Fortress. Alaodin, despite being one of the world's foremost murderers, had gathered an impressive collection of lore and relics of power-both Imaskari and otherwise. One item in particular was the relic you carried for so long."
"Erael'len?" said Berun. "It came from Sentinelspire?"
"It did," said Chereth. "How such a holy relic to our faith came to be in the possession of the Lord of Assassins I do not know. He had never been able to unlock its secrets, though he sensed the power within it. And here, I must confess that I defiled the rules of hospitality. I stole Erael'len and fled. I had no choice. For such a holy relic to rest in the hands of someone so unworthy… my heart would not bear it. During my escape, I was forced to kill several of Alaodin's men.
"Alaodin felt that his honor had been insulted-that, and I'm sure he wanted the relic back. And so Alaodin gathered his very best assassins and sent them to kill an old druid in the Yuirwood. And here, my dear son, is where you enter this tale."
Berun's mind reeled. When the Old Man had ordered him to lead the blades into the Yuirwood and kill an old druid, Berun had not asked why. The opportunity to kill had been enough. The order to hunt and kill in lands he'd never seen had been… intoxicating. There had never been any word of retrieving a relic. At least not to Kheil. If that had been part of their mission, it had been only for the ears of one of the other assassins.
"Kheil and his band," Chereth continued, "killed many of my people. But the old druid Chereth? Me, they missed, and Kheil was captured by my best wardens. And at my word, they put him to a just and deserved death. But the mysteries of the Oak Father are beyond comprehension. From death comes life. And so, by the grace and power of the Oak Father, I called you back to serve, to serve the will of the god and all we hold precious-growing things, the wild, life itself." The old half-elf smiled, and his voice became raspy with emotion. "And you did, my son. You did. Served beyond all my hopes and dreams for you."
Chereth turned, walked away, and began to pace the roof, the strange lights playing about him.
"But still my quest continued. I shared my desire with others of my Circle and other Circles. I pleaded with them of the need to strike a blow for the wild, lest it be lost beyond repair. But they failed to see the wisdom of my words. They failed to see the depth of civilization's stain upon the world. And so I left, and together we sought the final pieces I needed."
"Why, master?" said Berun. "Why did you never tell me any of this?"
Chereth stopped his pacing and held Berun's gaze. "You were strong. Never doubt that, my son. Strong like a diamond. But, like a diamond, I knew that one strike in the wrong place and you would shatter. I knew you had taken to your new life, becoming Berun for me and for the Oak Father. But I could also see that your old life still haunted you, that still you had to struggle with the corruption of Kheil in your soul. This is why you took so readily to the wild, I think. In civilization, in the cities, towns, even in the villages… Kheil's desires began to reawaken, did they not?"
It was true. The fear, the memories, and all the horrors endured by a little boy forced to survive on his own in the streets channeled that into an anger, a bloodlust, that could never be satisfied. Yes, that had been Kheil. And in the cities- hearing the call of merchants, the plaintive cry of animals caged and penned when they longed to roam, the bickering, the laughter, all the thousands of little sights and sounds and scents of civilization… they woke the old fears, and the fears sought the one comfort they had found: The desire to kill, to slay the things that had used and abused him as a child.
All this was true, but Berun simply said, "Yes."
"Yes," said Chereth, and he resumed his pacing. "Besides, I did not want to draw you into the petty bickerings of the Circles, of men and women whose minds were too small to see what ought to have been plain as summer sun before them. And so we left, you and I, wandering, doing what good we could in the lands where I continued my search for the final keys that would allow me to accomplish my desire.