Paladin and Hero fell to their faces before her.
Her song now was one of triumph as her power blazed brighter. The black tentacles clutching the diamond ignited, their flames adding to the brilliance. The globe of mirrors melted away, and a blast of pure force roared out amid the circling stars and wandering moons. With an answering roar the fire spread down the evil tree.
Freed at last, Heart would burn her former captor to oblivion. Her soul would sear the tree away. But what of the world it was rooted in? The worlds upon worlds into which it had sunk its wicked roots? Would they be destroyed, evil and good alike consumed in flames?
Paladin glanced at his comrade. Hero could do it. Hero could whelm the folk of the world below and bring their axes to bear on the base of this horrific tree.
Thousands of axes. Tens of thousands. If they chopped it through, the massive crown, a world unto itself, would pull away among the stars to erupt safely above and beyond all. Hero could do it.
But Paladin could not. This was she whom he sought, the Heart of all his world. If she was destroyed in flame, he would perish with her.
Empowered by the lightning blasts of Heart, Paladin hoisted Hero, bore him to the spinning edge, and flung him down toward the world. He shouted through the firestorm the only words they shared: "Save it!"
Hero understood. Therein lay his greatness. Despite his youth, his fumbling naivete, the heart so untried and vulnerable in his breast, in the end Hero always understood. And in worlds of truth, understanding bridged any distance.
Immediately, Hero was at the base of the tree, and at once in every farmstead and village and city clustered about it, exhorting folk to bring their axes, and save their world. He was believed and obeyed. That was the power of understanding in a world of truth.
Paladin felt the first thunderous thousand blows shiver the tree. He staggered, striding against the gale of light and power toward the blazing woman. She recognized him. Something in her knew the garment of scars that cloaked his soul. With a single finger of fire, gentle as a caress, she flung him from the inferno, down to the verdant world below.
All the while he fell, Paladin wept; he'd been so close to his love and now he was hurled farther with each breath.
Just before he reached ground, the massive tree groaned. Cut through, it swayed. The blazing bole turned listlessly once before easing up, away from the ground. It hung in the sky, engulfed in racing flames. A white-hot inferno tumbled up into the arching heavens. It was shrinking into vast distance when it blazed its last.
The flash blinded all who looked at it. It blinded Paladin, where he lay in a scorched glade, and the thunder that followed rattled the teeth in his head. A shock wave of wind slammed into him, thrusting him down through earth and bedrock beneath, whirling him through the swirling subterranean passages of Lethe. Even as he lost consciousness, falling asleep in one world to awaken in another, he knew she was dead.
His Heart's Desire was dead.
"The Tree of Illusion, grown to overbalance the real world in which it has root," mused Khelben, watching the final stitches snipped from the Open Lord's eyes. "The octopodal crown can be none other than Aetheric III. But what of this diamond?"
"Diamond be damned," hissed Piergeiron as his eyes at last struggled open, blinking into the glaring chandeliers. "Eidola is dead. The Heart is dead."
Khelben leaned over, helping the dead man up. "Perhaps not. Perhaps this glorious soul you saw wasn't Eidola, but-"
Before the Lord Mage could say more, Piergeiron saw the woman who lay in the casket beside his own. He sprawled across it and wept bitterly.
Chapter 4
In the streets above the cold stone of the palace dungeon, Waterdeep rejoiced beneath a sunset sky.
Piergeiron lived.
He had returned. He'd risen during his own funeral to tell a tale of such mythic force that two dozen bards were writing ballads, in moments snatched between the leap-dances and reels demanded by the crowds. The very sewers of Waterdeep throbbed to the tread of thousands of dancing feet. Piergeiron himself had blessed the revelry from his balcony. Khelben expressed his delight in the form of green and gold fireworks, blazing and popping above the harbor.
It seemed only Noph wasn't rejoicing. He stood in the cell where he'd met with his father, and a fictitious fireball had blasted Artemis Entreri and Trandon into twin piles of ash-this wood ash, by his boots.
Noph growled to himself. Appearances, facades, deceptions; how could Khelben nod so sagely at Piergeiron's morality tale when the Blackstaff himself had just perpetrated a treasonous deception on the entire city? "Being a hero is the most confusing job in the world," Noph complained aloud.
"Well now, getting down to the brass, you hit the snail on the prosuberbial head there," a basso voice answered, from disconcertingly nearby.
Noph looked up into the tragicomic mope of Becil Boarskyr's face, the cell bars stretching his red jowls back into a doglike grimace. It was not a pretty sight. "Mayhap," Becil added, "that's on account of because it's not a job."
"What are you talking about?" Noph snapped wearily.
"A job's something they give you compensatory damages for doing it. But heroes don't get any monetary renunciation. If they did, they'd be just missionaries."
"Mercenaries," Noph corrected reflexively.
"Yes, that's it, mercy killers-"
"Mercenaries!" Noph snarled. "People who fight for money: mercenaries!"
Becil nodded amiably. "Yes, mammonaries. Which is why being a hero doesn't provide a fellow the fine emnities of lordly life."
"Amenities."
"Amen to that, yourself. Anyway, when a hero does his goodliness, it's like he doesn't get fiscal repercussions because it's not him who gets paid but the whole world."
Noph suddenly understood. The whole world gets paid. He stared at the twin dust piles.
Khelben hadn't benefited from the jailbreak. He'd nothing to gain from keeping Eidola's identity a secret. He'd not seized power during Piergeiron's long incapacity. In each case, Waterdeep had been made the richer, not the Lord Mage. He was a hero because he acted on behalf of everyone but himself. The whole world got paid.
"Now, as long as we're conversating about those of us who worship mammon getting the chance to go prostate before the sanctuary of our golden god-"
"Prostrate," Noph corrected irritably. "Don't throw around words you don't know."
"I'm planning to expose myself about the jailbreak unless I get some commercial satisfaction."
"You what?" Noph asked, emerging from the empty cell to glare at Becil.
"I observated the deception you and that Blackshaft perpetuated on the Waterdousians," Becil said. "And so, I'll need twenty thousand gold for you to buy the pleasure of me keeping my mouth shut."
"You're going to blackmail Khelben?"
"Blackboil is such a dirty word-"
"No one will listen to you."
"I have the truth."
"It can't be called truth when put to such purposes."
"You'll see."
"I already see," Noph assured him darkly, and then stiffened. An insistent thumping echoed down the hall, followed by muffled shrieks and curses.
Noph ran toward the sound, passing along corridors to a solidly barred floor hatch. He pulled the bar and flung back the hatch. Beneath was a latched iron grating, its bars as thick as his wrist, and beneath that a deep well. A rickety ladder clung to one side of its shaft. The shouts and screams came from the depths below: desperate human voices.
"I wonder how much the world'll be paid for this," Noph mused grimly, as he yanked a lantern from a wall hook, undid the latch, swung back the grating, and started climbing down the well.