But at least, if I fight, I can choose the battlefield, position myself to my best advantage. Which would be at the monastery; that’s where my knowledge is best and where I have the greatest number of trustworthy allies. The ground is broken and the monastery shattered so it affords a great number of places for ambuscades and traps.
What other choices are there? I suppose I could abrogate my responsibility, return the Sphere to Prelate Quardov, and leave it to him to determine its disposition. Teron paused in his stretching to snicker.
If only there were a way to destroy it, he thought. Remove it forever from the reach of Praxle, and others like him.
Once more he paused in his stretching. Dol Arrah, he prayed, let the gnome be dead. Let what I do here be wasted time and effort. Let the Sphere never again fall into his hands, or into the hands of anyone like him.
Any prayer I’ve raised that wished for my own death, he added, let this prayer supercede it.
Shortly before sundown, the lightning rail pulled into Starilaskur. As it slowed, Teron took his satchel, Praxle’s dagger, some leftover food, and the bag containing the Sphere and jumped out of the sundered window. The abnormal inertia of the Sphere yielded him a soft landing.
He glided into the drizzle, leaving the ruined carriage behind, empty of people, empty of answers.
Hoping to avoid detection, he passed the night resting in the shadows, for the most part quietly. A footpad tried to take advantage of a lone, unarmed man sitting in an alley, and instead received a lesson in how short life could be.
Well after sunrise, Teron located someone to buy the enchanted dagger and bought himself a hot bath, two days’ worth of food, and passage on the lightning rail to Ghalt. He opted for a private cabin; he intended to stay awake for the entire trip back to the monastery. He had no intention of leaving the Sphere of Xoriat unguarded even for a moment; at best he would allow himself to fall into a light meditative trance from which he could easily awaken.
The days passed slowly for Teron, trapped within a cell consisting of a bunk and a writing table. He tried to spend time in meditation, but every time he did, he heard the faint echoes of screams in the back of his mind, lingering remnants of those whose souls he had unwittingly devoured. Instead, he spent long hours staring out the window of his cabin, watching the world pass by and wondering what had become of Flotsam. Every so often Kelcie’s eyes would haunt his thoughts, but he drove her memory away by reliving her betrayal.
The rail cut through the more fertile portion of Breland, then turned north toward Aundair, skirting Lake Brey. Then at last it crossed into Aundair, and Teron dared breathe a sigh of relief.
The sky was dark as Teron debarked the lightning rail. He hitched the leather bag and its recalcitrant occupant under his arm, and began the long walk back to the Monastery of Pastoral Solitude. Part of his mind was aware that the weather was fine, with cool air and a clear sky, but the weight under his arm did not allow him to enjoy it.
He walked through the night and into the next day. He arrived at the monastery well after dark, thankful that the darkness had saved his eyes from having to see the vile red tinge of the Crying Fields. With a weary, satisfied sigh, he crossed the threshold of the Gallery and started to meander down to his small room.
Just as Teron passed the door to Keiftal’s room, the aging master burst out, wild-eyed and frantic.
“What is it, my boy?” he yelled, the loudness distorting his nasal tone. “What’s happening?”
Exhausted and startled, Teron whipped around, expecting to see a wave of gnomes pursuing him. “What? Where?” he asked.
Keiftal grabbed Teron’s shoulders and spun him around face to face. “What’s happening? Where’s that coming from?”
“Where’s what coming from?” asked Teron, edgy and confused.
“The screaming!” said Keiftal urgently. “I hear screaming, hundreds of voices, thousands …”
Teron’s brow furrowed, and one hand flew to the black leather bag. He pulled himself out of Keiftal’s grip and took a step back from the aging master. “I don’t hear anything,” he said warily.
Keiftal’s eye dropped to the bag held protectively beneath Teron’s arm, and his eyes went wide. “You have it?” he gasped, his eyes bugging out. He began to tremble. “The screaming, they’re all begging …”
“What’s going on, master?” asked Teron.
Keiftal stopped his rambling. “You can’t hear them?”
“Hear who? Hear what?”
Keiftal put his hands to his ears. “The cries of the monks, the Thranes, the cries of people being devoured by madness …”
Teron pushed the bag down to the floor, and took his master’s hand and led him away, down the hall. “I don’t hear any screaming, master,” he said, keeping one eye on the unattended bag. He ushered Keiftal around a corner, out of sight of the leather satchel. “Well, not much screaming, anyway.”
The elder monk wagged his head. “I never thought that my prayer would be such a curse,” he said.
“What do you mean, master?” asked Teron, “I don’t understand you.”
“My son,” said Keiftal with a loud, trembling, brassy voice, “I can hear the screams of those devoured by that foul device all those years ago. I can hear them clear as a bell. For years I have prayed to Dol Arrah to let me hear something, anything, and now this …”
“What?”
“I’ve been completely deaf since the day the Thranes first opened the Sphere. The last thing I ever heard was the cries of the armies as the Great Maw drew them in. I haven’t heard a single sound since. Not the crows as they ate the dead, not the prayers of my brothers and sisters, nothing. Not until just now. I can still hear their final screams.
“My boy, that thing is evil. We have hidden it for years, but now it has been found.” He poked Teron in the chest and said, “We trained you to destroy. I tell you now, you must destroy that thing.”
“But how?”
“Find a way. For the sake of the world, find a way.”
Under Keiftal’s direction, a rotating guard was set up to watch over the Orb of Xoriat. When he was not standing guard, Teron thought on Praxle’s words. Patterns. Patterns too complex for the human mind.
Why was it that the Crying Fields existed the way they did? Why did the ghosts of those dead manifest in the Crying Fields when the moon for which the month was named waxed full? The monks of the monastery had debated those questions for many years.
Some just dismissed the phenomenon as the result of magic, but Teron had always felt that that argument had been flippant at best. It was not understandable, therefore it was magic, because magic was incomprehensible. Yet Praxle’s words had implied that even magic operated by patterns, and the fact that people across Khorvaire could cast spells indicated that patterns of magic could be understood and applied.
Other believed the occurrences were part of a rhythmic cycle that was very complex. A pattern of days and hours between manifestations that defied formulae; something predictable if not comprehensible. Yet the chance of such an equation randomly matching the cycle of moons and the calendar was infinitesimal.
Then it struck Teron: such answers looked on the alignment of the moons as a coincidence, or a marker. But what if the moons were themselves the cause? What if the manifestation in the Crying Fields occurred because of the moons, when the moons and the sun and Eberron itself all aligned into a pattern too large to be seen from the surface of the world? Was this a part of the prophecy that the dragons spoke of?
Then he started seeing other patterns, how his road had taken him on a large circle across Khorvaire. How he began pursing Praxle, then joined with him, then split from him, only to have Praxle—and he must assume the gnome was alive—pursuing him. How he easily outfought Jeffers at their first meeting to get to Praxle, then saved his life from the fire elemental, then Jeffers saved Teron’s life from a lightning bolt, then Jeffers outfought Teron at the end to take Praxle away.