Remy went, lowering himself up into the sky. For the first time since coming out into the courtyard of the Keep, Remy felt strong vertigo. He shut his eyes and concentrated on letting himself down, hand over hand, bracing himself with a coil of rope around one foot. The thought occurred to him that he might open his eyes and find himself on the Astral Plane. But when he did open them, as his feet found solid ground, he was standing on the rune-scored stones of the keyhole. The rest of the group had already built a fire and set to having a look at some of the more interesting objects they had found in the keep. Paelias, Keverel, and Lucan read over some of the Road-builder’s scrolls. Obek was tapping at the stone in a ring he had taken from the dead Moula. He also carried a satchel filled with other booty, such as they had found in their brief search of the Road-builder’s study and other parts of the Keep on their way to the broken bridge.
No one had yet said a word about Kithri, but all of them felt her absence. When Biri-Daar appeared no one asked how it happened that they could climb down into the sky and end up where they had ended up. The Road-builder’s magic, the magic of the Inverted Keep itself… some phenomena did not bear close examination. If they happened, they happened. They were to be experienced, not understood.
Paelias, crosshatched with cuts from his trip through the greenhouse window, was the first to address their situation head-on. They had eaten, drunk, passed around the last of a flask of spirits Lucan had picked up back at Crow Fork Market. The eladrin was whittling a small flute when in the middle of the task he broke off and said, “The way I understand things, our situation is thus. We are in possession of Moidan’s Quill that is needed to reinscribe the Seal of Karga Kul. We are also in possession of a chisel that one assumes was intended to destroy that seal. Moidan’s Quill cannot be destroyed except at the cost of losing the city of Karga Kul to demons; if the quill is not destroyed the Road-builder will appear in its vicinity at some indeterminate but not distant time. So our current task is to get to Karga Kul, talk to the Mage Trust, evade capture or death at the hands of the vizier of Avankil and his minions, and replenish the Seal so that the quill can be destroyed. Do I have that right?”
“In a general sense,” Biri-Daar said.
“What about the chisel?”
“The chisel… Remy, let me see it,” Keverel said. He inspected it for a moment before going on. “Those runes speak of service to the Demon Prince Orcus. He and his army are massed on the other side of the Seal, awaiting their chance to pour across any threshold into our world. Clearly Philomen has pledged his life and his service to the forces of the Abyss. Just as clearly, he hoped to get the chisel to Karga Kul, either via allies in Toradan or by other means we have not yet understood.”
Keverel handed the chisel back to Remy. “The chisel and the quill must be kept apart. Philomen will be on the hunt for one; we must not let him capture both in the event that things do not fall our way.”
“No. We were drawn together,” Biri-Daar said. “Bahamut has made it so. Do you not see? The restoration of the Knights of Kul and the salvation of the city of Karga Kul, these are the same task. Bahamut has led me to destroy Moula, the apostle of Tiamat. Now he leads me on to finish the work against the demons of the Abyss that threaten the city of the Order’s birth. Our two errands are the same. It is time to finish them together.”
The two locked gazes. “I do not know if this is wise, Biri-Daar,” Keverel said. “The breaking of the box will have alerted Philomen to our location. He will waste no time trying to get the chisel back. If we are to stay together, we need to move fast and be on our guard.”
“To Karga Kul, then,” Lucan said. “But we all knew that already.”
“And how are we to get there before the Road-builder comes back?” Remy asked. “How far is it?”
“On foot, ten days. On horse, four.”
“In ten days, we will have met the Road-builder again,” Keverel said. “Perhaps even in four.”
“Then we must travel more swiftly,” Paelias said. “We must return to Iskar’s Landing and trade on the hospitality of the halflings again. The river will take us to the cliff landing below Karga Kul in two days, will it not?”
“It will, but I fear those halflings will not be nearly so happy to see us now that Kithri is dead,” Lucan said.
Keverel shook out his blanket and lay down. “That must be balanced against another unhappiness,” he said. “Orcus will be in a fury that we have destroyed the Road-builder. All liches pay their homages to the Demon Prince.”
For a few minutes more, Paelias whittled. He sheathed his knife and blew an experimental note on the flute. “Orcus,” he repeated. “The Demon Prince will chase us all the way to Karga Kul. So will Philomen’s agents. And when we get to Karga Kul, we will have to contend with a disintegrating Seal and Corellon knows what else. Including, possibly, a reincarnated Road-builder whom our only chance of avoiding requires a boat trip with a tribe of potentially hostile, or at least indifferent, halflings.”
He looked around at them. “Do I understand our circumstances?”
“Mostly you have the right of it, yes,” Keverel said.
“Then as long as everyone knows what awaits us, let us await it no longer. What is it, half a day back down to Iskar’s Landing?” Paelias rose and piped a note on the flute. “To the river, comrades.”
Obek had said little since returning to solid ground. But he too stood. “I’m with the eladrin. Let’s move if we’re going to move.”
“It is not your decision,” Biri-Daar said.
Meeting her gaze, Obek said, “I didn’t make a decision. I offered an opinion. The right to an opinion I earned up there.” He pointed toward the spectral hulk of the Inverted Keep, somehow less ominous knowing the Road-builder was-however temporarily-dead. And the final blows, Remy thought, were struck by Obek and me. I helped to kill a lich. It was a story to dumbfound his fellow Quayside urchins back in Avankil.
Only Remy wasn’t any kind of urchin anymore. Perhaps he had already been beyond that when Philomen sent him out on the errand he was never supposed to complete. Certainly he was beyond it now.
“Dragonborn and tiefling, the assembled humans and elves have no interest in your grievances.” Keverel stepped between them, placing a hand on the back of each. “Obek, you fought well in the Keep, but we do not know you. Ask Remy about finding a place in the group. Biri-Daar, this quest is personal for you, and spiritual, and it will be the matter of great songs. But only if we survive. Obek willingly risked his life to join us, braving the Road-builder’s Tomb on his own. He has earned our trust until he proves himself unworthy of it.”
“That’s what I would have said if I could have thought of how to say it,” Remy said. Everyone looked at him and he realized what they were thinking. It was the first time he had claimed a voice in the group.
Biri-Daar cracked a smile. It was the kind of smile, Remy thought, he had seen on the faces of fathers at the sight of their children’s first steps. Partly he was proud of himself and of her regard, and partly he was spurred on by its slight condescension.
“Let us go, then,” she said. “And let us leave the memory of our comrade Kithri the halfling to Avandra. She, patron of halflings, the Lady of Luck and the spinner of fortune’s wheel, she will bring Kithri’s spirit to its rest.” All of them realized toward the end of these words that Biri-Daar was offering up a prayer for Kithri. But before they could grow solemn, Biri-Daar was already walking away down the ridge toward the Tomb Fork of the Crow Road.
As Paelias had predicted and all of them had quietly assumed, Vokoun’s band of river halflings did not greet them as long-lost brothers, or even as fellow seekers after a common goal. The river pilot was cold as he looked from one face in the group to another. “So,” he said at last. “You have added a tiefling and left the halfling behind.”