The Seventh Sentinel Read online

  Lyim squinted suspiciously at the woman. “All the potentates? You’re centuries old—and a sorceress, no doubt. I suspected as much.”

  A sorceress? No—at least not in the way you think.

  “Why did you beckon me to follow you?”

  In answer, she stretched over the glass case and extended a sensuously pale arm. Touch me, she invited.

  Understanding came to Lyim, and he half laughed, half scowled. “I’d have to be insane to dally with one of the potentate’s mistresses.”

  Ventyr ignored his rejection and slid her fingers into his hand. Lyim tried to pull away, but he felt … nothing. Nothing but air touched the flesh of his hand, yet it seemed as if his whole body was being enveloped by her soft fingertips. If this was her usual method of seduction, Lyim began to understand why three potentates had kept her around for five hundred years. The basha himself had charmed and discarded many women in his time; he knew he was under a spell. Yet he didn’t care. Lyim knew he would die rather than never feel such … vibrancy again.

  The woman withdrew her hand, and Lyim nearly collapsed.

  Have you never wondered how such an unmagical potentate as Aniirin III maintains this magical palace?

  Lyim gathered his composure. “I had been told he supported wizards, as well as concubines. I never imagined they were one and the same.”

  Ventyr sighed, the sound like a cold wind over a frozen field. You have taken me too literally, mage.

  “I am not a mage,” Lyim hastily corrected.

  And I am not a woman, in the mortal sense.

  She stepped away from the pedestal and directed his eyes to the glove inside the glass box. It appeared to be made of intricately carved, interlinked plates of ivory, jade, and silver. The carvings on the plates were clearly magical pictograms, but the forms were unfamiliar to Lyim. Some of the individual plates were so small they were barely discernible. They must have given the glove incredible articulation, since it appeared to contain no other linking material.

  The Gauntlet of Ventyr is my true physical form, she explained. However, I choose to appear as a woman to men.

  Lyim prided himself on being worldly wise about magic and all its forms. Still, he could not deny his surprise.

  I was created by the dwarves of Thorbardin in their desperation to disarm the wizards of Ergoth during the War of the Mountain, she continued. But before I could be used, the elflord Kith-Kanan engineered the signing of the Sword-sheath Scroll, which settled the long-standing dispute between the barbaric Ergothians, the elves, and the dwarves.

  The woman stepped behind the glass case and wrapped her arms around it. I lay unused and forgotten in the bowels of Thorbardin, passed from thane to thane, for more than two thousand years. But in the years preceding the Cataclysm, that event which Qindaras will not acknowledge, Thorbardin became heavily dependent upon the world outside the mountain for food. With available sources drying up, the thane, Beldris, searched farther east. The fertile fields of Northern Kharolis were the breadbasket of the region. What was more, Aniirin I had taken control of trade on the River Torath. A powerful wizard in his own right, the first potentate of Qindaras was less interested in adding coin to his coffers than magical items.

  Being a dwarf, Beldris was happy enough to exchange a magical item for much-needed food. You see, most dwarven clans distrust magic, though historically they have created the greatest magical items, since they are superb metal-smiths. She smiled coyly. Being a wizard, Aniirin knew he had acquired his greatest magical treasure for two boatloads of grain.

  “What makes you so great?” Lyim blurted. “Your power to bewitch?”

  Your ignorance surprises me, mage. But perhaps you are merely out of practice. Ventyr straightened and rounded the case slowly. The dwarves created me to absorb magical energy, both virtual and realized. I can syphon power from the vast field of magical energy that suffuses the world. I am tapped directly into the magical weave that mages like yourself must work so diligently to release.

  You can imagine the practical application of such a skill. The first Aniirin realized that the energy I absorb could be harnessed and redirected to power and maintain his beautiful city. Ventyr waved her arm, and Lyim saw before his feet an image of Qindaras as he had never seen it. It was a bird’s-eye view, perfect in every detail, shimmering and clean.

  This was particularly significant to Aniirin in the years preceding the Cataclysm, when jealousy and hatred of magic was being stirred up by the Kingpriest.

  “Wasn’t it unwise to increase his visibility as a mage at such a time?” Lyim inquired.

  Aniirin neither advertised my presence nor his own use of magic. The Kingpriest’s energies were focused on destroying the towers of magic, not some minor potentate who was rumored to practice the Art.

  Lyim shook his head. “I can’t believe the Council of Three were not concerned about a wizard who had the ability to absorb and redirect their own magic against them.” Lyim blinked as a realization struck him. “Why, it made this palace almost as powerful as a Tower of High Sorcery!”

  They were aware of that, conceded Ventyr. Yet they, too, were consumed with defending their own towers against the Kingpriest. They didn’t ignore the problem, however, but struck a noninterference treaty with Aniirin. They wouldn’t insist he surrender me, as long as he didn’t use my power beyond the already-established bounds of Qindaras. Ventyr drew her legs up into a crossed position and hovered, in a sitting posture, next to the glass case. I suspect the Orders allowed the unusual treaty because they hoped a fragment of magic would survive beyond the clutching fingers of the Kingpriest.

  And it did just that. It also explains the origin of Qindaras’s refusal to acknowledge the Cataclysm.

  Lyim shrugged. “I assumed it was just another facet of Aniirin’s obsession with the policies of his grandfather.”

  The woman nodded. That has become the truth. But it began because I was already in place, magically powering and protecting the city when the Cataclysm struck. The quakes had little effect here because of those protections. Under Aniirin’s rule, the city had already been pursuing an isolationist policy, largely because of the treaty with the Orders of Magic. There were few enough people to maintain even a minimal trade of goods and ideas in the years of isolation that resulted from the catastrophe.

  Practically speaking, daily life changed very little within the city walls. A new copper dome was added to the palace each year, marking the passage of time in the same old way. There was no need to recognize an event that affected the people so little.

  Lyim’s mind was racing with the possibilities. “How is the gauntlet—I mean how are you activated?” he asked awkwardly, no longer sure how to refer to the woman who was not a woman.

  Aniirin instructed me to absorb spent energy and redirect it to maintain Qindaras’s magical effects.

  “With no guards on the door to this room,” mused Lyim, “it’s amazing no one has ever stolen you.”

  Aniirin recognized that danger, explained Ventyr. He used powerful magic so no one but the crowned potentate of Qindaras can wear or use me. Such safeguards are vital: if I’m somehow removed from the grounds without being worn by the potentate, the loss of my magic would cause the destruction of the palace.

  “So you’re saying Aniirin III dons you to draw magic?”

  As potentate he could, responded the woman. However, he does not practice the Art, so he has chosen to not use me for over a century. As a result, I have expended most of the energy stored by the first two potentates. As you must have noticed, the city has suffered for my lack of power. Soon I will not have enough energy to maintain even the palace, as Aniirin I magically bade me to do.

  “Why tell me this?” asked Lyim. “The potentate is the only one with the ability to help you. Appeal to him.”

  I have. Unfortunately, though Aniirin is enamored of magic, he does not understand it. He has neither the abilities nor the foresight of his grandfather. He even pales beside his f
ather, whose meager intellect was no gift from the gods.

  She drifted close and settled directly before Lyim. You, however, are smarter and stronger than Aniirin. I sensed this when you entered the palace tonight. That is why I summoned you to help me.

  “I no longer use magic, for myself or others,” Lyim said in a taut voice.

  Without a skilled wizard as potentate, my magical stores will be drained. The city and all who reside within will wither and die. She paused for effect. Consider what I have said, mage.

  “I told you, I am not a—”

  But the mist woman had already slipped into the glass case and was gone from his sight.

  With Ventyr’s passing, Lyim felt the magical compulsion lessen and vanish. It left him angry, angry at having been used by the thing he had vowed to destroy. But it also left him confused. An item that absorbed magic … Was that so different from his own goal?

  Lyim felt too drained by the events of the evening to think beyond his anger. As he left the chamber, he thought of Fendock. The old sharp was dying on Salimshad’s knife somewhere below in the city. That thought made the basha feel better, even though some would call him a monster for ordering the death of a harmless old huckster.

  Lyim had a motto, a gift from Fendock himself, that he would have used to reply to any outraged accusations of cruelty. The words had held the ex-mage in good stead through the lean years: “Never explain, never defend.”

  It was cold, and it was wet, and he was hungry. Bram slogged uphill over slippery, rain-soaked leaves behind the centaur, Aurestes. No matter which way he turned, the filthy weather hit him in the face. What had ever made him think their realm was always warm and green? Their realm … He would have to stop thinking of the tuatha dundarael as “they.”

  Bram slipped on a patch of slick, frozen leaves and went down hard on one knee. He stayed there, eyes closed, trying to gather himself and remember why he was going through this ordeal.

  You’re going to meet your true mother, he thought to steel himself. A damp chill is little enough to bear in order to learn the truth. You’ve suffered worse plowing Thonvil’s fields by yourself.

  At least he didn’t have to be hungry, too. Reaching into the leather pack provided by the tuatha, he withdrew the first thing his fingers met with, a dried fig. Bram swallowed it in one bite, hoping it would restore his determination.

  “Don’t tell me you’re tired already,” scoffed Aurestes.

  Bram looked above him to the centaur. Aurestes had picked his way up the steep hill as surefootedly as a mountain goat. Slung over one broad shoulder was a quiver filled with arrows. Across the other was a hand-carved bow. Saddlebags bulged with wooden clubs and provisions sent by the tuatha who served Weador. Aurestes’s expression was bemused.

  “I offered to let you ride on my back.”

  Bram gritted his teeth. “I told you, I don’t think that would be a good idea. Frankly, I find it only barely tolerable that you’re my guide.”

  The centaur gave an equine snort. “As long as we’re being frank, one of the two reasons I agreed to lead you was because I found out you were half tuatha. That makes you only half tolerable.”

  Bram stood and, with chilled fingers, brushed off his knee. “I still don’t understand why Weador insisted that you accompany me.”

  “I believe he explained that. Apparently your human half is too dim-witted to understand, so I’ll try to say it simply: we must cross a region of utter desolation to reach the area where Weador believes Primula has settled. The region would rapidly drain a tuatha’s energy, dependent as they are on the health of their environment. I am not a tuatha, so I will be safe from the effects of the area. You, on the other hand, may be affected, since you are part tuatha.”

  Bram nodded reluctantly. “I still don’t think of myself as anything but human yet.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I’m not sure I ever will.”

  “I don’t know why you’d fight it,” remarked the centaur. “Tuatha are a far more civilized and intelligent race than humans.”

  “That’s just your centaur bias,” Bram said coolly, “which is interesting, considering that your front half looks human. Tell me, how would you react if someone told you that you weren’t really a centaur, you were a … a bugbear?”

  “That would be ridiculous,” said Aurestes. “Look at me.” He peered around at his flanks. “Do I look like a bugbear?”

  “Do I look tuatha?” returned Bram. “No, I look, I feel, I think like a human. It’s all I know.”

  For once, Aurestes refrained from a nasty reply. Instead, he nibbled on his own stores.

  “You said something about there being two reasons you agreed to guide me,” Bram recalled, breaking the silence. “What’s the second?”

  “Not that it’s any of your business,” the centaur pronounced haughtily, “but I am in temporary service to the tuatha as a priest of the true god, Habakkuk.”

  “You don’t seem like the spiritual type,” Bram remarked unkindly.

  Aurestes gave him an arch look. “Habakkuk says nothing about having to be nice to stupid humans. He does, however, expect that once during a priest’s lifetime he leave friends and community to wander the land. This time purifies the priest and teaches him the true ways of nature. The time ends when the priest receives a sign from Habakkuk that he has done a great service. Toward that end, I have served my time helping Weador to restore the lands within his domain. Just before Weador asked me to accompany you, I received a vision from Habakkuk. He told me that leading you to Primula would complete my missionary work.”

  “But Weador told me the tuatha worship Chislev. Why would a priest of Habakkuk serve the followers of another god?”

  “Habakkuk and Chislev work in concert to restore and maintain the natural world. Both tuatha and centaurs fiercely protect nature from those who would destroy or squander it.”

  “Wait,” protested Bram. “Habakkuk is also worshiped by the cavaliers in Ergoth—”

  “So?” barked the centaur rudely. “Knights and centaurs have much in common—bravery, valor, a fierce love of nature. Habakkuk, in fact, created the Order of the Crown of the Knights of Solamnia.”

  The centaur looked back over his shoulder, then began picking his way up the slope again. “If you’re done resting, let’s continue. We haven’t even reached the devastated area yet.”

  Bram looked around at the gray, wet landscape in disbelief. “This isn’t it?”

  “Not hardly,” Aurestes snorted. “But we’ll be there all too soon.”

  Beyond the ridge the land dropped away sharply. As the pair pressed on, moving down to lower elevations, they reentered a wood. But this one was nothing like the forest they had left behind. These plants had none of the sense of harmony or perfection that had been so strong back at Weador’s court. More and more, they took on a threatening appearance: twisted, gray, thorny. Hideous faces leered out from between shadowed tree trunks or down from the gnarled branches, only to disappear when Bram looked at them squarely. He found himself shuddering involuntarily and jumping every time a twig snapped beneath Aurestes’s hooves.

  When the forest ended a short time later, Bram wished for the frightening shadows again, so bleak was the landscape here. The sky, or what functioned as sky, was gray-black. The air smelled of wood smoke mingled with the scent of burning flesh. There were no trees or grass to speak of, only bare branches protruding from barren, black dirt. And rocks: big, jagged boulders.

  “What happened here?” Bram asked breathlessly. “It looks as if the hottest fire swept over this landscape.”

  Aurestes took a careful step forward. He looked more watchful than usual. “Just as Weador’s court reflects the organic and spiritual health of the physical world it parallels, this part of the tuatha realm mirrors the desolation of the Plains of Dust. Weador believes this area is particularly devastated because of a magic-absorbing artifact that’s being used there.”

  Bram considered the bow in the centaur’s
hands. His guide had nocked an arrow for the first time since they’d left the court. “Are you expecting some trouble?”

  “I always expect trouble when I travel with a human.” Aurestes smirked, but his eyes never stopped scanning the bleak scene.

  “I thought you’d been here before,” accused Bram. Following Aurestes’s lead, he withdrew a cudgel from his own pack and proceeded cautiously behind the centaur. The area prompted in Bram a feeling of silent desperation. They moved quickly, at a run, to get the desolate landscape behind them. When at last they passed back into gray, rainy slopes, Bram could have kissed the wretched, cold dirt.

  Some distance into the leafless forest, Aurestes finally stopped to let them rest. The centaur’s flanks were running with sweat, his lungs heaving. He dropped to his front knees and struggled to catch his breath.

  Bram took the wineskin from his pack and pressed the opening to Aurestes’s mouth. The centaur gulped the drink gratefully, splashing the runoff onto his hot, red cheeks. Despite the guide’s protestations, Bram began to realize the creature wasn’t as cantankerous as he pretended. “Why did you seem bent on keeping me from traveling first to Wayreth, then Weador’s court?”

  Aurestes wiped his mouth on his forearm. “My assignment was to test your mettle and determination.”

  “I had you pegged for a bit of a fool,” Bram confessed ruefully.

  Aurestes actually smiled. “You, of all people, should know not to judge on appearances.”

  “I owe you an apology,” Bram said. “I was wrong about not needing you as a guide.”

  Instead of looking touched, Aurestes scowled. “I told you, I came along because I was charged by Habakkuk to do so. Somehow—and I can’t imagine why—it furthers his goal of defending nature. It was not out of any sense of friendly concern or affection. Just get that notion right out of your foolish human head.”

  “Fine,” Bram said, trying to hide a grin that he knew would only annoy the centaur. He retrieved his wineskin and tilted it. One last drop fell to the earth. “Next time, guzzle your own rations.”