Bladesinger - Keith Francis Strohm [3]
"I have done what I must," she finally answered the vremyonni's question. "Now," she asked almost sweetly, "what will you do for me?"
"I will never betray the oaths of my brotherhood," the Old One said, "especially to a durthan pawn."
At that, Yulda laughed, a terrible sound, like the cawing of a crow.
"Do you think I have anything to do with that dark sisterhood?" she asked at last, nearly spluttering as she tried to catch her breath. "The durthan are nothing more than toothless crones. They scurry and scuttle in the shadows of the Erech Forest, clutching their little secrets and spinning webs of intrigue like bloated spiders, too full of themselves to realize true power.
"No," the witch continued, drawing blood as she ran a sharp nail down the Old One's gaunt cheek. "I am far more than wychlaran. I am free-and nothing will stop me before I have worked my will upon the world."
"Then I am truly sorry," the vremyonni replied. "The freedom you have is a terrible burden. Who can survive it?"
The Old One's words were spoken mildly, but their sorrowful tone awoke a fierce flame within Yulda's heart. Who was this broken wizard, this man, to feel sorrow for her? She turned from him and with a single shout sent an arcane message spinning across the breadth of Rashemen to the one person she trusted. The witch's forces would begin to gather. Her time was at hand.
"If you will not offer me the power that I seek," Yulda said fiercely as she returned her attention to the captive wizard, "then I will reach into your very heart and rake for it."
Quietly at first, and then with greater intensity, the witch gave voice to the spell that had taken her eye to learn. Black power billowed from her ruined eye socket like smoke, forming a cloud that gathered around the chained Old One. A final shouted incantation sent the cloud rushing at the chained wizard with enough force to extinguish the guttering torches. The cave plunged into darkness as the Old One's screams kept company with the night wind.
In deep winter, night in the Icerim Mountains lasted a very long time indeed.
CHAPTER 1
The Year of the Lion
(1340 DR)
Aelrindel watched as the river burned.
He stood utterly still beneath the arching canopy of leaf and branch, caught in that silent space between breaths, that moment when life and death cease their endless dance, poised in a single embrace-watching.
Flaming wrecks of wood and iron floated aimlessly across the river's broad back, caught in its bloodied current. Thick plumes of oily smoke rose from the shattered hulks like incense to a dark god, their black and terrible shapes bruising the soft spring sky. On the far bank, obscured by the columns of smoke, trebuchets and small catapults stood in various stages of disarray-the castoff toys of a malicious giant. Everywhere, the bloated bodies of the dead and dying bobbed sickeningly in the water as a shadowed convocation of crows cawed raucous symphonies before plunging downward to feast.
Aelrindel watched it all with eyes that had gazed upon a hundred mortal lifetimes of joy and sorrow, had witnessed the world's fragile beauty suspended on a single silken strand of time, spinning out across the ages on an unending pilgrimage-and refused to look away.
"Animals," a voice to his left barked, interrupting Aelrindel's sorrowful reverie. "Filthy barbarians, that they would kill and leave their dead to rot in the sun." The words were harsh, sharp edged despite the lilting, cadence with which they were delivered.
The golden-maned elf turned a thin, angular face toward his companion, squinting almond-shaped eyes against the rapidly brightening day. The exclamation hung in the cool morning air. He heard the anger in his friend's voice-and more. The weight of history pressed down upon their hearts, of centuries spent in war and strife with the humans in this part of Faerun. Even though an uneasy peace had reigned for nearly as long, the memory of sword and steel, wrack and ruin, lay across a generation and more