City of Towers_ The Dreaming Dark - Keith Baker [67]
“What about me?” Jode said. “Do I have mysterious family issues as well?”
Flamewind looked down at the little halfling. “You know your family, Jode. And you know who you are. What matters are the choices that you will make in the next few hours. There is a key that only you can find, hidden between two stone that only you can move. You must find it alone, but you will pay a terrible price to do so. You have the power to end the suffering of others, but you will need to sacrifice all that you have.”
“Why are you doing this?” Daine said. “If you know so much about our destinies, why the riddles? Why not just tell us what you know?”
The sphinx looked at Daine and smiled. “What answer do you wish to hear, Daine with no family name? That I am bound by divine and arcane laws and have told you all that I can? That I have told you what you need to know to fulfill your purpose in this world? Or that I have my own plans, and I am shaping your destiny as much as any of the others who watch?”
“Which is true?”
“Which will you believe?”
“I suppose you have a mysterious riddle for me?”
Flamewind looked at him. “You have turned your back on your past, Daine. You sold your family sword long before Jode did. You will need to take up that sword again.”
“One sword’s as good as another.”
“You don’t believe that. The wielder determines the value of the sword. If you will not use what you have, you will never succeed.”
Daine said nothing. Her eyes glittered as she continued.
“You will have lost far more than your sword by the time the sun has set. You must make peace with the shadows if you are to survive. Enemies are all around you, and the deepest darkness is hidden within the light.”
“Do you have any more parables, or are we done here?”
“Just one more. There will come a time when you will be asked to give away your closest friend. Be careful. You will have to carry the consequences for the rest of your life.”
“And you already know what I’ll decide?”
“Of course. But you haven’t decided yet.” Flamewind smiled one last time. “I have said all that I can say—or all that I will say. Now go. Your enemies await.”
She spread her wings and took to the air, disappearing into the shadows of the dome. Daine looked up after her, but she was nowhere to be seen.
Well, that certainly cleared things up.” Daine said, kicking a piece of rubble. When they’d left the temple, the ogress was nowhere to be seen. However, the people of Malleon’s Gate were beginning to stir. Bands of goblins were setting off for the workhouses, and up the street a few bugbears were wrestling on a stoop. “Lei and Pierce are supposed to go have a family reunion, you should start turning over stones, and I should get ready to suffer a big loss. And we’ve got three days to sort all this out before we’re out on the street.”
“I don’t know,” Jode said. “I thought it was worth doing. When’s the last time you saw a sphinx? I wonder if she participates in the races.”
Lei had taken the darkwood staff from Pierce, and they had been walking in silence. Now she spoke again, though her thoughts seemed distant. “I don’t think so. Back when I was studying in Sharn, I remember hearing a story about a Morgrave expedition bringing a sphinx to the city.”
“Where’d she come from?” Jode asked. “Droaam?”
“Xen’drik, I think.”
Xen’drik was a continent to the south, a land of secrets and mysteries. Daine had never been there, but he knew it was said to be the homeland of the elves, and the home of an ancient civilization of giants that had been destroyed millennia before the rise of humanity.
“A group of explorers found her in the jungles,” Lei continued, “or she found them, depending on how you look at it. As I heard the story, the sphinx said she’d been waiting for the explorers and that she would be returning to Sharn with them. They took her along because you don’t meet a sphinx every day. Supposedly she was hidden away at the university, talking to sages about Xen’drik. No one ever said anything about a temple in Malleon’s Gate. That I know for certain.