Daughter of the Drow - Elaine Cunningham [23]
Through the power of the Sight, Fyodor watched as the sorcerous Witch boats attacked the hastily built Tuigan crafts. He heard the Witches summon poisonous mists to enshroud the lakes, and call upon the giant dragon turtles that lurked beneath the waters. By the scores, by the thousands, the Tuigan died.
All this Fyodor saw, and felt a grim satisfaction at the justice the Witches meted out. Then, suddenly, the vision faded. Still attuned to the echoes of battle, Fyodor felt the remembered presence of a new power, a malevolent magic that seared and corrupted all that it touched. Yet what he saw was only the shadow of a memory; there was no image to accompany the sense of lingering evil, nothing that could tell him of the battle's end.
Fyodor cast away the handful of soil and rose to his feet. The answers he sought could be found only in the tower. Although he dreaded what he might find, he circled around to the lone door and kicked his way in.
He quickly searched the lower levels. There was no sign of the mystic circle he had glimpsed. The women's dying agonies lingered in the air of the enchanted tower, but the Witches had simply disappeared. Fyodor was not surprised; even in death, the dark sisterhood cared for its own. No doubt the women's bodies had been magically whisked away for honorable burial in the Witches' stronghold city far to the east. Yet a mystery remained: one of those women had possessed an ancient magical treasure, and that treasure had not returned to the hands of the sisterhood. It had become Fyodor's task to find it.
Fyodor continued his search until he reached the very top of the tower. The uppermost chamber of any keep was usually the most secure room, the place where treasures would be kept.
The door was open a crack, its magical defenses apparently spent. Fyodor nudged the door with his cudgel and it swung inward, creaking softly.
Immediately he was assaulted by a horrid stench: the sickly sweet, unmistakable smell of human carrion. Fyodor flung his arm across his nose to ward off the worst of the odor and pushed into the room. Sprawled about, in various stages of decomposition, were several red-robed figures. Some looked newly dead, others lay in steaming, rotting piles, and a few were little more than dust.
"Red Wizards," he muttered, and he began to understand what had happened here. Despite his youth, Fyodor had spent years fighting the powerful enemies that surrounded his land. Until the coming of the Tuigan hoard, Rashemen's deadliest foe had been Thay, an ancient land ruled by the powerful Red Wizards. Many of these wizards used magic to sustain their wretched lives far past the natural span; this would explain the many stages of decay.
But the deaths themselves? The answer to this seeming riddle was plain enough to one who had been raised in the shadow of Thay. The Red Wizards had formed a nominal alliance with the Tuigan invaders, but they were ever alert for opportunities to extend their own power. Any one of them would happily slay his fellows for personal gain. During the recent battle, these wizards had probably banded together to attack the Witches while the women were deep in their spell meld. Once they'd overcome the Witches in spell battle, the wizards had breached the tower and stripped it of its treasures. Then a single wizard had turned on the others and claimed all the treasures of the Witches' tower for himself.
A quick search of the chamber confirmed Fyodor's suspicions. There was nothing of value: no spellbooks, none of the famed Rashemi rings and wands, not a single pot of anything that resembled a spell component. The bodies of the Red Wizards had also been stripped of all magic-bearing items. The surviving wizard had taken the magical treasures of both his enemies and his allies.
No doubt this wizard had fled to a secret place, to study in private his stolen treasure until the time he had mastered enough power to return to Thay and increase his domain. Long before that day came, Fyodor would find him.
But first,