Realms of Infamy - James Lowder [99]
She wondered right then if she should kill him. Perhaps the Zhentarim had sent them both here to see who was the stronger. If so, she intended to win. Her hand strayed toward the eating knife at her belt.
A half-smile touched his lips. "Feel free to kill me, warrior. Of course, know that if you do, you will never discover the way to climb the walls of Gurthang yourself."
Ravendas could only laugh. The mage was young, yes, but he was clever. "And I suppose you would tell me if you knew?"
"Only fate can say," he said mysteriously, drawing a deck of cards from a leather pouch at his belt. He shuffled them deftly with uncallused hands.
"Draw three." He fanned the cards out before her. "Set them face down before you."
"I'm a little old for card games," she noted acidly, but did as he asked.
"This is your past," he said, turning the first card. The Empress of Swords. A spark of magical blue light shimmered about the outline of a stern woman standing before a dark, broken landscape, a red-tinged sword in her grip. "A woman of ambition wields death to gain what she desires."
Ravendas nodded. The card suited her well enough. When she was seventeen, she had left her home and journeyed to Baldur's Gate, where she joined the city's elite guard, the Flaming Fist. Within five years, she had risen high in the Fist. But Baldur's Gate was just one city. The Black Network wove its dark webs across all the Heartlands. That was why Ravendas sought to join the Zhentarim. One day she intended to stand mighty among them.
The mage continued. "This is the path you now tread." He turned the second card. The Scepter. Again, blue light flickered over the drawing. The mage's eyes met hers. "You seek great power for yourself, at any cost."
She simply shrugged. She did not need a wizard's trick to tell her something she already knew.
"And this is your fate," the mage said, turning the third card. She reached out and snatched it from him before he could look at it. She'd had enough of this game.
"I make my own fate," she said flatly, shoving the card into a pocket of her leather jerkin. He nodded, but she could see a strange curiosity in his expression.
"All right, apprentice, you've had your fun," she growled. "Now, tell me what you know about Gurthang."
He stood to retrieve a book from his pack. It was bound in timeworn leather, its pages yellowed and cracked with age. "This tome contains fragments of a lost cycle of epic poems, the Talfirian Eddas," he explained. "The eddas tell many legends of these mountains, and of the now-vanished people who once dwelt here, the Talfirc. Unfortunately, Talfir, the language this was penned in long ago, is a forgotten tongue. I've been translating it as I journeyed, but it has been tedious work. Only today did I reach a passage that concerned the sorcerer Ckai-el-Ckaan."
Ravendas leaned forward eagerly. "What does it say?"
The mage opened the ancient tome to a place marked with a black ribbon. "It tells many things. But perhaps most importantly, it tells that we are not the first to attempt to gain entrance to Gurthang."
"What do you mean?"
The mage's expression was grim. "The last fragment I translated tells how, in the centuries after the fortress was raised, many tried to climb Gurthang's walls." He bent his head to read the strange, spidery script on the page before him. " 'To the sorcerer's keep they journeyed, the walls of midnight to climb: Kaidel the Ancient, Sindara of the Golden Eyes, and Loredoc who slew the great wyrm of Orsil. One by one they came, and one by one they perished. For thus speaks the prophecy of Ckai-el-Ckaan, that no one hero will ever be great enough to scale the walls of Gurthang.' "
Slowly the mage shut the book. "No one has ever climbed Gurthang. Not in a thousand years."
Ravendas could not suppress a shiver. "Then it's impossible," she whispered.
The mage nodded. "Apparently."
She swore vehemently and stood,