Storm of the Dead - Lisa Smedman [22]
The magical darkfire burned with great heat, but no light. The flames flickering inside the furnace were black as dancing shadows. Coal-dark smoke poured out of a chimney atop the furnace and twisted up through the hollowed-out stalagmite that was Darbleth's workshop. The top of the stalagmite had been lopped off to release the smoke. Once, which rose toward the ceiling of the cave above, blending there with the outpourings of dozens of other forges and furnaces. It spiraled lazily above, eventually disappearing into a one-way portal at the center of the cavern that conveyed it to the surface realm.
When the copper in the crucible collapsed into a glowing puddle, Darbleth pulled the bowl from the furnace and swung it around in front of Q'arlynd. The wizard picked up a scroll and held his free hand over the dish, low enough to feel the heat rising from the molten metal. As he read from the parchment, he crossed each finger over the one next to it, then uncrossed them again, from forefinger to little finger and back again. Then he clenched his hand, as if grasping the haze of heat that rippled above the dish…
As Q'arlynd opened his hand, sparks of violet light erupted from his palm and spun off into the air. Startled, he jerked his hand back. There it was again: another of the manifestations that had been perplexing the sages at the College of Divination. For the past two cycles, any time anyone in the city cast a divination spell, bright sparkles of faerie fire appeared on his hands or lips-something that could be annoyingly inconvenient when secrecy was the aim. It didn't seem to matter how weak or powerful the divination spell, how skilled the caster, or even what method of spellcasting was being attempted. Wizard, sorcerer, bard, or cleric, the result was always the same, as long as the caster was drow: an involuntary glimmer of faerie fire. And it was getting worse. Two cycles ago, it had been a faint, barely noticeable glimmer; now it came as bright, crackling sparks.
No one had any idea why-least of all, Master Seldszar, head of the College of Divination.
A bit of an embarrassment, that. Especially when it was Seldszar's College that had been charged with finding a solution to the problem.
So far, the best theory his sages had come up with was that the effect was linked with the sun. They noted that all drow, down to the youngest, most unschooled boy, had the innate ability to evoke faerie fire and use it to clothe either their own bodies or whatever objects they pointed at in heat-less, sparkling radiance. Everyone knew that this ability was tied to the passage of the sun through the skies of the surface realms-drow could only invoke faerie fire once per cycle-and so the sages speculated that something must be affecting the sun. Increasing its intensity, perhaps, to the point where faerie fire was invoked whether a drow willed it or not.
As to why involuntary manifestations occurred during the casting of divination spells, the sages opined that the practice of the divinatory arts made spellcasters especially sensitive to the passage of time. All that was required was a little mental discipline, they said, and the involuntary manifestations of faerie fire would end. Then all would be well again.
Nobody was buying that explanation. Especially when reports from the surface realms indicated that the sun appeared exactly as it always had.
But now was not the time to dwell upon this problem. Q'arlynd had a spell to complete.