The Druid Queen - Douglas Niles [4]
"That's good news," Keane said quickly, his mind immediately clicking onto the problem. He couldn't teleport directly to the shrine. Since he'd never been there, it would be dangerous and difficult to attempt to transport himself into the midst of buildings and landscape. After all, he wouldn't want to materialize in a place where something else, like a tree or hill, already existed. Such a mistake would be inevitably fatal.
Yet a sense of profound urgency consumed him. The thought of his king, so cruelly mutilated, still outraged him, and Keane was the one Tristan had relied upon to get help. Such a mission could brook no delay.
The wizard looked up and saw that the sun was perhaps an hour from the western horizon. Keane noticed the messenger standing awkwardly beside his horse, casting longing eyes toward the inn and the cool barroom beyond. The man had done his work, he reminded himself.
"Here-thanks for your efforts," Keane noted, drawing several gold coins from his pouch and pressing them into the man's suddenly extended hand.
"I hope the news is welcome, my lord," said the fellow, bowing. Leading his horse, he went in search of a liveryman, while Keane returned to the inn. He found the rotund innkeeper, a cheery halfling named Miles, and pressed a few more coins on the not unwilling businessman.
"I'll be gone for a short time, perhaps a couple of days," Keane explained. "I'd like to leave my things in the room upstairs until my return."
"Consider them safe!" Miles proclaimed, with a deep bow. "You will find them undisturbed when you return!"
"Splendid," the wizard replied agreeably. All urgent matters thus attended to, he climbed the stairs to his rooms so he could make the final preparations for the trip.
* * * * *
Bakar Dalsoritan, High Patriarch of Chauntea, enjoyed these hours of early evening better than any part of the day. It seemed so often that the weight of his labors dragged him down during the busy days. Now, with the shrine buildings closed up tight behind him and the apprentices gone to sup, he could let the soothing aspects of his faith revive and revitalize him.
He walked along the low ridge, row upon row of lush grapes stretching to either side of him-sweet to the south, where the sun warmed them fully, and more sour to the shady north. The latter, when harvested, created a highly sought vintage that had put this shrine on the map. Indeed, many merchants sailed to nearby Baldur's Gate, the port that was barely a day's ride away, for the express purpose of seeking out the Shrine of Chauntea and its prized wine. Bakar cheerfully sold each one a barrel or two-no more, in order to preserve the rarity of the vintage-and had employed the profits to create one of the grandest nature shrines on the Sword Coast.
Now the high patriarch approached the crowning glory of that shrine: the orchard. Set in long lines, each trunk perfectly aligned with its neighbors to the four points of the compass, the orchard curled along the ridge, surrounded by swaths of smooth grass and well-manicured hedges. The goddess Chauntea must be well pleased, thought Bakar. All around him was the vitality of fruitful life, the precision of well-managed nature turned to the uses of man.
The orchard was the place where the priest felt most serene, most capable of communion with his goddess. And here each night, during long hours of prayer, he tried to repay the debt he felt to that benign deity, Chauntea. For a lifetime, she had allowed him to serve as her agent, furthering the worship of her name along the length of the Sword Coast-even, for a time, as far as the Moonshae Islands. But in none of those places had he found the sanctuary that he now approached.
Yet memories of past travels now occupied him, and most particularly his thoughts dwelled upon the Moonshaes.