The Seal of Karga Kul_ A Dungeons & Dragons Novel - Alex Irvine [52]
If someone had asked him to list five things he thought he would never see, Remy would have put seeing a dragonborn cry high on the list. And he would have put tears from Biri-Daar at the top of any list. The paladin cried silently and without motion, riding forward with no change in her pace or expression. “It occurs to me,” Lucan said, “that if all of us chose to bear the sins of our ancestors, we would surely be suicides.”
“I fear that I can disagree. My ancestors have pledged themselves to Erathis for as long as there are records in Toradan,” Keverel said.
“Surely we don’t have to remind the good cleric that holy men sin,” Kithri said. “If we do have to remind him, I know some songs.”
“I don’t think so,” Keverel said, but once Kithri got started with a song, there was no stopping her.
Here I am, Remy thought periodically over the next few days of riding. I am with a group of strangers on a quest that means little to me. Why did they insist I come with them? Why didn’t they leave me at the market?
The box that had caused all the trouble was a foot long, give or take, and perhaps three inches wide and two deep. Its clasp was pewter and the seam between its lid and the box was invisible—unless magical attention was directed at it. The seam had glowed right along with the sigils on its lid when Iriani had first investigated the box. Remy wondered again what would happen if he opened it. It had been some time since anyone or anything had tried to take it from him.
What did Philomen want? Was Biri-Daar right that the vizier was untrustworthy, that he had sent Remy out into the wastes to die? Biri-Daar’s theory was that Philomen needed the object Remy carried to disappear because other forces in Avankil wanted it. Or that Remy was never intended to survive the trip to Toradan, and that after his death some agent of the vizier’s would have found his body and recovered the box.
No one in the group seemed to have any patience for the idea that Remy had been intended to deliver the box to Toradan.
“Who were you supposed to speak to there?” Biri-Daar asked on their fourth day. The Crow Road switchbacked down a steep slope for as far as they could see in front of them before disappearing into what looked like a lowland jungle. They weren’t in the lowlands yet, but before they got to the Whitefall there would be a good deal of marsh to traverse. Biri-Daar remembered that much of her previous passage along the road.
“I was given a place,” Remy said. “The vizier told me that when I arrived at Toradan, I should find the Monastery of the Cliff and speak to the abbot. But he never told me the abbot’s name.”
“The Monastery of the Cliff,” Biri-Daar echoed. “What would those monks want with a package from the vizier of Avankil?” She clucked her tongue, something that Remy had learned meant she was mulling a problem with no obvious solution. “You were sent out into the desert to die, Remy,” she said shortly. “That is clear to you now, isn’t it?”
“I know it’s clear to you,” Remy said. “That’s why I came along. But I still don’t understand … I don’t know anything. What does any of this Karga Kul business have to do with me?”
“The Abyss pursues you. And demons threaten Karga Kul,” Biri-Daar said quietly. “Do you want to stake your life on that being a coincidence? I would sooner cut my own throat than deliver an unknown, magically guarded item to the monks on the cliff.”
“Why?”
“It has been long years since those monks kept their holy orders,” Biri-Daar said.
They rode in silence for some time after that. Eventually Remy worked up his nerve and said, “Biri-Daar. This is a personal quest for you.”
The dragonborn nodded.
“Almost an obsession.”
Biri-Daar made