Jean Rabe - The Eve of the Maelstrom

“Risk my life,” Usha whispered. “Keep it safe. I promise.” She paused, then asked, “Silvanos—what did he use this scepter for?”

“I will tell you, Usha Majere. I will tell you everything.” The elf smiled, words tumbling from her lips.

Usha fought to remember them. They were locked away. They were...

“You were telling me about your voyage to this forest,” the elf said.

Usha’s fingers passed across her temples, rubbing away a small headache. “Yes,” she said haltingly. “A ship brought all of us here.”

“What did you call it, this ship?”

“Flint’s Anvil. Jasper named it, bought it with a gem his Uncle Flint gave him.”

“Uncle Flint?”

“Flint Fireforge. One of the Heroes of the Lance.”

“The legendary dwarf.” The elf cocked her head. “Is something wrong, Usha?”

“I seem to have forgotten something. Maybe about the scepter. Maybe something I was going to say. Maybe...”

“It must not have been important.”

“I suppose not.”

“Usha!” Blister’s hand was tugging on her skirt, rousing her from her reverie. “You better come inside. The Shadow Sorcerer’s found Dhamon—with my help, of course.”

Usha’s golden eyes smiled down at the kender. “All right,” she said softly. “I’d like to see.”

A large crystal bowl filled with rose-colored water sat in the center of a round mahogany table. A dozen thick candles spaced evenly on sconces set into the walls reflected the stern visages of the sorcerers who peered into the water’s gleaming surface.

Palin sat next to the Shadow Sorcerer, an enigmatic figure cloaked in gray. Though the Majeres had worked with the sorcerer for years, they actually knew little about him—or her. The folds of the sorcerer’s robes were too voluminous to provide a clue, and his voice was soft and indistinct. Indeed, it might belong to either a man or a woman. They knew only that the Shadow Sorcerer had walked out of the Desolation, possessing magical abilities none could mimic and willing to assist the Last Conclave in its campaign against Beryl.

Across from the sorcerer sat the Master of the Tower, who, Palin had confided to Usha, was not a man at all, or a woman. He was the embodiment of High Sorcery, birthed when the tower in Palanthas fell decades ago. The Master and Wayreth were one.

And there was Ulin. Usha observed her son. He had recently joined the young gold dragon, Sunrise, attempting to learn more about magic. The dragon was elsewhere in the tower, in the guise of a boy, roaming and exploring, no doubt. The creature had an unending curiosity. Ulin had not returned home to see his wife and children in months, had not even communicated with them, and it looked as if he had no plans for a visit in the immediate future. He was changing before her eyes, becoming more obsessed with magic than ever his father was. He reminded her of Raistlin.

Gilthanas stood away from the table, his thin elven arms draped across the shoulders of a comely Kagonesti—who in truth was no elf at all. She was Silvara, his silver dragon partner whom he’d met decades ago and whom he’d finally come to admit he loved. In her guise as a Kagonesti, she presented a striking figure, though as far as Usha was concerned it was a false mask.

Half the people in the room were cloaked in mysteries and half-truths, Usha had to admit she was a bit of a mystery herself, as the elven woman in the Qualinesti forest had pointed out. Where had she come from? And where were she and Palin ultimately headed?

“Usha! Quit daydreaming!” Blister tugged her closer to the bowl.

She peered over the crystal lip and saw a hazy image, that at first seemed merely like ripples on the surface. But as she stared, she saw that the ripples were curls. Dhamon’s hair. His face came into focus, pained and determined.

“They needed my help, because I knew him the longest,” the kender babbled. “Well, the longest of anybody they knew about. I even met him before Goldmoon did and, well... The Shadow Sorcerer asked me all sorts of questions about Dhamon. Down to the scars on his arms I’d seen. His eyes, the way he talked, walked, everything. They really did need my help to find him.”

The water shimmered green, and leaves came into view, framing Dhamon’s sweat-slicked face. Water dripped from the leaves, fell to ground covered with moss. His feet moved swiftly over rotting twigs and puddles.

“He’s in the swamp,” Palin explained. “Ahead of Rig and the others, and moving quickly. They’re practically following his trail, though they don’t know it.”

“Where is he going?” Usha asked as she pulled back from the table.

The Shadow Sorcerer passed a pale hand across the surface and the water turned clear. “Toward an old ogre ruin. Farther and farther away from us.”

“Toward Malystryx,” Blister suggested.

“She owns him,” the Shadow Sorcerer said.

How would the Shadow Sorcerer know that? Usha wondered.

“No!” The scream cut across the darkening fen. “I’ll go no farther, damn you!” Dhamon Grimwulf dropped the glaive and fell to his knees, cupped his throbbing palms and hugged them to his chest. He rocked back and forth, tucking his chin down and gritting his teeth. His hands, though visibly unmarred, stung horribly from contact with the mysterious weapon, sending jolts of fire up his arms and into his body. His chest burned, and his head pounded. “No farther!”

Tears rolled down his cheeks, from the pain, the memory of killing Goldmoon, of killing Jasper, from the memory of striking Blister, Rig, and Feril. Beloved Feril, now forever lost to him. “You’ve cost me my friends, my life!”

His hands dropped to his thigh, where his leggings were cut. The red scale, shining through, glimmered in the light of the setting sun. Goldmoon had examined the scale, trying to free him from it and from the dragon who controlled him. Dhamon’s fingers trembled as they ran around the edges of the scale, flush with his skin. His nails dug in near a scalloped corner and pulled hard. He was rewarded with another stab of pain. He bit his lip to keep from crying out and continued his efforts. Blood ran down his leg, over his scrabbling fingers, yet the agonizing scale would not budge.

“Damn you, Malys!” He gasped and rolled onto his side, into a stagnant puddle. “You’ve made me into a murderer, dragon! Made me a thing of evil! That’s why the glaive burns me so! It burns those who are evil!” He sobbed and stared at the glaive lying several inches away.

Dhamon had dropped it the instant he felt the red dragon’s presence withdraw, only a few heartbeats ago, here in the fading light of the sun. An early evening was fast overtaking the swamp.

Had he finally— successfully— pushed the dragon from his mind? Or had she merely backed away to tend to other matters? In the end, the reason for her absence was unimportant. What was important was that he was finally free. Free after running days upon days through this seemingly endless swamp and existing on pieces of fruit and foul water. Free after killing Goldmoon, Krynn’s famed healer, the woman who had met him outside the Last Heroes’ Tomb and coaxed him to take up the cause against the dragons— the woman who once told him she’d looked into his heart and found it pure and honorable.

He was free after sinking the Anvil. Free after losing Feril.

Free? I can’t go back to Schallsea, Dhamon thought. I can’t go back to face Rig and Feril. I’m a murderer, worse than a murderer. A betrayer, a turncoat, a slayer of an old woman and a dwarf whom I called a friend. He closed his eyes and listened for a moment to the insects all around him, listened to his still-pounding heart. He felt the pain in his hands lessen. Perhaps I should go back, he mused. Rig would certainly kill me, and that would not be so bad a thing, would it? Certainly it’s preferable to being a dragon’s puppet.