Don Bassingthwaite - The Grieving Tree

“Maybe they’re not the same device,” said Orshok. All eyes turned to him and the young druid shifted uncomfortably. “Dah’mir’s device was bigger, wasn’t it? A knife and a sword have a lot in common, but you don’t use them for the same thing.”

Singe’s eyebrows rose. “But both devices were built around the same Khyber shard. Once a shard is attuned to a particular magic, it can’t be changed.”

Geth was abruptly conscious of the weight of Adolan’s stone collar around his neck. During the battle at the Bonetree mound, the Gatekeeper magic within the collar had protected him from the mental assault of a mind flayer. The Dhakaani sword at his waist had been forged to kill illithids and the other aberrant servants of the daelkyr; the ancient hobgoblins must have known about the tentacle-faced creatures’ deadly abilities. “Dandra,” he said, “are the powers of mind flayers psionic or magical?”

Her mouth opened, then closed as her eyes narrowed. After a moment, she said, “Psionic. They might come from the madness of Xoriat instead of the dreams of Dal Quor, but they’re still psionic. It’s like the difference between the magic of druids and the magic of wizards.”

“The Dhakaani fought mind flayers during the Daelkyr War.” Geth looked to Singe. “What if the binding stone traps things with psionic powers and all the wires and crystals around it are like …?” He struggled to put the idea in his head into words. “Like a sieve that only lets certain things through. What if the Dhakaani built a device that let the shard capture mind flayers, but Dah’mir made a new device that captures kalashtar instead.”

Singe drew a long, shallow breath and pulled on his whiskers as he turned back around to stare at the device. “Twelve moons,” he muttered. He spun around sharply and walked to the nearest wall. Closing his eyes for a moment, he spoke a word of magic and laid a hand against the wall, then opened his eyes again and stepped back to scan the wall. His gaze seemed strangely unfocused but he clenched his teeth. “Twelve bloody moons.”

“You can read it?” asked Dandra.

“Yes and no,” Singe said. “No, because it’s not all words. A lot of it is research notes, just like that researcher at Wynarn. And yes-” He blinked and turned around to face Geth. “-because you might be right.”

Geth felt his gut tighten at the angry disgust in the wizard’s voice, but no one else seemed to notice. Dandra was pushing forward. “It was meant to trap mind flayers?”

“I think so, but it’s hard to tell.” Singe turned and traced a hand across the wall, his eyes going unfocused once more. “These are mostly notes and calculations. They talk about illithids and arrangements of crystals that would attune the binding stone to their aura. I can only follow bits of it. They look more like the notes of an artificer than of a wizard. Other passages don’t make any sense at all.” He shifted his hand to another section of text. “This describes a sphere made of carved stone beetles linked together-it sounds like a child’s puzzle.” He touched other words. “This curses workers who fled the kraat. This tries to work breakfast into the equation for binding mind flayers. This-” He winced and lifted his hand away. “This just repeats over and over ‘My name is Marg. My name is Marg. My name is Marg.’”

“I think someone lost themselves in their work,” said Natrac. “You were right when you said you felt madness in the air, Dandra.”

“Why would a Dhakaani have built something like this, though?” asked Ashi, still circling the ancient device. “Dah’mir had to tie Tetkashtai and the other kalashtar down to use his device on them. Wouldn’t it be easier just to kill a mind flayer directly?”

“This might answer that,” Singe said. He had paced further along the wall, trailing his hand over the writing. He read from another passage. “Too large! The first stones were so much smaller. The matrix can be made larger but focus will be a problem. How did he do it?”

Dandra paled. “There were other binding stones?”

“It sounds like there were-at one time, at least. Marg says were and it sounds like he was trying to re-create them rather than come up with something completely new.” Singe looked up at the wall. “I wonder who this other ‘he’ was, though.”

The wizard’s pacing had drawn them past the strange stone sculpture of the grieving tree and the far end of the great chamber loomed in the shadows at the edge of Geth’s vision. He squinted at it, took a few more paces, and let out a soft growl. “Maybe this was him.”

Behind him, Singe and Dandra both turned and came forward. The soft glow of magical light spilled across the floor-then climbed over the legs of the statue that stood, tall as the sculpted tree, within the sharp point of the chamber’s end. Dandra lifted her spear high, throwing light onto the statue’s torso and head.

The statue depicted a Dhakaani hobgoblin, or so Geth guessed from its build and from the sword-very much like his own-that it gripped, point resting against the ground. The subject had been a man and muscular even for a hobgoblin, with massively thick arms and shoulders. He wore a smith’s thick apron over a bare chest, with heavy gloves on his hands. Whether he had been fierce, benevolent, or wise, however, was impossible to tell. The statue’s face had been ruined, hacked away leaving only deep scars in the stone.

The blade of the statue’s sword, as wide as the shifter’s own body, had also been gashed and as Geth moved closer, he saw that several characters had been crudely removed from the beginning of a longer inscription in Goblin. Writing identical to that on the walls throughout Taruuzh Kraat had been scrawled in its place.

Near the statue’s feet, a few pitiful crumbled bones lay mixed with chips of stone, bits of metal ornament, an axe with a metal shaft, and a short black rod. One of the bones was a hobgoblin skull.

Singe slipped past Geth and laid his hand against the inscription on the stone sword. His eyes unfocused once more as he read the Goblin characters, then he lifted his hand and looked up at the statue’s scarred face. “His name has been erased,” he said. He pointed at the remaining text, moving his hand along as he read. “The rest of the inscription says, ‘The Father of the Grieving Tree. The time will come again. Three great works stand together as allies: treasure, key, guardian, disciple, and lord.’”

The others fell silent, but Geth couldn’t hold back a groan. “The Grieving Tree again. Grandfather Rat, another bloody riddle?”

“The spell lets me read a language,” Singe snapped back irritably. “That doesn’t mean I understand everything. The inscription might mean something in Goblin.”

“What does the other writing say?” Natrac asked.

Singe looked up at again. “‘Keep your secrets, old master. Marg has surpassed you! I have created a new-’” He frowned. “It ends suddenly.”

Ashi knelt beside the fragmentary remains at the statue’s feet. “There’s not much left of him,” she said, “but I think Marg died in the moment of his triumph.” She pointed at the skull and Geth saw that part of it was fractured. “I think he fell.”

“An apprentice trying to outdo his master?” asked Orshok.

“I think you’re right.” Singe turned and walked away from the defaced statue to join them again. “Our nameless master created the first binding stones, but didn’t share the secret. Marg went mad creating another stone, then died before he could do more than taunt a dead man.” The wizard cursed. “But he still left a record of his research and thousands of years later, Dah’mir came along.”