Margaret Weis - The reign of Istar

The vat was empty. Candlelight flooded its dark interior, illuminating the draft marks at intervals on the inner wall. A dozen feet below, shadowy in the reeking murk, drying dregs lay crusting, inches below the lowest draft mark. Pitkin's pale face went ashen. The vat could not be empty. It was not possible. Yet, there was no wine within.

Easing the sampler lid down again, he locked it and stared around the cavernous vault. From where he stood, on the catwalk, the great vats receded into shadows in the distance. Nine in all, only their upper portions extended above the hewn stone of their nestling cradles. Each of them was many times the size of Pitkin's sleeping cell four levels up in the Temple of the Kingpriest. The huge flattop vats seemed a row of ranked monoliths of seasoned hardwood, their walls as thick as the length of his foot. Each one nestling into a cavity of solid stone, the vats were like everything else in this, the greatest structure of Istar, the center of the world. They were the finest of their kind… anywhere.

The wines they held were blessed by the Kingpriest himself. Not personally, of course, but in spirit, in somber ceremonies performed by lesser clerics on behalf of His Radiance. For two and a half centuries the wines had been blessed. Every Kingpriest since the completion of the temple, at every harvest of the vines, had blessed the wines of the nine vats.

Symbolic of the nine realms of the Triple Triad — the three provinces ruled directly by Istar, the three covenant states of Solamnia, and the Border States of Taol, Ismin and Gather — the wines were part of the holy wealth. The best of vintage, produced entirely by human hands and made pure by the blessings of the sun, these were the wines of the nine vats.

The wines that were supposed to be in the vats, Pitkin corrected his thought. The wines that vats number one through eight did indeed hold — Pitkin had inspected them himself, as he did every morning — and that Vat Nine somehow did not.

His mind tumbled and churned in confusion. How could Vat Nine be empty? No vat was ever empty. These were no table wines. Readily available elven wines were used for routine. No, these wines were sacred, used only on rare occasions and only in ceremonial amounts. What was used was replenished by the stewards at regular intervals — always by the finest of human vintage from each of the nine realms.

Made of sealed hardwood, cradled in solid rock, no vat had ever leaked so much as a drop of precious fluid. And there was no way to remove any wine from any vat except by unlocking the sampler port. And only he had the keys. Pitkin wanted to cry.

Slowly, on shaking legs, he made his way to the sealed portal of the cellar vault. A hundred thoughts besieged him — approaches to explaining what he had found, to formulating apologies for such an unthinkable disappearance, to the wording of a plea for clemency — but none had any merit.

There was only one thing for him to do. He must simply report the disappearance of Vat Nine's wine and pray for the best.

"Wizardry," the second warder muttered, staring into the empty vat. "Evil and chaos. Mage-craft. Spells."

"Mischief of some sort," the high warder agreed, "but

… wizardry? Within the very temple itself? How could that be? There certainly are no mages here… save one, of course, but he is sanctioned by the Kingpriest himself. The Dark One would use no such mischievous spells. All the other wizards are gone-driven to far Wayreth. All of Istar has been cleansed of their foul kind."

"Then how can you explain this?" a senior cleric from the maintenance section insisted. "An entire vat of wine — four hundred and, ah, eighty-three barrels' count, by yesterday's inventory — it certainly didn't get up and walk out by itself, and there has been no cartage below the third level for the past week, not even porters."

"Thieves?" a junior cleric suggested, then turned pink and looked away as scathing glances fell upon him. It was well known that the Temple of the Kingpriest was inviolate. In all of Istar, in all of Ansalon, there was no edifice more theftproof.

"Only dregs," the second warder muttered, still staring into the drained vat. He prodded downward with a long testing rod. Its thump as it tapped the bottom of the vat was muted. "Waist-deep, drying dregs. How could this have happened, unless…" He lowered his voice. "Unless by magic? Dark and infidel magic."

From below the catwalk a curious voice asked, "Brother Susten, are you aware that you are wearing only one sandal?"

"I can't find the other one," the chief warder snapped. "Please concentrate on the matter at hand, Brother Glisten. This is no time to count sandals."

Far in the distance, beyond the vault doors, a loud, exasperated voice roared, "I'm tired of this game, you bubbleheads! I want to know who took it! Now!"

Heads turned in surprise. Several clerics hurried away toward the sound, then returned, shaking their heads. "It's nothing, Eminence," one of them said to the chief warder. "A captain of temple guards. He, too, has lost some part of his attire, it seems."

Again the irritated voice rose in the distance, "This has gone far enough! What pervert took my codpiece?"

"Gone," the second warder muttered, staring into the emptiness of Vat Nine as though mesmerized. "All that wine, just… just gone."

"Sorcery?" The keeper of portals rasped, staring in disbelief at the assembled clerics before him. "Magic? Don't be ridiculous. This is the Temple of the Kingpriest. Mage-craft is not allowed here, as all of you very well know!"

"Our accumulated pardons, Eminence," the chief warder said, shifting his weight from sandaled foot to bare foot and back, "but we have given this matter the most serious of study, and we can arrive at no other explanation."

The keeper of portals glared at them in silence for a long moment, then spread his flowing robes and seated himself behind his study table. He sighed. "All right, we shall review it once again. One: Even if magic were somehow introduced into the temple — and what mage would dare such a thing? — what purpose would be served by draining a vat of blessed wine?"

"Evil," someone said. "The purposes of evil, obviously."

"Two: His Blessed Radiance, the Kingpriest himself, oversaw the evacuation of the Tower of High Sorcery in Istar. Every last mage and artifact was removed, and every magic-user of any degree driven away — not just from Istar but from the nine realms. The tower is empty, and its seals are intact."

"Dire evils have their way," someone said.

"There is the… Dark One," someone else whispered, then blushed and lowered his head, wishing he had not spoken.

"Three." The keeper of portals continued grimly, pretending not to have heard. "It is patently impossible for that wine to have disappeared — " He stopped, scowled, and blinked.

" — by any device other than sorcery," the chief warder finished softly, trying to look pious rather than victorious.

"Wizardry?" the master of scrolls whispered, shaking his head. White hair as soft as spidersilk trembled with the motion. Here in the shadows of his deepest sanctuary, where few beside the keeper of portals — and of course the Kingpriest himself — ever saw him, he seemed a very old man. Very different from the dignified and reverent presence who sat at the foot of the throne when the Kingpriest gave audience in the sanctuary of light.

Again the master shook his head, seeming very frail and sad as long as one did not look into his eyes. "After all these years… evil still confronts us in Istar."

"There is no other answer, August One," the keeper of portals said, sympathetically. For more seasons than most men had lived, the master of scrolls — next to the Kingpriest himself, the very epitome of all that was good and holy — had born upon his frail shoulders the weight of righteousness in a world far too receptive to wrong. Now he looked as though he might break down and weep… until he raised his eyes.