Douglas Niles: The Druid Queen

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. Earlier that day he had received a message from one Keane of Callidyrr, requesting the honor of an interview. Keane, it seemed, had arrived via teleportation in Baldur's Gate and awaited the cleric's reply in one of the more comfortable inns of that great port city.

Bakar remembered Keane, though the fellow had been but a gawky adolescent when the priest had finally departed from the Moonshaes. Even then the youth had displayed an uncanny aptitude for magic. Now, in adulthood, he had become a mage of considerable power. Bakar knew him to be a loyal lieutenant to High King Tristan Kendrick, recently returned to his throne from captivity beneath the sea. It was rumored-even a patriarch couldn't depend on absolutely accurate information-that the king had lost a hand during the course of his captivity.

Such a loss could possibly be repaired, but only by means of a powerful spell of the priesthood, the enchantment of regeneration. Bakar was one of but two or three clerics within several hundred miles capable of performing such magic. Besides that, he had tutored the High Queen during the years she had devoted to Chauntea. Bakar had developed a special relationship, of trust and faith and humor, with Robyn and Tristan Kendrick. It seemed only natural that they should turn to him now in this hour of need.

Bakar passed under an arched gate of roses as he entered the orchard for his evening meditations. The sacred fruit trees-apples, pears, even oranges-sheltered and protected him, surrounding the priest with soothing ambience.

But then, in a telltale instant, Bakar realized that something was wrong. The trees, even the carefully mowed grass under his feet, shuddered under the force of a nameless apprehension. Nothing looked any different. The rays of the setting sun cast the last of their warmth over the treetops, with their many spots of ripening fruit.

Then, in a flash, he understood. The orchard knew fear.

The hair at the back of his neck, where it grew in its encircling fringe beneath his shaved scalp, prickled and stood on end. What menace could cause even the plants to dread?

An immensely powerful man, both physically and in the arcane might of his faith, the patriarch nevertheless stepped nervously backward, casting his eyes about for some sign of danger as he retreated from the orchard. Another step, and after a third, he sensed that he neared the gate.

Suddenly ground ripped open directly beneath his feet, with a sound like the splintering of wet wood. Bakar screamed as he toppled into space. Desperately he reached for the edges, but the wet dirt came away in his fingers, tumbling with him into the crevasse. Slipping down the steep side, aware of the moist, living earth around him, he finally caught himself on a stout root, tangled with dirt and extending from the side of the split

Earthquake! He sensed the might rending his grove, knowing that this was no act of nature. Power sizzled around him-magical, clerical power! Pulling himself upward, the high priest tried to kick a leg over the root, hoping to gain a foothold. Around him, the ground continued to tremble. The deep rumbling seemed to rattle the marrow in his bones, and clumps of dirt showered downward, stinging his eyes and filling his mouth.

Just when he thought he would make it, Bakar looked upward and saw the man standing at the edge of the crevasse, his lips split by an incongruously pleasant smile.

"You!" gasped the struggling priest, kicking frantically, knowing he had mere seconds in which to save himself. The other man said nothing but merely raised a hand and pointed at the doomed figure writhing below.

Immediately the walls of earth moved together, rumbling and grinding with unspeakable force. Bakar kicked out frantically at the opposite wall. He braced his feet, trying to scramble upward, but now the root entangled his robe, tying him effectively in place.

In another moment, the walls of earth came together with crushing pressure. Bakar's scream vanished in the thunderous volume of noise as the two surfaces of sod pressed so tightly that no seam was visible in the grass. The other man, the murderer, stood on the ground, hands clasped before his stomach in a posture of reflection, lips still pursed in that slight, enigmatic smile.

The teleport spell carried Keane, in the blink of an instant, from his room at the Eagle's Nest to the vicinity of the shrine some fifty miles inland. However, as a precaution, he employed a unique protection against the threat of striking a solid object on the unknown terrain: He arrived at a place nearly a thousand feet above the sweeping landscape.

At the exact moment the spell concluded, Keane felt himself falling, plunging through cool, evening air in steadily increasing speed. The ground below, a soft carpet of forest broken by the occasional patchwork of fields, villages, and great manors, rushed upward at a dizzying speed.

Then the featherfall spell changed that sensation with the speaking of a single word, and the wizard floated gently toward the ground, which now appeared properly motionless. Drifting easily, he took time to study the lush landscape spreading below. The central feature of the River Highway was a plain track of dusty tan slicing a nearly perfect east-west line into the horizon to either direction.

The sun had already set, but enough light remained for him to identify the marble-walled enclosure, with its long ridge of vineyards to the north. He congratulated himself on his accuracy, for the shrine was less than a mile away.

Something about that ridge caught his eye, and he blinked, certain that the twilight played tricks with his eyes. But when he looked again, he saw beyond doubt that the ground there was moving! He saw men there, at least two of them, before the tiny figures vanished amid the tumult.