Robert Salvatore - The Ghost King

“Easy, friend,” said Dalebrentia Promise, a fellow traveler from the port city. Older and with a large gray beard that seemed to dwarf his skinny frame, Dalebrentia looked the part of the mage, and even wore stereotypical garb: a blue conical hat and a dark blue robe adorned with golden stars. “We are asked to respect the scrolls and books of Spirit Soaring.”

A few months earlier, Wanabrick’s explosion of frustration would have been met by a sea of contempt in the study of the great library, where indeed, the massive collections of varied knowledge from all across Faerûn, pulled together by Cadderly and his fellows, were revered and treasured. Tellingly, though, as many wizards, sages, and priests in the large study nodded their agreement with Wanabrick as revealed their scorn at his outburst.

That fact was not lost on Cadderly as he sat across the room amidst his own piles of parchment, including one on which he was working mathematical equations to try to inject predictability and an overriding logic into the seeming randomness of the mysterious events.

His own frustrations were mounting, though Cadderly did well to hide them, for that apparent randomness seemed less and less like a veil to be unwound and more and more like an actual collapse of the logic that held Mystra’s Weave aloft. The gods were not all dark, had not all gone silent, unlike the terrible Time of Troubles, but there was a palpable distance involved in any divine communion, and an utter unpredictability to spellcasting, divine or wizardly.

Cadderly rose and started toward the table where the trio of Baldur’s Gate visitors studied, but he purposely put a disarming smile on his face, and walked with calm and measured steps.

“Your pardon, good Brother Bonaduce,” Dalebrentia said as he neared. “My friend is young, and truly worried.”

Wanabrick turned a wary eye at Cadderly. His face remained tense despite Cadderly’s calm nod.

“I don’t blame you, or Spirit Soaring,” Wanabrick said. “My anger, it seems, is as unfocused as my magic.”

“We’re all frustrated and weary,” Cadderly said.

“We left three of our guild in varying states of insanity,” Dalebrentia explained. “And a fourth, a friend of Wanabrick’s, was consumed in his own fireball while trying to help a farmer clear some land. He cast it long—I am certain of it—but it blew up before it ever left his hand.”

“The Weave is eternal,” Wanabrick fumed. “It must be … stable and eternal, else all my life’s work is naught but a cruel joke!”

“The priests do not disagree,” said a gnome, a disciple of Gond.

His support was telling. The Gondsmen, who loved logic and gears, smokepowder and contraptions built with cunning more than magic, had been the least affected by the sudden troubles.

“He is young,” Dalebrentia said to Cadderly. “He doesn’t remember the Time of Troubles.”

“I am not so young,” Cadderly replied.

“In mind!” Dalebrentia cried, and laughed to break the tension. The other two Baldurian wizards, one middle-aged like Cadderly and the other even older than Dalebrentia, laughed as well. “But so many of us who feel the creak of knees on a rainy morning do not much sympathize, good rejuvenated Brother Bonaduce!”

Even Cadderly smiled at that, for his journey through age had been a strange one indeed. He had begun construction of Spirit Soaring after the terrible chaos curse had wrought the destruction of its predecessor, the Edificant Library. Using magic given him by the god Deneir—nay, not given him, but channeled through him—Cadderly had aged greatly, to the point of believing that the construction would culminate with his death as an old, old man. He and Danica had accepted that fate for the sake of Spirit Soaring, the magnificent tribute to reason and enlightenment.

But the cost had proven a temporary thing, perhaps a trial of Deneir to test Cadderly’s loyalty to the cause he professed, the cause of Deneir. After the completion of Spirit Soaring, the man had begun to grow younger physically—much younger, even younger than his actual age. He was forty-four, but appeared as a man in his young twenties, younger even than his twin children. That strange journey to physical youth, too, had subsequently stabilized, Cadderly believed, and he appeared to be aging more normally with the passage of the past several months.

“I have traveled the strangest of journeys,” Cadderly said, putting a comforting hand on Wanabrick’s shoulder. “Change is the only constant, I fear.”

“But surely not like this!” Wanabrick replied. “So we hope,” said Cadderly.

“Have you found any answers, good priest?” Dalebrentia asked.

“Only that Deneir works as I work, writing his logic, seeking reason in the chaos, applying rules to that which seems unruly.”

“And without success,” Wanabrick said, somewhat dismissively.

“Patience,” said Cadderly. “There are answers to be found, and rules that will apply. As we discern them, so too will we understand the extent of their implications, and so too will we adjust our thinking, and our spellcasting.”

The gnome at a nearby table began to clap his hands at that, and the applause spread throughout the great study, dozens of mages and priests joining in, most soon standing. They were not cheering for him, Cadderly knew, but for hope itself in the face of their most frightening trial.

“Thank you,” Dalebrentia quietly said to Cadderly. “We needed to hear that.”

Cadderly looked at Wanabrick, who stood with his arms crossed over his chest, his face tight with anxiety and anger. The wizard did manage a nod to Cadderly, however.

Cadderly patted him on the shoulder again and started away, nodding and smiling to all who silently greeted him as he passed.

Outside the hall, the priest gave a sigh full of deep concern. He hadn’t lied when he’d told Dalebrentia that Deneir was hard at work trying to unravel the unraveling, but he hadn’t relayed the whole truth, either.

Deneir, a god of knowledge and history and reason, had answered Cadderly’s prayers of communion with little more than a sensation of grave trepidation.

“Keep faith, friend,” Cadderly said to Wanabrick later that same night, when the Baldurian contingent departed Spirit Soaring. “It’s a temporary turbulence, I’m sure.”

Wanabrick didn’t agree, but he nodded anyway and headed out the door.

“Let us hope,” Dalebrentia said to Cadderly, approaching him and offering his hand in gratitude.

“Will you not stay the night at least, and leave when the sun is bright?”

“Nay, good brother, we have been away too long as it is,” Dalebrentia replied. “Several of our guild have been touched by the madness of the pure Weave. We must go to them and see if anything we have learned here might be of some assistance. Again, we thank you for the use of your library.”

“It’s not my library, good Dalebrentia. It’s the world’s library. I am merely the steward of the knowledge contained herein, and humbled by the responsibilities the great sages put upon me.”

“A steward, and an author of more than a few of the tomes, I note,” Dalebrentia said. “And truly we are all better off for your stewardship, Brother Bonaduce. In these troubled times, to find a place where great minds might congregate is comforting, even if not overly productive on this particular occasion. But we are dealing with unknowns here, and I am confident that as the unraveling of the Weave, if that is what it is, is understood, you will have many more important works to add to your collection.”

“Any that you and your peers pen would be welcome,” Cadderly assured him.

Dalebrentia nodded. “Our scribes will replicate every word spoken here today for Spirit Soaring, that in times to come when such a trouble as this visits Faerûn again, Tymora forefend, our wisdom will help the worried wizards and priests of the future.”