R. Salvatore - The Dragon King

Luthien managed a weak smile, not convinced that Brind’Amour was speaking truthfully. The young Bedwyr had no other explanation, though, and so he let it go at that. If there was something amiss, magically speaking, then it would be Brind’Amour’s concern, and not his own.

“Come,” the wizard bade, moving down a side passage. “We have perhaps found the link between Greensparrow and the cyclopians, thus our treaty with Avon may be deemed void. Let us draw up the truce with King Asmund of Isenland and begin to lay our plans.”

“We will fight Greensparrow?” Luthien asked bluntly.

“I do not yet know,” Brind’Amour replied. “I must speak with our prisoners, and with the ambassador from Gascony. There is much to do before any final decisions can be made.”

Of course there was, Luthien realized, but the young Bedwyr held faith then that he would not be battling against his brother. Greensparrow’s treacherous hand had been revealed in full; Resmore was all the proof they needed. Visions of sailing the fleet up the Stratton into Carlisle beside the Huegoth longships danced in Luthien’s mind.

It was not an unpleasant fantasy.

Brind’Amour entered the dimly lit room solemnly, wearing his rich blue wizard robes. Candles burned softly from pedestals in each of the room’s corners. In the center was a small round table and a single stool.

Brind’Amour took his place on the stool. With trembling hands, he reached up and removed the cloth draped over the single object on the table, his crystal ball. It was with trepidation and nervous excitement that the wizard began his incantation. Brind’Amour didn’t believe that Greensparrow had launched a bolt for Luthien that had accidentally destroyed Resmore’s familiar demon. In lieu of that, the old wizard could think of only one explanation for Luthien’s incredible tale: one of his fellows from the ancient brotherhood of wizards had awakened and joined in the effort. What else might explain the lightning bolt?

The wizard fell into his trance, sent his sight through the ball, into the mountains, across the width and breadth of Eriador, then across the borders of time itself.

“Brind’Amour?”

The question came from far away, but was insistent.

“Brind’Amour?”

“Serendie?” the old wizard asked, thinking he had at last found one of his fellows, a jolly chap who had been among his closest of friends.

“Luthien,” came the distant reply.

Brind’Amour searched his memory, trying to remember which wizard went by that vaguely familiar name. He felt a touch on his shoulder, and then was shaken.

Brind’Amour came out of his trance to find that he was in his divining room at the Ministry, with Luthien and Oliver standing beside him. He yawned and stretched, thoroughly drained from his night’s work.

“What time?” he asked.

“The cock has crowed,” Oliver remarked, “has eaten his morning meal, put a smile on the beaks of a few hen-types, and is probably settled for his afternoon nap!”

“We wondered where you were,” Luthien explained.

“So where were you?” Oliver asked.

Brind’Amour snorted at the halfling’s perceptive question. He had been physically in this room—all the night and half the day it would seem—but in truth, he had visited many places. A frown creased his face as he considered those journeys now. The last of them, to the isle of Dulsen-Berra, central of the Five Sentinels, haunted him. The vision the crystal ball had given him was somewhere back in time, though how long ago he could not tell. He saw cyclopians scaling the rocky hills of the island. Then he saw their guide: a man he recognized, though he was not as fat and thick-jowled as he was now, a man Brind’Amour now held captive in the dungeons of this very building!

In the vision, Resmore carried an unusual object, a forked rod, a divining stick. So-called “witches” of the more remote villages of Avonsea, and all across wild Baranduine, used such an object to find water. Normally a divining rod was a form of the very least magic, but this time, Resmore’s rod had been truly enchanted. Guided by it, Resmore and his one-eyed cronies had found a secret glen and the blocked entrance to a cave. Several wards exploded, killing more than a few cyclopians, but there were more than enough of the brutes to complete the task. Soon enough, the cave mouth was opened and the brutes rushed in. They returned to Resmore in the grassy glen, dragging a stiff body behind them. It was Duparte, dear Duparte, another of Brind’Amour’s closest friends, who had helped Brind’Amour in the construction of the Ministry and had taught so many Eriadoran fisherfolk the ways of the dangerous dorsal whales.

All the long night Brind’Amour had suffered such scenes of murder as his fellows were routed from their places of magical sleep. All the long night he had seen Resmore and Greensparrow, Morkney and Paragor, and one other wizard he did not know, flush out his helpless, sleeping fellows and destroy them.

Brind’Amour shuddered visibly, and Luthien put a comforting hand on his shoulder.

“They are all dead, I fear,” Brind’Amour said quietly.

“Who?” Oliver asked, looking around nervously.

“The ancient brotherhood,” the old wizard replied—and he truly seemed old at that moment! “Only I, who spent so long enacting magical wards against intrusion, seem to have escaped the treachery of Greensparrow.”

“You witnessed all of their deaths?” Luthien asked incredulously, looking at the crystal ball. By Brind’Amour’s tales, many, many wizards had gone into the magical slumber those centuries before.

“Not all.”

“Why did you look?” Oliver asked.

“Your tale of the encounter with Resmore,” Brind’Amour replied.

“You did not send the lightning,” Luthien reasoned. “Thus you believed that one of your brothers had awakened, and had come to our aid.”

“But that is not the case,” Brind’Amour said.

“You said you did not find them all,” Oliver reminded.

“But none are awake; of that I am almost certain,” Brind’Amour replied. “If any of them were, my divining would have revealed them, or at least a hint of them.”

“But if you did not send the lightning . . .” Luthien began.

Brind’Amour only shrugged, having no explanation.

The old wizard sighed and leaned back in his chair. “We erred, my friends,” he said. “And badly.”

“Not I,” Oliver argued.

“The ancient brotherhood?” Luthien asked, pausing only to shake his head at Oliver’s unending self-importance.

“We thought the land safe and in good hands,” Brind’Amour explained. “The time of magic was fast fading, and thus we faded away, went into our slumber to conserve what remained of our powers until the world needed us once more.

“We all went into that sleep,” the wizard went on, his voice barely above a whisper, “except for Greensparrow, it seems, who was but a minor wizard, a man of no consequence. Even the great dragons had been destroyed, or bottled up, as I and my fellows had done to Balthazar.”

Luthien and Oliver shuddered at the mention of that name, a dragon they knew all too well!

“I lost my staff in Balthazar’s cave,” the wizard continued, turning to regard Luthien. “But I didn’t think I would ever need it again—until after I awoke to find the land in the darkness of Greensparrow.”

“This much we knew,” Luthien said. “But if Greensparrow had been such a minor wizard, then how did he rise?”

“What a great error,” Brind’Amour said to himself. “We thought magic on the wane, and so it was, by our standards of the art. But Greensparrow found another way. He allied with demons, tapped powers that should have been left alone, to rebuild a source of magical power. We should have foreseen this, and warded against it before our time of slumber.”