"You should have stayed in the forest," Aballister said, pacing the length of his small room at Castle Trinity.
Dorigen wisely kept her stare locked upon him. Unlike Barjin's demise, this defeat had brought a somber mood to the head of Castle Trinity, a real fear that his plans for conquest might not be so easily accomplished. He still had more than three thousand soldiers at his command, and many more might be salvaged from the tribes returning to their mountain homes, but Shilmista was lost, at least for now, and the new elf king was determined and valorous. Dorigen had heard, and recounted for Aballister, many tales concerning mighty Elbereth's exploits in the battle for the wood.
"You should have stayed!" the older wizard growled again, more forcefully.
"I would not remain among such treacherous rabble with my fingers broken," Dorigen answered, holding up her bandaged hands. "Do you really believe that I would have been safe among goblins and orcs?"
Aballister could not deny the truth of her observations. He had seen firsthand what wild goblinoids might do to a woman. "Without you to guide them, Ragnor's army is no more than scattered bands," he reasoned, "easy targets for the organized elves and this new king they hold so dear. We will be months in recovering our losses."
"The goblins will find a leader amongst them," Dorigen replied.
"One loyal to us?" Aballister asked incredulously.
"We still have time before the onset of winter to go back and set things in Shilmista to our advantage!" Dorigen snapped back at him, not conceding an inch regarding her decision to leave. "The elves are not many, no matter how well organized and how well led they might be. For all their gains now, they'll surely have a long road in ridding Shilmista of the dark plague Castle Trinity has dropped upon it."
"You should have stayed."
"And you should have watched out for your son!" Dorigen rejoined before her better judgment could overrule her actions. Druzil, perched on Aballister's desk, groaned and folded his leathery wings about him, certain that his master was about to blast Dorigen into little pieces.
Nothing happened. After several moments of silence, Dorigen, also fearful, realized that she had hit a sensitive area, one where Aballister, mighty Aballister, felt vulnerable.
"Cadderly," the wizard mumbled. "Twice he has wandered into my way and I had thought myself rid of the boy. Well, the first inconvenience could be forgotten. I wasn't so certain that I wanted Barjin to conquer the library in any case," the wizard admitted openly. "But this! No, Cadderly has become too much a threat to be tolerated."
"How do you intend to end that threat?" Dorigen asked bluntly. She could hardly believe the coldness on Aballister's face when he spoke of his long-lost son.
"Boygo Rath has some helpful connections in Westgate," Aballister answered, his thin lips curling up in a wicked smile.
Dorigen winced, suspecting what the wizard had in mind.
"You have heard of the Night Masks?" Aballister asked.
Dorigen winced again at the mention of the assassin band. Of course she had heard of them everyone from the Dragon Reach to Waterdeep had heard of them! She nodded, her expression openly revealing her disbelief that Aballister would be wicked enough to hire such a band to kill his own son.
Aballister laughed at that incredulous expression. "Let us just say," he remarked, "that Cadderly, too, will soon hear of them."
Dorigen took the news with mixed feelings. She was angry with Cadderly, to be sure, for what he had done to her, but she could not ignore the fact that the young priest easily could have killed her. She shrugged her thoughts away and reminded herself that it was none of her affair, that what now transpired was between Aballister, Boygo, and Cadderly.
And the Night Masks.
*****
"Them goblin things are to be dancing in the trees tonight when they hear that ye're a dead one," Ivan remarked, cutting an easy swipe with his great axe.
"More likely, they shall sing of the death of a dwarf," Elbereth retorted, easily backing from the lazy swing. He rushed in behind the swipe, looking for an opening, but Ivan's defenses were back in place before the elf got within reach.
"What's an Elbereth?" Ivan taunted, white teeth shining through his yellow beard.
"I shall use that phrase for your epitaph!" the elf roared, and he played his sword through a dazzling display of feints and thrusts, ending up with its point sinking through Ivan's armor, toward the dwarf's chest.
Ivan fell back and blinked stupidly.
"Oo," moaned Pikel from the side, a sentiment echoed by Shayleigh, Tintagel, and many of the other gathered elves, including even Elbereth.
"Ye killed me, elf," Ivan grunted, his breath coming hard. He stumbled backward, barely holding his balance. Elbereth lowered his sword and rushed in, terrified at what he had done. When he got two steps from Ivan, bending low to examine the wound, he noticed Ivan's lips curl up in a smile and knew he had been deceived.
"Hee hee hee," came a knowing chuckle from the side.
Ivan turned his axe sideways and thumped Elbereth on the forehead, sending him tumbling backward. The elf threw his weight into the roll and came back to his feet some distance away. He watched curiously as two images of Ivan Bouldershoulder steadily closed.
"Ye think yer skinny blade'd get through me dwarf-made armor?" Ivan huffed. "Silly elf."
They joined in melee again, this time Ivan taking the lead. Elbereth learned his lesson well, and he used his superior speed and agility to parry Ivan's attacks and keep out of the dwarf's shorter reach. Every time the cunning elf found an opening, he slapped the side of his sword against the side of Ivan's head.
He might as well have been banging stone.
After many minutes, the only somewhat serious wound came when Ivan tripped and inadvertently dropped the head of his heavy axe on Elbereth's toes.
The call around the perimeter of the battle, where nearly the entire elven camp had by then gathered to watch, became general.
"Hee hee hee."
*****
Cadderly looked out the open window, beyond the rooftops of Carradoon, toward Impresk Lake, but his thoughts were many miles away, back in the forest he had left four weeks before. The morning fog rose from the still water; a distant loon uttered its mournful cry.
Where was Danica now? Cadderly wondered. And what of Ivan and Pikel? The young scholar dearly missed his friends and lumped that emptiness into the same void he had discovered when he had realized that the Edificant Library was not his home, and never had been.
He had gone back to the library with Headmaster Avery, Kierkan Rufo, and a score of other priests after leaving Shilmista. Avery had begged him to stay and continue his studies, but Cadderly would not, could not. Nothing about the place seemed familiar to the young scholar; he could not help but view the library as a lie, a facade of serenity in a world gone crazy.
"There are too many questions," Cadderly had told the headmaster. "And here I fear that I will find too few of the answers." So young Cadderly had taken his purse and his walking stick, and all the other possessions he had considered worthwhile, and had left the library, doubting that he would ever return.
A knock on the door broke the young scholar from his contemplations. He moved across the small room and cracked open the portal just enough to retrieve the breakfast plate that had been left for him.
When he had finished his meal, he replaced the plate outside his door, leaving a silver coin as a tip for obliging Brennan, son of the innkeeper of the Dragon's Codpiece. Cadderly had asked for his privacy and the innkeeper had given it to him without question, delivering his meals and leaving him alone.
The calls in the street began again shortly after, as Cadderly expected they would. Carradoon was being roused for war; a force was quickly being mustered to organize a defense of the town. At first, the call was for soldiers to go to the aid of the elves in their noble battle for Shilmista, but the latest reports had changed that. Shilmista was secured, it seemed, with most of the scattered goblinoids fully on the run.
Still the force in Carradoon swelled, and restrictions, including a curfew, had been placed on the town.
Cadderly did not enjoy the rising level of anxiety, but he thought the town wise in making preparations. The evil that had inspired Barjin's attempt on the Edificant Library and Ragnor's invasion of Shilmista was not fully defeated, Cadderly knew, and it would no doubt soon descend over Carradoon.
Cadderly did not close his window against those calls. The wind coming off the lake was comfortably cool and gave him at least some tie to the outside world. Reverently, the young scholar took out his most valuable possession, the Tome of Universal Harmony, opened it on his small desk, and sat down to read.
Too many questions filled his mind.
