CHARTER TWENTY-THREE

AIRSPUR
THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)

UP THERE,” THE THIEF TOLD DEMASCUS, HER VOICE STILL flat.

She ascended one side of a set of matching stairs that converged on a landing. Afternoon light blazed down the steps from a stained-glass window depicting an apple tree laden with red orbs.

Demascus followed the windsoul up.

She’d found him and Chant searching the alley where the secret passage had let out. His relief had dissolved his dour mood. He was so happy he could have kissed her. She explained she’d trailed Kalkan back to his lair, but her manner had been oddly subdued. She explained that Kalkan had escaped through a hole in the wall.

He hadn’t wasted time interrogating her. And here we are, he thought. In the home of the creature who’s haunted my dreams since I first woke on that damned altar. He was close to understanding everything … which worried him more than anything else.

“Kalkan owns this manor?” said Chant. “A place like this will set you back some serious coin.”

Riltana paused at the top of the stairs. She said, “It’s probably how he was able to get away with feeding off people, owning a place with grounds so large that neighbors couldn’t hear their screams …”

The thief had also explained she’d found a room filled with rotting corpses hanging from the ceiling. Apparently, Kalkan’s predatory features were more than just show. He really was a flesh-eater. A man-eater.

And not only a predator—but a schemer interested in killing Demascus. Kalkan had insured that Demascus would be caught up in Murmur’s schemes. Schemes somehow entangled with a previous life, where he’d evidently stymied several demons kin to Murmur, with the help of allies he no longer remembered the least thing about …

That was an unproductive line of thought. Soon, he would know more.

The Veil claimed his sword, or ring, would trigger more memories. But Riltana said Kalkan waited by his tomb, where perhaps the items, the ones he’d seen in his visions, lay with the moldering remains of one of his former selves.

If he went for those objects, Kalkan was sure to attack him.

Those objects contained the missing portion of himself, of which he was apparently only a fraction.

When it came down to it, he was no longer certain he wanted that reunion to occur.

What good can come of looting a corpse I shucked like a snake’s skin? he thought. That life is over; maybe its memories should be too. And what if I absorb so much, I lose myself, and become a different person? Won’t that be a death for the man I’ve learned to be these last few days?

He was afraid the answer was yes.

“Are you coming?” said Riltana. She stood at end of the hallway, her arms crossed. Her normally lustrous skin seemed drawn and almost tarnished, as if she was sick.

Demascus took a deep breath, then joined her.

The room was as she’d described it, complete with a still active portal leaking darkness, a rogues’ gallery featuring himself in various guises and outfits, and an overwhelming smell of death.

Riltana stayed near the entrance. He and Chant went to the wall and gazed at the drawings. Kalkan had a gift for art—at least when it came to capturing images of his favorite topic—Demascus.

Demascus studied his portrait in one particularly compelling piece. His back was to the perspective, and he stood poised with a two-handed runesword held high, his Veil and many charms aloft in the wind blowing across the mountain peak on which he stood. Hovering off the face of the peak was a colossal dragonlike abomination, its breath of billowing green gas enfolding him.

Demascus had no memory whatsoever of the event. Or … of any of the other scenes depicted on the wall in their hundreds. That was the person he might become if he found his memories. The man depicted was a complete stranger.

“Kalkan’s made quite a study of you,” Chant said quietly.

He had no words.

“The bodies … are behind there,” Riltana choked out. She pointed to a door in the corner.

“Should we examine them?” Chant said.

He said, “I’d rather not.”

“Good choice,” said the thief.

The drawings tore at his guts enough, with all the unanswered questions they posed. He didn’t need to be wrenched by seeing the trophies of a murdering psychopath.

Demascus retreated from the drawings, until he stood before the portal. The darkness was a physical blot, hanging just an inch off the wall. The lip of the effect wavered and blurred, as if renegotiating its terms with reality every moment. Beyond it, he imagined Kalkan watched him.

What would happen if I simply walk away? he wondered. He could break the cycle the pictures hinted at. Leave Airspur, and settle down in some distant land and learn a peaceful trade. Beer brewing maybe, or storytelling. This is my last chance to stay ignorant. My last chance to stay myself.

And if he did turn away, he’d resign himself to forever wonder why he’d killed a priest in cold blood.

“Let’s go find our friend,” he announced.

“Lead on,” Chant said, “We’ll follow.”

Demascus unsheathed his latest sword, and grabbed the Veil in his other hand. Just to see if he’d get an answer, he addressed it.

“Veil, what lies beyond this portal? Is it my tomb?”

A single word appeared in pale light in the fabric:

Demascus stepped through, and found himself on the shore of a sunless sea.

An earthy breeze engulfed and cooled him. He was underground, in some kind of canyon-sized cave chamber. A ramshackle collection of boulders formed a circle on the cave floor, and he was standing in the center of it.

He stepped out of the stone-bounded area to clear the portal, and to get a better look at the island that lay at the center of the half-drowned vault. Dark wavelets rolled to the island’s bone-strewn shore. Pale cavelight from luminescent growth and faded runes illuminated dozens of wide catacomb mouths along the island’s periphery, providing watery paths deeper inside. The failed majesty of ruins lay heaped above the winding entrances like a crown of broken spires.

He didn’t know what he’d been expecting, but this wasn’t it.

“Where on Toril are we? What’s that?” came Riltana’s voice. She stepped clear of the circle, her gaze fastened on the funerary island. A moment later Chant flickered into view. His eyes widened at the panorama.

“Is that your tomb?” said the thief. “I mean, the tomb of your last … self?”

“I suppose it must be,” he replied. “Except it looks grand enough to be some fallen necropolis. Thousands must be interred there!” The magnitude of the darkling island took his breath away.

“If you say so,” said Chant, who remained in the stone circle where he’d appeared. “How do we get across the water? I’m not swimming, I’ll tell you that for free.”

“There,” said Riltana, pointing at a gondola-like craft pulled up along the shore not far from where they’d appeared.

Chant gave an exaggerated sigh and left the circle. They trooped down to the boats across pocked black rock and inspected the boats. One was more than large enough to carry them all. Demascus was amazed that the boats all seemed seaworthy, despite how ancient they were.

“This one’s got oars,” Riltana noted. “You won’t have to get your clothes wet after all, Chant.”

They pushed the craft out into the cold water and hopped aboard.

“Be ready,” the pawnbroker said. “If this place has guardians, it’s a good bet they live in the water.”

“Then why provide boats?” Riltana asked.

“To lure us into range,” Chant said knowingly. He flipped a crossbow bolt through his fingers as his eyes scanned the nighted waves.

Demascus hoped the pawnbroker was wrong, but didn’t have any evidence to soothe the man’s worry. So he took up the oars and sent the skiff gliding out across the lake.

Except for the occasional splash of ice-cold water from a dipping oar, nothing troubled their passage. No one spoke as Demascus rowed. The sound of keel scraping stone marked their landfall on the cemetery island.

A craft smaller than their own was moored next to a stone jetty.

“There!” Demascus said. “Someone came this way.”

“Kalkan,” Riltana said.

They tied up next to the smaller craft, then searched it. If it had been Kalkan’s conveyance, he hadn’t left anything behind.

“Now where?” Riltana said.

Their choices included walking straight into a gaping catacomb mouth or ascending to the island’s higher elevation via a narrow, wandering stair in the cliff face.

One end of the Veil animated, and threw a beam of light from the tip. In a manner almost like a human’s extended finger, it pointed to the stairs.

“We go up,” Demascus said.

The stairs provided a relatively easy climb to the top of the cliff. From there, a jumble of smashed gravestones, tilted memorial spires, rusted plaques, and half-collapsed mausoleums stretched away across the island.

“Sharkbite, it’s cold up here,” said Chant. The man’s breath steamed out in great puffs of gauzy white. Demascus was acutely aware that such a vast difference in temperature between the rest of the cavern and the island couldn’t be “natural” in any good sense.

The Veil’s animated end scanned the tableaux a moment, then directed them down a cobbled lane lined with a crumbling columbarium wall. Displaced urns from the wall lay shattered and askew across the way. Dark ashes spilled from some.

“A whole lot of disturbed graves,” said Chant, his tone worried.

“But is there any sign Kalkan came this way?” Riltana asked.

Chant kneeled to the cobbles. He carefully examined the stone, then rose, nodding. He said, “Something came this way recently, wearing boots. Scrapes along the paving stones are far enough apart to indicate whoever it was either was unnaturally tall, or more likely, that he was in a hurry.”

“Be on your guard, either way,” said Demascus, his own breath a waterfall of white. He stepped forward. His boot came down on a loose funerary urn. The sound of it cracking beneath his heel was loud as a bombardier’s detonation. Oops …

Sure enough, something stirred in response. Demascus pulled his sword free and ignited the imaginary glyphs along its edges, as greenish luminescence coalesced from the shattered urns. The glow swirled into a blot, and became a vaguely humanoid shape of terror.

“A specter!” barked Chant, his voice a full octave higher than normal.

The ghostly creature’s swirling, ethereal tatters feathered across him, and Demascus’s nose hairs froze and his fingertips went numb. He slashed, but his blade passed right through the specter as if it were only a dream.

Then it screamed. A barrage of horror sleeted through him, potent as a shot of whisky and sharp as a scalpel. He fell on his face, and his sword spun away from his nerveless grip.

“Lords of light!” he croaked, and scrambled for his weapon on hands and knees that suddenly didn’t want to function.

His hand found the hilt, and he regained his feet, barely. Where was the specter? He couldn’t see it. Was it gone? No. Unlikely it would appear just to say “Boo!” then run off.

The pawnbroker lay on his back, and Riltana perched on a grave marker a full ten paces away.

“Chant, are you all right?” he asked.

The man groaned.

The specter, quick as an eye blinking open, reappeared. It hadn’t gone anywhere, it had just turned invisible.

Its insubstantial claw glided straight through Demascus’s leather armor and drew a tear across his soul. Strength poured from him, and it was all he could do to not go down again.

His first instinct was to step away through a lane of shadow. But … that would probably only make him even more vulnerable to the creature’s attacks. It was the light he required. Light like what had blazed in the temple of Oghma, when he’d stood before the avatar of knowledge …

Some measure of his strength returned as a half-real glyph on his sword brightened. He summoned the temple light of his vision and set his sword afire with it. The specter came on, oblivious, until he swept his sword through the insubstantial undead. Golden light outlined the specter.

Features resolved above the undead’s ill-defined and vaporous torso for a single heartbeat: a man’s face, teeth gritted in ageless hate. Demascus laughed, and his voice broke strongly across the lane, “Your reign of terror ends here, lost one.” A wild exultation fired his limbs and his mind, a side effect of the glorious light. But he didn’t care. He reveled in it.

The specter retreated, flickering as if attempting to fade from sight again, but the radiant glow prevented it from slipping away from mortal eyes.

“Destroy it, while the gods’ light pins it!” Demascus yelled.

Chant rolled to his feet and sent three metal-tipped shafts through the undead’s swirling form, tearing great rents in the ectoplasmic flesh. Riltana popped up opposite Demascus, and shoved her short sword directly into the torso, where a living being would have kept its heart. Her blade took fire from the radiance still surrounding the specter. The short sword found the knot of animation keeping the undead bound to the world, and severed it.

The specter dispersed like mist in a sudden wind. A mournful cry faded to nothing, and the unbearable cold went with it.

The light faded, and the exhilaration leaked away, leaving him feeling almost empty.

“Nice job, Demascus,” said Riltana.

He merely nodded. “Everyone all right?”

“Thanks to what you just did,” she replied. “So … When you summon that kind of glow, it almost seems divine, like something Carmenere might manage. Which god did you call for aid?”

Chant glanced over, his eyebrows high with interest.

Demascus glanced around, noting the location of each broken urn and gravestone. The immediate threat seemed over, so he sheathed his sword. Finally, he answered Riltana, “No god in particular. More like … all of them, I guess. Or whichever one is paying attention.” He felt vaguely embarrassed as soon as the words were out of his mouth.

“Hmm. That’s scarily disturbing,” she replied. “Still … I like it better when you call the light. When you shroud yourself in shadows, you seem almost like a specter yourself.”

“Oh.” He didn’t have a response. He didn’t want to tell her that he wasn’t necessarily consciously choosing which abilities to employ. It was more like the abilities were choosing him.

He wondered if using light more than shadow, or the other way around, could be setting him up for some kind of consequence he didn’t know enough to avoid. Another reason to recover his sword: maybe it would give him the context to judge his actual situation, and put an end to the guesses.

They continued down the lane, until they came to a plaza. Black iron rails fenced off the surrounding graves-cape, though great rents made the barrier meaningless. The leaning tombstones surrounding them almost looked like stalking beasts in the ambiguous light, curled and ready to spring the moment no one was looking.

A hole plunged into darkness at the plaza’s exact center.

Chant examined the edges of the shaft, running his finger along the lip. He nodded to himself. “See these scratches? Someone went over the side and climbed down here. Someone with, um, claws, it looks like.”

Demascus peered downward. It wasn’t completely dark as he’d first thought: a glimmer of reddish light shone somewhere below, perhaps a reflection off a pool of liquid. He wrinkled his nose. Stagnant water, by the smell of it.

“Does anything seem at all familiar?” asked Riltana.

“If this leads down to Demascus’s tomb, he’s not likely to remember it,” said Chant, as he uncoiled a length of rope from his pack.

Demascus said, “Chant’s right. I don’t even know where this cavern is in relation to Airspur.”

Chant glanced at the distant shore where they’d arrived, then said, his voice raised, “I’ve been assuming we could return the way we came in. If we’re lost down here, you’re going to see a grown man throw a fit. I promise you, it’ll be like nothing you’ve experienced in any of your incarnations.”

Demascus said, “I’m sure there’s a way out. Either way … now you’ve got me curious, what kind of fit does a grown man throw?”

Chant burst out laughing.

“Shush!” said Riltana. “You’ll warn anyone below we’re here.”

“It’s not pretty,” said Chant, still grinning.

Demascus chuckled. He decided that, if he lived through whatever was waiting for him in his tomb, he would laugh more.

Chant tied rope to the iron fence, and dropped the rest of the coil into the well. He said to Demascus, “Do you know how to go down a rope?”

“Uh … just shimmy down?”

“Hmm. In a pinch, but, here …” Chant showed him a clever method of wrapping the rope so that he sat into it, which allowed the rope to support his weight even as it played out. He leaned back and jump-walked down the shaft.

The hole magnified the sound of his boots against the curved wall. The rope rasped on his palm and fingers, making him grateful he didn’t have farther to descend.

The shaft dropped him into a mausoleum tiled in black stone. The light came from flames burning from iron candelabra in each corner.

Demascus dangled in a shadowed space, scanning for his nemesis. Kalkan wasn’t there. Or if he was, he was hiding. He wondered if Kalkan had lit the candles, or if they simply had magically burned alone and untended for years in silence.

The mausoleum floor was dominated by a shallow pool. Clear water revealed several fish skeletons lying still on the bottom. Demascus half expected to see them flit around beneath the surface.

A tunnel mouth provided an exit from the funerary space in one wall. Opposite it, across the pool, a massive sarcophagus crouched. The wan candle’s magical light silhouetted it, giving the enigmatic carvings a stuttering life sketched out in flickers.

Except for the sound of his own breath and heart, it was noiseless. The stone tomb was his own. Seeing it, his earlier resolve to get his sword and more of his memories faltered. Demascus felt frozen in the utter quiet like a fly in amber.

“Well?” came Riltana’s voice down the hole in the ceiling, shattering the silence with a riot of echoes. “What do you see?”

“A sarcophagus!” he called back up. He let go of the rope and dropped to the floor next to the shallow pond. “Come down!”

The sound of rushing wind preceded Riltana’s rapid descent. She landed, absorbing what would have been a fatal impact for him with a ringing slap of boot heels on stone.

“Show-off,” he said. Riltana shrugged. Her eyes were fastened on the stone coffin.

The dangling rope jerked, and Chant slid down it with practiced ease. Demascus would have been impressed if he hadn’t just seen the windsoul drop fifty feet.

He approached the sarcophagus. The designs were so thick that newer symbols overlaid older etchings. Gauntlets, shields, leaves, orbs, eyes, stars, anvils, skulls, moons …

“These are all symbols of the gods!” he said.

“They might be,” said Chant. “But if they are, I don’t recognize half of them. Like this one.”

The pawnbroker pointed to a symbol that might have been a raven’s head. “Or this.” His finger moved to a symbol that looked sort of like a stylized eye.

“There are more worlds than just Toril,” Demascus said. “And more gods too.”

“What do you mean?” said Riltana.

“I can’t quite put it in words … I just know that all these symbols are legitimate divinities, somewhere.”

“Amazing,” said Chant.

Riltana said, “What about this?” The thief pointed to several lines inscribed on the stone face.

Chant read, “ ‘Agent of Fate, Emissary of Divine Judgment, Cutter of Destiny’s Thread. You died as you lived, and will live again. Demascus, Sword of the Gods.’ Sharkbite! Does—”

“Let’s stop wasting time. Help me get this gods-cursed thing open!” Demascus said. He put his shoulder to one side of the stone lid and heaved.

“Wait,” said Chant. “We should check for traps.”

Demascus repositioned his feet, and pushed harder. The stone groaned its displeasure as the heavy lid slid three inches, revealing a sliver of darkness.

“No traps,” he said, and pushed again. The lid slid farther open, revealing a cavity two handspans wide.

Chant and Riltana bent to help. The next heave pushed the lid nearly all the way off.

The Veil, wrapped around his arm, took light. Its glow revealed a body nestled in the square cavity. Funerary wrappings swaddled it, and it was shrunken with decomposition. A smell like dried daisies dusted the air. They all gazed into the sarcophagus for a handful of heartbeats. Demascus felt not the least stir of recognition. It couldn’t possibly be the previous version of himself.

“Well?” said Riltana.

“It … It’s just a dead body,” Demascus said. “Less than that—rags and dust. It could be anybody.” He hadn’t expected this sad display. Disappointment hollowed his chest. No rings adorned the corpse, and—

“Get the sword,” said Riltana, peering over his shoulder.

He’d missed it at first; a huge blade did lay along the side of the wrapped remains, but was covered in a fine layer of silver-gray dust.

Demascus reached in, then pulled the greatsword from the tomb. It was nearly as long as two normal blades laid end to end.

The weapon quivered, shaking the dust from its length. For a moment, a newcomer stood in the mausoleum with them. Was it Kalkan? … no. It was a woman, with eyes like distant storm clouds, glaring at him as if he’d broken some kind of promise, as if he’d done her a wrong so grievous that no apology could ever make amends. Regret, sharp as a knife, whirled into him with the force of a tornado.

Demascus gasped and—

The woman was gone, as if someone had pinched a candle flame.

“What is it?” said Chant.

He shook his head, deciding it would be impossible to provide a meaningful explanation. The woman had been a memory fragment, jarred loose when he’d grabbed the sword, was all. He hoped. He gave one last glance at the empty space where she’d just stood, then examined the weapon in his hands more carefully.

A series of alphabet-like runes, blood red down one side, porcelain white down the other, obscured the blade’s shimmering pattern weld. He knew those runes—every time he picked up any sword, an imperfect memory of those runes formed, quasi-real recollections of the real thing he held in his hand.

The sword’s edge was beveled, and its fine edge was free of nicks and notches—the sign of an enchanted blade. Its balance was exquisite; despite his one-handed hold of the massive piece of metal, it seemed no heavier than a sword a quarter its size. The crossguard was an intricate affair of two opposing styles, as if the weaponsmith had managed to forge two weapons into a single whole.

“The Sword of the Gods,” he breathed, and the Veil twitched. Words appeared in its weave:

A coin-sized object dislodged from a crossguard. He caught it in his free hand. It was a metallic charm shaped like a scroll. He recognized it immediately—Oghma’s symbol.

The charm flashed, and a new memory unspooled in his mind. Demascus realized he’d been wrong all along.