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in despair. "Of all the places in the world梩he world, this one here, the v-vale, was the closest to F-Faerie! And now it's all dead梐ll dead!"
"Faerie? I've heard it's a magical place, unlike any other realm. Is that so?"
"Oh, y-yes!" Yazilliclick brightened perceptibly. "It has fa-beauty and magic梐nd a w-wonderful peacefulness!"
"Where is it?"
"I d-don't know for sure. You go through a g-gate and you're in Faerie; it's that easy梕asy. There are so many gates, especially to here, to the v-vale."
"Did you come through one of them?" Tristan tried to divert the sprite's attention from his misery.
"Oh, yes! L-Long ago, I came here to the vale梩he vale. It was so beautiful here, just like F-Faerie. Wh-why did they have to kill it all?"
"It is not gone forever. Whatever is causing this must have a weakness. We'll find it."
"It's all d-dead," wept the faerie, unconsoled.
Tristan looked at the wasteland through new eyes and wondered at the evil before him. This vale had never been more than a vast wilderness to him. It was well stocked with game, to be sure, but he knew that, to Robyn, it was very much more. It was the center of her faith and the heart of her goddess's power. He began to picture, very vaguely perhaps, what its desecration meant to her.
Canthus never hesitated for a moment as he trotted through the twists and turns of the path. Somehow Daryth had followed the trail through the thick of the night, and the king marveled at this evidence of his friend's nocturnal skills.
The trail suddenly dropped into a rocky gorge, and here Tristan called Canthus to slow as the horses made their way carefully down the steep and gravelly path. The moorhound sprinted ahead and then waited impatiently. He pranced in a circle in agitation, then dashed forward as soon as Avalon drew near.
Tristan lost sight of the hound as Canthus leaped around a bend in the gorge wall. As always, the moorhound hunted
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silently, so the king heard no barking to help locate his dog.
Spurring Avalon into an easy trot, the fastest gait he dared on this rough ground, he came around the same bend. The stallion reared back in surprise, his nostrils flaring, and Tristan's hand darted instinctively to his blade.
But the shock before them was in its tale, not in its terror. Canthus had stopped at the bottom of the sheer granite wall of the gorge. The hound stood up on his hind legs, his forelegs reaching up the wall higher than the height of a man's head.
Following the gaze of his dog, the king looked up to see a garish streak of blood across the face of the rock. The stuff had dried to a reddish brown color, but its nature was unmistakable. Tristan raised his eyes and saw bloodstains running down the entire side of the gorge.
Robyn came around the bend then, and he saw her face grow pale. She looked first to the right, and then to the left. "Back up the trail! We can get out of the gorge and come around on top!" No sooner had she spoken than she whirled the mare around and sent it racing up the trail.
Canthus dashed between Avalon's legs and raced up the gorge past Robyn. Daryth had been the dog's trainer and beloved teacher, and Tristan sensed dire urgency in the dog's manner. The gnawing dread he himself had experienced all morning broke into cold terror. Pawldo and Tav-ish, bringing up the rear, turned quickly and led the column out of the gorge. They raced along the rim, dreading what they would find.
Hobarth walked among villages of leather-covered huts huddled in glens among the great fir forests of northern Gwynneth. This land contrasted sharply to Corwell, which lay upon the southern shore of this same island. While Corwell was pastoral and open, a place of farmers and fields, this was a place of hunters and warriors. While the Ffolk of Corwell looked to the land for their sustenance, the northmen looked to the sea. But they would die just the same, mused the cleric. And their dying would give as much
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pleasure to his god as would the passing of the more peaceful Ffolk to the south.
Finally the cleric reached the shore and saw the work of Bhaal in all its glory. The northern shore of Gwynneth was separated from Oman's Isle by the Strait of Oman. Upon Oman's Isle was the great fortress known as the Iron Keep, former palace of the northman king Thelgaar Ironhand. Oman, and especially Iron Keep and its sheltered bay, were the focal points of northmen power in the Moonshaes.
But this focus, already dimmed by the catastrophic Darkwalker War, was about to be diffused.
Already the waters of the strait lay heavy and dark in the channel. The cleric could see the rocky bulk of Oman's Isle, but his attention was drawn instead to the sea itself.
Great patches of brown scum and thick foam floated across the water. Hobarth, invisible to man, observed the distress in the northmen villages as sleek hulls began to show signs of early rot and a putrid odor rose from the waves and wafted ashore.
He witnessed the consternation of fishermen as they pulled bloated, rotting fish from the strait. He watched with delight as a swollen, drowned body washed into a quiet cove and frightened a group of women.
Soon the northern folk would ignore these trifling inconveniences, as Hobarth's god put his plan into action. When that happened, the existence of pollution or poor fishing or foul scent would mean naught to these humans. By then, they would be confronted by the ravaging menace of the sahuagin.
And worse.
Kamerynn galloped through a stretch of marshy fen, his broad hooves sucking effortlessly from the muck with each supple bound. Brown water splashed and foamed all around him, streaking his flanks with grime. His thick fetlocks clung to his legs, soaked in a mass of putrid ooze that spattered to his belly.
But he held his head high, and his mane floated, unblem-
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ished, behind him. His ivory horn remained proudly upright, a challenge to the desolation all around.
Soon he charged up a smooth slope and stopped on dry ground once again. Normally he would have paused to nibble a patch of clover or very young grass, but now there was no food to be found.
Every day the unicorn progressed farther in his exploration of the devastated vale. And each day, the scene around him grew more miserable, more hopeless. Kamerynn's ribs now showed clearly through his dirty hide, but his stance remained ever proud and unbowed.
And then he was off again, moving with the easy canter he could maintain all day. He loped through a chaotic jumble of hills, where all the dead trees had lost their roots in the sandy soil and lay like matchsticks, a nearly impenetrable tangle. The unicorn forged ahead, forcing his way among the trunks and nearly getting stuck before he emerged from the other side.
He came into a shallow draw and followed a pebbly stream bed, now dry, down the center. This was free of trees, so he was able to canter again.
Finally the unicorn stopped in his tracks, his nostrils flaring. His great head swiveled as he looked this way, then that, before turning his attention to the ground. A spoor lay there, crossing the path that Kamerynn followed. As a trail, the spoor was completely invisible, for the thing that had passed had neither disturbed even one tiny stone nor broken the most insignificant of twigs.
Nevertheless, its passing was written boldly on the land for the eyes of the unicorn. Kamerynn saw the mark of four huge paws, carrying a heavy body of supple grace. But the thing that made the unicorn's ears perk upward and widened his large eyes was the fact that the spoor on the ground was written not in trail sign, but in sheer, palpable evil.
The god of murder sucked hungrily at the warm life of the Moonshaes, like a vampire claiming the blood of its vic-
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tim. And like the vampire's prey, the goddess Earthmother's strength faded toward eternal nothingness.
The history of Bhaal is a tale of treachery and betrayal, murder and death, on a scope undreamed of by most creatures. Creatures of the lower planes, creatures of the mortal world梐ll had tasted death at the hands of Bhaal and his minions.
But his killing had never before claimed a god.
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OATH OF BLOOD AND DESPAIR
Canthus, leading the others along the trail, discovered the body first. The moorhound probed Daryth's corpse mournfully as Tristan dismounted and walked slowly to the remains of his friend. He heard Robyn behind him, but he did not turn.
He had no doubt that the Calishite was dead. A ghastly wound had torn away half his chest. The scene lay under a blanket of blood, more blood than Tristan could imagine. Numbly he watched as Robyn knelt beside the body and closed Daryth's eyes. She bowed her head, and he followed her example, too stunned to compose a prayer of his own. The others stood back silently, sharing in their grief.
/ did this to him\ a voice screeched in Tristan's mind. He watched Robyn's back, saw her shoulders shake as she wept. At that moment, he dreaded, more than anything he had ever feared, that she would turn to him and accuse him of the very thing he was blaming himself for. If she did that, he knew that his grief, and his guilt, would surely drive him mad.
In a moment, she rose and looked at him with tear-filled eyes. Her gaze held no accusation, only a deep, aching sorrow. "I shall find a place to bury him," she said and walked into the woods.
Tristan nodded dumbly and watched her go. As Robyn disappeared between the trees, his eyes were drawn unwillingly back to the corpse. Angrily he tore his cloak from his shoulders and knelt beside Daryth, covering him with the garment. And then he wept.
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"By all the gods, my friend, I know I failed you!" He spoke softly, to himself only, and to Daryth. He hoped devoutly that the Calishite could know his sorrow. "I did not deserve the loyalty of one such as you, and yet you gave it to me."
Tristan raised his eyes to the gray sky, staring upward through the blur of his tears. "By those same gods, I vow to avenge your death. I know I cannot bring you back, but I can only pray that your memory will grant me forgiveness!" He wept for the loss of his friend, and for his own terrible guilt in that loss. He seemed, everywhere, to be confronted by evidence of his own failure. He felt as if his life was degenerating into chaos. All of his failures seemed to culminate in the lifeless body of his friend, growing cold in this dead forest.
"No more!" he hissed, almost inaudibly. Pressing his fists to his eyes, he willed his tears to stop. He started at the touch of a hand upon his shoulder and looked up to see lavish beside him.
"He was a brave man, and true," she said, her own eyes moist.
"And I was the one? Tristan began angrily. "Don't say it!" warned the bard, an iron edge in her voice. "You are the High King of the Ffolk, king of us all. Our destiny is wrapped within yours, and some of us will die before you reach that destiny!"
The king listened. He wanted to argue, but the tone of her voice compelled him to remain silent.
"It grieves you to witness the death of those who serve you, and that is good, for you must share our pain. But you cannot carry the blame for those deaths. You must have a goal, and that is the goal for all of our people. That goal is the important thing!"
Tristan wanted to shout at her, to tell her that this was different. This was a death for which he bore special responsibility, for it was brought on by his own selfishness and arrogance.
But he said nothing. Instead, he thought about her words. It seemed a long time that he stood there, while Tavish sat beside a tree and began to strum a slow anthem on her lute.
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The music floated around him, sweet and heartbreaking at the same time. It was full of minor chords, yet it resounded with a triumphant pattern that urged a listener to look up, not down.
"I always knew he needed me to look after him," said Pawldo mfeerably. The halfling's face was red with grief. Tristan had always suspected that the diminutive adventurer cared for the Calishite more than he had admitted.
Newt and Yazilliclick curled up dejectedly on the ground. The faerie dragon's scales had darkened to a deep purple, a hue the others had never seen him take on. Yazilliclick peered into the woods nervously, his antennae twitching in agitation. Robyn returned, having found a suitable grave site, and Tristan carried the body behind her. The others offered to help, but he would have no assistance for this task.
They prepared Daryth for burial as best they could, covering his body and its horrible wound with his favorite red cloak. Robyn tenderly brushed his hair, and finally Daryth had the look, almost, of one who rested peacefully.
Tristan gently removed the Calishite's ensorcelled gloves and laid Daryth's hands across his chest. Turning to Pawldo, he held the soft leather objects toward the halfling. "These came from a place of long ago," he said haltingly. "I think he ... he would have wanted you to have them."
The despondent Pawldo said nothing, but he took the gloves reverently and slid them onto his hands. Though they had been too large for the halfling while Tristan held them, they quickly shrunk to a skintight fit.
They laid Daryth to rest in a small clearing, high above the winding gorge. Robyn said a quiet prayer over his body, asking the goddess Earthmother to help his spirit in its search for fulfillment. Tavish strummed another anthem, heart-breakingly beautiful, and they stood for a moment of silence.
Tristan stared at the rough ground, the dirt he had piled with his bare hands. He had never felt more forlorn. But all the time he had labored, a grim resolve had begun to crystallize in his mind, a determination that this drifting of his
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life into chaos must end.
Hobarth decided that the community before him must be the largest on this forsaken shore. He stood on a high, bald hilltop less than a mile inland from the town. From the summit, he could see the wooden and animal-skin buildings scattered around the shore of a small cove. Rickety wooden piers jutted into the water, and a number of small boats bobbed at rest.
It wasn't much of a town, but the other human settlements he had discovered were even smaller, tiny fishing villages of a score or two buildings. The north coast of Gwynneth seemed a poor place for an attack, if plunder was the object. The plans of Bhaal were not obvious to his humble cleric, however. Here Bhaal had ordered the attack, and so here it would be.
