But never had she witnessed a greater blasphemy than the Children ofBhaal. Their very existence was a challenge to the balance, and their birth, wrought by the magic of the Darkwell, was a challenge to her soul.
She looked upon all the creatures of the isles as her offspring, and this compounded the outrage. Perhaps her heart bled most bitterly for the fate of the great brown bear. Grunt had been a faithful servant and protector of Genna Moonsinger for a very long time, measured in human terms, and the destruction of the bear and his subsequent perversion into a thing of evil were the cruelest cuts of all.
But all her knowledge, awareness, and outrage slowly faded as her weakness grew. A blackness, the expanding void of death, surrounded her.
And then she knew no more.
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Recoiling in shock and grief梐nger would not come until later桼obyn stumbled back to her room. There she took refuge in the Scrolls of Arcanus. Burying herself in these talismans of faith, she sought an answer that did not exist.
A tiny voice cried within her. Why? Why would he betray me thus? And then the plaintive voice vanished beneath the din of cold anger. Her rage swelled inside of her like an unnatural poison, hurting her but also directing a fiery scorn toward the young king who, hours earlier, had claimed her love.
Robyn's door thumped beneath a persistent pounding, and she vaguely realized that Tristan stood without, calling her name. She made no reply, and after a while he went away, allowing her to return to the scrolls.
Each was a sheet of frail parchment, inscribed at the top with a stylized rune depicting a blossoming rose within the circle of a blazing sun. The parchment curled of its own will, shaped by long storage within the tube. Each was covered with strange runes, symbols Robyn had never seen before.
All of the scrolls bore a similar border, inscribed in green ink faded to a dull brown. Delicate tracings outlined the thorny stems of roses, framing each page. The stems encircled a vivid image of the sun in each corner, then came together in an involved depiction of the rose blossom itself at the top center of the parchment.
The druid dropped her eyes to the writing on the page. The runes seemed to dance and waver before her gaze. Her
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vision blurred, and a dull ache throbbed in her forehead, but she held to her scrutiny. The pounding in her head grew to a roar, and the runes seemed to twist all over the page, as if attempting to evade her.
Gradually, by the force of her will, she began to bend the text to her understanding. The shivering of the runes ceased, and each lay flat and motionless on the page like a normal inscription. The pounding in her head diminished, and as it did, the runes became visible as symbols, and then the meaning of those symbols became clear.
As she read, she learned secrets deeper than any she had imagined. The scrolls were exquisitely preserved, but incredibly ancient. She was certain they predated even the age of Cymrych Hugh, before the very earliest era of the Ffolk.
I believed that you, Tristan Kendrick, would be a leader as great as Cymrych Hugh. You would unite the Ffolk, I thought. You would be the light that would drive evil from our lands. How could you fail me so?
The first of the scrolls told her of the gods of the planes and the delicate harmony of power that ebbed and waned between good and evil, law and chaos. She saw her own druidic doctrine of the balance reflected in this struggle and sensed that the message of the new gods was not so very different from her own faith in the goddess Earthmother. Where she had long known of the four elements, water, earth, fire, and air, the scrolls promised secrets of wind and stone, ocean and flame.
The writing on the scrolls was clerical in nature, strange to her eyes. Some of the symbols梩hose in which she sensed the greatest power梥till hurt her eyes as she beheld them. Some mighty enchantment lurked within these runes. But she forced herself to overcome the pain and discomfort. If she had been weaker, the symbols might have blinded her or driven her mad, but her discipline was such that she bent the power of the scrolls to her will and mastered them. Instead of a threat, the scrolls became a source of spiritual nourishment and growth.
How I wanted to bear your child ... our child. He would
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have been so strong! He would have been so wise! We could have done so much together, you and I. How could you betray me?
The next of the scrolls held the tale of the elements and told how the gods had used them in the creation of the Realms. Prime among them rolled the great mass of the sea. Eternal, imperturbable, unchanging, the sea had marked the boundaries of the world since the dawn of time. Holding fast to the slender page of the scroll, Robyn came to know the gods as beings of and from the sea, forces whose original essence was the vastness of the oceans.
You, too, could have been a force of primordial power, Tristan. Your mark could have been as vast as the ocean! Your power, with me at your side, would have run as deep, your legacy have been as eternal, as the sea itself!
Then she took up the parchment that told of the secrets of stone. She read of the land's rising, bleak and lifeless yet solid and firm, from the bosom of the sea. Thus were the Realms born, and their earth made the foundation for all that would follow. Stone was the flesh of the world, and in this secret梐nd the mastery of stone promised by the scroll梥he began to sense a hope for her fellow druids.
You were my foundation, my rock! You were the firmament upon which I rested my hopes, not just for us and ours, but for the land and peoples of the isles! You could have been the unshakable base for generations of growth and peace and progress!
The following scroll told the story of fire. Fire, hot to the touch, killing and cleansing in its heat. Fire was the forge of the world, the spark from which emerged all the multitude of life that came to live upon the isles.
And the heat of passion that burns within that life. How could that fire consume you so easily? How could you be so weak?
And last she read the tale of wind, the breath that gave life to the world. Vitality came to all things through the wind, she learned. Even the plants breathed, and air was the vessel that brought health to life and carried waste and corruption away. Wind, so tenuous and untouchable yet so
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pervasive and strong. Without the air that was its medium, nothing could live.
Was our love so tenuous, so weak? Could you be so frail that the touch of a strange woman's hand was enough to draw you from me? Is holding you like holding the air: You are here when I breathe, but gone as the breath leaves my body?
As dawn colored the eastern sky, her grief dimmed, only to be replaced by the cold fire of anger. She confronted the reality of Tristan's betrayal, and she found she could not forgive him.
She did not see the aura that shimmered around her as she stood. Her body thrummed with power. The enchantment of the scrolls possessed her soul. Her flesh became the earth, her blood the water.
The fire of anger burned brightly in her soul as she stood before the window, looking eastward toward distant Myrloch Vale. There, awaiting their rescue, stood her druids. She no longer needed the help of a sword at her side, especially one held by so fickle a hand as that of her king. The power burned within her, and she stepped through the window, high above the courtyard, to go to the rescue of her clan.
With a puff of air, she was gone, her body disappearing even before it began to fall. A gust burst from Caer Corwell, racing eastward toward the vale as Robyn, druid of Gwyn-neth, became the wind.
Once again the vulture rose above Caer Corwell, this time soaring away from the sea. The bird's bright eyes searched eastward, for the darkness upon the land that was its destination. For two days the bird flew, never tiring, until it passed above the reaches of desolation and blackness that marked its goal.
Genna, the druid梑ut also Kazgoroth, the minion of Bhaal梐rrived at her master's lair in the Darkwell. Her body shifted easily back to that of the druid, and she quietly informed her master that her task was done.
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Tristan stormed back to his room. Robyn had not acknowledged his knock, and now all his shame, all his frustration, became anger directed at the woman who, he felt, had brought this upon him. He crashed through his door, ready to strike her or kick her. He would drive her from his castle!
But she was already gone.
He sat numbly upon his bed. The haze of drink had fallen from his brain, and now he thought about the woman. It didn't strike him as odd that he had never seen her before. Even as prince, he had never traveled across all of Corwell. Yet she had seemed to know him. And the effect of her eyes, and her body, upon him had been like a powerful drug.
Slowly he convinced himself of a lie: that she had bewitched him somehow into betraying his beloved. His mind would not accept the reality, that the betrayal occurred because his own will was weak.
He thought of the celebration, still proceeding in the hall. As midnight approached, the revelry would be reaching its height. The bitter knowledge of his shame held him to his seat. He could not bear the looks that would fall upon him from his friends, his subjects. Daryth's burning look of accusation as he had left the hall came unbidden into his mind's eye.
The longer he sat and brooded, the blacker his mood became. He leaped to his feet and paced the length of the large bedroom, raging silently. He would make it up to Robyn, he vowed! He would go to Myrloch Vale and confront the evil there with the Sword of Cymrych Hugh! Then she would know the depths of his love for her.
Somehow this made his shame bearable. He walked from the room, passing slowly by Robyn's door. Tempted to knock, instead he listened softly for a moment but heard nothing.
Then he went down the wide stairway and reentered the Great Hall. lavish still played her lute, and most of those present sat quietly, enthralled by a ballad of young lovers.
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Carefully the king returned to the head table.
The others turned as he sat. Pawldo quickly avoided his gaze, and he saw the look of disappointment, even anger, on Daryth's face. More annoying to him was the leer of amusement with which Pontswain regarded him. Grunnarch the Red smiled pleasantly, apparently unaware of anything untoward.
The king looked boldly at his companions, but he felt the red blush of his shame rise into his face. Never mind. His friends would forgive him when he explained his plan of action. And Tristan cared very little what Pontswain thought.
lavish returned to the table as Tristan leaned forward to speak to his friends gathered at the table. The Ffolk at the other tables paid no attention as they joined again in then-own conversations. He saw no sign of the redheaded woman, and for this he felt great relief.
"In the morning, Robyn and I embark for Myrloch Vale. There we will confront this foul cleric and destroy him?and when we return, the celebration can truly begin!"
Daryth's eyebrows rose in surprise, but his face remained masked by a scowl. Pawldo nodded, and Tavish, who arrived at the table as he made his announcement, beamed. "This time I'll be there with you!" declared the bard. "There'll be a song in this that'll last for the ages, to be sure!" "I, too, shall place my axe at your side!" declared Grunnarch solemnly, surprising the young king.
"Thank you, Grunnarch. But I cannot梬ill not梐sk you to accompany us on this mission. We will fight a battle for Corwell's heart, but it is a battle that must be waged by the Ffolk." The Red King scowled, and Tristan wondered if he had offended his guest.
"There is a greater task you can perform, Grunnarch, if I can ask it of you," he hastened to continue. "Can you go to your people and tell them of our peace? Tell them that the time of war between Ffolk and northman is over?" "That is no task for a fighting king!" "Perhaps not. But I ask you, can you do it? The enemies of our islands lie not just in the heartland of Gwynneth. The
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sahuagin who attacked our ships are ample proof of that. Carry the word of Our alliance to your people, and we can unite in a common strength that will defeat all of our foes!"
Grunnarch looked skeptical but held his peace.
"I will need to leave the castle's administration in your hands a little longer," Tristan went on, turning to Randolph.
"I will come with you," announced Daryth, though the black look remained on his face.
"Someone'll have to keep you two alive," grumbled Pawldo. "As usual, it might as well be me!"
Tristan felt a burst of relief as his two old comrades declared their intentions. He had not previously realized how much their support meant to him. The memory of his shame fell to the rear of his thoughts, now, as planning for the expedition accelerated. But then he noticed the Crown of the Isles, gleaming in its place at the center of the table, where he had placed it at the start of the banquet. Its purity seemed to mock him, its brightness causing a physical pain to his eyes. Impulsively he stood up.
"As long as the scourge of evil marks our island, my kingship shall not truly begin!" he announced to the guests at large, noticing the sudden hush that fell across the room. "I shall leave the crown, the symbol of my past victories, here at Corwell, awaiting my triumphant return! Then, and only then, it shall be placed upon my brow in my own castle?and here, before you all, I shall take my place as High King of the Ffolk!"
A thunderous volley of applause exploded from the people, warming the king and seeming to wash his guilt away. That would truly be a grand event, he imagined, with Robyn at his side and evil vanquished from the land!
In the excitement, he failed to notice Tavish's look of alarm following his announcement. She studied the crown with concern, then looked back to the king. She admired, and even loved him, but now she feared he was embarking on an act of folly.
Tristan sat again, and planning for the excursion continued. Tavish, he learned, had returned to Corwell upon the king's powerful stallion, Avalon, from the stable at Kingsbay,
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where Tristan had left him months earlier. His spirits rose still further at the knowledge that this sturdy steed would carry him into the vale.
Finally the details had all been addressed. The revelers had left the hall. Virtually forgotten was his momentary dalliance with the redheaded woman. Perhaps it had all been a dream. Certainly it seemed logical that Robyn would have forgotten about it as well.
