And there remained, too, the war. The last few days had come as a reprieve to the battle-weary woman, despite the attack on the road, but Danica knew that the quiet time was only temporary. More fighting would break out, in the spring if not sooner, and Danica had long ago resolved to be a part of that struggle.
Cadderly, though, had run away from it, and she didn’t know if he would change his mind.
So Danica didn’t answer the question, and Cadderly, wise enough to understand her hesitancy and her fears, didn’t ask it again. Day by day, she decided. They would pass their time together day by day and see what changes the wind across the lake brought.
They walked quietly along the beach for some time, Cadderly leading Danica to one of his favorite places. The shoreline jutted sharply out into the water in a small, tree-covered peninsula with banks only a foot above the water level. A single path, barely a foot wide, led the way into the thick tangle, ending at a small clearing right in the center of the peninsula. Though they were barely half a mile from the bustle of Carradoon, and barely half a mile from the island section as well, it seemed to Cadderly and Danica that the world had disappeared beyond the shelter of those trees.
Danica looked slyly at Cadderly, suddenly suspecting the reason he had brought her out there.
But Cadderly apparently had other ideas. He led Danica down another narrow path, to the very tip of the peninsula, beside a small pool formed by the waves whenever a large boat passed by. Cadderly indicated a mossy stone and bade Danica to sit.
Cadderly walked the perimeter of the pool, muttering something under his breath that Danica couldn’t make out. She soon came to understand that the young priest was chanting, a spell, most likely.
Cadderly stopped walking. His body swayed gently, a willow in the wind he seemed, and his arms moved in graceful circles. Danica’s eyes settled on Cadderly’s holy symbol, the single eye-and-candle design set in the center of his wide-brimmed hat. She felt a pulse of power from that emblem. It seemed to glow with some inner strength.
Cadderly’s arms waved again as he reached low in front of him and swung them slowly out wide to either side.
The water reacted to his call. The center of the pool bubbled with sudden energy then rolled outward, great ripples moving to every edge. Danica moved her feet in close to her, thinking that she was going to get splashed, but the water didn’t break the edges of the pool. As the waves crested, there came a great hissing sound and the water vaporized, rolling up into the air to form a grayish cloud.
More water rolled out to be consumed, and when it was done, just a few small puddles remained where the pool had been. The cloud hovered for a few moments until the pull of the wind broke it apart to nothingness.
Danica blinked in amazement and looked at Cadderly, who stood very still, staring at the mud-and-puddle pit.
“You have become powerful,” she remarked after some time had passed. “For a nonbeliever.”
Cadderly glared at her but could not sustain any anger in the face of her disarming smile. Through his smile, though, Danica recognized the young man’s torment.
“Perhaps it’s just a variation of a wizard’s magic, as you fear,” she offered, “but perhaps the strength does come from Deneir. You seem too quick to deny what others of your order—”
“My order?” Cadderly was quick to interrupt, his tone both sarcastic and incredulous.
“Your holy symbol vibrated with power,” Danica replied. “I witnessed it myself.”
“A conduit for magical energy, much like the tome on my desk,” Cadderly said more sharply than Danica deserved. He seemed to understand that, and his tone softened considerably as he continued, “Whenever I call on the magic, I merely recall some of the words in that book.”
“And it is a book of Deneir,” Danica reasoned.
Cadderly shook his head. “Do you know of Belisarius?” he asked.
“The wizard in the tower to the south?” Danica said.
Cadderly nodded. “Belisarius has a similar book—a spellbook. If he attached a god’s name to it, would it then become a holy book?”
“It’s not the same,” Danica muttered, frustrated.
“I don’t know that,” Cadderly said.
Danica looked at the lake behind her, at the gently lapping waves against the many small rocks at the peninsula’s tip, determined to change the subject. Then she looked at the muddy hole. “How long will it take to refill?” she asked, not happy with the results of Cadderly’s display. “Or must it wait for the next rain?”
Cadderly smiled and bent low, scooping a few drops of the remaining water into his cupped palms. He pulled his hand in close to his chest, again muttered some words under his breath.
“As the graceful rain must fall!” he ended, then he threw his hands out before him, threw the water to the air above the muddy pit. A tiny cloud appeared, hovering and churning in the air, and a moment later, a steady stream of water poured forth, splashing into the mud.
Before Danica ended her first burst of laughter, the pool had returned, as full as when she had first seen it.
“You find this humorous?” Cadderly asked, narrowing his gray eyes and thumping his fists against his hips so that he seemed a caricature of wounded pride.
“I find you humorous,” Danica retorted, and Cadderly’s expression revealed that he was truly hurt.
“You have all the proof right before you,” Danica explained, “more proof than the vast majority of ordinary people will ever know, and yet you remain so filled with doubt. My poor Cadderly, so damned by the unending questions of his own intelligence!”
Cadderly looked at the pool he had magically evaporated and refilled, and chuckled at the irony of it all. Danica took his hand and led him back to the clearing at the center of the peninsula. Cadderly thought to keep going, down the other narrow path and back out to the wider beaches, but Danica held tight to his hand and did not continue, forcing him to turn around.
They were alone in the sun and the breeze, and all the world seemed peaceful. Danica smiled mischievously, her almond eyes telling Cadderly without the slightest doubt that it was not yet time to leave.
It was nearly twilight when Cadderly and Danica made their way back to the Dragon’s Codpiece. Farther down Lakeview Street, fatherly Ivan watched their progress. The dwarf was much more at ease than he had been, and the safe return of Cadderly and Danica made him feel that his suspicions might be unfounded, that he was acting as silly as a mother hen.
But was it a coincidence, just a moment later, when a beggar came to the end of the alleyway next to the Dragon’s Codpiece, and appeared to be watching the young couple as intently as Ivan was?
Ivan sensed that the man meant to go after the two, and the dwarf started to make his way slowly up the street. He didn’t have his greataxe with him—it wasn’t considered proper to stand around on one of Carradoon’s streets so obviously armed—but he was wearing his deer-antlered helmet. If the beggar made a move against Cadderly, Ivan resolved to gore him good.
Cadderly and Danica turned into the inn, and the beggar leaned against the wall. Ivan stopped, perplexed, feeling foolish. He looked around, half-expecting everyone else on the street to be pointing at him and chuckling, but of course no one was.
“Stupid dwarf,” he muttered under his breath. “What’re ye getting so anxious about? Just a poor man, looking for a bit of coins.”
Ivan stopped and scratched his yellow beard curiously when he looked back toward the alleyway.
The man was gone.
Danica giggled, but Cadderly was not amused at the knock on his door—not at that particular moment.
“Oh, go and answer it,” Danica whispered to him. “It’s probably the innkeeper’s son, whom you have been worried over the whole of the day!”
“I don’t want to go,” Cadderly replied, pouting like a child.
That brought another chuckle from Danica, who pulled the bedclothes up tight around her neck.
Gr
oaning with every move, Cadderly pulled himself out of bed and eased over to the door, wrapping himself in his discarded cloak.
“Rufo?” he asked as he cracked the door open.
The hallway was dark, the candles in the great chandelier atop the stairs having long since died away. Only the glow from the hearth room’s fireplace offered any light at all. Still, Cadderly could hardly mistake Rufo’s tilting posture.
“My greetings,” the man replied. “And my apologies for disturbing you.”
Cadderly blushed deeply, a sight the man obviously enjoyed.
“What do you want?” asked the younger priest.
“You are needed in the hearth room,” Rufo explained, “as soon as you can.”
“No.”
The answer seemed simple enough, and Cadderly moved to shut the door, but Rufo stuck his foot in the way and said, “Headmaster Avery will return with a delegation from the chapel of Ilmater.”
Cadderly looked back over his shoulder to the balcony doors, and the blackness of the night. “It’s late,” he said.
“It is very late,” Rufo admitted. “The Ilmatari wish this done in private. They seek information about the deaths of their acolytes at the Edificant Library during the time of the chaos curse.”
“I have already written my testimony—”
“Avery asks that you come,” Rufo pressed. “He has not required much of you, certainly less than he asks of me.” Obvious resentment rang clearly in the man’s tone. “You can do this much for him, impudent Cadderly, after all the headmaster has done for you.”
The argument seemed solid enough. Cadderly groaned again then nodded. “I’ll be along,” he said.
Danica’s giggling renewed as soon as the door was closed.
“I will not be gone long,” Cadderly promised as he pulled on his clothes.
“It doesn’t matter,” Danica replied. “I’m certain I shall fall asleep immediately.” She stretched languidly and rolled to her side, and Cadderly, cursing his luck, left the room.
He, too, must have been sleepy, for he didn’t even notice the weasel-like man—was it a man?—behind a slightly opened door, watching him go.
“Cadderly?” Danica uttered the question, but she heard it as though someone else had spoken the words. A smell of exotic flowers permeated the room.
Somewhere deep in her mind, she was surprised that she had fallen asleep so soon. Or had she? How long had Cadderly been gone? she wondered. And what was that smell?
“Cadderly?” she asked again.
“Hardly.”
The word should have sounded like a warning to the woman—she knew she should open her eyes and find out what in the Nine Hells was going on … but she couldn’t.
She felt a thumb, a gloved hand, she believed, pressed against her eyelid, and her eye was forced open, just a crack. Danica tried to focus her thoughts—why was she so sleepy?
Through the blur, she saw herself in a small mirror. She knew that the mirror was hanging around someone’s neck.
Whose neck?
“Cadderly?”
The laughter that came back at her filled her with dread, and her eyes popped open against the permeating drowsiness, suddenly alert.
She saw Ghost for just an instant, too briefly to strike out, or even to cry out. Then she fell back into her own thoughts, into the blackness that suddenly became her own mind, and she felt a burning pain throughout every inch of her body.
Danica didn’t understand what was happening, but she knew that it wasn’t good. She felt herself moving away, but knew that her body wasn’t actually moving.
Another blackness loomed in the distance, across a gray expanse, and Danica felt herself pulled toward it, compelled to sink into it. The first blackness, her mortal coil, was left behind, far behind.
Few in all of Faerûn would have understood, but few in all of Faerûn were as well versed in meditation as Danica.
Her identity!
Someone was stealing her very identity!
“No!” Danica tried to cry out, but control of her body’s voice was almost gone by then and the word came out as an indecipherable whimper.
Danica focused her will, dismissed the continuing smell that she suspected was some sort of sleeping poison. She located that approaching blackness and pushed against it with all her mental strength, understanding that to enter it was to be lost.
A moment later, she felt another presence, similarly wandering out of body.
Her thoughts screamed a thousand protests at it, but it didn’t respond, it just kept making its way for the blackness that Danica had left behind.
“Where are they?” Cadderly asked when he came down into the hearth room. The fire burned low and the place was empty, except for him and Rufo, who sat at a table in the far corner.
“Well?” Cadderly growled as he moved over and took a seat opposite the man.
“Patience,” Rufo replied. “It won’t be long.”
Cadderly leaned back and threw one arm over the back of the chair. By his estimation, it had already been too long. He looked at Rufo again, noting a subtle undercurrent of nervousness in the man. Cadderly dismissed the feeling and any suspicions it started to encourage, reminding himself that Kierkan Rufo was always at least a little nervous.
The young priest closed his eyes and let the moments slip past, let his thoughts linger back to Danica and the pleasures and implications the day had brought. He would never leave her again, of that much he was sure.
Cadderly’s eyes popped wide.
“What is it?” he heard Rufo ask.
Cadderly studied the man, and saw Rufo blink—heard Rufo blink!
The fire crackled so powerfully that Cadderly thought the whole wall would be aflame, but when he turned to regard the hearth, the embers barely seemed to glow with their last flickers of life.
A fly buzzed by the bar. Gods! Cadderly thought, the thing must be the size of a small pony.
He saw nothing there.
And he was aware of that song again, playing softly in the back of his mind. Instead of trying to figure all of it out, Cadderly just allowed himself to feel.
Something—some danger?—had put him on his guard, and he had subconsciously replayed a page from the tome, enacted a magical spell to heighten his hearing.
“What is it?” Rufo asked him again, more urgently. Cadderly didn’t look at the man, just held a hand up to silence him.
Breathing.
Cadderly heard the steady inhale and exhale of breath a few tables away. He looked over but saw nothing.
But there was something, someone, there. Shifting his probe, Cadderly felt the magical energy.
“What are you saying?” he heard Rufo ask, and he realized only then that his lips were moving, forming the words from yet another page of The Tome of Universal Harmony.
Cadderly saw a silvery outline of a young man, recognized the stringy locks of hair hanging down one side of the invisible intruder’s head.
Rufo shoved him roughly, forcing his attention.
“What?” the man demanded.
Cadderly started to rebuke him then stopped and instead locked his intent gaze on Kierkan Rufo.
Danica calmed her thoughts; she had to beat the other presence to the void of her physical mind. She turned her spirit around, willed her mind to connect fully with the tiny part of her that she had left behind, the part that had forced her mouth to utter that pitiful sound. She sensed the other presence pushing at the blackness then, nearly entering her form.
She felt a burning sensation.
Danica saw too many things in the next instant for her to possibly sort through them. She saw, most clearly, murders—dozens of murders. She saw the Night Masks.
Night Masks!
The assassins guild, the scourge of Westgate, had killed her parents.
She saw a clan of giants, through the eyes of a giant.
She saw the other giants die at her own giant hands.
She saw Cadderly,
on the road to Carradoon, and huddled at his desk over The Tome of Universal Harmony, and crouched behind the protection of his partly opened door.
To her horror, Danica realized that she was recalling someone else’s memories, had connected with the small part that other identity had left behind on its journey to take her body. And that person, whoever it might be, had been close to Cadderly on several occasions.
Night Masks!
Let me out! her thoughts protested.
The other identity cried out to her in rage and agony and disbelief. She heard no words, but understood its meaning acutely, understood that her focused rage could push her back to where she belonged.
Let me out!
Danica pushed against the foreign blackness with all her mental strength, called upon her rage in combination with her years of mental training. The burning intensified then abated, and Danica felt a physical presence once more—her own body.
The smell returned and Danica felt a cloth pressed against her face. Giving in to her warrior instincts, she locked her fingers into a gouging position and cocked her arm for a strike.
She fell hard against the floor, but she didn’t realize it.
Shadows—dark, misshapen things—grumbled and growled from the man’s shoulders, their demeanor toward Cadderly obviously hostile. Rufo reached out across the small table to touch Cadderly again, but the young priest slapped his hand away.
“Cadderly!” Rufo responded, but the young priest sensed clearly that the man’s apparent concern was a facade.
Before Rufo could move again, Cadderly pushed against the table, slamming its other edge into the man’s belly. Cadderly honestly didn’t know what to do, didn’t know if he was being warned or misled.
“Tell Avery that he can find me in the morning,” the young priest said, rising and spinning around to survey the room. He sensed that the invisible wizard was long gone.
“Avery won’t like that,” he heard Rufo say, but more acutely, he heard a thump from somewhere upstairs that he knew instinctively was his own room.
Danica!