And saw, not the library of Tarchamus but the temple of Oghma, the Domes of Reason, in Procampur. And it was Jedik and the leaders of Oghma’s paladins who were walking toward Dahl.
Cold rushed over him. He heard his sword fall to the ground, but when Dahl looked down at his hands, he saw as he feared: the blood-soaked bandage wrapped around the left, the ugly swelling of the broken bone. The floor beyond was no longer pale limestone, but rust-colored tiles, and there was no blade beyond. The shelves around him had become pews and reading stands.
No-he shut his eyes. Not again. Once was enough.
But before Jedik reached him, those old emotions surged up like an unstoppable tide. His world was in freefall, and no matter how hard he tried to catch hold, there was nothing to slow him down. His heart was pounding, and by the time his mentor stood before him, his stomach was sick and his head spun as if he might collapse.
“Nothing happened,” he said, as he had seven years before.
“I know,” Jedik said.
“I tried. I tried, and tried.” Panic again clawed its way up Dahl’s throat. “It’s still broken and I can’t fix it, I can’t fix it!” The paladins behind the old loremaster looked on, stern and cold. Looking for all the world as if they had never thought anything of Dahl but that he was trouble and a nuisance. A poor use of the order’s charity. A millstone.
“Please,” Dahl said, tears rising to his eyes. “What do I do?”
Jedik set a hand on his shoulder and gestured for Dahl to sit. “It seems,” Jedik said, settling himself beside the younger man, “that Oghma has seen fit to revoke your powers.”
He had said it already, already the pain of it was seven years on, but all over again Dahl’s heart shattered. “No,” he pled. “No.”
“Dahl-”
“Why?” he howled. “What have I done? How have I failed?” He was sobbing now, and he didn’t care that the paladins were shifting uncomfortably to see him. Somehow he had slipped, he had transgressed without knowing how, and fallen. “I cannot. I cannot lose everything. Please. What do I do?”
Jedik laid a hand on his shoulder. “You are sworn to serve knowledge. ‘Knowledge is not to be hidden, not from the world and not from the self. Tell me, Dahl … how does it serve you to lock yourself away here?”
Jedik waited as if he expected an answer. Dahl shook his head. “I don’t understand. Where? In the temple?”
With a pitying look, Jedik set his gnarled hands on either side of Dahl’s wounded one. But this time, he did not clasp his student’s hand in his. He did not cast the spell to heal the wound … instead, Dahl watched as the old man’s cheeks sank like a corpse’s, his eyes becoming small and eerily bright as diamonds.
“There’s nothing here worth dying for,” he said, but it was Tam’s voice that said it.
Someone grabbed ahold of him and pulled him bodily to the floor. He hit the ground, and once more the tile was limestone, the shelves hemmed him in, and his sword was lying on the ground all-too-near his cheek. And the tiefling was there, scrambling to her feet behind him, leaping over his prone form to stand as if ready to do battle with some unseen monster.
“You leave him be!” Farideh shouted. “Leave all of us be!” There were flames licking the edges of the air around the rod in her hand, the veins in her wrist black as streaks of rot. No answer came from the cold quiet of the library. “You can’t chase us off!” she shouted. “We’re not as weak as you think!”
Silence, but for the pant of her breath and of Dahl’s.
She made a little shriek of annoyance and shook the flames from her hands. She looked down at Dahl for an interminable moment, her queer eyes flickering-and it took him a moment to realize she was assessing his state.
“Are you all right?” she said softly.
He looked down at his hands, but they were whole again. Not so his heart, once again ravaged by the knowledge of what he’d lost. He swallowed against the lump in his throat.
“Fine,” he said, ignoring the hand she offered him. He dared to look at the spot where Jedik had stood. An illusion, he thought. A very cruel illusion.
“You were standing there,” she said. “Talking to someone. Begging …” She looked away. “It was an illusion, wasn’t it? You were reliving something bad.”
He turned away from her and wiped the tears from his face-gods, that hadn’t been part of the illusion either. “It’s fine.”
How had he come so under Beshaba’s notice that not only did the illusion force him to relive his very worst memory, but then Farideh-of all people-had to find him at it, weeping like a child and shaking. He did not need her watching him all smug and piteous, while Jedik’s words rattled his thoughts.
It seems that Oghma has seen fit to revoke your powers. Tell me, Dahl, how does it serve you to lock yourself away here?
No. That wasn’t right …
Farideh was still there, watching him with that inscrutable expression. “What happened?” she asked more gently.
“It’s fine,” he repeated. “We need to find the others.”
“You ought to tell Tam what you saw. He’d want to know-”
Dahl cut her off. “If you breathe a word of this to him,” he snarled, “I will tell him exactly what I found you doing, and then I will leave you here in this bloody cavern with all that water to get through. Now leave. Me. Be.”
For a moment, he thought she was going to pull the same ridiculous stunt she had back at the inn-flash her infernal powers as if rubbing them in his face. The tatters of smoke blurred her edges and she stepped back.
“You think,” she said, “that you know everything, you think no one can possibly be as godsbedamned smart as you, but every other word out of your karshoji mouth is you jumping to another conclusion that isn’t fair. At least now you know better than to sneer at the rest of us for getting caught by those illusions. I’ll see you in the camp.” The sound of her tail brushing the floor in an agitated slash chased her footsteps.
Good riddance, Dahl told himself. But it didn’t work-that had been humiliating in every possible way, including telling her off. He didn’t want to care. He dragged his hands through his hair. Once they were free of this place, he would find some other way to occupy himself-away from tieflings and silverstars.
Tell me, Dahl, how does it serve you to lock yourself away here?
It had been very nearly the same conversation they’d had on that terrible day, until the end. What Jedik had told him, Dahl had etched on his heart, repeating it over and over and over again: “Tell me, Dahl, how does it serve Oghma to simply give you the answers you’ve been sent to seek? When you are sworn to the God of Knowledge, you are sworn to serve knowledge, to seek it, to free it.” He’d shaken his head. “It is in your power to know. So find the answers.”
That had been three years ago. And Dahl had found nothing.
Not a soul would have called the Lord of Knowledge a cruel god. But after so long searching, Dahl had begun to wonder how dear Oghma’s regard really was. He missed, still, the divine presence of his god, the surge of magic lighting his mind on fire and nearly stealing his breath away entirely, the shimmering notes of the harp that came sometimes with powerful prayers. He wondered how long it would be before he couldn’t remember it any longer, and he both craved and dreaded that day.
He would have liked to keep on sobbing. He would have liked to have locked himself away with a bottle of zzar or three and get as maudlin as he liked. Three years and the wound was as raw as the day it had cut his life in half.
He wiped his face again, burying down all the sorrow and anger and loss and rage, all the while turning the difference between his memory and the illusion over in his thoughts, as if by some twisting he would find a secret to unlocking this misery. He pulled himself to his feet.