"What do you see when you look out there?" Jarlaxle asked. "Wasted potential? Barrenness where there should be fertility? Death where there should be life?"
"Reality," Artemis Entreri answered with cold finality.
He turned and offered one stern look to the drow then walked past him.
Jarlaxle heard the uncertainty in Entreri's voice, sensed that the man was off-balance. And he knew the source of that imbalance, for he had played no small part in ensuring that Idalia's flute had found its way into Artemis Entreri's hand.
He stayed at the rail for some time, soaking in the scene before him, remembering the night just passed, and considering his always dour friend.
Most of all, the dark elf wondered what he might do to dominate the first, recreate the second, and alter the third.
Always wondering, always thinking.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE RIDE OF MARIABRONNE
Arrayan had to pause and consider the question for a long while before answering. Where had she left the book? The woman felt the fool, to be sure. How could she have let something that powerful out of her sight? How could she not even remember where she'd placed it? Her mind traced back to the previous night, when she had dared start reading the tome. She remembered casting every defensive spell she knew, creating intricate wards and protections against the potentially devastating magic Zhengyi had placed on the book.
She looked back at the table in the center of the room, and she knew that she had cracked open the book right there.
A sense of vastness flooded her memories, a feeling of size, of magic, and a physical construct too large to be contained within.
"I took it out," she said, turning back to Wingham and Mariabronne. "Out of here."
"You left it somewhere beyond your control?" Wingham scolded, his voice incredulous. He leaped up from his seat, as if his body was simply too agitated to be contained in a chair. "An item of that power?"
Mariabronne put a hand on Wingham's arm to try to calm him. "The book is out of the house," he said to Arrayan. "Somewhere in Palishchuk?"
Arrayan considered the question, trying desperately to scour her memories. She glanced over at Olgerkhan, needing his always rock-solid support.
"No," she answered, but it was more a feeling than a certainty. "Out of the city. The city was… too small."
Wingham slipped back into his seat and for a moment seemed to be gasping for breath. "Too small? What did you create?"
Arrayan could only stare at him. She remembered leaving the house with the book tucked under her arm, but only vaguely, as if she were walking within a dream. Had it been a dream?
"Have you left the house since your return from your journey with the book?" Mariabronne asked.
The woman shook her head.
"Any sense of where you went?" the ranger pressed. "North? South near Wingham's caravan?"
"Not to Uncle Wingham," Arrayan replied without pause.
Wingham and Mariabronne looked at each other.
"Palishchuk only has two gates open most of the time," Mariabronne said. "South and north."
"If not south, then…." said Wingham.
Mariabronne was first to stand, motioning for the others to follow. Olgerkhan moved immediately to Arrayan's side, offering her a shawl to protect her from the chilly wind in her weakened form.
"How could I have been so foolish?" the woman whispered to the large half-orc, but Olgerkhan could only smile at her, having no practical answers.
"The book's magic was beyond your control, perhaps," Mariabronne replied. "I have heard of such things before. Even the great Kane, for all his discipline and strength of will, was nearly destroyed by the Wand of Orcus."
"The wand was a god's artifact," Arrayan reminded him.
"Do not underestimate the power of Zhengyi," said Mariabronne. "No god was he, perhaps, but certainly no mortal either." He paused and looked into the troubled woman's eyes. "Fear not," he said. "We'll find the book and all will be put right."
The city was quiet that late afternoon, with most of the folk still off in the south at Wingham's circus. The quartet saw almost no one as they made their way to the north gate. Once there, Mariabronne bent low before Arrayan and bade her to lift one foot. He inspected her boot then studied the print she'd just made. He motioned for the others to hold and went to the gate then began poking around, studying the tracks on the muddy ground.
"You left and returned along the same path," he informed Arrayan. The ranger pointed to the northeast, toward the nearest shadows of the Great Glacier, the towering frozen river that loomed before them. "Few others have come through this gate in the last couple of days. It should not be difficult to follow your trail."
Indeed it wasn't, for just outside the area of the gate, Arrayan's footprints, both sets, stood out alone on the summer-melted tundra. What was surprising for Mariabronne and all the others, though, was how far from the city Arrayan's trail took them. The Great Glacier loomed larger and larger before them as they trudged to the northeast, and more directly north. The city receded behind them and night descended, bringing with it a colder bite to the wind. The air promised that the summer, like all the summers before it so far north, would be a short one, soon to end. An abrupt change in the weather would freeze the ground in a matter of days. After that, the earth would be held solid for three quarters of the year or more. It was not unknown for the summer thaw to last less than a single month.
"It's no wonder you were so weary," Wingham said to Arrayan some time later, the miles behind them.
The woman could only look back at him, helpless. She had no idea she'd been so far from the city and could only barely remember leaving her house.
The foursome came up on a ridge, looking down on a wide vale, a copse of trees at its low point down the hill before them and a grouping of several large stones off to the right.
Arrayan gasped, "There!"
She pointed, indicating the stones, the memory of the place flooding back to her.
Mariabronne, using a torch so he could see the tracks, was about to indicate the same direction.
"No one else has come out," the ranger confirmed. "Let us go and collect the book that I might bring it to King Gareth."
Arrayan and Olgerkhan caught the quick flash of shock on Wingham's face at that proclamation, but to his credit, the shrewd merchant didn't press the issue just then.
Mariabronne, torch in hand, was first to move around the closest, large boulder. The others nearly walked into his back when they, too, moved around the corner only to discover that the ranger had stopped. As they shuffled to his side to take in the view before him, they quickly came to understand.
For there was Zhengyi's book, suspended in the air at about waist height by a pair of stone-gray tentacles that rolled out from its sides and down to, and into, the ground. The book was open, with only a few pages turned. The foursome watched in blank amazement as red images of various magical runes floated up from the open page and dissipated in the shimmering air above the book.
"What have you done?" Wingham asked.
Mariabronne cautiously approached.
"The book is reading itself," Olgerkhan observed, and while the statement sounded ridiculous as it was uttered, another glance at the book seemed to back up the simple half-orc's plain-spoken observation.
"What is that?" Wingham asked as Mariabronne's torchlight extended farther back behind the book, revealing a line of squared gray stone poking through the tundra.
"Foundation stones," Arrayan answered.
The four exchanged nervous glances, then jumped as a spectral hand appeared in mid-air above the opened book and slowly turned a single page.