For a long time he stood there, staring at the water which now showed nothing, not even his own reflection. He wondered if he would ever see himself again.
When he stepped outside the cave, Kellin started like a child caught in a forbidden act. She was in conversation with Lanaal, but they both silenced at the sight of him.
"Vell," Kellin said, trying to appear calm, though her eyes were red and her cheeks stained. "Did you see anything?"
"Yes," he said, walking over to her. "So did you."
"No, I…"
He stopped near her. "Tell me," he said.
"It helped explain why I'm here," she said, casting her eyes to the ground. "My compulsion to help your tribe."
"What do you mean?"
"She's atoning," Lanaal supplied. Her hand stroked Kellin's shoulder. "Atoning for a wrong she didn't know of until now."
Vell shook his head, not understanding.
"I saw Morgur's Mound in my vision," Kellin said, her throat becoming dry. "And my father. He read a counter-spell that cut through the magic protecting the place, and he took a piece of the dinosaur bone." She looked up into Vell's eyes. "He lied when he said he bought it in Baldur's Gate. He stole it. He was a-" she choked, "-a vandal and a desecrator."
"But you're not," Vell said.
"But my father…"
"Apparently the blood of mages flows in my veins, but I am no mage," Vell said.
Kellin looked into his brown eyes.
"Sometimes ancestry is something to be overcome, not embraced," Vell continued. "All the same, I don't recommend you tell Keirkrad about this."
"I should say not!" cried Kellin. She wrapped her long arms around him, something he didn't expect. He could feel the warm trickle of tears onto his shoulder. "Tylvis was right," she said. "The Fountains of Memory can show you things you don't want to know." Forcing a smile, she asked, "But what did you find?"
"I was fascinated by what I saw," Vell said. "Few answers and many more questions, but at least now I have seen the faces of our enemies."
"Truly?" Lanaal asked.
Vell broke his embrace with Kellin and nodded to the elf. "One of them is the woman who abducted Sungar. She travels with a group of companions, and from what I saw, they're much closer to our destination than we are." He pointed south to the horizon, to those incongruous mountains.
CHAPTER 11
"They say the gods walk here," Nithinial said. With each foot planted in the muddy earth edging the Unicorn Run, they might have trod in the steps of the immortals. The thought was not comforting to any of the Antiquarians. This was a place where they did not belong.
They had spent quite some time marching along the banks of the famed Unicorn Run. They made no attempt to conceal their presence, but they saw no signs of life here, godly or otherwise, beyond the occasional shalass fish jumping in the waters. Certainly there was no sign of the unicorns, nor of the numerous fey believed to make this area their home.
Leng walked like he belonged there, or at least as if he thought he did. It was odd that such a dark priest could walk through such a famously hallowed place with no ill effects-the Antiquarians wondered if he were trying not to show any harm to himself, or if he were truly powerful enough to resist the effects. He haughtily sniffed the air as if all of the crystalline beauty of nature had no effect on him, indeed, as if it were disgusting to him. The blue purity of the cool, slow waters might have been like a slap to the face to the rest of them, but not for Leng. He would pollute it, destroy it.
Leng was disappointed that they had not yet seen any unicorns. "I had hoped this place which bears their name would be thick with them," he said, not so much to his companions as to the Run itself, and whatever ears might be listening. "I sacrificed one in the temple once. My acolytes captured it in the Southwood. Cyric was especially pleased with that offering. I sliced its horn off, ground it to powder, and used it to devise something special. You will see soon enough."
The fog-shrouded Star Mounts were stretched out before them now, but they still seemed an eternity away-a place they would likely never reach. The Antiquarians had been together for many years and knew each other's moods well. With Vonelh left to rot in a duskwood grove among a pile of dead fey, killed by a supposed ally, they were certainly at their lowest moment. Royce and Bessick walked slumped, defeated; Gunton could not stop himself from talking; and crazy anger blazed in Nithinial's almond-shaped eyes. His elf nature, rising to the surface in the presence of the beauty of the Unicorn Run, was the only thing stopping him from a violent act against Leng.
This was supposed to be an epic quest, but this type of epic did not fit their own modest definition. They did not revere Cyric, spending most of their prayers on Shandakul-a fellow wanderer and explorer of ancient dungeons. They recognized in Leng a truly epic evil. If he had epic heroism to match, this could be a terrible time for the North, for all Faerun even. They certainly did not want to die fighting on behalf of the Mad God's priest, but neither did they want to lose more members to his whims.
What did Ardeth think? A cool mystery, she was obviously not a willing party to this detour, but there was no obvious fear in her face. Unfortunately, they could not draw strength from her composure the way the simple-minded hobgoblin could.
"The fashion in Secomber is to say that at the headwaters of the Run lies the Glade of Life, where the gods live and dance as mortals do," said Gunton. "Others claim that it's the birthplace of all the races of Faerun, and that no further race could ever come to exist if the Glade were destroyed."
A faint roar drew them upstream, the sound growing louder and louder until they rounded a rocky bend to find a true place of legend before them. The roar of the falling water was deafening, yet it appeared as gentle as the mist that softly drifted down from the rocks high above, and the high grassy plateau surrounding it. They all stopped, stunned at the sight of this waterfall. Even Leng stood agape. He merely stared into the rushing waters, the gentle spray misting his strangely calm features.
"The first of the Sisters," said Royce. The Sisters, a set of waterfalls along the Unicorn Run's upper reaches, were famed for their beauty and natural majesty. For once, the legends did not lie.
"I thought no sight could displace Highstar Lake as the most beautiful my eyes have seen," Gunton said, gripping his bearded chin. "The alchemist Amanitus wrote…"
"Quiet, fool," shouted Leng. The calm on his face vanished as he spun to face the trees that lined the banks. With a quick incantation, a pair of black, disfigured hands appeared in the air before him, disembodied and sharp-clawed, and in a flash they flew out into the green wilds. When they returned, they were clamped around the slender arms of a naked woman with greenish hair. She resisted wildly with flailing limbs, her eyes wide in terror. The claws released the dryad at Leng's feet, dropping her flat on her face. Leng drew the flail from his waist and brought it down with all his force onto the dryad's head with a stomach-turning crack.
The Antiquarians winced. The wreck of the dryad's body shriveled before their eyes and lay motionless.
"Was that necessary?" demanded Royce. "Obviously, they know we're here."
"I prefer my women without skin the texture of bark," Leng hissed, his eyes alighting on Ardeth.
"What threat is this place to you?" Royce pressed, determined to speak, though it might mean his death. "Is it a threat to Llorkh, or the Zhentarim, or to the church of Cyric? You want to destroy this because it is beautiful, or simply because it offends you?"
The twin claws flew over to hover at Royce's neck.