And then there were the flowers.
Dahl had found another trail of them, a scatter of crushed violet petals, and followed it to the crowded quarter. He asked about Tharra, and everyone played dumb. He asked about Oota, and everyone looked at him like he was madder than a mouther.
He might be one of them, their looks seemed to say, but he also might not be. They gave him a little gruel, though, and asked where he was from, when he’d come to the camp. His answers weren’t the right ones, and everyone seemed to keep their distance.
Dahl cursed, nipped whiskey-flavored air from his flask, and cursed again. What he wouldn’t do for an ale, he thought for the third time that day. What in the Hells had Farideh gotten him into?
He found a bench before one of the dwellings and sat down to eat his gruel and think. He looked up at the dark fortress, looking comically wicked against a blue, cheery sky. He’d have to get back inside, somehow. Climb over the wall. Bluff his way through a gate. Discover how the villagers interacted with the fortress and slip in with someone who did belong.
“Hey!” a child called. “Hey! Hey!”
Dahl looked down the road a short ways, where a trio of children watched him from another bench several dwellings down-a blond boy, a blue-skinned girl with the marks of a water genasi on her bare scalp, and a long-legged Turami boy, his knees drawn up to his chest.
“What’s your name?” the genasi called out, her little legs swinging back and forth.
Dahl considered them a moment. “Dahl. What’s yours?”
“I’m Vanri,” she said, pointing to herself, the pale boy, and the darkskinned boy in turn. “He’s Stedd, and that’s Samayan.” Samayan watched him cautiously over his knees.
“Well met,” Dahl said. “Are your parents around?”
Vanri shook her head. “No, they didn’t get took.”
“Taken,” Stedd corrected. “When did you get taken?”
“Two days ago,” Dahl said. He stood and crossed over to the children. Taken-interesting. “Have you been here long?”
“I’ve been here longest,” Vanri said. “Then Samayan, then Stedd.”
“But she’s the youngest,” Stedd said. “She’s only seven. But I’m ten. And Samayan’s almost eleven.”
“How old are you?” Vanri asked.
“Twenty-seven. Do you know a woman named Tharra?”
“Everyone knows Tharra,” Vanri said. “She makes everyone talk to each other, and keeps all the people safe. Most all the people, if they listen.” The dark-skinned boy hissed something at her, and Vanri made a face at him. “What?”
“Safe from what?” The children traded glances. “Does she tell you what this place is?”
“It’s like. . a farm,” the little blond boy said, and he smiled, pleased with himself.
“No, it’s not,” Vanri said.
Dahl shook his head. “Like a what?”
“A farm,” Stedd said more loudly. “A farm for chosen.”
“Chosen what?”
“You know. Chosen of the gods,” the little boy said. “The wizard makes them grow, then he harvests them.” He thought a moment. “But not really. Because they’re people.”
“Ah.Chosen,” Dahl said. He ruffled the serious little boy’s hair. “Of course.”
The Chosen of the gods-if there were any such people walking Toril- were individuals the gods imbued with uncanny powers, to serve their interests in the mortal world. But even in stories such people were so rare as to be apocryphal. You didn’t fill a mountain village with them, even if you managed to capture every Chosen in the world. Even if you were a wizard and a high-ranking Shadovar. .
“Have you ever seen the wizard?” he asked. The children eyed him like he was a lunatic.
“You don’t want to see the wizard,” Vanri said.
“Nobody does,” Samayan said quietly.
“Sometimes Tharra sees him,” Stedd said. “I mean, I bet she does. ’Cause she goes into the fortress. For food and things,” he explained to Dahl.
“She doesn’t see him,” Samayan said, sounding worried.
“Where can I find Tharra?” Dahl asked.
“She just left,” Vanri said. “She had to go and meet Ol’ Sour-Fey, so we’re waiting for Hamdir.” She wrinkled her nose. “You ask a lot of questions.”
“Which you are very good at answering,” Dahl said. “Do you know where I can find Tharra right now?”
“I told you,” Vanri said. “Ol’ Sour-Fey.”
“Cereon,” Stedd said. “You’re not supposed to call him that.”
Samayan’s dark eyes watched Dahl. “Why do you want to know about Tharra?” he asked. Dahl weighed his options-all the while Samayan watched him nervously.
“Because I think she can help me,” Dahl said.
“If you want help you’re supposed to go to Oota,” Vanri said. “Everyone does. Except Ol’ Sour-Fey and the elves.”
“Can you tell me how to find Oota?”
Vanri wrinkled her nose again. “How come you don’t know where Ootais?”
Dahl held up two fingers and smiled. “I only got took two days ago, remember.”
“Taken!” Stedd cried.
It was more information than Dahl had gotten anywhere else, even though he wasn’t sure what to make of half of it. It did not answer his questions of the daisies. It did not tell him who the wizard was. It didn’t give the other villagers much reason to stop playing dumb with him, particularly when he broke down and asked about the farm for Chosen.
Though, he had to admit, that might well have been more because it was a foolish question than because they weren’t going to answer. Dahl felt foolish enough asking. If the villagers were somehow Chosen of the gods, one of the dwarves pointed out, they would have been able to breach the wall with those fantastical powers and escape. Why would any one of them be sitting there, at the wizard’s mercy, if the gods had granted them powers fit for a chapbook?
It sounded like the sort of puzzle Dahl’s masters in the Church of Oghma would have handed down: A god grants powers to a mortal, but leaves the mortal trapped in the hands of a madman. What is the god’s will?
And after all the possibilities, the ultimate answer: We can never be certain of the will of the gods. We can only trust them to know their own minds.
The thought dredged up old pains Dahl always managed to believe were buried down deep. A god grants a mortal powers, but then takes them away without saying why. What is the god’s will? The answer, Dahl had found, was much the same: We can never be certain of the will of the gods. We can only be certain they know you aren’t worthy.
He stopped and blew out a noisy breath, as if he could spit out the shame of falling that still crept up on him from time to time and plant it in the cold mud. Now was not the time.
When night fell again, he tried to re-enter the fortress, but the gates were locked tight, and there was no climbing the stone wall without risking the bored guards. He retreated to the cottage he’d stored his things in and cast the second sending. At least he’d puzzled out one answer: he’d scaled the crater’s edges, high enough to look down on a trackless forest stretching off to the east and south and north, a ribbon of river to the west, just past the wood’s only visible edge.
“Southernmost of the Lost Peaks,” he said, while the ritual’s components burned away. “A camp of some kind-inhabitants were kidnapped. Definitely Shadovar work. There’s a wall around the place I can’t breach.”