“You’ve said enough, old crone,” Brisbois growled, rising to his feet and setting a protective hand on the Keeper’s shoulder.
Jo interposed herself between the enraged man and Karleah, Wyrmblight raised and ready in her hands. Though her eyes sternly warned Brisbois back, she spoke to Karleah behind her, “Please, Karleah. Isn’t it obvious Keeper Grainger is in pain—”
“Pain?” the old witch cried. “Pain? You yourself should know about pain, Johauna. You know what it feels like to be attacked by an abelaat. And you, idiot knight. Has this woman’s spell so completely enraptured you that you cannot guess the source of her allure?”
Stunned, Brisbois stared at the Keeper.
“It’s from the abelaat blood,” Dayin murmured without peering up.
Karleah nodded, keeping her blazing eyes on the two fighters. Brisbois blinked as if he had been slapped in the face, and Jo’s arms dropped heavily from their defensive posture.
“Yes, it’s true,” Karleah said. “The abelaats have many magical powers, and this ‘attraction’ is one that has allowed them to live among humans all these years,” the old woman said. “All the abelaats that came to Mystara before the gates collapsed share in that beauty. Those who are gated in now are twisted by their journey, transformed into horrible monsters.” Karleah pointed a crooked finger at the Keeper, who still sat on the floor beside the brazier. “The Keeper is from the old line.”
Keeper Grainger nodded. A tear rolled down her cheek. “Aeltic—the last true abelaat on Mystara—was my father.”
Chapter XIII
“Your father!” Jo exclaimed. Stunned, she stared in disbelief at Keeper Grainger. The others around her, even Karleah, in the shadows, leaned toward the woman beside the brazier.
The Keeper nodded. “Yes, my father, though so many times removed as to no longer hold the meaning you have for ‘father.’ He was the father of the Keepers—we who keep the memory of the abelaat alive. Aeltic was the last abelaat, and he took as his consort a human. Their offspring, a daughter who bore traits both abelaat and human, mated also with a human. And so it went for a thousand years, until at last I was born. I, the last Keeper, have only a bare trace of my father’s blood left in me.”
“This is all neither here nor there,” Karleah spoke up in her raspy voice from the shadows. “You are the last Keeper—tell us what we need to know.”
Keeper Grainger stared in the direction of Karleah’s voice. “You are bold, Karleah Kunzay of the Red Ones,” she said angrily. “Though I was but a babe when last we met, I thought it might be you ”
“The ancient traditions demand that you answer our questions, Keeper,” Karleah said sternly, drawing the blanket up to shade her features.
“I have denied my vows of tradition, witch,” Keeper Grainger rejoined, “for I have taken no mate. The line of Keepers ends with me.”
“Of course it does,” Karleah snapped. “But the time has come for you to give us what the Keepers have passed down from generation to generation—and you know that.”
Keeper Grainger’s face clouded over. Her pale skin flushed as she bent her head, and Jo had to strain to hear the woman’s voice. “You have come to find the abaton—what you call simply the puzzle box—which Auroch has unleashed on Mystara.”
“Yes,” Karleah said, her bony frame finally entering the circle of light.
The Keeper continued, “The abaton was created to save the abelaat race, to give them one final portal for entering and leaving Mystara.”
“Wait a moment,” Jo said, shaking her head in confusion. “ What good is a portal if there aren’t any abelaats to use it? In their home world, the abelaats are asleep—slumbering statues of stone, like you said. And those abelaats that are here are hideous monsters who wouldn’t think to use a gate.”
“The portal is not so much for the abelaats to cross,” Keeper Grainger replied, “at least not initially. The portal’s first function is as a drain, to draw magic out of Mystara and deposit it into the abelaats’ world. Only when it has drawn enough magic to awaken the first abelaats, only then will the abaton begin to serve as a portal for the creatures themselves.”
“But, why would they want to come to Mystara, where they are hated?” Dayin asked quietly.
The Keeper smiled wanly at the young apprentice. “The abelaats desire more than all else to draw their magic back to their own world. They want to revive their slumbering kin. After they are awakened, they will march upon Mystara, to reclaim it as their own.”
Jo turned and looked at Brisbois. The man was obviously confused. But she had a sudden revelation, a horrible realization that no one had voiced. “That must mean Teryl Auroch is in league with them!”
“Yes.”
“Because he, like Keeper Grainger, is part abelaat,” Karleah conjectured.
The Keeper nodded leadenly and added, “Teryl Auroch’s mother was a human sorceress who dared to travel to the land of the abelaat. She took enough magic with her to awaken one of the ancient creatures. She never returned, but gave birth to a son—”
“Who built the abaton to shift the balance of magic back,” Jo concluded.
The Keeper simply nodded.
Dayin whimpered slightly, tears running down his face. Jo knelt beside him, sliding her arm gently about his shoulders. “It’ll be all right, Dayin,” she said stupidly. Censoring herself for the platitude, she elaborated, “You are your own person now, Dayin. That man, Auroch—he isn’t your father any more than I am your mother. The evil that he’s done can’t touch you.”
The boy’s sky-blue eyes regarded Jo coldly. “You don’t understand,” he said, his voice uncommonly bitter. “I’ve got abelaat blood in me, too. You just heard about how they’ve been hunted and tortured. You’ve heard their tragic story. It has everything to do with me. Teryl Auroch is my father.”
Karleah sat down next to Dayin and held him in her arms. She said, “The boy is right, Jo. Let him feel what he feels.”
Brisbois had begun to pace nervously. “So, if we don’t intercept this—this stupid box, we’ll have an army of monsters marching down our throats. Is that what you are saying?”
“Yes.”
“Why are you helping us?” Jo blurted, suddenly, rising from Dayin’s side and clutching Wyrmblight nervously. “You’ve got abelaat blood in you, too—”
“Teryl Auroch is an abomination to the abelaats. He wants vengeance, he wants Mystara to suffer for stealing the abelaats’ magic. I don’t want that to happen. You must understand, Mystara is my world, the only one I’ve ever known. I don’t want it to be destroyed any more than you,” the woman said, finally standing from her place. “Besides, he will desire my death in his quest to purify Mystara of all its human traces. As his power grows, he will become more and more aware of me. He will come for me soon. I have seen it.”
“Come, Dayin, we must find other accommodations tonight,” Karleah whispered, slowly rising. She helped the boy to his feet, and he sadly clutched her side.
Jo shook her head in outrage and confusion. “There must be something we can do!”
“There is,” the Keeper said despondently, moving toward the door, which Braddoc pulled open. “Find the abaton. Remove it from any source of magic. Find a way to destroy it.” She paused and reached into a pocket in her dress. “Take this.” She held out her hand, presenting a beautiful amber crystal, eight sided and pointed on the ends. “It is a crystal from my father—the most powerful magic I can give you.
“Now I think you should go. You can find lodgings at the Maiden’s Blush,” the Keeper said. As she stepped out of the barn, she added, “Do not come this way again.”
Jo tossed fitfully in her bed, wishing they could set out for Armstead. But earlier that evening she had lost the argument about pushing on before morning. Even Braddoc had refused, saying that she obviously had never traveled through the Altan Tepes Mountains. Karleah, too, noted wryly that in order to capture the abaton, they must first reach Armstead alive. Despite all the good reasons for staying in Threshold that night, Jo wanted to leave, if only to pay Brisbois back for his sneering taunts. “I should have killed him in the alley,” she told herself, rolling angrily over.