The Scepter of the Sands (Book 3 of the Vicelord Chronicles)

Memnon, Calimshan

(2nd of Alturiak, 1380 Dalereckoning)

When morning came and their initial coupling ran its course, Vala bade her husband good fortune, for he needed privacy to recover his strength, and allowed a familiar face to lead her to the bathhouse proper. Since they were not able to leave the manor, for their presence needed to remain a secret, it seemed a good a place as any to waste time, especially since their host was by no means of a scholarly persuasion, and possessed no study.

She considering visiting his room of instruments, but she was out of practice. It’d been many months since she’d used her flute, which had remained in her room in the poor quarter of Almraiven, and years since she’d sampled the elegant stringed instruments of the Promenade. Maybe one day she’d endeavor to become a maven of bardic practice, but right now the thought seemed silly.

And, she thought with mirth and a little melancholy, the people of Faerûn would hardly suffer her, be it in a tavern or in an amphitheatre. And she likely couldn’t suffer that much attention.

“Have you been treated well, Amara?” she asked her middle-aged northerner handmaiden, who had survived Ahriman’s betrayal as well, as had most of Adir’s retinue that day.

She smiled, her worry lines deepening, “Well enough, milady. Better than if we’d been seized by the king.”

“Although...” she added, considering her uniform, a black velveteen cloth affair with white trim and a pleated apron, that was oddly more revealing than not, “I would have a thing or two to say about the dress code here.”

Sharing a laugh, Vala nodded, “I have had to acclimate to custom, myself. I think I like it now. All these light fabrics...”

“That is noble custom in general.” Amara corrected, “Ah, here we are. Right this way.”

She was led through a rosewood door, for the heat would have certainly bled out of such a small chamber with veils or curtains.

Ormat’s bathhouse was nearly level with the sea; a large pool that actually spilled out into the ocean, the fresh water and salt water separated by a peculiar membrane that fish and other sea life could penetrate, before realizing the shift in the water’s particularities and hastily darting back out.

Nonetheless, she saw a dolphin banked near the boundaries, equipped with a jeweled headpiece adorned with a long ivory spike, making the animal reminiscent of a narwhal. She assumed it was Ormat’s underwater mount. It eyed her with keen intelligence and no small amount of curiosity.

There were also a pair of fountains, not unlike the one in their room, a steaming porcelain tub, and several massage tables.

Durrah stood quietly before one such table with a hole near its end. Having done this before, Vala knew she would normally place her head face down, and then she would receive a massage. As her belly was too sensitive to press down like that, she would lie on her side.

But she wanted to know something first, something that had been bothering her.

She studied the woman, a native of Almraiven. The way her expression never changed. Even a little, where the lower half of her face was concerned.

“Durrah...” Vala started, troubled, “If...you were compelled by geas not to speak, would you have a way of telling me?”

She nodded.

“Are you compelled by geas?”

She shook her head.

“Let it go, milady...” Amara warned, but she had an inkling of the woman’s silence.

“Were you...disciplined for speaking, by Adir?”

Again, she shook her head.

“By anyone.”

She nodded.

“Please, Durrah. I know we haven’t been on amiable terms...so far as I can tell. Things are different now. You can-”

“Her last owner was a merchant of flesh.” Amara pointed out, gently but firmly separating them, “She tried to barter away his secrets in return for her freedom, but her actions were betrayed to her owner and her buyer abandoned her without fulfilling his promise. So the man had her tongue cut out.”

Durrah’s expression darkened, and Vala saw a flash of teeth.

“Leave it be.”

“I think not!” Vala snapped, “Durrah, I am learning new powers every day. Did you not once think I might try to help you if you told me?”

“It nah be hulpd...” Durrah said, her vowels muffled as the stump of her tongue struggled to compensate, “I tock too mah. Now I nah tock too mah.”

Vala made a split decision, without the approval of her husband.

“You are free, Durrah.”

Her eyes went wide.

“Milady, you have no right to-”

“Adir owes me his life.” Vala corrected, “And thus a service, which I invoke now. Durrah, Amara, you are both free to leave, or to serve us as hirelings if that is your desire. Neither of you will ever have to speak to me in anything other than a manner of equals. If anything, as Adir’s property, it is I who would reply in honorifics.”

“Durrah, if you remain, by your leave I would try to find a way to restore your lost flesh, and anything else that will settle life’s inequities. What do you say to this?”

She seemed at a loss for words.

“Whah?”

“Because I will it so.” Vala replied, “I need no more a reason than this.”

She nodded, a faint smile on her face.

“Good. Now that we’re all friends here... I’ll take that massage, if you are willing. You can discuss your wages with Adir later. My ankles and back are killing me.”

Such a small thing. Such a banal thing.

Adir set the codex on the floor in front of him, as it was too heavy to safely place in his lap like his lost spell book.

Vala had told him she’d had no trouble handling it, but had found herself unable to actually open it. This was because only a wizard could access it, and she was no wizard.

The codex had no reason to make things futilely difficult for her.

Its dark leather cover was unremarkable. Its pages were another matter altogether.

Adir steadied himself, and opened it to its first page.

Already he had completed this trial, that he might contact the beings of the outer planes.

He turned to the second page.

Already he had unlocked the ability to sacrifice mortals to these beings through a powerful banishment, the better to placate them and invite gifts in turn.

Like most sentient beings, elementals were known to enslave rivals, and oftentimes force them to demeaning tasks, like serving mortals, for one.

The third page detailed the summoning of lesser elementals, and the fourth, greater.

He intuited that the final page detailed the binding of Elemental Lords, the equivalent of archdevils, but this was a feat reserved for gods or their chosen. And there were hundreds more pages before then, each of which containing a trial, each of which needed to be overcome to advance further in.

Adir knew from the failure of so many iterant wizards that to presume to challenge the codex beyond the strictly permitted process invited a painful death. To be unworthy or possessed of weakness was to also invite death.

Those who survived could peruse its pages and learn its powers, though not without risk. To learn too much invited madness, for the codex gradually surrendered a part of itself to its reader. In essence, the reader became the codex, by absorbing its knowledge and memory. Already he possessed images and sensations that were not his own, fragments of the language that filled the codex’s pages.

His standing theory was that of a god, in his final moments, creating the codex as a means to duplicate himself, attaining a form of subjective immortality. Though he knew not the being, he fancied this figure a possible progenitor to Azuth, Mystra’s subjugate deity and warden of all magic.

Adir knew that he dared not absorb too much of the book, for he risked losing himself to it. Becoming a creature he didn’t recognize.

But he also knew that without this power he could not reclaim his home. He would not be able to keep his family safe.

His family...

“Oh, what have you done to me, Vala?” Adir mused as he held the edges of the current page, in the last moments before the next trial began, “Things seemed much clearer when I only fought for myself.”

He flipped the page, and at once, he ceased to be in Ormat’s private room.

While Adir read his book, Ormat found himself left with a difficult decision.

He sat at his parlor, pouring himself rare imperial cognac in one of his specially made crystal glasses.

He sloshed the dark amber fluid, sniffing its unique bouquet of vanilla, hazelnut, and oak, taking in the sights of Memnon, his home.

Its beauty.

Its treacherous beauty.

All those that lived within its lofty walls survived only due to their dedication to pragmatism. And pragmatism only thrived without constraints of higher mortality.

He took another sip, exhaling, palming the enchanted bead Amon’s spymaster had left him many years ago. A device that had up until now been quiescent.

If he wanted to, Ormat knew he could defeat his friend in single combat. With only the codex, he was more vulnerable than he’d been in decades. Vala would be leaving soon, and Netal’s loyalty seemed uncertain at best.

He could hand his friend over to Amon. The rewards would sustain his proclivities for decades more. He could strengthen his hold over Memnon, be named its king. A war between Memnon and Almraiven would be to his benefit; his allies were not restricted to those that walked on land, and both cities hugged the coast. Power of the sands would not avail Ahriman, and his armies were small, necessarily so.

He set down his glass. In his other hand, he drew his holy symbol, his connection to Sashelas Deep.

Would his god approve of such a thing?

“Adir is a slaver and a necromancer...” Ormat pondered, voicing his conflict, “He has no greater right to moral superiority than Amon or Ahriman.”

But he was also a good man. A friend, if ever Ormat had known such a thing in this cruel, uncertain life. Adir had shown him that one’s origins did not define him. Adir had been born a slave, but he had become a pasha.

Ormat had been born of an evil elemental spirit, an agent of the Kraken Society and a cutthroat pirate...and yet...

And yet he had also become a priest of a goodly deity, become an ally to Aquatic Elves and other benevolent species. He’d even considered freeing his thralls, the females at least, ungrateful louts that they were.

He’d made him home in this city of vice, but tried to become something more than a scoundrel.

And what else, if not a scoundrel, would betray Adir now?

The bead in one hand, the symbol of his god in the other. What an apt metaphor. What was more important to him? To survive? To profit?

Or to survive to accomplish something meaningful?

Adir found himself floating in an infinite void, so, naturally, he assumed that he’d failed, and thus found himself amid Shar’s nothingness. He’d always wondered if another deity would take him in his final moments, and found himself immeasurably disappointed, whether in himself or the pantheon he couldn’t say.

Panic might have set in, but for the peculiar haze had settled over his mind, like taking a pinch of minddust in a crowded bazaar.

But then, coherent notions began to form; he could not be dead. His final precaution had survived Ahriman’s abjuration, the better for him to reactivate at a later time. The gem had been latent; no dispelling could have affected an item that didn’t output magic of any sort.

Right?

Before him appeared a massive pillar of jacinth, ringed in silver, and he knew he was not in the embrace of Lady Loss after all. Yet.

Still, everything was cloudy. What had he been doing just moments ago?

Nothing for it, he projected himself forward, floating, reached towards the gem, entranced by the light.

As his hand brushed across its faceted surface, there was a cacophony of light and sound, and Adir watched, awestruck, as dozens of metallic pillars ascended from the empty space beneath him, and likewise descended from the empty space above him.

And then he was by no means among empty space. The pillars were innumerable.

Their surfaces reflected the gem’s light, and looking at a thousand perfect reflections of his face, he realized they were mirrors. All of them. Roughly cut, each pillar nonetheless emitted a perfect reflection, no matter their angle or exact direction.

He was not the sort to be overly prideful of his own appearance, nonetheless, he felt that this element of his surroundings was important somehow. Indicative of narcissism, or desire for apotheosis?

He touched the pillar closest to him, and in a flash of light, felt himself being whisked away...

When she returned from dining with Ormat and his retinue, for Adir had not answered the summons, Vala found him right where she’d left him that morning.

He sat cross-legged before the book, his eyes vacant, emitting a steady drone of indeterminate chanting. In another instance, she might have assumed him to be lost amid the pages of a particularly engaging book.

But she knew that in this case that was exactly the matter, in the literal sense.

Knowing that becoming privy to the words of the codex may very well include her in its trial, Vala smiled sadly, knelt down, and kissed him on the cheek, “I go to sleep now. If you...don’t come back until after I wake, I just want you to know that you will be in my thoughts until I return. Always. Goodnight, my love.”