Interlude
“He escaped the Grip of Despair.”
The words were as much felt as heard, for the voice that spoke them was mostly a hollow whisper. The speaker was a mere outline, a stick figure in a robe, with glowing trails of shimmering blue energy leaking openly from beneath the hood and the sleeves.
“We are aware.” The voice that answered him, from a similarly thin robe, was something closer to two voices echoing each other.
“He killed one of the Knowing.”
“He killed Bhimanzir, who was counted one of us by but the slimmest of margins.” The reply echoed through the stone-walled chamber.
“It is easy to speak glibly of the dead, but we did not count him so slightly when he still lived,” replied a third, much more human voice. “I say this not because he was my student, but because there was a time not long ago when he was well valued among us for his power, his potential, his gifts, and his willingness to act. It is the latter trait that we most miss.”
“Be easy, Gethmasanar.” Two trails of sickly green spread across the darkness as the echoing figure turned towards the younger, more hale sorcerer, whose own eyes and fingertips leaked a bilious yellow. “Bhimanzir’s loss was unforeseen and regrettable. It will be paid. Let us not speak of moving in haste or of foolish concepts like revenge. We do not get revenge. We advance our aims, consolidate power. What other goal should power have?” The words rebounded off the stones, chasing each other in their dual tones.
“This man and his deity are a threat to us in precisely this way,” the hollow voice answered.
“You also forget the boy,” Gethmasanar pointed out. “How much of our knowledge does he carry with him? What power, what will, did we lose? He is a dagger held over our heart.”
“You may feel free to plunge a dagger into our heart if you wish,” the voice that was two voices answered. “It will have as much effect upon us as tossing a stone into the sea. The boy is nothing. He is a failure. Our order’s history is littered with them.”
“When is the last time our order faced something as dangerous as this man, his deity, and his movement?” The whispery voice rose to a ragged high, and Gethmasanar’s spine stiffened, hands tensing beneath the sleeves of his robe.
“Deity? Dangerous? Are you beginning to believe this babble, Iriphet?”
“There is power there we do not see, power we cannot understand.”
“He is a man with a hammer. He may as well be an ape with a rock bashing open grubs.” The final sibilant hissed its way around the chamber.
“And yet, he escaped the Grip of Despair. How many men can have done that, in all the time the Knowing record its use?”
“We do not keep count of such things. What we do is not sport, nor clumsy battle losses tallied by an historian, nor trade goods upon a ledger.”
“No, but there are those who do,” Gethmasanar ventured, feeling like he had overturned a dice cup as he spoke. “Keep a count of such things. In song—and there is a song collected from these lands that speaks of it being thrown off by a paladin of legend, a Reddyn the Redoubtable…”
“We do not know that name.”
“Because it is not known does not mean he did not exist,” came the whisper.
“We do not acknowledge that name. The two of you go and do as you must, as you think fit. Speak not of this Allystaire again to us till he is dead or broken. Leave us.”
The weird, pitchy yowl of the two voices was an end to the conversation. Iriphet stood and Gethmasanar went to his side, and they left, both feeling the piercing stare of bright and terrifying power across their backs.