98: NO TRUST FOR WIZARDS
(Kihrin’s story)
Grizzst broke out the booze immediately.
“Why visit all the brothels if you have this much alcohol here already?” Thurvishar asked.
We’d gone downstairs into the workshop, partly because there was no room up in the library, but mostly because Thurvishar had insisted. I saw his point; there was too much chance of spilling something on important papers, and nobody wanted to see Thurvishar lose his temper about that. Personally, I had zero interest in getting drunk but a lot of interest in plying Grizzst with enough alcohol to get him to tell us something useful.
Like how to stop Relos Var’s plans.
Grizzst paused in the middle of pouring several fingers of brandy. “Are you joking? Brothels are great.” He handed me a rather large glass, which I turned into something nonalcoholic as soon as his back was turned.
Don’t get me wrong; I wanted a drink. After that encounter with Vol Karoth? Oh yeah. But fate of the whole world and all that. This didn’t seem like the time.
I set the drink down and put my head in my hands.
“I always wondered why the weather patterns were wrong,” Thurvishar said.
I pulled my head up and stared at him. “What are you babbling about?”
He made a vague gesture. “The currents are all wrong. Nythrawl’s throwing it all off. Never mind. It’s not really important right now.”1
I spun around on the bench to face Grizzst, who seemed to have forgotten that he was keeping us prisoner and was making a really excellent attempt at finishing off the bottle he’d opened. “Can Urthaenriel be used to control Vol Karoth? Is that what you did the first time?”
His glassy gold eyes focused on me. “Yes. Yes, that’s it exactly. I used the sword to keep him in place so the Assembly could do the ritual the first time.”
“Right.” The room fell into silence again for a few minutes. “I didn’t think his influence was quite that”—I spread my hands—“large.”
“You know, if I had a coin for every time a woman’s said that to me…,” Grizzst mused.
Thurvishar and I both stopped, turned to stare at him, and then turned back to each other.2
“We may have to admit the possibility that Vol Karoth hasn’t been appearing outside the Blight because he simply hasn’t cared to,” Thurvishar said.3
“Oh, that’s just … terrifying.” I picked up my glass and took another sip. “You know, this is pretty good.” I’d only changed the alcohol, not the taste.
“Should be,” Grizzst said. “It’s old enough to be your grandfather.” The wizard pulled the circlet off his head, slammed the wand down on the table next to him. “Let’s go back to the part where you gave Vol Karoth an order and he fucking obeyed it.”
I glared at him. “Did you not bother to find out just who you were setting up to be raised in that brothel? I’m Relos Var’s brother, remember? What did you think that meant?”
“I didn’t think it meant … that.” The wizard looked deep in thought. “I’m trying to decide if this is a good thing or not.”
“If you figure it out, let me know.”
Thurvishar sighed and walked over to Grizzst, then heaved himself up onto the worktable itself and sat down on it. “Gahan, Gahan, Gahan. Damn it, Gahan. What are you doing? You’re going to let the last immortal race be cast down and lose all that accumulated knowledge for what? So you can free Vol Karoth? There are better ways. Ways that don’t … My grandfather’s an idiot.”
“Relos Var is very much not an idiot.” Grizzst scoffed. “And weren’t you listening? I told you that isn’t what the ritual is going to do. The vané people will be fine. I changed the ritual so it will actually do something instead. Nobody is going to lose their immortality.”
“If there is one thing I know about Relos Var,” Thurvishar said, “it’s that whatever deal you think you’re getting from him will always turn out to be a lie. And I don’t feel like playing along with his games. Aren’t you tired of letting that bastard set the rules?”
Grizzst shook his head. “I wish it were that easy. Nothing moves forward without Vol Karoth being freed. And the Eight—oh, how I do regret that bit of genius on my part—the Eight will never allow that. They’re going to fight to the last inch to keep that from happening.”
“Well, sure, because millions of people will die,” I pointed out.
“Because they’re scared. And if we don’t do this, everyone dies!” Grizzst slammed his hand against the table.
Thurvishar put out his hand to stop the wand from rolling off the edge. “No, if you don’t do this, we’ll have to find another way. It’s a false dichotomy to claim that your way is the only other option.” He spread his arms. “The universe is not black and white.”
Grizzst narrowed his eyes. “You’re not nearly drunk enough if you can say dichoto … diko…” He made a face. “What you said.”
“Oh, I’m quite drunk,” Thurvishar said. “You’ll just have to take my word for it.”
“Look—” Grizzst looked to the side, chewed on the inside of his mouth, and grumbled a few curse words. “If I had another way, I’d take it. But breaking that prison requires a tremendous amount of tenyé, and I don’t have it. I don’t have a convenient religion I can direct at the issue. The Eight can do it, but won’t, so I’m tricking them into doing it, anyway. If C’indrol had bothered explaining how their damn theories actually worked, I might have been able to fix up something, but everything I’ve ever learned from their notes I’ve had to reverse engineer. Pisses me off. Fucking Rev’arric.”
I straightened. “What was that?”
“I said I need a way to create enough energy—”
“No.” I moved to a closer bench. “You said the name C’indrol. Did you know a lot of people named that? Was that a common voras name?”
Grizzst scowled. “Probably among any members of the Indrol family, I imagine. They were researchers, specialized in ousology—souls and energy transfer between the Twin Worlds. Unfortunately, since they lived in Karolaen, they died during the great cataclysm. I found some of their notes, but—” He shook his head. “You find any more, let me know. I’ll tip you extra.”
“What if I just brought you C’indrol?”
Grizzst stared at me in disbelief. “C’indrol’s dead. Very dead.”
“C’indrol was reincarnated. And we know her. If you’re saying that C’indrol might know how to pull together enough energy without having to sacrifice an entire race’s immortality, then why don’t we ask who she is now, in this life?”
He stared at me for a long beat, then shook his head as if to clear the fog. “Wait. Okay. Even if that were true—which I will allow is possible—she wouldn’t remember that past life, and no one—not me, not Rev’arric, not any of the Eight—have figured out how to soul imprint past lives once someone has been reincarnated, reborn from birth, and not just resurrected.”
Thurvishar straightened. “That’s not true.”
“Who would have thought Gadrith was such a prodigy?” I told Thurvishar. “But even without Gadrith, C’indrol definitely knew how. I mean, I’m pretty sure they’re the reason I’m remembering being S’arric. Same with Teraeth.”
Grizzst just stared at both of us. “You’re joking, right? This is a joke? You can’t be—” He rubbed his forehead.
I held out my hands. “Seems to me that my brother’s way isn’t the only way, and if you insist on pretending it is…”
“What are you going to do, Gahan?” Thurvishar said. “Keep with Relos Var’s plan, which will kill thousands, if not millions? Or try something new?”
“Seems to me that if our way doesn’t work,” I commented, “there are other sources of tenyé in the universe to charge that crystal. Why not try our way first, before you default to worst-case solutions?”
Grizzst ran both hands through his hair. “I shouldn’t have started drinking.”
“Sober yourself up,” Thurvishar said, “if that will help. But you know we’re right.”
Grizzst rubbed his eyes. “Yeah, I do.” He stood. “Come on, then. Let’s go disable my little toy before the vané complete that ritual and set Vol Karoth free.”
So we returned to the bottom of Lake Jorat.
As we stepped out of the magical gate and found ourselves once more swimming in a whole lot of water, Grizzst made a gesture, and a lever behind one of the statues flipped. There was a terrific boom, and giant metal walls slowly began to rise out of the ground around the throne area. Once they reached a height of forty feet or so, each side began to iris out a metal ceiling, which fit together in the center. Water drained out of the room.
I turned to Grizzst. “That was here the whole time?”
He shrugged. “I’ve spent a lot of time here over the centuries. You think I wanted to work on the warding crystal while underwater? No, thank you.”
“I wish I’d known about it, that’s all.” I sat down on one of the stairs that were almost clean from the last visit to this same spot.
“I assume you know how to disable that safely,” Thurvishar said.
“It’ll be a tiny bit tricky,” Grizzst admitted, “since I’ve spelled the fuck out of it. I’m not saying this thing is any Urthaenriel, but I wouldn’t try to destroy it using your typical magic spell, that’s all.” He climbed up on top of the throne and started looking at the crystal.
I looked over at Thurvishar. I suspected we were having the same thought: that if Grizzst wanted to lie to us and tell us that the crystal had been turned off, we weren’t terribly likely to have a way of verifying it. At least not without breaking the crystal.
Thurvishar moved his robe sleeve and showed me where he’d been hiding the wand Grizzst had left on the table. I looked away quickly. Surely, if anything qualified as “not your typical magical spell,” it would be that.
We didn’t say anything, just watched the man work. After a bit, Grizzst stepped back and nodded to himself. “That’s the first bit. Sorry, kids, but we’re going to be here for a little while. Just make yourself comfortable.”
“Or better still, don’t.” Relos Var walked through one of the walls and closed the opening behind him.