Read Online Farthest Reach by Richard Baker - Free Book Online Page B

contained in this selukiira are only tools, Ilsevele. The device can’t harm anyone as long as I do not permit it to do so, and it offers me invaluable insights into spells and lore lost to the People for ages.” Araevin threw his hands wide in an angry shrug. “Someone has to study the arts our enemies might turn against us, simply to understand how we might defend ourselves when they are used against us. At the moment, I seem to be the only one who can dare this high loregem to do that.”
    “But the daemonfey don’t have access to Saelethil’s lore now,” Ilsevele protested. “Why else would they have been looking for the Nightstar before? I don’t understand why you shouldn’t just put it back where you found it, Araevin. Ithraides’s defenses kept the Nightstar out of evil hands for five thousand years, after all.”
    “Sarya Dlardrageth was entombed for almost all that time, so it’s not at all clear to me that Ithraides’s defenses were in fact sufficient to the task.”
    Ilsevele stood, seizing her cloak from the chair back she had draped it over and throwing it around her shoulders.
    “I’m not sure you understand as much about the Dlardrageths or the Nightstar as you think you do,” she said. “An ancient marriage and a glimmer of kinship don’t stain you with evil, Araevin. Flirting with dangerous and hateful powers because you think the end justifies the means—that is what you should worry about.”
    She gave him one final sharp glance, and strode stiffly out of the reading room. Araevin watched her leave.
    Is she right? he wondered. Maybe I should simply bury the Nightstar again, until I know for certain that I need it.
    He rubbed his fingers over the small, cold facets above his heart, and sat down to read more about Morthil, Sanathar, and Ithraides, and their accounts of the device from fifty centuries ago.
    *****
    Scyllua Darkhope, Castellan and High Captain of Zhentil Keep, stared intently at the stronghold rising on the green verge of the forest that lay, low and distant, beyond the ruined walls of Yulash. Here on the outskirts of the abandoned city a new Zhentish watchtower was being raised, and the heavy wooden scaffolds and booms surrounding the shell of cold gray stone seemed as light and fragile as a birdcage.
    It struck her as incongruous that a work of enduring strength could be born within such a light and impermanent cocoon. A bad windstorm could blow down the scaffolding in an hour, but once its work was done, why, her new tower might stand for a thousand years.
    She studied the work a little longer, not really watching the indentured masons and stonecutters at their tasks, simply lost in the metaphor. Her own life could be described in a similar way, she decided. Out of the fragility and impermanence of the flesh, a stone-hard spirit took shape. Out of the weakness of her heart and her foolish early hopes, the foundations of true purpose and real clarity had been laid. When her true self had finally taken form, well, it was of no account that the scaffolding of her ideals and her former dreams had been discarded, was it?
    “High Captain?”
    Scyllua pulled her gaze from the ongoing construction, and turned to her lieutenant. The Zhentish officer visibly steeled himself when she glanced at him. She was not a tall woman, but she was broad-shouldered and athletic, and the black plate armor she wore with the ease of long experience only contributed to her formidable presence.
    “Yes, lieutenant?”
    “The wizard Perestrom is here. You asked for him after reading his report.”
    “Have him brought up,” Scyllua commanded without looking at the lesser officer. She rarely bothered to look anyone else in the eyes, and had the habit of staring off over a shoulder or fixing her blank gaze on someone’s breastbone as if she might bore a hole through his heart with simple concentration. She didn’t realize that she had that habit, and certainly didn’t do it deliberately; she simply