The Diamond (6 page)

“Blackstaff” Arunsun was sailing above the heads of the cringing congregation in a flurry of black

wool. Someone shrieked.

Khelben descended like a magnificent storm cloud, huge and unstoppable. Lightning seemed to

dash from his furious brows. “Fools! Piergeiron lives! Open the coffin! Bring pry bars, augers and

saws! Where are the crafters? Bring them here! Open that coffin!”

Khelben landed beside Madieron. The man-giant’s fists were crashing like twin hammers on the

glass of the Open Lord’s casket; it boomed like a thunderous war drum. Piergeiron’s own fists

were answering, blow for blow, from within the case.

“It’s no good!” Khelben shouted to Madieron, peeling the grieving giant back from the coffin by

main strength. “Yon glass is hard as diamonds—impenetrable! We’ve got to pop the bolts!”

Craftsmen were scurrying up the aisle now, their rugged wooden toolboxes odd against the

ceremonial garb they’d been given for the funeral. Horns sounded as Watch officers summoned

men to run far and fast in search of tools, all the tools that could be found in the ward and

beyond!

“How many bolts are there?” Khelben snarled, his eyes fairly spitting sparks.

“Fifteen hundred,” a smith gulped, looking away from that fiery gaze.

“Well, drill, man! Air holes—hurry!”

As men crouched beside the coffin and lifted their tools to the task, Madieron let out a howl of

despair and hammered the glass again.

“Stop!” Khelben shouted. “Give them room! You’d have to weigh ten times as much as you do to

have a chance of breaking through.”

Madieron stared for a frustrated moment at the mage, tears standing in his eyes. Then he let out

a roar that rang around the chapel, and rushed off through the stunned crowd.

Pry bars bit along the side of the casket. Men groaned, and metal creaked. A golden bolt popped,

and then another. Men and dwarves crawled forward on their elbows under those wielding the

bars, to crank large drills hard and as fast. Curls of gold sheered away from whirling bits and fell.

Sweat beaded hands and foreheads. More bolts popped. Auger bits gnawed and dug.

All the while that hands gripped and wrenched at the outside of the casket, the Open Lord’s hands

pounded against the inside. His breath had quickly frosted over the glass. Insistent fingers

scratched long trails in the condensation, but each puff of the dead man’s breath filled in these

frantic marks.

“Faster,” growled Khelben, his fingers weaving a spell. The pumping arms of gasping, groaning

workmen became a sudden blur. Five more bolts. Ten more. Drill bits were smoking in their holes

as gold melted away. With a sharp crack, one auger snapped. Its wielder fell back, stunned, and

was flung aside like a doll by a furious figure in black robes. “Faster!” the Lord Mage bellowed.

“He’s dying in there!”

Hooves clattered abruptly at the rear of the chapel. Heads snapped around as Madieron charged

into view astride a massive plow horse. The hooves of the great beast struck sparks from the

chapel floor as it thundered through the citizenry, parting merchants and nobles in their finery as a

shark parts a school of fish. One lady was too slow to leap clear, but the Champion of Waterdeep

hauled expertly on the reins, and the gigantic beast reared. Its shaggy forehooves beat ominously

at the air. Anxious hands plucked the moaning woman from under the very shadow of the horse,

as Madieron, eyes blazing, urged it into a gallop, straight at the casket of the Open Lord.

With a sigh, Khelben stepped aside, slapping the shoulders of the frantically working crafters to

get them out of the way, as the juggernaut came pelting down the aisle. Men scrambled, tools

ringing on the stones.

Madieron rode clatteringly to the dais, pulling the horse up severely at the last. The massive

animal reared again, its hooves lashing the air between the chandeliers. Madieron crowded his

mount against the coffin, and those hooves dropped on the glass like twin mauls. “Impenetrable”

glass cracked and shattered. The Champion hauled on the reins, spinning the horse around.

Piergeiron’s own fists finished the job, punching glass aside in a scintillating shower of knife-edged

pieces. Madieron leapt from his saddle through the flying shards, to lift Piergeiron from the riven

casket.

“No!” the Open Lord cried again, his voice raw. “No!”

Bleeding and glistening with slivers of glass, Madieron bore Piergeiron to the aisle floor and laid

him down. “You’re all right,” the giant said awkwardly. “You’re free. You’re alive.”

“But she’s not,” Piergeiron gasped, clutching Sunderstone’s tunic. His eyelids strained at their

stitches. “She’s dead!”

Madieron glanced at Shaleen’s glass-topped casket. “Who? Who’s dead?”

“Eidola,” replied the Open Lord. He coughed, blood spattering cracked lips. “I pursued her across

Faerűn, and beyond

through all of time. I pursued her through life, unto death.”

Madieron looked up beseechingly to the Blackstaff. Khelben crouched beside the fallen lord of

Waterdeep and said, “You’ve had a long sleep

a short death. You’ve dreamed.”

Piergeiron shook his head, shards of glass and drops of blood raining to the stone floor. “No. I did

not dream this. She’s dead. Somewhere beneath our feet, she’s died.”

“Don’t speak,” urged the Blackstaff.

“I will speak,” Piergeiron snarled. “I must speak, or it’ll all fade and be forgotten like a dream. It

wasn’t a dream!”

He struggled to sit up in Madeiron’s arms. “I was dead. I’ve traveled the places of the dead. I’ve

walked other worlds, and journeyed through mirror mazes to find Eidola and bring her back. I’ve

fought tanar’ri and climbed the world tree and plunged into Lethe’s waters of forgetfulness; they

still cling to me. If I don’t tell what befell me now, I’ll nevermore remember.”

Khelben raised his head to glare at the armsmen, merchants, and nobles crowding around. “I need

priests—now!—to heal this man. Are there any tailors or seamstresses here? Someone with a sure

hand? The Open Lord needs the stitches out of his eyelids! The rest of you, back! Officers, see to

it!”

The Lord Mage leaned back over Piergeiron, shielding the wounded man against any dart or hurled

dagger that might forestall the return of the Open Lord to his throne. “Let them tend you, and tell

all the stories you wish. Wherever you have been, welcome home, friend.”

As folk in their finery scurried to obey Khelben’s orders, Piergeiron Paladinson smiled and started

to speak.

He surfaced in a deep wood, leaving behind cold, still water. But he was dry, and no water stood

nearby, only damp leaf mold. Somewhere beneath it, perhaps, was the deep, eternal darkness

he’d ascended through

limitless depths inhabited only by the souls of the dead.

I am dead, he told himself plainly. I am dead.

There were airy dreams of elsewhere: a palace perched above a restless sea, waves as white and

loud as clashing swords. Their clamor mingled with bards’ songs that wove truth out of thin air. He

saw again masked lords and darting daggers, a thousand shadowed conspiracies, saw bright

banners fluttering, and heard armsmen shouting a name in jubilant unison—a name also shaped

by the hostile lips of those conspirators. A name that belonged to him. Piergeiron. It sounded like

some sort of falcon.

Something more came back to him then, lone, shining, and beautiful

a soul that sang his name,

high and pure.

What was her name? It was gone with her. She was gone.

He stood alone, in this wood. It was real; the rest were but fading tatters of forgetfulness. It all

meant nothing now. The cloak of scars and sorrows, woven in life to encrust and mottle old souls,

making them distinct from all others, was gone. He was Pier—He was a falcon. Nay, he was a

Paladin.

Paladin looked about.

This was a verdant place. Trees soared to join earth and endless sky. Vines spiraled across

ancient bark, leaves catching scraps of light lancing down from above. Birds coursed in silent lines

among the trees. The musk of growing things hung strong in the air. The forest quivered with the

tremendous murmur of the world growing. Growing.

Then, slashing through all, came a round, mournful cry, a call long unanswered and despairing.

Paladin felt the longing in its haunting wail.

She. There had been a name for her in the world of contingencies and consciousness, but here

she had no name save Desire, or Heart’s Desire, or Broken Heart, or just

Heart.

The sound of Heart in her hopelessness sent deep sorrow through Paladin. He turned toward the

song. It came from there, high above.

He was facing the greatest tree of all, its massive gnarled bole as wide as a mountain. It was the

tree, whose roots plunged down through the deeps and (somehow he knew this) beyond, into and

out of and through a thousand worlds. It was the tree whose crown cracked the blue shell of

arching sky and whose branches held aloft a great diamond as large as worlds. The world tree. A

tree that bound worlds together and was worlds altogether. The call came from its crown.

He walked to the tree that loomed like a mountain. It took days. Dreams of otherwhere—dead

bodies and cold cellars and crafters with hammers and measuring tapes—intruded. He drifted

down into them, and surfaced again after not a blink of time. When at last he reached the tree, he

climbed.

There were whole worlds in its bark, hidden in the brown terrain of ragged mountain ridges and

deep valleys. Paladin climbed tirelessly and quickly. He clambered away from strange stinging and

swarming creatures who dwelt in some of the valleys, and he learned to avoid their villages but

otherwise pressed on as straight as he could.

He fell thrice, and died each time, surfacing again in the strange world of gold-gilded caskets and

mourning men. But what is death to a dead man? Always he resurfaced to climb on.

The fourth time he fell, Paladin fell up the tree. Its diamond crown loomed, and Paladin plunged

toward it, watching brown ridges race past. The crown grew ever larger. The bark of the tree

became slick black skin, and the boughs branched into massive tentacles. Where once there had

been leaves, now there were suction cups, broad and oozing, gripping the great diamond. Large

as worlds, the gem glittered with the tiny gleams of pinprick stars and wandering moons.

This was no world tree, but something darker and deadlier. A world in itself, huge and alive,

or—no, a creature that wished to be a world. Its thousand limbs in their dark and mighty

magnificence clutched the glowing diamond.

He looked at that awesome stone. It drew him up. The lady hung unseen within it, crushed on all

sides by titanic, yet balanced, forces. She sang out from its bright depths.

Paladin would save her.

He was suddenly there, beside the diamond, a cage within a cage. In it, entrapped, was Heart,

who called to him.

Now he saw how the stone had held so powerful and beautiful a creature as Heart captive so

long: the diamond was no clear crystal, but a hall of mirrors. Reflections, semblances, illusions; the

most potent of magics in a world of truth. A labyrinth of lies and deceptions, receding into endless

illusions that worked with eye and mind to betray body and soul.

Truth is, in the end, powerless against dazzle and shine.

The mournful throb of Heart came distantly from within.

Mirrors can be broken. Paladin drew steel. He would smash his way into the maze and carve a

path inward to Heart.

The luminous mirror before him bore his own determined features. He shattered them and

stepped into the slanted space beyond. Angled planes all around gave back his appearance.

The first few reflections showed Paladin as he was, only subtly reversed. His sword arm was

switched, his forward knee had been traded for the trailing one. Others held images even farther

from

Paladin gritted his teeth and swung. A delicate magic can slay if it reverses thoughts until self and

purpose are lost. Ten images of swordsmen struck in unison.

The world shattered. Another passage opened. Paladin stepped through.

The mirrors he now faced showed him the snout and tusks of a boar, black lashes and snakelike,

slit-pupiled eyes, a blood-gorged cockscomb and wattle. He looked like a monster. He was a

monster. Monsters must die.

“You fall first,” he snarled in sudden rage, and clung to what he was, naming himself aloud as he

swung shattering steel. Shards boiled away before him like smoke, and suddenly that unreal and