The Reign Of Istar (28 page)

“I have been beguiled,” he told himself. “It is only an illusion. The vat is not empty.
The vat is full.”

Murmuring, he knelt on the stone floor of the great cellar and did obeisance to all the
gods of good, waiting while his prayers eased the tensions within him, letting the light
of goodness and wisdom flood his soul. Still shaken then, but feeling somewhat reassured,
he climbed the stone steps to the catwalk and returned to the sample port of Vat Nine.
With hands that shook only slightly, he unlocked it again, muttered one further litany,
and opened the lid.

The vat was empty. Candlelight flooded its dark interior, illuminating the draft marks at
intervals on the inner wall. A dozen feet below, shadowy in the reeking murk, drying dregs
lay crusting, inches below the lowest draft mark. Pitkin's pale face went ashen. The vat
could not be empty. It was not possible. Yet, there was no wine within.

Easing the sampler lid down again, he locked it and stared around the cavernous vault. From where he stood, on the catwalk, the great vats
receded into shadows in the distance. Nine in all, only their upper portions extended
above the hewn stone of their nestling cradles. Each of them was many times the size of
Pitkin's sleeping cell four levels up in the Temple of the Kingpriest. The huge flattop
vats seemed a row of ranked monoliths of seasoned hardwood, their walls as thick as the
length of his foot. Each one nestling into a cavity of solid stone, the vats were like
everything else in this, the greatest structure of Istar, the center of the world. They
were the finest of their kind ... anywhere.

The wines they held were blessed by the Kingpriest himself. Not personally, of course, but
in spirit, in somber ceremonies performed by lesser clerics on behalf of His Radiance. For
two and a half centuries the wines had been blessed. Every Kingpriest since the completion
of the temple, at every harvest of the vines, had blessed the wines of the nine vats.

Symbolic of the nine realms of the Triple Triad - the three provinces ruled directly by
Istar, the three covenant states of Solamnia, and the Border States of Taol, Ismin and
Gather - the wines were part of the holy wealth. The best of vintage, produced entirely by
human hands and made pure by the blessings of the sun, these were the wines of the nine
vats.

The wines that were SUPPOSED to be in the vats, Pitkin corrected his thought. The wines
that vats number one through eight did indeed hold - Pitkin had inspected them himself, as
he did every morning - and that Vat Nine somehow did not.

His mind tumbled and churned in confusion. How could Vat Nine be empty? No vat was ever
empty. These were no table wines. Readily available elven wines were used for routine. No,
these wines were sacred, used only on rare occasions and only in ceremonial amounts. What
was used was replenished by the stewards at regular intervals - always by the finest of
human vintage from each of the nine realms.

Made of sealed hardwood, cradled in solid rock, no vat had ever leaked so much as a drop
of precious fluid. And there was no way to remove any wine from any vat except by
unlocking the sampler port. And only he had the keys.

Pitkin wanted to cry. Slowly, on shaking legs, he made his way to the sealed portal of the cellar vault. A hundred thoughts besieged him - approaches to explaining
what he had found, to formulating apologies for such an unthinkable disappearance, to the
wording of a plea for clemency - but none had any merit.

There was only one thing for him to do. He must simply report the disappearance of Vat
Nine's wine and pray for the best.

*****

“Wizardry,” the second warder muttered, staring into the empty vat. “Evil and chaos.
Mage-craft. Spells.”

“Mischief of some sort,” the high warder agreed, “but ... wizardry? Within the very temple
itself? How could that be? There certainly are no mages here ... save one, of course, but
he is sanctioned by the Kingpriest himself. The Dark One would use no such mischievous
spells. All the other wizards are gone-driven to far Wayreth. All of Istar has been
cleansed of their foul kind.”

“Then how can you explain this?” a senior cleric from the maintenance section insisted.
“An entire vat of wine - four hundred and, ah, eighty-three barrels' count, by yesterday's
inventory - it certainly didn't get up and walk out by itself, and there has been no
cartage below the third level for the past week, not even porters.”

“Thieves?” a junior cleric suggested, then turned pink and looked away as scathing glances
fell upon him. It was well known that the Temple of the Kingpriest was inviolate. In all
of Istar, in all of Ansalon, there was no edifice more theftproof.

“Only dregs,” the second warder muttered, still staring into the drained vat. He prodded
downward with a long testing rod. Its thump as it tapped the bottom of the vat was muted.
“Waist-deep, drying dregs. How could this have happened, unless ...” He lowered his voice.
“Unless by magic? Dark and infidel magic.”

From below the catwalk a curious voice asked, “Brother Susten, are you aware that you are
wearing only one sandal?”

“I can't find the other one,” the chief warder snapped.

“Please concentrate on the matter at hand, Brother Glisten. This is no time to count
sandals.”

Far in the distance, beyond the vault doors, a loud, exasperated voice roared, “I'm tired
of this game, you bubbleheads! I want to know who took it! Now!”

Heads turned in surprise. Several clerics hurried away toward the sound, then returned,
shaking their heads. “It's nothing, Eminence,” one of them said to the chief warder. “A
captain of temple guards. He, too, has lost some part of his attire, it seems.”

Again the irritated voice rose in the distance, “This has gone far enough! What pervert
took my codpiece?”

“Gone,” the second warder muttered, staring into the emptiness of Vat Nine as though
mesmerized. “All that wine, just ... just gone.”

*****

“Sorcery?” The keeper of portals rasped, staring in disbelief at the assembled clerics
before him. “Magic? Don't be ridiculous. This is the Temple of the Kingpriest. Mage-craft
is not allowed here, as all of you very well know!”

“Our accumulated pardons, Eminence,” the chief warder said, shifting his weight from
sandaled foot to bare foot and back, “but we have given this matter the most serious of
study, and we can arrive at no other explanation.”

The keeper of portals glared at them in silence for a long moment, then spread his flowing
robes and seated himself behind his study table. He sighed. “All right, we shall review it
once again. One: Even if magic were somehow introduced into the temple - and what mage
would dare such a thing? - what purpose would be served by draining a vat of blessed wine?”

“Evil,” someone said. “The purposes of evil, obviously.”

“Two: His Blessed Radiance, the Kingpriest himself, oversaw the evacuation of the Tower of
High Sorcery in Istar. Every last mage and artifact was removed, and every magic-user of
any degree driven away - not just from Istar but from the nine realms. The tower is empty,
and its seals are intact.”

“Dire evils have their way,” someone said.

“There is the ... Dark One,” someone else whispered, then blushed and lowered his head,
wishing he had not spoken.

“Three.” The keeper of portals continued grimly, pretending not to have heard. “It is
patently impossible for that wine to have disappeared - ” He stopped, scowled, and blinked.

“ - by any device other than sorcery,” the chief warder finished softly, trying to look
pious rather than victorious.

*****

“Wizardry?” the master of scrolls whispered, shaking his head. White hair as soft as
spidersilk trembled with the motion. Here in the shadows of his deepest sanctuary, where
few beside the keeper of portals - and of course the Kingpriest himself - ever saw him, he
seemed a very old man. Very different from the dignified and reverent presence who sat at
the foot of the throne when the Kingpriest gave audience in the sanctuary of light.

Again the master shook his head, seeming very frail and sad as long as one did not look
into his eyes. “After all these years ... evil still confronts us in Istar.”

“There is no other answer, August One,” the keeper of portals said, sympathetically. For
more seasons than most men had lived, the master of scrolls - next to the Kingpriest
himself, the very epitome of all that was good and holy - had born upon his frail
shoulders the weight of righteousness in a world far too receptive to wrong. Now he looked
as though he might break down and weep ... until he raised his eyes.

“Evil,” the old man whispered. “After all we have done, still it rears its vile head. Do
you know, Brother Sopin - but of course you do - that my illustrious predecessor, my own
venerated father, died of a broken heart, realizing that even his strenuous efforts as
advisor to His Radiance had not stamped out evil forever. He truly believed that such had
been done, first with the Proclamation of Manifest Virtue, and subsequently by sanctioning
the extermination of evil races everywhere. He believed, for a time, that we had
succeeded, just as the third Kingpriest and his advisors believed that THEY had stamped out evil for good the day this temple was blessed in the names of all the gods -
of good, of course,” he added as an afterthought.

The master of scrolls raised rheumy old eyes - they seemed so at first glance - to gaze at
his visitor. “He once even believed the tenet of the first Kingpriest, that by bonding the
might of Solamnia with the spiritual guidance of Istar, the forces of evil could be driven
from the world.”

“It is regrettable, August One,” the keeper said sorrowfully.

“Yes. Regrettable. I have said it before, good Sopin. Evil is an abomination. Evil is an
affront to the very existence of the gods, and of men. Yet how to eliminate it, finally
and forever?” His question was rhetorical. He obviously had the answer.

“Yes, August One?”

“We know now - the Kingpriest himself must know as well - that evil cannot be conquered by
unifying states and building temples. Neither by driving away practitioners of chaos, nor
even by eliminating evil acts and evil races ... though that has yet to be thoroughly
tested, I understand.”

“Such things take time, August Brother. Even the vilest of races resist extermination. As
to the practices of evil men, when they believe they will not be found out ...”

“Time,” the master of scrolls rasped, in a voice as dry as sand. “There is so little time,
Sopin. This business of the wine missing, this willful and arrogant exercise of a
sorcerous spell, right here in the holiest of places in this entire world ... Don't you
understand it, Sopin? Don't you see what it means?”

“Ah ... well, it might be ...”

“It is a challenge, Sopin. Worse, it is a taunt. Evil is gaining strength in the world,
because we have yet to kill it at its source!” The rheumy eyes blazed at the keeper, and
now he saw the fire in them, the eyes of a zealot.

“August Brother! Do you mean - ?”

“Yes, Sopin. As has been argued before. It is time to go to the root of evil. The very
minds of men.”

The keeper went pale. “August Brother, you know that I agree, but is this the time for so
drastic a policy? People are - ”

“People are children for us to lead in the true path, Brother Sopin, at the pleasure of
His Radiance, the Kingpriest.“ The master of scrolls gathered his robes around him, shivering. He was often
cold, of late. ”The Grand Council of the Revered Sons, Brother Sopin ... I believe they
are all present now, in Istar? His Radiance has received their respects.”

“They are all present, Highest. Each of the nine realms has sent a delegation for
tomorrow's festivity, and all the members of the council are present, though I have word
today that one of the high clerics is ill. None have been able to heal him. Perhaps
tomorrow - at the time of the festivity - he will be better.”

“As the gods of good will,” the master of scrolls agreed, then looked up again at his
assistant. “Ill? Which of them is ill?”

The keeper looked agitated. “Ah ... it is Brother Sinius, August One. The high cleric of
Taol.”

The master of scrolls stared at him. “Taol? The ninth realm? The one from whose realm came
the disappeared wine?”

“The same.”

“By the gods of ultimate good! There lies evil's perfidy, Sopin. It lulls us with subtlety
until we expect all of its machinations to be subtle. Then, when we are lulled, it strikes
- simple and direct. Through the blessed wine, it strikes directly at us. None can heal
him, eh? I must speak of this to His Radiance himself, Sopin. Tomorrow's council of light
... there is business to discuss.”

“It is the Kingpriest's birthday, August. Is such business appropriate?”

“The council is present, Brother Keeper, and so is the evil. Leave me now, Brother. I must
prepare a petition. I shall suggest an edict - the same that I have submitted so many
times before. But His Radiance must consider it, Brother Sopin. Beyond that, it must have
the sanction of the Grand Council of Revered Sons.”

“Yes, August One.” Sopin felt a chill rise up his back. The Kingpriest require the
sanction of council? Only one order of business could explain that. The master of scrolls
meant to propose the opening of the Scroll of the Ancients.

It was the one artifact in the keeping of the priesthood that the first Kingpriest had so
feared that it was sealed by a spell. It could be opened, but only by separate, secret
incantations recited in unison by all the members of the Grand Council of Revered Sons. The knowledge contained in the Scroll of the Ancients was a power that the first Kingpriest had found so fearsome that he trusted no man with it
- not even himself, or any of his successors. The Scroll of the Ancients, it was said,
contained the secret of mind reading. With its power, one could enter and adjudge -
possibly even control - the minds of others.