The Architect and the Raven
The rain had moved on. The braziers were guttering out.
Mythrades was at your feet.
Ubys decomposed the Heiress's body where she lay. Flesh withered, bone paled, and shadow drifted up off her cushions like smoke. By the time the wind took the last of it, she was gone.
You stood in the courtyard and argued about the Nagpa.
AC wanted him dead. Now. Here. Ubys wanted to take him home. KeYs wanted him on a Griffon with a Knight. Lessie just wanted to sit down a moment. The vulture-headed body on the ground breathed slowly and did not move.
You took a short rest.
Moist cast Prayer of Healing. The three of you who'd gone down came back twenty-one points stronger, and the rest of you came back seventeen.
AC clamped the Iron Bands of Binding around Mythrades's bound hands. They closed with a click.
Lessie Wild Shaped Giant Spider and bit him — just enough to slip a little venom in. He stirred, opened his eyes, said "Ah, it all feels so good," and smiled.
Ubys cast Zone of Truth.
The Nagpa failed the save.
Where are you from?
"The Shadowdark," he said. "A place called Evernight. That is where I was born. But it is not where I was born."
What about Brookside?
His vulture-head tipped to the side.
"Brookside," he said. *"Yes. Brookside was my assignment. Where I went to study the beginning of the pathogen. The Blight. That is where we first inoculated a world."*
He looked at Crowley across the courtyard fire.
"You assisted in it quite a bit, if I remember correctly. Those years ago."
The wind moved over the ruined wall.
What happens next? Ubys asked. Here. Now. To us.
"You shall see soon upon your own realm," the Nagpa said.
*"First, you will see the red moon. Then the demons. Then chaos and death. Then silence."*
He laughed.
"Oh, the silence. You should hear it."
Who do you serve?
"I am but an instrument for my master's hand."
Who is your master?
He smiled. "The one who must not be named."
If you died right now — would you go to the Shadowfell?
"Oh, you have figured out the next part. I don't think I'm ready to tell you that part."
He looked at Crowley again.
"Do you still bear the mark?"
Crowley said nothing.
"Did I ever give you the mark?" the Nagpa asked. "Like I gave your sister?"
Nobody breathed.
"That is a shame," he said. "Because when the Shadowvar get here — and they will — I would like to taste those memories. You would taste just as good as your sister."
Ubys held Crowley by the elbow.
AC drew Ubys's khopesh from his belt.
"You're not getting a fight," he said. "But I'll offer you the courtesy. You know what this blade does. You know whose it is. Cut yourself with it."
The Nagpa's wrists were tied. His shoulders were tied. He couldn't grip a hilt.
He head-butted the blade. He drew blood.
He was, then, marked. Whatever happened to him next, the Raven Queen would see him through Letherna.
You decided.
KeYs and Falkor would fly Mythrades to Sir Titus in Leilon. Moist would wild-shape small and ride along. Falkor is fast. He could be there in a day.
The rest of you — Crowley, Ubys, Lessie, Dhuxtyn — would walk north, into the Neverwinter Wood, to find the entrance to the Shadowfell that Ubys's Divination had pointed toward at the end of the night.
Meet at the south edge of the wood. If anyone doesn't make it, the other half comes looking.
Falkor flew through the night with a bound Nagpa under his belly and a small, wet-feathered druid clinging to his neck.
An hour out, KeYs felt something following. A shape, more than a shape. After another hour it fell off. Couldn't keep up with a dragon.
At dawn, Falkor passed over the High Road between Neverwinter and Leilon. Below: a long thin line of walkers. Forty, fifty. Pilgrims in plain clothes, carrying banners — white field, black silhouette of a serpent or a dragon. They looked up.
They bowed.
The sky over them broke into cheering as you passed.
You flew on.
Leilon is still half-empty. The mines are still collapsed. The pillar of white light is still shining out of the ruined tower in the center of town, and the devil is still pinned to it with a paladin's sword.
Sir Titus was on the steps.
He was polishing his helm to a mirror.
There was a small altar of rune-stones beside him — a shrine to Tyr, a working one, built from what he had to hand.
When he saw Falkor coming down he reached for his sword by instinct and laughed when he remembered where it was. (Stuck in the tower.) He had a spare laid out near the altar. He greeted KeYs like an old friend.
"Tell me of the auction," he said.
She told him. He nodded. He thanked her for getting Ser Gertz free. He prayed Lathander's light over her.
When she got to the Nagpa, he looked at the bound vulture and said:
"I know who this is. He's known as the Architect. He was building the railroad, from what I know. But he has also dabbled in the occult and death."
You learned then that the Engineer and the Architect are the same man. That Sir Titus's second-chapter Knights have been tracking him for some time. That they will keep tracking him.
"Our numbers have dwindled," Sir Titus said, "because of the strife and corruption in this realm." He did not pretend the Leilon chapter was not what it was.
He looked at Falkor for a long moment.
"There are many rumors," he said. "That this is the prodigy. The rebirth of the lost god Bahamut. Do you know anything about that?"
KeYs told him she didn't know. She was inspired to find him. He is not like the dragons she has seen.
"Hope is a good thing," Sir Titus said.
"What are we calling ourselves?" KeYs asked. "The Band of the Raven?"
"The Band of the Raven," Sir Titus repeated. "All right."
He said he would spread the word. (He will.)
He took Mythrades off the dragon, rebound him with his own shackles, and returned the Iron Bands of Binding to KeYs. "They're my favorite pair." He whistled for Ladre. The Griffon walked over and let the captive be loaded.
"If you get any more information out of him," Sir Titus said, "would you share it with me?"
"I will."
"Well. I have no qualms about what you're going to do with him."
He climbed onto the Griffon and flew north for Yartar.
KeYs turned Falkor south. Moist held on.
While KeYs was flying, the rest of you were climbing.
The ruined keep had a tower. Eighty feet, maybe a hundred. Half the rafters were missing. AC climbed it the way he climbs anything — parkour, foothold, foothold, leap. He made it to the top in four pulls.
At the top, in the open, was a raven's nest. Empty. Black feathers in it.
AC kept watch up there through the night.
Ubys sat with his back against the wall at the base, his sister's holy symbol burning against his chest like it does every dawn.
This dawn it burned a little softer than usual.
Beneath the burn, something warm. Like a hand. Like hello.
He didn't say anything to anybody about it.
At dawn, AC saw the clearing.
Fifteen miles north. A bald patch in the wood. Dead trees ringing it like the wood had bent away.
He came down.
The raven came back.
It looked at you. It tilted its head. It tilted it the other way. It cawed once, very loud.
Ubys said hello in the Raven Queen's tongue.
The raven said hello back.
His name was Ravi. (He went with Bradford for a moment. He went back to Ravi.)
"Finally," he said, "someone I can talk to. Your friends are slow."
Ubys offered him a cookie from his rations.
"So friendly," Ravi said. "My mistress, I can see why she has great favor for this one."
He took the cookie.
"The place you are looking for is north. I will show you."
Ravi led you four hours through the wood. Up through the canopy. Back down. Check direction. Up again.
The trees thinned.
The trees died.
The trees were gone.
You walked out into a wide clearing of dead wood and ash-pale grass, and at the center of it was a hole in the ground.
Reddish, firm, vine-like growths ringed the lip.
The air did not move.
Ubys knew the place. It was where his patron had pointed. A temple of Shar — the goddess of dark, of loss, of secrets beautifully kept. From inside, three ways down. One to the Underdark. One to the Shadowfell.
Ravi perched on a dead branch at the edge.
He would not come further.
"You are about to enter into an area that I do not like," he said.
Then he reached down with his beak and tapped one pebble onto the dirt at your feet.
Then a second.
Then a third.
Then a fourth.
"There are four very dangerous people following you," he said. "They will be here before nightfall."
Lessie asked: are they like us?
"That one — closest. But not the same kind."
He flew south to find KeYs and Moist.
You stood at the lip of the Dread Ring with no Falkor, no KeYs, no Moist, and the sun already climbing.
Four pursuers. Closing.
Ubys's sister was warm against his chest.
Next session: what walks out of the wood, and what's at the bottom of the hole.