NUMBERING THE STRANDS

This is futile!" cried Wanabrick Prestocovin, a spirited young wizard from Baldur's Gate. He shoved his palms forward on the table before him, ruffling a pile of parchment.

"Easy, friend," said Dalebrentia Promise, a fellow traveler from the port city. Older and with a large gray beard that seemed to dwarf his skinny frame, Dalebrentia looked the part of the mage, and even wore stereotypical garb: a blue conical hat and a dark blue robe adorned with golden stars. "We are asked to respect the scrolls and books of Spirit Soaring."

A few months earlier, Wanabrick's explosion of frustration would have been met by a sea of contempt in the study of the great library, where indeed, the massive collections of varied knowledge from all across Faerun, pulled together by Cadderly and his fellows, were revered and treasured. Tellingly, though, as many wizards, sages, and priests in the large study nodded their agreement with Wanabrick as revealed their scorn at his outburst.

That fact was not lost on Cadderly as he sat across the room amidst his own piles of parchment, including one on which he was working mathematical equations to try to inject predictability and an overriding logic into the seeming randomness of the mysterious events.

His own frustrations were mounting, though Cadderly did well to hide them, for that apparent randomness seemed less and less like a veil to be unwound and more and more like an actual collapse of the logic that held Mystra's Weave aloft. The gods were not all dark, had not all gone silent, unlike the terrible Time of Troubles, but there was a palpable distance involved in any divine communion, and an utter unpredictability to spellcasting, divine or wizardly.

Cadderly rose and started toward the table where the trio of Baldur's Gate visitors studied, but he purposely put a disarming smile on his face, and walked with calm and measured steps.

"Your pardon, good Brother Bonaduce," Dalebrentia said as he neared. "My friend is young, and truly worried."

Wanabrick turned a wary eye at Cadderly. His face remained tense despite Cadderly's calm nod.

"I don't blame you, or Spirit Soaring," Wanabrick said. "My anger, it seems, is as unfocused as my magic."

"We're all frustrated and weary," Cadderly said.

"We left three of our guild in varying states of insanity," Dalebrentia explained. "And a fourth, a friend of Wanabrick's, was consumed in his own fireball while trying to help a farmer clear some land. He cast it long - I am certain of it - but it blew up before it ever left his hand."

"The Weave is eternal," Wanabrick fumed. "It must be ... stable and eternal, else all my life's work is naught but a cruel joke!"

"The priests do not disagree," said a gnome, a disciple of Gond.

His support was telling. The Gondsmen, who loved logic and gears, smokepowder and contraptions built with cunning more than magic, had been the least affected by the sudden troubles.

"He is young," Dalebrentia said to Cadderly. "He doesn't remember the Time of Troubles."

"I am not so young," Cadderly replied.

"In mind!" Dalebrentia cried, and laughed to break the tension. The other two Baldurian wizards, one middle-aged like Cadderly and the other even older than Dalebrentia, laughed as well. "But so many of us who feel the creak of knees on a rainy morning do not much sympathize, good rejuvenated Brother Bonaduce!"

Even Cadderly smiled at that, for his journey through age had been a strange one indeed. He had begun construction of Spirit Soaring after the terrible chaos curse had wrought the destruction of its predecessor, the Edificant Library. Using magic given him by the god Deneir - nay, not given him, but channeled through him - Cadderly had aged greatly, to the point of believing that the construction would culminate with his death as an old, old man. He and Danica had accepted that fate for the sake of Spirit Soaring, the magnificent tribute to reason and enlightenment.

But the cost had proven a temporary thing, perhaps a trial of Deneir to test Cadderly's loyalty to the cause he professed, the cause of Deneir. After the completion of Spirit Soaring, the man had begun to grow younger physically - much younger, even younger than his actual age. He was forty-four, but appeared as a man in his young twenties, younger even than his twin children. That strange journey to physical youth, too, had subsequently stabilized, Cadderly believed, and he appeared to be aging more normally with the passage of the past several months.

"I have traveled the strangest of journeys," Cadderly said, putting a comforting hand on Wanabrick's shoulder. "Change is the only constant, I fear."

"But surely not like this!" Wanabrick replied. "So we hope," said Cadderly.

"Have you found any answers, good priest?" Dalebrentia asked.

"Only that Deneir works as I work, writing his logic, seeking reason in the chaos, applying rules to that which seems unruly."

"And without success," Wanabrick said, somewhat dismissively.

"Patience," said Cadderly. "There are answers to be found, and rules that will apply. As we discern them, so too will we understand the extent of their implications, and so too will we adjust our thinking, and our spellcasting."

The gnome at a nearby table began to clap his hands at that, and the applause spread throughout the great study, dozens of mages and priests joining in, most soon standing. They were not cheering for him, Cadderly knew, but for hope itself in the face of their most frightening trial.

"Thank you," Dalebrentia quietly said to Cadderly. "We needed to hear that."

Cadderly looked at Wanabrick, who stood with his arms crossed over his chest, his face tight with anxiety and anger. The wizard did manage a nod to Cadderly, however.

Cadderly patted him on the shoulder again and started away, nodding and smiling to all who silently greeted him as he passed.

Outside the hall, the priest gave a sigh full of deep concern. He hadn't lied when he'd told Dalebrentia that Deneir was hard at work trying to unravel the unraveling, but he hadn't relayed the whole truth, either.

Deneir, a god of knowledge and history and reason, had answered Cadderly's prayers of communion with little more than a sensation of grave trepidation.

"Keep faith, friend," Cadderly said to Wanabrick later that same night, when the Baldurian contingent departed Spirit Soaring. "It's a temporary turbulence, I'm sure."

Wanabrick didn't agree, but he nodded anyway and headed out the door.

"Let us hope," Dalebrentia said to Cadderly, approaching him and offering his hand in gratitude.

"Will you not stay the night at least, and leave when the sun is bright?"

"Nay, good brother, we have been away too long as it is," Dalebrentia replied. "Several of our guild have been touched by the madness of the pure Weave. We must go to them and see if anything we have learned here might be of some assistance. Again, we thank you for the use of your library."

"It's not my library, good Dalebrentia. It's the world's library. I am merely the steward of the knowledge contained herein, and humbled by the responsibilities the great sages put upon me."

"A steward, and an author of more than a few of the tomes, I note," Dalebrentia said. "And truly we are all better off for your stewardship, Brother Bonaduce. In these troubled times, to find a place where great minds might congregate is comforting, even if not overly productive on this particular occasion. But we are dealing with unknowns here, and I am confident that as the unraveling of the Weave, if that is what it is, is understood, you will have many more important works to add to your collection."

"Any that you and your peers pen would be welcome," Cadderly assured him.

Dalebrentia nodded. "Our scribes will replicate every word spoken here today for Spirit Soaring, that in times to come when such a trouble as this visits Faerun again, Tymora forefend, our wisdom will help the worried wizards and priests of the future."

They held their handshake throughout the conversation, each feeding off the strength of the other, for both Cadderly - so wise, the Chosen of Deneir - and Dalebrentia - an established mage even back in the Time of Troubles some two decades before - suspected that what they'd all experienced of late was no temporary thing, that it might lead to the end of Toril as they knew it, to turmoil beyond anything they could imagine.

"I will read the words of Dalebrentia with great interest," Cadderly assured the man as they finally broke off their handshake, and Dalebrentia moved out into the night to join his three companions.

They were a somber group as their wagon rolled slowly down Spirit Soaring's long cobblestone entry road, but not nearly as much so as when they had first arrived. Though they had found nothing solid to help them solve the troubling puzzle that lay before them, it was hard to leave Spirit Soaring without some measure of hope. Truly the library had become as magnificent in content as it was in construction, with thousands of parchments and tomes donated from cities as far away as Waterdeep and Luskan, Silverymoon, and even from great Calimport, far to the south. The place carried an aura of lightness and hope, a measure of greatness and promise, as surely as any other structure in all the lands.

Dalebrentia had climbed into the wagon beside old Resmilitu, while Wanabrick rode the jockey box with Pearson Bluth, who drove the two ponies.

"We will find our answers," Dalebrentia said, mostly to the fuming Wanabrick, but for the sake of all three.

Hooves clacking and wheels bouncing across the cobblestones were the only sounds that accompanied them down the lane. They reached the packed dirt of the long road that would lead them out of the Snowflakes to Carradoon.

The night grew darker as they moved under the thick canopy of overhanging tree limbs. The woods around them remained nearly silent - strangely so, they would have thought, had they bothered to notice - save for the occasional rustle of the wind through the leaves.

The lights of Spirit Soaring receded behind them, soon lost to the darkness.

"Bring up a flame," Resmilitu bade the others.

"A light will train enemies upon us," Wanabrick replied.

"We are four mighty wizards, young one. What enemies shall we fear this dark and chilly night?"

"Not so chilly, eh?" Pearson Bluth said, and glanced over his shoulder.

Though the driver's statement was accurate, he and the other two noted with surprise that Resmilitu hugged his arms around his chest and shivered mightily.

"Pop a light, then," Dalebrentia bade Wanabrick.

The younger wizard closed his eyes and waggled his fingers through a quick cantrip, conjuring a magical light atop his oaken staff. It flared to life, and Resmilitu nodded, though it shed no heat.

Dalebrentia moved to collect a blanket from the bags in the wagon bed.

Then it was dark again.

"Ah, Mystra, you tease," said Pearson Bluth, as Wanabrick offered stronger curses to the failure.

A moment later, Pearson's good nature turned to alarm. The darkness grew more intense than the night around them, as if Wanabrick's dweomer had not only failed, but had transformed somehow into an opposing spell of darkness. The man pulled the team to a stop. He couldn't see the ponies, and couldn't even see Wanabrick sitting beside him. He had no way of knowing if they, too, were engulfed in the pitch blackness.

"Damn this madness!" Wanabrick cried.

"Oh, but you've erased the stars themselves," said Dalebrentia in as light-hearted a tone as he could manage, confirming that the back of the wagon, too, had fallen victim to the apparent reversal of the dweomer.

Resmilitu cried out then through chattering teeth, "So chill!" and before the others could react to his call, they felt it too, a sudden, unnatural coldness, profound and to the bone.

"What?" Pearson Bluth blurted, for he knew as the others knew that the chill was no natural phenomenon, and he felt as the others felt a malevolence in that coldness, a sense of death itself.

Resmilitu was the first to scream out in pain as some unseen creature came over the side of the wagon, its raking hands clawing at the old mage.

"Light! Light!" cried Dalebrentia.

Pearson Bluth moved to heed that call, but the ponies began to buck and kick and whinny terribly. The poor driver couldn't hold the frantic animals in check. Beside him, Wanabrick waved his arms, daring to dive into the suddenly unpredictable realm of magic for an even greater enchantment. He brought forth a bright light, but it lasted only a heartbeat - enough to reveal the hunched and shadowy form assailing Resmilitu.

The thing was short and squat, a misshapen torso of black flesh and wide shoulders, with a head that looked more like a lump without a neck. Its legs were no more than flaps of skin tucked under it, but its arms were long and sinewy, with long-fingered, clawing hands. As Resmilitu rolled away, the creature followed by propelling itself with those front limbs, like a legless man dragging himself.

"Be gone!" cried Dalebrentia, brandishing a thin wand of burnished wood tipped in metal. He sent forth its sparkling bolts of pure energy just as Wanabrick's magical light winked out.

The creature wailed in pain, but so too did poor Resmilitu, and the others heard the tearing of the old wizard's robes.

"Be gone!" Dalebrentia cried again - the trigger phrase for his wand - and they heard the release of the missiles even though they couldn't see any flash in the magical darkness.

"More light!" Dalebrentia cried.

Resmilitu cried out again, and so did the creature, though it sounded more like a shriek of murderous pleasure than of pain.

Wanabrick threw himself over the seat atop the fleshy beast and began thrashing and pounding away with his staff to try to dislodge it from poor Resmilitu.

The monster was not so strong, and the wizard managed to pry one arm free, but then Pearson Bluth screamed out from in front, and the wagon lurched to the side. It rolled out of the magical darkness at that moment, and the light atop Wanabrick's oaken staff brightened the air around them. But the wizards took little solace in that, for the terrified team dragged the wagon right off the road, to go bouncing down a steep embankment. They all tried to hold on, but the front wheels turned sharply and dug into a rut, lifting the wagon end over end.

Wood splintered and the mages screamed. Loudest of all came the shriek of a mule as its legs shattered in the roll.

Dalebrentia landed hard in some moss at the base of a tree, and he was certain he'd broken his arm. He fought through the pain, however, forcing himself to his knees. He glanced around quickly for his lost wand but found instead poor Resmilitu, the fleshy beast still atop him, tearing at his broken frame in a frenzy.

Dalebrentia started for him, but fell back as a blast of lightning blazed from the other side, lifting the shadowy beast right off his old friend and throwing it far into the night. Dalebrentia looked to Wanabrick to nod his approval.

But he never managed that nod. Looking at the man, the magically-lit staff lying near him, Dalebrentia saw the shadowy beasts crawling in behind the younger mage, huddled, fleshy beasts coming on ravenously.

To the side, Pearson Bluth stumbled into view, a beast upon his back, one of its arms wrapped around his neck, its other hand clawing at his face.

Dalebrentia fell into his spellcasting and brought forth a fiery pea, thinking to hurl it past Wanabrick, far enough so its explosion would catch the approaching horde but not engulf his friend.

But the collapsing Weave deceived the old mage. The pea had barely left his hand when it exploded. Waves of intense heat assailed Dalebrentia and he fell back, clutching at his seared eyes. He rolled around wildly on the ground, trying to extinguish the flames, too far lost to agony to even hear the cries of his friends, and those of the fleshy beasts, likewise shrieking in burning pain.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, old Dalebrentia could only hope that his fireball had eliminated the monsters and had not killed his companions.

His hopes for the former were dashed a heartbeat later when a clawed hand came down hard against the side of his neck, the force of the blow driving a dirty talon through his skin. Hooked like a fish, blinded and burned by his own fire and battered from the fall, Dalebrentia could do little to resist as the shadowy beast tugged at him.

Had he remained at the door where he'd sent the wizards off more than an hour before, Cadderly might have seen the sudden burst of fire far down the mountain trail, with one tall pine going up in flames like the fireworks the priest had often used to entertain his children in their younger days. But Cadderly had gone back inside as soon as the four from Baldur's Gate had departed.

Their inability to discover anything pertinent had spurred the priest to his meditation, to try again to commune with Deneir, the god who might, above all others in the pantheon, offer some clues to the source of the unpredictable and troubling events.

He sat in a small room lit only by a pair of tall candles, one to either side of the blanket he had spread on the floor. He sat cross-legged on that blanket, hands on his knees, palms facing up. For a long while, he focused only on his breathing, making his inhalations and exhalations the same length, using the count to clear his mind of all worry and trials. He was alone in his cadence, moving away from the Prime Material Plane and into the realm of pure thought, the realm of Deneir.

He'd done the same many times since the advent of the troubles, but never to great effect. Once or twice, he thought he had reached Deneir, but the god had flitted out of his thoughts before any clear pictures might emerge.

This time, though, Cadderly felt Deneir's presence keenly. He pressed on, letting himself fall far from consciousness. He saw the starscape all around him, as if he floated among the heavens, and he saw the image of Deneir, the old scribe, sitting in the night sky, long scroll spread before him, chanting, though Cadderly could not at first make out the words.

The priest willed himself toward his god, knowing that good fortune was on his side, that he had entered that particular region of concentration and reason in conjunction with the Lord of All Glyphs and Images.

He heard the chant.

Numbers. Deneir was working the Metatext, the binding logic of the multiverse.

Gradually, Cadderly began to discern the slightly-glowing strands forming a net in the sky above him and Deneir, the blanket of magic that gave enchantment to Toril. The Weave. Cadderly paused and considered the implications. Was it possible that the Metatext and the Weave were connected in ways more than philosophical? And if that were true, since the Weave was obviously flawed and failing, could not the Metatext also be flawed? No, that could not be, he told himself, and he moved his focus back to Deneir.

Deneir was numbering the strands, Cadderly realized, was giving them order and recording the patterns on his scroll. Was he somehow trying to infuse the failing Weave with the perfect logic and consistency of the Metatext? The thought thrilled the priest. Would his god, above all others, be the one to repair the rents in the fabric of magic?

He wanted to implore his god, to garner some divine inspiration and instruction, but Cadderly realized, to his surprise, that Deneir was not there to answer his call to commune, that Deneir had not brought him to that place. No, he had arrived at that place and time as Deneir had, by coincidence, not design.

He drifted closer - close enough to look over Deneir's shoulder as the god sat there, suspended in emptiness, recording his observations.

The parchment held patterns of numbers, Cadderly noted, like a great puzzle. Deneir was trying to decode the Weave itself, each strand by type and form. Was it possible that the Weave, like a spider's web, was comprised of various parts that sustained it? Was it possible that the unraveling, if that's what the time of turbulence truly was, resulted from a missing supporting strand?

Or a flaw in the design? Surely not that!

Cadderly continued to silently watch over Deneir's shoulder. He committed to memory a few sequences of the numbers, so he could record them later when he was back in his study. Though certainly no god, Cadderly still hoped he might discern something in those sequences that he could then communicate back to Deneir, to aid the Scribe of Oghma in his contemplations.

When at last Cadderly opened his physical eyes again, he found the candles still burning beside him. Looking at them, he deduced that he had been journeying the realm of concentration for perhaps two hours. He rose and moved to his desk, to transcribe the numbers he had seen, the representation of the Weave.

The collapsing Weave.

Where were the missing or errant strands? he wondered.

Cadderly hadn't seen the firelight down the mountain trail, but Ivan Bouldershoulder, out collecting wood for his forge, surely had.

"Well, what mischief's about?" the dwarf asked. He thought of his brother, then, and realized that Pikel would be angry indeed to see so majestic a pine go up in a pillar of flame.

Ivan moved to a rocky outcropping to gain a better vantage. He still couldn't make out much down the dark trails, but his new position put the wind in his face, and that breeze carried with it screams.

The dwarf dropped his pack beside the hand-sled on which rested the firewood, adjusted his helmet, which was adorned with great deer antlers, and hoisted Splitter, his double-bladed battle-axe, so named - by Ivan, after Cadderly had enchanted it with a powerfully keen edge - for its work on logs and goblin skulls alike. Without so much as a glance back at Spirit Soaring, the yellow-bearded dwarf ran down the dark trails, his short legs propelling him at a tremendous pace.

Fleshy beasts of shadow were feeding on the bodies of the Baldurian wizards by the time he arrived.

Ivan skidded to an abrupt halt, and the nearest creatures noticed him and came on, dragging themselves with their long forelimbs.

Ivan thought to retreat, but only until he heard a groan from one of the wizards.

"Well, all righty then!" the dwarf decided, and he charged at the beasts, Splitter humming as he slashed it back and forth with seeming abandon. The keen axe sheared through black skin with ease, spilling goo from the shrieking crawlers. They were too slow to get ahead of those powerful swipes, and too stupid to resist their insatiable hunger and simply flee.

One after another fell to Ivan, splattering with sickly sounds as Splitter eviscerated them. The dwarf's arms did not tire and his swings did not slow, though the beasts did not stop coming for a long, long while.

When finally there seemed nothing left to hit, Ivan rushed to the nearest mage, the oldest of the group.

"No helpin' that one," he muttered when he rolled Resmilitu over to find his neck torn out.

Only one of them wasn't quite dead. Poor Dalebrentia lay shivering, his skin all blistered, his eyes tightly closed.

"I got ye," Ivan whispered to him. "Ye hold that bit o' life and I'll get ye back to Cadderly."

With that and a quick glance around, the dwarf set Splitter in place across his back and bent low to slide one hand under Dalebrentia's knees, the other under his upper back. Before he lifted the man, though, Ivan felt such a sensation of coldness - not the cold of winter, but something more profound, as if death itself stood behind him.

He turned, slowly at first, as he reached around to grasp his weapon.

A shadowy form stood nearby, staring at him. Unlike the fleshy beasts that lay dead all around him - indeed, the four mages had also killed quite a few - it appeared more like a man, old and hunched over.

Such a cold chill went through Ivan then that his teeth began to chatter. He wanted to call out to the man, or shadow, or specter, or whatever it was, but found that he could not.

And found that he didn't have to.

Images of a long-ago time swirled in Ivan's mind, of dancing with his six mighty friends around an artifact of great power.

Images of a red dragon came clear to him, so clear that he began to duck as if the beast circled right above his head.

An image of another creature erased the others, an octopus-headed monstrosity with tentacles waggling under its chin like the braided strands of an old dwarf's beard.

A name was whispered into his ear, carried on unseen breezes. "Yharaskrik."

Ivan stood up straight, lifting Dalebrentia in his arms.

Then he dropped the man to the ground before him, lifted his heavy boot, and pressed it down on Dalebrentia's throat until the wheezing and the squirming stopped.

With a satisfied grin, Ivan, who was not Ivan, looked all around. He held out his hand toward each of the Baldurian wizards in turn, and each rose up to his call.

Throats torn, arms half-eaten, great holes in their bellies, it did not matter. For Ivan's call was the echo of the Ghost King, and the Ghost King's call beckoned souls from the land of the dead with ease.

His four gruesome bodyguards behind him, Ivan Bouldershoulder started off along the trails, moving farther away from Spirit Soaring.

He didn't reach his intended location that night. Instead, he found a cave nearby where he and his bodyguards could spend the daylight hours.

There would be plenty of time to kill when the darkness fell once more.