The Hand and the Storm

Xil had not expected returning to Ilbus to feel like returning anywhere.

The fishing town had been little more than a stopping point on the journey north: a place to gather supplies, ask questions and learn that a missing minstrel had disappeared somewhere inside the Great Swamp. He remembered wet docks, the smell of fish and Jandar becoming suspiciously competent around boats. Nothing about it had suggested permanence.

Yet when their borrowed boat touched the dock and Mills climbed out ahead of them, Xil felt some tension leave his shoulders.

The swamp was behind them.

For now.

Ilbus looked exactly as it had when they left. Nets hung drying beside the river. Smoke rose from crooked chimneys. Fishermen shouted over the creak of ropes and timber while gulls argued above them. The whole town smelled of water, wood smoke and enough fish to make Vegon visibly reconsider whether civilization was worth returning to.

Mills stopped on the dock.

For several seconds he said nothing.

Xil watched the minstrel stare at the buildings ahead as though uncertain they would remain there if he moved.

“You all right?” Zook asked.

Mills nodded.

Then shook his head.

Then nodded again.

“I think so.”

His voice remained rough, but it was recognizably his now. That mattered more than volume.

A man carrying a basket of river fish passed them, glanced at Mills and nearly dropped the basket.

“Mills?”

The minstrel smiled.

“Disappointing, isn't it?”

The fisherman stared.

Then shouted his name.

That was all it took.

Within minutes, people were coming from the docks and nearby buildings. Not a crowd exactly, but enough that Mills found himself surrounded by hands on his shoulders, questions he could barely answer and several accusations that began with you idiot and ended suspiciously close to tears.

Jandar stood beside Xil and watched.

“I believe he was missed.”

“So it appears.”

Mills caught sight of them through the growing circle.

“He says that now,” he called, pointing at Jandar. “He tried to sell me for a boat.”

Several people looked toward Jandar.

Jandar smiled. “That story lacks context.”

“It does not.”

“It absolutely does.”

Deacon walked past both of them toward the town. “You did suggest it.”

“That was in the swamp. The swamp changes a man.”

“You had been in it less than an hour.”

Jandar followed him. “A very long hour.”

Xil almost smiled.

Then he noticed the looks.

Not all of them were directed at Mills.

People were recognizing the others.

A pair of guards near the road had begun speaking to one another while looking toward Deacon and Zook. Another man pointed toward Jandar. A woman standing outside one of the drying sheds stared at Vegon, then toward the party as a whole.

Xil pulled his hood farther forward.

His disguise had faded days earlier, and he had no desire to discover how much tolerance Ilbus possessed for a drow walking openly through town. Their first visit had taught him enough to know that curiosity could become fear very quickly. He murmured the familiar words and felt magic move across his skin.

The taint came with it.

A cold prickle crawled along his spine as the spell settled, reshaping what others saw. Dark skin lightened. White hair became brown. The angles of his face shifted just enough to appear human.

The discomfort passed.

The disguise remained.

Jandar noticed.

He did not comment.

That was one of the reasons Xil had begun to trust him.

Mills eventually escaped the people around him, though only after promising to visit three families, one tavern keeper and someone named Bera whose relationship to him remained unclear. He caught up with the party near the center of town looking exhausted and happier than Xil had ever seen him.

“I owe you drinks,” Mills said.

“You owe me several,” Jandar replied.

“I was talking to all of you.”

“So was I.”

“The Weary Foot?”

Vegon sighed.

Jandar clapped him on the shoulder. “Civilization.”

“It smells exactly as it did before.”

“That is how you know it survived.”

The Weary Foot was crowded when they entered.

Conversation continued for several seconds before changing.

Xil heard it happen.

Not silence. Something subtler. Voices dropped. Heads turned. A few people looked toward Mills first, but others were already looking beyond him.

Then someone near the bar shouted, “There they are.”

Jandar stopped.

Xil nearly walked into him.

The guard captain they had met near the northern defenses rose from a table with two other men. Xil remembered him from the fighting at the bridge, though he looked different without blood on his armor.

The captain crossed the room and embraced Mills first.

“You stupid bastard.”

Mills laughed into the man's shoulder.

“Apparently that's the official greeting.”

The captain released him, looked him over and shook his head. “We thought you were dead.”

“So did I, briefly.”

“That isn't funny.”

“It will be eventually.”

The captain's attention shifted to the party.

Xil saw recognition settle fully.

“You brought him back.”

Zook shrugged. “He was there.”

Mills looked offended. “Excellent summary.”

The captain ignored him. “And the bridge. Those were you too.”

Jandar leaned against the nearest table. “I don't want to influence your memory, but yes, we were magnificent.”

Deacon looked at him.

“What?”

“You nearly fell off the wall.”

“That was tactical.”

The captain laughed.

Someone called for drinks.

Another person repeated the story of the bridge, incorrectly. Jandar corrected him, also incorrectly but in a more flattering direction. Deacon corrected Jandar. Within minutes the Weary Foot had become louder than it had been when they entered.

Xil stayed near the edge of it.

He was not accustomed to celebration.

Gratitude, perhaps. Relief. The solemn thanks of someone whose wound had closed or fever had broken.

This was different.

These people knew very little about them. They did not know why Jandar had joined the Order or what Deacon carried from the destruction of his village. They did not know what Vegon had left behind, what Zook had never bothered to tell anyone or what Xil concealed beneath a borrowed human face.

They knew only that five strangers had gone north when others had not.

They knew the bridge still stood.

They knew Mills had come home.

Apparently that was enough.

Xil found the thought uncomfortable.

He also found that he did not dislike it.

The first round became a second.

Mills acquired a small instrument from somewhere—nothing like the lute he had lost in the swamp, but close enough that he handled it with immediate familiarity. He tuned it carefully, grimaced when he tried to match one of the notes, then adjusted the instrument instead of his voice.

Jandar noticed.

Again, he said nothing.

Mills strummed a few chords.

The room quieted enough to hear him.

“Don't,” Mills said.

Jandar raised both hands. “I said nothing.”

“You were about to.”

“I was about to encourage you.”

“That is worse.”

Mills tried a line.

His voice cracked.

A few people in the tavern looked away.

Xil felt the change in him immediately. Mills's hands tightened against the instrument.

Then he tried again.

Lower this time.

The note held.

Not beautiful.

Not yet.

But true.

Mills smiled.

The next line was almost spoken rather than sung.

It concerned five fools who went into a swamp.

Vegon objected before Mills reached the second verse.

“We did not go into the swamp without reason.”

Mills stopped playing. “That is your objection?”

“It changes the meaning.”

“It improves the song,” Jandar said.

Vegon looked at him. “How?”

“Five highly qualified professionals conducting an investigation has no rhythm.”

Mills pointed at Jandar. “Exactly.”

Deacon took a drink. “Five fools is closer.”

Zook nodded.

Vegon looked betrayed by the entire table.

Mills played again.

The song was not good.

Xil suspected Mills knew that.

There were missing lines, repeated phrases and one section where he clearly forgot what he had intended to say and replaced it with something about Jandar losing his hat.

That part received the loudest response.

But people listened.

More importantly, Mills kept singing.

His voice roughened as he went. After several verses he stopped and rubbed his throat.

“Enough,” Xil said.

Mills glanced toward him.

“That was not a medical suggestion.”

“I know.”

Mills reluctantly set the instrument aside.

A man at the next table called, “What do we call them?”

Jandar immediately sat straighter.

Xil regretted everything.

“The Heroes of Ilbus,” Jandar suggested.

Deacon shook his head. “No.”

“The Five Swords.”

“Two of us don't use swords,” Vegon said.

“The Northern Blades.”

“No,” Xil said.

Jandar looked around the table. “You are all very difficult to name.”

Mills lifted his cup.

“They're the Hand.”

Everyone looked at him.

Mills seemed surprised by the attention.

“The what?” Zook asked.

“The Hand.”

“That is not better,” Vegon said.

Mills frowned, searching for the thought. “Five of you. Five fingers.”

Jandar held up his hand.

“Some of us are clearly more important fingers.”

Deacon caught his wrist and lowered it.

Mills continued. “You fight like that.”

The humor thinned slightly.

Xil watched him.

Mills looked from one face to the next. “Not the same. That's the point. One of you does something stupid, someone else fixes it. One of you gets hurt, somebody reaches for him. One of you finds trouble—”

Everyone looked at Jandar.

“That feels targeted.”

“—and the rest follow.”

Mills picked up his cup again.

“The Hand.”

For several seconds no one mocked it.

Then Jandar asked, “The Hand of what?”

Mills smiled.

His ruined voice had become worse over the course of the evening, but the expression on his face was entirely his own.

“The storm.”

Zook frowned. “What storm?”

“Me.”

Jandar laughed.

Mills spread his arms. “You lot are the Hand. I am the Storm.”

“That makes no sense,” Vegon said.

“It will in the song.”

“That does not reassure me.”

The captain raised his mug from across the room.

“To the Hand!”

Several others answered.

Jandar raised his own.

“The Hand of the Storm sounds better.”

Mills pointed at him. “You're stealing my name.”

“You gave it away.”

“I did not.”

“You announced it in a public tavern.”

“That is not legally binding.”

“You don't know that.”

Deacon leaned toward Xil. “We're never getting rid of it now.”

Xil looked around the room.

People were already repeating it.

The Hand.

The Storm.

The Hand of the Storm.

A name born from a damaged minstrel, several drinks and Jandar's inability to leave anything alone.

Xil had heard worse origins.

He raised his cup.

“Apparently not.”

It was well after midnight when they finally went upstairs.

The rooms were small and smelled faintly of river damp, old wood and whatever had once lived inside the mattress. Under other circumstances Xil might have objected.

After the swamp, it felt luxurious.

Jandar inspected his door and window before sleeping, using thin cord and broken bits of crockery to create crude alarms.

Xil watched from the corridor.

“You expect trouble?”

“I expect people.”

“That was not my question.”

“It was my answer.”

Jandar tightened the cord near the bottom of his door. “We came back carrying enough gold to make us interesting, a magical book we cannot read and at least three weapons worth stealing.”

“Four,” Deacon called from the next room.

Jandar paused.

“What do you have?”

“Go to sleep.”

Jandar smiled and finished the alarm.

Xil entered his own room.

For several moments he stood in the darkness without moving.

The celebration downstairs had left him more unsettled than he wanted to admit. Hearing strangers call them the Hand of the Storm should have felt ridiculous.

It did feel ridiculous.

It also felt dangerously close to belonging somewhere.

He removed his disguise before sleeping.

There was no reason to maintain it alone.

His real face returned in the small mirror beside the washbasin: dark skin, pale hair, eyes made for places far below the sunlit world. He looked at himself only briefly.

Home.

The word had become complicated enough that he avoided thinking about it.

Ilbus was not home.

Windmarch was not home.

The Order certainly was not home.

Silnorith had stopped being home long before he escaped it.

Perhaps home was simply another thing people invented once they had survived long enough to miss somewhere.

Xil extinguished the lamp and lay down.

Sleep came slowly.

When he woke, someone was standing beside the bed.

He did not move.

A second figure stood near the window.

Drow.

The recognition came before thought.

Not from skin or hair alone. From the way they held themselves in darkness. From the armor. From the silence. From details most surface dwellers would never have noticed.

One was a warrior, tall and broad for a drow, wearing a dark chain shirt beneath travel-stained clothing. A sword rested in his hand.

The other was a woman.

Caster.

Xil knew that before he saw the components bound at her wrist.

For one disorienting instant he thought he had awakened decades earlier.

Stone instead of timber.

Darkness beneath the world.

Running.

Hiding.

Waiting to learn which member of his family had died next.

Something pressed against his mind.

Magic.

Soft.

Persuasive.

Sleep.

Xil felt the command slide over him.

He rejected it.

His eyes opened fully.

The warrior saw.

“Do not make this difficult.”

Xil sat up slowly.

“How did you find me?”

The woman's expression changed.

Not surprise.

Recognition.

They had known exactly whom they were looking for.

The warrior lowered his sword slightly.

“Your mother is looking for you.”

Xil stopped breathing.

The words made no sense.

His mother was dead.

His family was dead.

That was the fact around which decades of his life had been built.

The warrior continued.

“We are here to take you home.”

Xil stared at him.

Then power erupted around the bed.

He called it without hesitation.

Radiant forms filled the room, half-seen spirits spinning through the darkness around him. Their light was imperfect, tainted at the edges by the sickness woven through magic, but they answered him.

The warrior cursed and lunged.

Xil rolled from the bed as the sword cut through the space where his chest had been. The divine spirits closed around the intruder, forcing him backward.

The woman began a spell.

Xil shouted.

Not words.

A warning.

Loud enough.

The warrior struck again, using the flat and hilt more than the edge.

Trying to subdue him.

That frightened Xil more than an attempt to kill him would have.

They truly meant to take him.

The door slammed open.

Deacon entered first.

He had not bothered with armor. He did not need it to look dangerous. Crossbow in hand, he took in Xil, the warrior, the caster and the spinning divine forms in less than a heartbeat.

“Friends?”

“No.”

Deacon raised the crossbow.

Jandar arrived behind him with his rapier already drawn.

“I knew the door alarms were a good idea.”

“You didn't hear your alarm.”

“I heard Deacon.”

The drow caster finished her spell.

Darkness swallowed the room.

Not ordinary darkness.

Xil knew that instantly.

The little light from the hall disappeared. So did the glow of his summoned spirits. The room became absolute black, deeper even than drow eyes could penetrate.

Someone struck the wall.

Jandar swore.

Deacon said, “Nobody move.”

“That is generally poor advice during a fight,” Jandar answered from somewhere near the doorway.

Metal rang.

The warrior had found him.

Xil heard the exchange but could not see it. His own spirits remained around him—he could feel them moving—but their light no longer mattered.

He reached for another prayer.

The taint answered.

Wrong.

Xil knew it before the power fully formed.

A familiar resistance twisted through the spell, but this time there was no opportunity to release it safely. The magic slipped beyond his control.

“Down!”

The room exploded.

Force struck Xil from every direction.

The blast threw him against the bedframe. Wood cracked. Someone shouted. The magical darkness vanished as suddenly as it had come.

For several seconds Xil could hear nothing but a high ringing.

Then the room returned.

Jandar was on one knee near the door, blood running from a cut along his cheek. Deacon had been driven backward into the corridor but was already rising.

The drow woman lay against the wall.

She did not move.

The warrior remained standing.

Barely.

Blood ran beneath his armor. One side of his face had been burned by the backlash, but his sword was still in his hand.

Xil stared at the dead caster.

He had not meant to kill her.

The taint did not care what he meant.

“Enough,” Xil said.

The warrior looked at him.

“Drop the sword.”

A bitter smile crossed the drow's face.

Jandar rose beside him.

“I recommend listening.”

The warrior attacked.

Jandar met him.

Their blades struck once, twice, then Deacon closed from the other side. The warrior tried to turn toward the greater threat and opened himself for half a second.

Jandar's rapier found the gap.

The drow staggered.

Deacon drove him to the floor.

Zook appeared in the corridor moments later, bow in hand, followed by Vegon wearing a robe and an expression suggesting that being awakened by magical explosions had done nothing to improve his opinion of mornings.

“What happened?”

Jandar looked around the wrecked room.

“Xil's family visited.”

Xil gave him a look.

Jandar's expression changed.

The humor disappeared.

“Sorry.”

The warrior was still alive.

Xil knelt beside him.

For several seconds he could do nothing.

The words returned.

Your mother is looking for you.

Impossible.

He pressed two fingers against the warrior's neck.

A pulse.

Weak.

“Keep him alive.”

Deacon looked down at the drow.

“Why?”

“Because I have questions.”

No one argued.

Xil used only enough divine power to prevent the warrior from dying. He did not try to heal the wounds completely. Zook bound the man's wrists while Deacon removed every weapon he could find. Jandar searched him for anything hidden.

Vegon examined the dead caster from a distance.

“That was the taint?”

Xil looked at the shattered furniture and scorched wall.

“Yes.”

Vegon's face tightened.

Neither said more.

They had both lost control of magic often enough to understand the rest.

The drow warrior regained consciousness several minutes later.

He found himself bound to a chair with Deacon standing behind him and Jandar leaning against the wall.

Xil sat opposite.

No disguise.

No hood.

The prisoner's eyes settled on his face.

Recognition again.

That disturbed Xil almost as much as the attack.

“How did you find me?”

The warrior said nothing.

Jandar pushed away from the wall.

Xil raised one hand.

“Let me.”

Jandar stopped.

Xil leaned forward.

“You entered a surface town, found the room where I slept and attempted to take me without killing me. That means this was planned. How?”

The prisoner's mouth curled slightly.

“We have been looking for you for a long time.”

“We?”

“The queen has eyes beyond Silnorith.”

Xil felt his chest tighten.

“My family is dead.”

The drow studied him.

“Is that what you believe?”

Xil nearly struck him.

He did not.

That restraint cost more than the prisoner knew.

“You said my mother sent you.”

“I said she was looking for you.”

“Is she alive?”

For the first time, the prisoner's confidence wavered.

Only slightly.

It was enough.

Xil knew the answer before he spoke.

“Yes.”

The room became very quiet.

Zook stood near the door.

Vegon had stopped examining the caster.

Even Jandar had nothing to say.

Xil stared at the prisoner.

For decades he had carried a history that did not change.

His father had rebelled.

The rebellion had failed.

His family had been destroyed.

Xil had survived because hiding was the only thing left to do. Years passed in darkness before he found his way out of the life that had been chosen for him and eventually out of the Underdark itself.

The details could hurt.

But the shape of the story had been fixed.

Now one word had broken it.

Alive.

“Why?” Xil asked.

The prisoner frowned.

“Why what?”

“Why is she looking for me?”

“I was not told.”

“Why now?”

“We found you now.”

“How?”

The prisoner hesitated.

Deacon shifted behind him.

The drow noticed.

“We have watchers throughout the surface realms. Traders. Messengers. People who owe favors. People who prefer coin to questions. You passed through this town weeks ago. Word went below.”

Xil thought back to their first visit.

Every face.

Every stranger.

Every person who had looked too long at the disguised drow among five Silver Crown travelers.

He had believed himself cautious.

Someone had seen through enough of it.

“Do you have someone in Ilbus?”

“I don't know.”

Xil believed that part.

The network was larger than one spy in one fishing town.

The realization carried its own kind of fear.

Jandar folded his arms. “So what happens if he doesn't come home?”

The warrior looked at Xil.

“Others will come.”

No threat in the words.

Certainty.

Xil believed that too.

Deacon broke the silence.

“We should leave.”

Vegon looked toward him. “Immediately?”

“We have the Grimoire. We have people hunting Xil. Staying gives both problems time to get worse.”

Zook nodded.

“Windmarch first.”

Xil looked at him.

“The book?”

“Eticus needs to see it.”

Jandar watched Xil carefully. “Then we figure out the mother who isn't dead.”

Ordinarily Xil would have objected to the phrasing.

He did not have the energy.

The warrior shifted against his bonds.

“Running will not change anything.”

Xil stood.

“No.”

He looked down at him.

“But neither will going with you.”

The drow said nothing.

Xil left the room.

Morning light had begun to reach the corridor windows. Thin, gray and ordinary.

Downstairs, Ilbus was waking.

Fishermen would be returning to the docks. Fires would be lit. Someone would complain about the previous night's drinking. People would repeat the new name Mills had given five travelers who had walked into town carrying a book that should not exist.

The Hand of the Storm.

Xil had thought the name was the most significant thing that would happen that night.

Now he stood at the top of the stairs with blood drying on his clothes and sixty years of certainty collapsing behind him.

Jandar stopped beside him.

For once, he did not make a joke.

“You all right?”

“No.”

Jandar nodded.

A simple answer deserved one.

Xil looked toward the rooms below, where Mills had probably slept through most of the attack and would undoubtedly turn it into a terrible song by noon.

Then he thought of Silnorith.

Of his father.

Of the family he had mourned.

Of a woman he had believed dead who had apparently spent years searching for him.

They had the Grimoire of Orozon.

The past was moving again.

Xil was beginning to understand that it was not only the world's past coming back for them.

His own had found him too.