Disclaimers, Disclaimers, Disclaaaaaimers:
Forgotten Realms, all published characters and locations, copyright (C) Wizards of the Coast. No challenge to the status of these copyrights is intended, even if the holders of these copyrights are sometimes setting-destroying idiots. Blegh.
DEBT OF PERSECUTION
A Story Set in the Forgotten Realms
-
Chapter One
Just West of Dragon Falls
3 Nightal 1373 (Year of Rogue Dragons)
A chance twist of her shoulders saved Taemara the worst of the first crossbow bolt. Before she could register the furrow that the barbed head had carved across her cheek, the second bolt slammed into her pauldron. The force of the impact turned the metal inwards before the tip penetrated, piercing her skin and tainting her blood with the stain coating the darksteel.
Even before her initial shock could fade, there was heat, burning,burning in her shoulder and spreading across her face. She distantly heard someone screaming; realized that it was her voice screaming in the suspended moment before she fell from the saddle.
Odd, she thought in a detached way as the ground sped towards her face. There were tracks on the road. Her eyes picked out the details of two footprints -- treadless boots -- before her face buried in one of them. Distantly, her ears registered the clash of metal against itself as her platemail and body met the ground.
Other sounds filtered through -- someone else's voice, giving a muffled battlecry; the whine of another crossbow bolt; a horse screaming. But the burning had spread through her body, consumed her. Every heartbeat pressed the poison more thoroughly into her; every breath brought a new wave of paralyzing pain.
All that was left to her in her lucid moments was prayer, and she prayed. "…Torm… help me…" The words barely passed between her croaked lips, but through the chaos of battle they were answered. A cool touch on her shoulder, and the pain began to recede -- as quickly as she could, Taemara pushed herself up. Yet another crossbow bolt buried itself near her left hand, spurring her up onto her unsteady feet in spite of the weight and encumbrance of her platemail. She staggered once, and then stayed upright.
There was no time to look around and see how the others fared. From a nearby bush exploded a cloaked figure, two symmetrical short swords brandished. Taemara spared enough thought to curse her eyesight -- being able to see with full clarity in the moonlight like other half-cousins would be veryhandy right now -- and then the swordsman was upon her. Slender, small, a hand or two shorter than she was, but the flashing blades over and under prevented her from seeing much else. She drew her greatsword over her right shoulder and swept to block the first strike; the second, she took across the thigh, spinning with the blow to rob it of its force as it struck sparks from the steel plate.
"Lackey's bitch!" the swordsman sneered as he stepped aside from a sturdy thrust that would have caught him below the collarbone. "Should have stayed down. Halfbloods make fine slaves."
"Not today," Taemara snarled, and that was about all she could say with her remaining breath. Her next stroke came down from right to left, overhand; he deflected it with a blade, but the tip of her sword still struck sparks from the mail on his chest. His step back bought her enough time for a proper breath, and then he was back on her. One of his blades hammered into the plate protecting her stomach before she could twist aside; the other feinted at her face, a shallow swipe that she avoided with a stumble backwards. Pressing forward, the slender figure committed to another slash at Taemara's belly -- and as she brought the tip of her blade down to block it, he spun with the force of her parry and went down to a knee. With blurring speed, he hammered the other blade into the back of her knee, where the plates parted to allow movement. The thin mail links snapped under the force of his blow. Agony flared, more intense and direct than the general torture of the poison, and Taemara's leg buckled, dumping her to the dirt.
"…nnaaaugghh…"
"No taunts for me, female?" The cloaked swordsman kneeled over her, straddling her prone form as he pressed the tip of one of his shortswords to her exposed throat. The hint of a smirk played across his lips again, barely visible from the shadow that concealed his face. "Mmm? No final bravado before I send your soul to play in the Fugue?"
Fear skittered across her mind, but it could not attach its grip, could not sink in its little claws of paralysis. Taemara acted instead of freezing -- a small insignificant movement. The bulk of her armor hid the brief glimmer of positive energy as her free hand touched her thigh.
"…advice," she croaked.
"Oh? Do tell?" The hood diverted quickly, looking aside to the other noises of battle -- he turned back, seeming in no hurry. Taemara realized with a brief sinking feeling that he must be feeling rather secure in the larger fight.
It didn't matter. For him, the larger fight would be over soon.
"Never…" Taemara focused herself, opening her body up to the divine radiance that drove away the lingering traces of chill and pain. "…give a paladin… a chance to recover."
And on the final word, her now uninjured knee pistoned upwards, catching him solidly in the groin -- and kept going, her conviction and faith focusing her impromptu strike into a hammer of righteous wrath.
Crunch.
"AAAAAUUGGGHH!"
Although the inflexibility of her plate made it difficult, Taemara reared up enough to sock him in the jaw. The lower strike had so thoroughly stunned him that he didn't even try to avoid it. Bones snapped under the punishment of the metal gauntlet, and the force lifted the slender figure completely off the ground, sending him sprawling on his back four feet away in an eerie mirror of Taemara's own position.
Ignoring the stream of cursing from her immobile tormentor -- now, her ears picked up, in something that sounded a cousin to elven -- she rolled to her side, then to her hands and knees, and pushed herself up onto her feet at last. One step, then two, brought her limping to the side of the swordsman. The greatsword had never left Taemara's other hand; she raised it overhead in both gauntlets before swinging it down with all the force her aching muscles could muster.
The cursing stopped.
"Unwise," she muttered at the fallen figure before spinning on her heel and wrenching her sword free of his ruined, hidden face.
Even as her eyes swept over the tiny vale that had witnessed the ambush, it seemed that the fight was ending. Only one more cloaked warrior fenced with Rislan, and that ended a moment later when the senior priest's blow smashed into a cloak-obscured hip with a cracking that Taemara could hear from fifty feet away. She wearily trotted towards Rislan as he finished off his last assailant with a blow to the throat.
"Sir, what's happening-- where are -- is Aileen all right?"
"Taemara!" He spun towards her, the hint of a smile crossing his blood-spattered face. "You're…! By the gods, when I heard you scream… You're limping, 're you okay? Do you need healing?"
She shook her head decisively, casting around for more movement in the darkness -- there was none. Apparently, the conflict was over, at least for the moment. "I'm… not okay…but my remaining wounds… don't much matter." As she spoke, she remembered the crossbow bolt and her shoulder -- which had apparently been completely expelled. Experimentally, she moved her arm, and aside from the general ache through her body, there was no twinge of torn muscle or flesh.
"Mrrmmph." Rislan's eyebrows came together, grey on his tanned skin in the moonlight, but it couldn't mask the relief in his voice. "Well, I'll save my blessings, then. Let me know if that changes, aye?"
Two cloaked bodies lay near Rislan, and there was another -- armored -- "Aileen!"
Weariness and pain momentarily forgotten, she sprinted towards the other Faithblade, covering the ten paces in only a few seconds before she dropped to a knee. "…Aileen, are you…"
Taemara turned the woman's head to face her, and pulled back. A small indrawn breath stuck in her throat as blank, lifeless eyes met hers. Blood dribbled from a slash in Aileen's neck just above the top of her breastplate; it had gone more than halfway through the flesh, all the way to the young paladin's spine, a sliver of which glinted in the moonlight. The breastplate and most of the surrounding ground was soaked, dark and wet. Taemara hunched over, pushing edges of armor into her flesh through the padding. She would notbe sick… she wouldnot…
"It's too late," Rislan's voice came from behind her. The priest more slowly approached the side of the fallen warrior and knelt on the other side. "I called for healing, but… my blessing came too late. They caught her while the poison had her down."
"Honorlessbastards," Taemara heard herself growl over the pounding of blood in her ears. She swallowed hard past the lump in her throat. "…I'll… what were they?"
The grey-bearded priest glanced over his shoulder again, then back to Taemara, his eyes hard. "Drow. Without a doubt, drow. Twelve or more -- they lost three. The others were… around, but if they had all joined the fight…"
Taemara's eyes filled with a vision of half a dozen swordsmen, twelve blades, all stabbing and relentless… a shudder trailed down her spine, which she sharply repressed with rage. Drow,and half an hour away from Dragon Falls -- she would not stand for this, and she had the feeling that the rest of the Temple would not, either. They would track down the remainder, put them to the sword, follow the leads into their filthy lair in the Underdark, and…
She forced herself to draw in a breath, then let it out. Breathe in, breathe out, ignore the smell of death.
"What… happens now, sir?"
"Now?" Rislan ran a hand through his beard as he peered around the area. "For now… we try not to fall to any other drow, or opportunist orcs, or whatever might smell the blood and come. I've… already sent word to the Temple… a wagon will be here in the morning, and more men to clear the area."
"A wagon." Her eyes turned dully on Aileen's body. "…yes. I suppose…"
She heard Rislan sigh. "It doesn't get any easier with time, sister. For now… let's… focus on the living."
Taemara nodded, and pushed herself up -- fell back down. She put more effort into it, and succeeded on the second try. Now that battle-spirit was wearing off, the ache intensified; the bruising of her stomach throbbed unhappily. Her divine healing had also been expended in repairing her leg, leaving her feeling hollow… empty.
Drow…
"I need to pray." Her eyes turned to Rislan, who offered a small nod. "I will not be… much more than a quarter-glass. Probably less. If more healing…" She couldn't help but see Aileen out of the corner of her eye. "If it would count for anything--"
"Best to be prepared," he replied. Taemara read a momentary hesitation in his body language before his armored gauntlet clapped her on the undamaged shoulder -- gently. "…Taemara… you served well… you really did, to survive that, and get a kill. Don't forget it in the sorrow and pain."
Taemara felt her shoulders slump as she blew out a breath. "Thank you, sir, for what it's worth. But without Torm's aid, I would have ended as…" Her eyes flicked to Aileen again, and she turned away.
"As would we all, without the aid of the True," Rislan replied quietly. "May prayer refresh you, sister. I will stand watch."
Only now, as Taemara found herself stumbling up the embankment a few paces for fresh air and separation from the carnage, did the shaking set in. An ambush… a drow ambush, so much happening all at once, and yet she somehow still drew breath. It was already beginning to blend together in her mind as a single swirl of chaos and death, much as she remembered the Trial battles and the raid on the orc tribe. But details remained in her mind, sharp and clear -- and thanks to her mixed heritage, they would stay that way until she died. In some ways, she was glad to live a normal span. Nine centuries of memories -- it would just be too much.
Not, she chuckled to herself, that an elf's lifespan for a paladin of Torm would probably ever be fulfilled.
Taemara sank down on both knees, her unsheathed sword still sticky with drow blood as she turned the tip and drove it into the ground to support her arms. Her forehead leaned against the pommel as she blocked out the lingering scent of sweat and blood.
Almost of its own accord, the Code spilled out of her lips, barely louder than a whisper but with all the conviction that a lifetime of training could infuse into such quiet words.
"Be the champion of the weak and defenseless. Be stern, unyielding and unswerving in your battles with evil…" She felt the shock of her sword breaking open the drow's skull, felt it work up her arms as she continued. "Obey your masters with alert judgment and anticipation. Serve the common good and the rule of law established by honorable rulers. Seek prowess and skill in all endeavors." A flush came to her face as Taemara recalled how easily the drow had nearly beaten her. She'd have to go over the battle in detail later, to learn from it, but… later… "Stand ever alert against corruption. Every failure of duty diminishes Torm and every success adds to his luster. Be ever mindful of the Code, and use them in your actions to swiftly enact justice."
The Code was more than a jumble of words. It was the glue that held together a paladin, and even as she finished reciting them she felt… better. Not good, but better, as though the universe was returning to some sort of equilibrium. Eyes closed, she continued to lean against the driven-in sword… breathe deeply… let the last trances of the battle fade from the present, and fall into the past where they belonged.
At length, Taemara spoke again, her voice quieter still. "Torm, god of duty… I name you now, to give you thanks… thank you. Without your aid I would have died, and all of us may have failed. Please--" She swallowed. "Please take Aileen's soul soon, and see that… she gets a good place. She was a friend, and loyal, and brave… I know she pleased you. Watch over us now, defend us from that which would see the -- drow's ambush finished… and guide both of us, that we might do your will."
More tension eased from Taemara's shoulders. Even though conversations with the gods were most usually one-sided, it was nice to know that he could at the least hear her.
"If I have… failed in duty, in any way, let me know that I might atone. If I might do anything to serve you better, please also tell me."
Open your eyes, child.
The voice hung in her mind for a moment -- firm, but comforting -- and she drew in a sharp breath. Her eyes opened.
Two eyes stared out from the bush in front of her, red and glowing, to meet hers. Behind them was lightness, hair, a face--
Dark skin. White hair.
Taemara really meant to show 'drow!' but it ended up coming out more along the lines of "Drrraaaaeee!" She rose and tore her sword free of the ground in one movement, little chunklets of dirt flying as training took over from instinct. Down and across, try to hit the--
"Friend!Friend! Don't swing!"
She wrenched her muscles to a halt; they screamed, but obeyed, as her eyes focused on the drow lurking in the shadows. This one wore now hood. His hands were raised palms outward -- at least, she thought it was probably a male.
"You have," Taemara spoke, her voice distant and cold even to her own ears, "five seconds to explain yourself starting now. Go."
"ImmaworshipperoftheDarkMaiden." He snatched a brief breath. "Eilistraee, and they ambushed us -- were waiting for us -- got everyone -- one who jumped after you had me. I hid…"
Eilistraee. Ah, and this was justwhat she needed, Taemara concluded with a sour grimace. Another drow, and a 'good' one at that, who would probably be up in arms over the hostile greeting when his senses returned. She half-closed her eyes and dropped the tip of her sword back to the ground, leaning on it as she stood. A few moments to focus on the lean figure in front of her… "All right. You are…" No, no glow, no sense of wrongness. "Probably not evil, or currently planning on such, in my judgment. I believe you--" Well, not really, but 'sort of maybe believe' was not what the flighty dark elf needed to hear. "Slow down, then… and tell me from the beginning. Starting, perhaps with your name."
Beside her, she heard the clank of plate-on-plate as Rislan jogged up beside her. Either he had heard the exchange, or had come to Taemara's conclusion regarding the probable motives of the drow in the bush, but however it had transpired his hands were empty of weapons.
"Yes… of course. I am … Malkyr Tr'zanel… of Eilistraee, as I said." His eyes slid to Rislan, who he didn't even pause to acknowledge, and then back to Taemara. "It isn't… it is not safe to discuss the full matter in the open. There-- could be more of the Masked Lord's get around, or worse… But our cadre was travelling to the shrine of the Maiden at Raven's Bluff, when… lady Sedaris, the sword dancer that leads us… she found something. She said it was too important to spread around, but that we needed -- to contact the Tormites in Tantras." He looked between the two of them. "To contact you, I'm assuming."
Taemara bit back a grin, though it still tugged at the corners of her mouth. "And what tipped you off there?"
"I, errr, was listening to your entire prayer…" Malkyr shut up and seemed to reconsider how that would make Taemara view him -- too late, she idly noted -- and continued on a different thread. "But now, I have no idea about what she wished to speak to you. And the only way to find out is to get her back… or find her… or find someone that she told."
"Mhmm…" She let her eyes linger on his face as she made an obvious show of considering his statement. Beside her, Rislan seemed strangely content to stand and watch. It boggled Taemara's mind -- he was three or four ranks senior, after all -- but perhaps he saw something of value in the practice.
Taemara didn't. She ached in body and heart, she wanted to go far away from this place -- she wanted the entire thing to be some sort of testing vision or dream. Worse luck that it wasn't. However, she'd continue to deal with him, much as she'd rather than Rislan took the lead.
"Very well. While I find it somewhat dubious that your leader would find something and tell no one else… or not tell everyone who was under her command… and while I think that you may well know more than you are letting on, those are matters for a Zone of Truth if you will submit to come with us back to Tantras."
She wasn't expecting his eyes to light up; certainly did not expect the sliver of a smile. "That would be wonderful, thank you. Perhaps there… and I will be safe?"
"You will be," Taemara answered with due care, "provided that you stay within the Temple proper and obey our customs and laws. Which I think shouldn't be much of a problem for a… good drow of Eilistraee."
Malkyr watched her for a moment, giving Taemara the impression that he was deciding whether or not to be offended. He chose the latter course and bowed with good grace, only slightly ruined as part of his sleeve snagged in a branch on the way up. "--gah. Yes, of course, my lady."
"Then with that…" She blew out a small sigh and looked aside to Rislan, still mysteriously silent and studying her as though waiting for something. "I suppose that we should resume the watch. Best if our guest gets some rest, I think. He has travelled further than we have."
"Of course, my lady," Rislan replied without hesitation. This time, the hesitation and suspicion were clear for her to read on Malkyr's face, but she saw him work through the logic in her mind. He must have concluded that his odds of waking up with them were considerably better than they'd be on his own, for a moment later her offered a smile and slowly stood up out of the bush. Leaves rustled as he walked closer to Taemara -- her heart clenched just a little bit -- and he bowed. "I will trance here, if it please you…"
Taemara suppressed the urge to bow in return, and simply inclined her head. "Very well. Find rest, sir Malkyr."
She turned on her heel and stepped away, throwing a glance over her shoulder at Rislan. He had his back turned, staring down at the road, a hand near the hilt of his weapon -- already on watch, it would seem, and it would not be worth disturbing him with the question right now. Taemara turned to peer up the hill to the top, mentally steeling herself for a long evening of aches, bruises and shadows that to her eyes would look very much like slender figures with paired swords.
It was going to be a long night, and a longer morning, until the wagon came.
"Torm, give me strength."