CHAPTER TWO Roots


"You have Kara-Tur roots?"

Elly arose from her sleep to realize Yoshimo had discovered her secret dagger and was scrutinizing it. She smiled weakly and nodded. It was not easy for Yoshimo to have guessed the true nature of her heritage. Only a Kara-Turan himself would have known the dagger's origins.

"This dagger is a symbol of loyalty to your partner," he told her, "and truth, as well as innocence." Elly lost herself among her thoughts. She felt bad about not keeping herself pure for Yoshimo.

"Yoshimo," Elly asked, "Why did you become a bounty hunter?"

Yoshimo was about to evade her question but halted abruptly, and decided to come clean with his leader. "I was from a poor family," he said. "Other than me, I have two younger sisters and a brother. I feared for my ailing parents' safety and didn't wish to see my siblings sold into prostitution or slavery, so I.. I joined a secret society."

Elly looked shocked, but urged him to continue with his story.

"Don't fret," he continued. "Although it is lawfully a secret society, the members are like the Shadow Thieves of Athkatla - concerned about the greater good. They help the innocent, self- proclaim themselves as do-gooders, but one day, something happened.

"My leader was assasinated by one of his 'brothers', who wanted the position of leader for himself. That was when the society went astray. There was no longer a boundary between bad and good anymore. The members of the society just went around killing others for their own self- benefit. Everything was a pack of lies. And just then, I received a letter.

"It was from a noble who was seeking revenge for the murder of his daughter. This Sir Oyuchi wished me to offer 'my services' to claim the bounty on that evil murderer's head. And at the same time, he was willing to sponsor my siblings' education.

"So together with a group of comrades from the society, we claimed the bounty on the head of the murderers. On leaving the society, we became bounty hunters and claimed head after head, bounty after bounty. But at one point, I claimed for myself not just the bounty on the heads of criminals but also, the love and body of a peasant girl.

"She was very pretty to look at, like a peony. She was the illegitimate child of a merchant, her mother a maid in the household. She claimed she loved me; and so she let me know the sinfulness of having an affair.

"It was not accepted in Japanese culture and I feared for the worst. One day, as my friends and I were performing 'our services', a misjudgement caused us to lose the life of a fellow comrade. Another comrade lost his eyesight, another was paralyzed from the incident. We knew it was the end. The bounty we collected from the killing that night was not ample to overwrite the pain inflicted on us from the incident; loss of a friend, and our friends' losses. So, our party disbanded. We went our own ways. I left Kara-Tur, and left Momoko-chan, who was then pregnant. Of course, our trysts had continued for quite some time. We developed feelings for each other, but I couldn't just bring her with me to Amn, into a dangerous new life. This is how I care," he said. "She didn't tell me she was pregnant. Her father came to see me, and demanded I leave his daughter. He didn't seem to know she was pregnant, either. He only knew of our trysts, and I don't expect to see Momoko alive after what has happened. Maybe she lost the child, or maybe she married someone else." Yoshimo ended his story.

Elly, though pleased to know of Yoshimo's heritage and culture, was by no doubts unhappy that Yoshimo had someone in his past, after all. Yet, she felt she was being unfair; didn't she, herself, have Laran, too, in her memory?

Though Yoshimo was talking to her, Elly was lost in her thoughts.

Adventure after adventure, travel after travel, Elly fell deeper and deeper in love with Yoshimo, but feared more about telling him the truth of how she loved him, rather than fearing for her own safety. Minsc and Jaheira understood Elly's plight but decided to let her make her own decisions. Very soon, they had acquired most of the $15,000 gold which was to be paid to the Shadow Thieves in return for their help in getting the party to Spellhold.

One night, at the Graveyard District, Elly and the others encountered the strange woman in black. Elly swiftly rejected the woman's offer. The woman rained curses on the party, seemingly directed at Elly herself, and promising Elly that she would regret allying with the Shadow Thieves, disappeared as rapidly as she had appeared. Jaheira was not wrong in her suspicions, for the woman did not seem very "alive". Viconia suspected that the woman was an undead, referring to the "neither dead nor alive" forms: mummies and vampires made up most of the undead. Keldorn the Paladin affirmed this, to everyone's surprise. There was not a single topic Keldorn would agree on with Viconia. It seemed that he was looking down on Viconia due to "her kind". Yoshimo felt it understandable, saying that he himself was subjected to such treatment in his young days in Kozakura; despite everyone being of the same race, society had caused everyone to look differently at each other. The rich despised the poor and the poor feared the rich and powerful.

Elly returned to Gaelan Bayle, the Shadow Thieves' spokesman with the money, and Gaelan directed her to their leader, Aran Linvail. Aran was a dashing young leader who was engaged to another female assassin. He promptly gave Elly a few tasks to do, which Elly completed without a single complaint. But it was going to Spellhold, that Elly was unprepared for. She would procrastinate the trip again and again, telling Aran the excuse that she had to stock up first. Jaheira found Elly's excuses annoying, and left the party on her own.

Traveling on her own, Jaheira was waylaid by bandits but fought and defeated them easily, sending some of them on their way whereas some died at her hand. She then realized there had been an injured captive, and took him back to Athkatla to his friend at the Docks. Little did she know that for this charitable action, she would get into trouble with Xzar, an old friend of Elly from their earlier travels. Xzar told her that the man she had spoken to earlier was a Harper, a member of the society that he was against, and also a society that Jaheira was from. Maddened that Xzar would urge her to turn against her own "kind", Jaheira got into a fight with the insane mage, who disappeared immediately after that. Sighing, Jaheira started finding her way around the Docks.

As it was getting dark, Jaheira, hoping to find shelter, knocked on the door of a cottage, hearing voices from the window. After calling out to them a number of times, and yet receiving no reply, she found the door unlocked and threw open the door. To her shock, two mages ambushed her, insisting she was "a test from the Master". She struck out at them in self-defense, and they summoned a number of monsters to deal with her. Being a druid, she easily defeated them all. She felt remorseful for her killing of the two apprenti. Bits of their conversation revealed to them they had a cruel master who pulled out the male apprentice, Prebek's toenails over small matters. She wondered about the female apprentice. Had her Master Mage cast ugly spells at her or turned her into a frog princess when his instructions for her to perform had gone wrong?

In her travels with Elly, they had killed. Killed out of self-defense, or killed the evil to maintain the balance between good and evil. But were they murderers? She hoped not.

Quietly and carefully, in the darkness of the night, she made her way back to the Copper Coronet. As she passed the spot where she had brought the man in green to safety, she realized Xzar had really disappeared for good, but the man's friend was still there. She told the man's friend about the apprentice Prebek and questioned why he had in his possession a sword meant for killing Harpers. From their conversation, she realized that the two apprenti she had killed were no other than Xzar's apprenti. Guilt overwhelmed her. However, the man's friend also revealed to her that he was a Harper as well, and Xzar had been responsible in bringing about the deaths of numerous Harpers. He urged her, that should she leave Elly, she would be welcome to join the Harpers as one of them. Jaheira told him she would reconsider, and left the district to return to the Copper Coronet.

Back in her room, Jaheira wept for Khalid and wished he was here with her.

Yoshimo crept back into Elly's room with the information that Jaheira had returned safely. Elly was relieved to hear his news. But she wasn't expecting that he would be making advances to her once more. Gently lying her down on her bed, Yoshimo slowly moved his swift fingers across the laces that kept her robes in place.

It will be over soon, she told herself. You have needs. You love him.

"I love you," she whispered so softly that her words were drowned by the calls of dogs and wolves in the night. This time, she felt the pleasure between her legs, and the passion she had for Yoshimo. Her love for him knew no bounds. As their bodies met, she felt a tingling sensation, like a bee sting, only less painful. She gazed into Yoshimo's eyes, as he had his release and then, shortly after that, exited her.

"That was fast," she said. Yoshimo glanced into her almond eyes and saw the fear in her eyes.

"You worry, don't you?" he asked. Elly gave him a quick nod.

He ran a finger across her bare torso. "You're new at this, Miss Leader. I knew it from the first time we.. ahem," he restricted himself from saying the forbidden word. "No worries, Leader. I can teach you how to pleasure yourself... for now." He held Elly's right hand for a few seconds, guiding her index finger on her most sensitive parts. "And I can also, teach you how to give a male pleasure."

Elly cast him her sweetest smile, "I'll give it my best, 'Teacher'. I won't fail you." She planted her lips on his, giving him the longest kiss she could, until both of them were breathless from the kiss.

"That felt good," Yoshimo told her, whispering into her ear, before giving her earlobe a gentle nip. "Very good for a beginner."