The enemy was dark-haired; unnaturally pale; a long narrow face and plump red lips. Khalid drew his sword.
"That's not my mother!" the child said, puzzled, and a red blast seared the air by him as Khalid flung him away from the invader.
"Selune strike you!" Sharadaa cried, casting; a silver moonbeam came from the air and did the intruder no harm. She raised her hands for another spell.
She targeted Harpers—
Behind a fallen chair, in a depression of rubble, protected by a ripped cushion. "S-stay here," Khalid told the child—-Subhash's magic flared against the invader; Sharadaa called a battlecry— "Can you be brave? Can you stay still and—and count to one hundred?"
"Two hundred," the child whispered, "one hundred and ninety-nine, one hundred and ninety-eight..."
"Q-quiet as a swan," Khalid whispered; concealed; near open to the streets; even if they fell here someone must offer to aid a child. He left the shelter and ran to the enemy.
His sword glided over her skin as if she was made of oil. She seized the blade in one bare hand and reversed the force. Khalid fell on his back. He'd given Subhash time for a spell against her and it rippled across her skin to do nothing.
Cold. She is cold. —Undead, her features—
Subhash screamed and fell to the ground. His eyes bulged. Sense had fled his face and he screamed in pain and terror; Khalid rushed to him and force-fed him a potion to heal. Sharadaa and Flores rushed the enemy.
Bone snapped and Sharadaa hung from the vampire's hands with her right arm hanging and wrongly bent.
"The stone," the vampire hissed in Common. "Tell me now, Selunite, and spare me trouble—"
Flores flew across to the other destroyed wall. Khalid saw her chest still rise and fall.
"Never if we knew, fiend." Sharadaa spat in the vampire's face and that was enough for the undead beast to throw her aside.
"A coward," the vampire said, gazing at Khalid. The red eyes drew him to her light face, her long narrow-bridged nose and bee-stung lips, ringlets of dark hair curling at the edges of her cheeks. She was more Calishite than he in feature. The Rune were based in that nation. The knowledge came to him. "You would rather force potions down the throat than attack yourself. Come to me."
She was a vampire—of the Twisted Rune—the name was on the tip of his thick tongue. He could not speak it.
Shyressa.
He shambled up from Subhash's form, the potion gone to preserve the life of his fellow Harper for at least a few moments longer. He approached the red glowing eyes that called him.
"Dear slave," she said, "tell me who holds the Waal-Baqi."
Khalid stumbled toward her, silent, his throat dry and no words coming though his lips moved. His sword dragged in his right hand, scraping over the ground. Her tongue ran over her lips and fangs. He was close enough to smell her sweet decaying breath.
Then he drew out the seeds Jaheira had given him from a pouch, pressed them against her skin, and flung himself down the moment before their sun's fire erupted.
Khalid, in case of unnatural undead—
The vampire screamed. She was a bat; she was a mist; she was going in the wake of the brilliant sun fading. Flores, limping, stalked toward where the blackened fireseeds had fallen, swore, and failed to strike anything.
"—One hundred! Do it again? Do it again?"
—
"There's another safehouse—no—better make it the Low. Subhash can get Sharadaa there," Flores said.
"I would go—I would Selune's punishment on the Rune and all that vampire's breed—but I—" Sharadaa's broken body convulsed. She was expert at fieldwork and knew she should not be sent out; Subhash sat beside her, pale and drained.
"She's high-up Rune. She thinks we got the Waal-Baqi—they don't," Flores said. "Has it been stolen? That leaves the cursed Zhents, or maybe Jayadevii—"
So we do not either? Khalid thought; there were times even Harpers were not trusted with the full secrets, to spare them from interrogation. It would do no good to ask Sharadaa one way or the other, but the next orders showed the truth.
"It belongs to the temple of Saiva," Sharadaa said; Subhash and Flores looked as if that surprised them.
The Destroyer, Khalid thought, that was Saiva's name in countries beyond Durpar; called a death god. That drew to mind Bane of the Zhentarim, Myrkul of the dead and of necromancers who gazed into what they should not, Bhaal the murderer's patron. But that was wrong: Saiva was Changer as well as Destroyer, and his followers judged undead and returned their souls to the afterlife. For an artefact that controlled death magic to be associated with the name, and worse, used by the likes of the Twisted Rune—a crisis of faith, one that could shake Durpar worse than any struggle over rulers—
"You understand," she said to him, sounding surprised.
"What does it look like?" Flores said, scowling. "That's one thing I've never heard."
"A magical object. Capable of transmutation," Subhash said. "The magery would give it away." He sniffed the air.
"If there's magic, there's pretty colours!" the child burst out. They had paid attention to the Harper mission instead of to him; it was no place at all for the young. At least he seemed to understand not the danger of it. "So many of them, 'specially the mage who wasn't my mother. I see emerald, rubyfruit, tangilim, orange, blacktaste, chiorescent—" So few of those were real colours, and Khalid worried for him. "Here are the threads out the door where she went!"
Subhash looked down at the boy. "Mageborn indeed," he said slowly. "Child, how far can you trace the direction?"
The child pointed and babbled; Khalid stared.
"A rare gift," Subhash said. "Take him with you, as far as you can without risk to him; for it seems a habit of picking up unconsidered trifles, Khalid..." The Harper mage shook his head.
"She went that way," the boy said. "Can't you see?"
And who—and what—is he?
—
But they had little time to follow the vampire. Srinavath faced an invasion of undead on its streets.
"Have to," Flores muttered, and dashed in against a ghoul. This was the same market-quarter Khalid had wandered first through, the white temple of Saiva the Auspicious Judge to the right—
"Cling to my back," Khalid asked of the boy, looking about and still alight with that mage's vision. "I will keep you safe. Stay close and this coat will protect you..." The surcoat was a blanket protecting the child.
Khalid drew his sword; fastened a small buckler to his arm; and went in to join with a ghast.
"Priest's robes!" Flores said, looking down at the remains of a body already dead. "High Priest's robes. The temple of Saiva. The Everlasting—"
It transformed these. He and Flores had saved some people of the city; the undead had returned to true death quickly enough.
Abominations, Khalid! We must return them to natural death, the instant we are able— he remembered Jaheira, both of their first encounter with necromancy at large scale— He scattered some risen ghouls; Flores set them alight with a burning brand. Smoke rose in the air. It must not spread through the rest of the city, of course.
"Have to ask the temple some pretty searching questions, Khalid," Flores ordered, pulling him along. "No time!"
The boy watched, wide-eyed; it was a hard thing for a child, and worse there had been other young ones amidst the undead attacks. I lost my birth family, Khalid; but at that age it is easier to forget, easier than were I older; the druids took me in and nature became my true home. It still is...
Perhaps in this world there is no place for children. I grow morbid; I am only wearied, Khalid; not all is sign.
"How are you, child? Do you s-see anything you know of your home here? Is all well?" Khalid patted a shoulder wrapped below the blanket-like armour.
"Chiorescent colours, lots of them, pearlenway—can't you see the threads? They'll come together, they have to come together, your sword was flightgold—" The child grinned, his face dirty, taking in everything with those wide green eyes. "They are vetala, undead? Pretty colours!"
"No bloody time for this, Khalid—come on!"
The temple to Saiva the Auspicious Judge was greyer close by than the pure white it had looked before and from a distance; and the priests within it were terrified of the foes they faced. Khalid stood with Flores, and together with cold iron they beat a path to the temple's entrance. Skeletons had risen in tatters of clothing, yellow and flaking apart as if they had been buried for centuries in old catacombs. It was a terrible sight, for their wide grins and their clawed hands of bone, reaching, always reaching, and only put down when spines were shattered to fragments and Flores induced cleansing flame upon them through a torch. The child coughed and spluttered at the smoke; at least here, perhaps, if there can be sanctuary for the innocent— Khalid thought, grimly shattering bones that parted easily enough against his cold iron.
Flores grabbed a young priest's blood-flushed arm and forced him to sit up. "What happened?" she demanded, her short sword close to his skin.
"Oh, thank the Judge you've come—saved us—nobody—" he began. "So few of us—too few—the High Priest—"
"What happened?" Flores demanded. Khalid saw cracks and lingering smoke on those white domes; as if rot and death had taken this place from the inside.
The human man bridled, tight-lipped. "A disturbance. The ritual. The High Priest—he was one of those abominations, crawling the city—"
"I think we killed him." Flores flicked down a strip of a once-golden headdress. "Sent him to his proper rest, I mean. Saviours of the city and all that."
"But you haven't." The priest glared. "You haven't found the stone. The Waal-Baqi," he said in a low tone. "I was—I saw nothing of what happened. We who live saw nothing of the thief. Restore it—destroy it. In the name of the Creator and Great Destroyer. Or else it will be a hell, a rakshasa's nightmare. The city—faith in Lord Saiva ruined—"
"Then we n-need information of it," Khalid said, trying to shape his tone to calm the young priest, though he never had gift for speech. "And this—this boy—" A chance at last to keep the warm living child next to him safe.
"He's lost," Flores said, casually shaking remains of the dead off her sword. "Wandering the streets 'round here and shouldn't be. Any ideas where he came from?"
The priest shook his head. "None," he said weakly.
"Then, can you...h-help him? Take him..." Khalid said, but then squirming arms and legs escaped him and a force strong as an otyugh's tentacles clung like steel bands to his left leg. The child held on unable to be pried free.
"I want to stay with Khalid! Don't take me here! There are monsters and Khalid's the best at keeping the monsters away! And I can see all the magic— I want to stay with Khalid!" The child's green eyes looked pleadingly up at him, wide as mossy ponds.
"Do you not know what has happened here?" the priest said. "Guttered, shattered—like as not he would be safer with you—"
"Show us," Flores said calmly, and Khalid walked inside the temple of Saiva, still hoping to detach the boy and keep him to safety.
"Only the...only the holiest of us are permitted," the priest said, hurrying them along, walking with other lower-ranked priests through halls that showed many signs of recent battle. The clawed nails of undead had ripped paint and murals in relief from the walls and trails of viscera and blood, old and new, were dragged on the floors in the passings of many running feet. "Usually. It is down here. The sanctum. I was not allowed before. But it was here..." Two great doors of polished kathal timber lay opened and broken on ground deep below the temple.
Khalid and Flores crossed into the site of the ritual. The underground chamber was circular and oddly unadorned; the walls were craggy stone left to irregular natural formations dotted with shadows and blackened with mage's marks, and the single altar in the centre was rubble. He looked down at the floor and saw that a maze of lines led toward the centre, the whole of the room sloping toward the remains of the altar as if poured liquid would rush to pool around it.
Or poured blood...no.
The child next to him clung silently, arms still wrapped around Khalid's leg. He had not said a word all through the temple and looked wide-eyed up at the dark shapes in the pumice-like rock. Khalid patted the soft curls on his head and laid a hand gently on the boy's shoulders.
"Are you...does this f-frighten?" No reply came. Dark stains marked the ground and some substance was pooled around the altar.
"Stinks of undead in here," Flores said matter-of-factly. "Shyressa?"
"Was s-she here also?" Khalid asked the boy. The child shoved the fingers of his right hand into his mouth and did not speak, but nodded once as if he could see the magery that proved the vampire's presence. "D-do you need to leave?" There was a pause, and then the boy shook his head.
"Lots of stones here," Flores said, examining the ground. "Not all of 'em from the altar. The bloodsucker came, didn't find... What's with these?" She plucked up a handful of stones, black and brown and amber.
"The story of the Waal-Baqi is that Saiva walked through a forest in the time he courted his wife and love. Like flame, like a white bull, Lord Saiva descended the heavens to walk among the bilva plants and set his footsteps upon grass on earth..."
"And the stone," Flores repeated. Khalid saw the same as she on the ground: many different small stones, none of them with signs of being attached to the altar.
"And he walked with the guardian of his son while incarnate, upon the waters where the tiger drank and worshipped, where on the bank were many stones..." The young priest recited the story as if only now was he called on to shorten it for an audience. "Lord Saiva asked, In which of the stones of the bank is hidden my power. And his wise follower pointed to the first stone under his own feet.
"Lord Saiva only looked within the heart of the guardian. While his heart was attuned he should see the Waal-Baqi for what it was. And then Lord Saiva spoke that that night he should face a great battle, and were he to perish and be sent to the hells it should be to him to carry the power of the Everlasting: the heart of the Destroyer.
"Ever since only the chosen may find the Waal-Baqi amidst other stones."
Flores had industriously gathered all the nearby stones she could find and was turning them over in her hands. "I can't tell too often what's dweomered and not. Couple of them look like they might. Magekid, any of these powerful? Very powerful?" She had to bend down to show them to the child. She gave another fierce glare at the priest. "You got ideas which one it is, bright boy?"
The priest stumbled over and above her. He looked at the stones carefully and plunged his hands into them. But then he stepped back.
"I am unworthy. I find nothing."
"Are any..." Khalid asked the child. "Take as...as much time as thou need." He caught himself on the familiar pronoun. "If you can h-help, then we w-would thank thee."
The boy took down his fist from his mouth. "Trash," he said, and swept the stones out of Flores' hands with a quick movement. "All trash! No magic in them. I want to go out of here!"
So—before Shyressa it was taken, used— Khalid and Flores shared a glance.
A priest? A sneaking thief? The King himself? Khalid thought. It is supposed to belong to the ruler...
There is a dangerous vampire yet unalive in Srinavath...
Flores darted to the walls and scrambled upward. "Passages up here!" she called back. "Found a tunnel, open, running—" It passed only for one of the shadows in the irregular pumice; but it was hollow and small enough for a halfling. She pushed herself inside. "Knew about this?" she directed to the priest, her voice muffled. He shook his head and looked genuinely shocked.
"It'll hurt her!" the child cried out. "The rocks will fall and she'll hurt—Khalid, stop her! Stop her!"
"Blocked in here," Flores called back. "Damned unstable! Fit for my size...mage's peephole? Doubt anyone bigger than me could get through it, it's tight even now."
"C-come out," Khalid asked her.
"Oh, it's blocked all right..." She could be heard scrambling still in it. "Coming." She groaned on her way out, face blackened by layers of dust. Behind her it sounded as if the stone shifted once more. "Hand over a map of the surrounding estates. We'll weed out our spy." She wiped her hands over her trousers, streaking them with black dirt.
Some of this land was garden land, grown over with green grasses, wide walnut trees and pale cotton flowers spotting the ground. Flores traced the lines of the earth, speaking of tunnels and buried pipes for water to wealthy homes; the three of them wandered through paths of a tranquil garden despite the chaos and danger of the city.
"It's enormagigamous," the boy said, clinging to Khalid's hand. "I like this part of the city. I like seeing far. I could have adventures like the stories say, and be a wizard travelling all over the world and learning new spells and fighting bad monsters like you, Khalid. Can I be a 'venturer when I grow up, Khalid? And I could make new friends like Flores, little people to travel with me and be my best friend, and go and see everything and find out all the colours in the threads and find the new colours and places— How many places have you been, Khalid? What is the strangest thing you've ever seen?"
There are so many—
Cold eyes of a lich in the dark, Zhentarim swooping on wyvern mounts—
"The star-nosed mole," Khalid said firmly. "It's a...c-creature with a nose that resembles a starburst...it is a mass of pink tentacles on its face, and it w-wriggles these to touch its food. They are very small," he added. The description would have scared him as a child...
But the boy laughed happily.
"A bursting pink star! That sounds like an adventure. I know pictures of things with tentacles and I can see it in my head, like I can see the old black colours." He looked down at the ground, the grass they slipped past. "Do you have children like me, Khalid?"
It was natural. Of course it was natural, Khalid. Why then should there be grief?
"No. We have none," he said.
"Oh. I don't have a father," the boy said—as if he'd heard something in Khalid's tone of voice. "You'll like my mother, though. She's wonderful and beautiful and—"
"Cripes, shut the hells up, kid," Flores said. In the shade of a hill rose the white marble gates of the mansion they'd come seeking. They guarded a garden, thick with almond and crown and sycamore trees growing plane leaves above the barred walls, terraced and mazed with the sound of a flowing fountain. It was tranquil and beautiful, and Khalid wondered if the horrors of the city indeed came from that place. "I don't take brats off on adventures."
"D-don't you...I h-heard you were a married woman?" Khalid said to her. There were no apparent guards posted ahead. They walked between trees that still sheltered them; he looked for gates and ways to investigate.
Flores spat on the ground. "Was. Had a kid with that worthless scoundrel, even."
The child laughed. "Even smaller than you? A little man? Is he here too?"
"No. He fell in with the wrong crowd. Too much like his damn father." Flores tightened her lips, glancing up at Khalid. "If ye ever meet a good-for-nothing hin of the name Montalban Gurman, give him a kick in the teeth from me. Useless man." She picked up a small pebble from the ground and seemingly casually flung it over the wall, watching its trajectory carefully.
"Monty," the boy repeated.
"Yeah. Reckon that's a mage-field," Flores said. "You see it, kid? Round the back." She had them head down shielded by trees, though still close to the mansion. Behind them the temple still rose on the high ground that allowed such a mage's spyhole.
They must know at the least.
"This one's better," Flores said; a smaller gate at the back, set with a large heavy lock of iron. "Sharadaa gave me a bit of magic. Dead-air the top, lift me up, then come over yourself, Khalid. Lady Muck's got enough defences that it's not like she's not up to something. Stay here and hide, kid, and don't come out unless you can see us alone."
Then impulsively she flung a small red amulet up above the gate, and it dissolved and breathed something into the air that the child watched it—
"Now!"
Khalid lifted her, then reached back for the boy while she scrambled over the top—safer with us than alone, or at least so I pray—
They ran across the garden, feet scuffing the grass; Khalid saw nothing. Then he heard a man's voice and raised his head.
—a spell, if I can halt it in time—
But waves of night came too quickly down, crashing over his head and bringing him, horrified, down into nothing at all. He thought he lifted a hand to plead for mercy for the innocent at the last.
—