Troubles in the South
The sun was setting by the time they reached Nashkel.
Evelyn looked up just in time to see the small town folding over them, quiet and beautiful. Evergreens sprouted up all along the cobble-turned-gravel road that wound down its middle, branches stretching high and wide to embrace the setting sun. The farmhouses and small cottages were bathed in a radiant, orange glow, a few people milling idly about at ease and in little hurry. With so little worry of their own. It was almost … idyllic.
Evelyn had to choke back a sob.
"Cover your face."
The ranger spared her a glance before pushing past. She reached up mechanically and tugged the hood of her cloak down even more. Everything seemed so peaceful …
But she knew better than they did what ill and bloody fortune she carried in her wake like a dark tide. Sooner or later, it was going to catch up with her again.
They had had little trouble on their continued journey south to reach the town, only a small group of those pig-faced men Kivan had called Hobgoblins giving them any trouble. The ranger took Khalid and Jaheira, though, and made short work of them. Evelyn only saw their corpses afterwards. It had hardly been a comforting sight to add to an already bloody day.
The others had not waited for her, Jaheira at their head hardly losing a stride before crossing the stone bridge at the foot of the town to the opposite bank. As soon as she set foot inside, though, someone raised a hand to stop them.
"Halt and identify yourselves, travelers!"
The voice was stern, though certainly less dubious than those of the Flaming Fist officers had been. Evelyn hesitated only briefly before hurrying over to join the others, not daring to be singled out alone. A man strode to meet them with several others in tow. Each was adorned in a thick mesh of chain links, the sleeves and legs of his tunic and trousers flared out in crimson. Some had bows in hand. They were tense.
The leader swiftly removed a winged helm from his head, tucking it under an arm.
The half-Elven woman canted her head toward the man simply enough. "I am Jaheira," she declared for him, "and we are travelers as you say." Then took them all in with a look. "We are to meet the mayor."
The man eyed each of them carefully. But it was not the same distrust that the other officers had held them with on the road. They seemed more grim than anything, and there was something haunted there. He grunted noncommittally after he had taken them all in, puffing out black mustaches.
"Captain Bardolan's the name," he told them, and waved a gauntleted hand back toward his men. "And we belong to the contingent of Amnish guard that protects this peaceful town. So if you're seeking to resolve troubles, welcome. If you're seeking to cause them, kindly take it elsewhere. Things are not good here."
"What things aren't good?" the half-Elven woman asked innocently enough. She folded her arms across her chest.
Bardolan had turned away. Now he returned slowly, obviously wishing to be done with them already. He leveled a hard eye at the dusky-skinned woman. But she held her ground.
"Aye," the captain eventually barked a bitter laugh, shaking his head, "what is good around here anymore? Our iron is rotten and there is talk of demons in the mines." He suddenly spat into the dirt. "The lower levels have been all but abandoned until this crises passes. And then there is the question of Commander Brage …"
He winced hard. Then growled, "Ack, they have stripped him of that title but I use it yet." The Amnish guards behind the captain exchanged a few muttered words and glances, none of them overjoyed.
Bardolan's voice grew soft, and he seemed to forget they were there, staring hard into the weathered cobbles. "He killed his wife and children in a rage one night and all who saw him. Then he tore himself away and headed for the hills."
His gaze was drawn upward and away toward the west.
"He is out there still, and still we mourn," he sighed, heavily. "As much for him as for those he's taken."
A long moment passed, slowly, while Jaheira seemed to wait for the man to return to the present. No one else spoke.
Finally, the captain blinked. He scrubbed a hand at his eyes, and then twisted his gaze back toward Jaheira.
"Fie on you, now!" he cried at them, angry with grief. "You have brought tears to the eyes of a soldier!"
Without another word, he turned away from them, sweeping the other men up in his wake as he continued to wipe at his eyes and try to regain his composure. One man clapped him on the back, grunting some reassuring words while the other men spared the five travelers no few dark looks. Jaheira's face merely hardened.
"It is late," she told them with a hard look. "We will see about rooms for the night and seek out the mayor in the morning. No doubt he has already gone to bed."
Evelyn was back at the gates of Candlekeep. They loomed before her, closed and barred. The iron gleamed, cold and implacable in the twilight glow that seemed to emanate from the very stones themselves. And the walls spanned high – higher than they ever had. She could still see over them, though, all the way inside to the central keep. A candle was in her room, burning bright against the shadows that pressed in all around.
For a moment, it was her.
And then the light went out, the brick surrounding the window closing together. Even the walls conspired to keep her at bay.
A familiar voice startled her back to herself then. Calm, and caring. A brush of ice and death against her being.
Her whol body shivered. Ephemerally.
"You cannot go back this way, child," the voice told her. "You must go on."
Gorion was standing in front of her. She felt sudden warmth suffuse her at the sight, beaming bright and wide as she took a hasty step toward him. That chill wind came back, though, and blew through to her very soul.
She froze, and the smile slipped from her face. The man who stood before her then was a shade, his features vague and indistinct. He was dead, she knew.
The phantom of her adopted father gestured toward the blackness of the woods beyond her old home – as though they should have been inviting. It was, in a way, she thought suddenly. But the traveling would be hard. Even as she thought it, though, a smooth and obvious path became clear out of the corner of her eye. It seemed meant for her – pulled at her very being. And promised to quickly lead her away from the life she had once led.
She glanced that way. Her body tugged her along. Insistent. Perhaps it would be for the best.
But something tugged at her from elsewhere too. The thought faded.
The path seemed too convenient. She couldn't stay here. Didn't want to. She had lost everything. But she couldn't ever forget it either. Didn't want to …
Gorion smiled. And faded away.
The pull became a push, but Evelyn turned away, steadfast. The way was not clear, but there were lights ahead in that dark forest. They would help find her way.
A whisper followed her as she moved away, however. Something vestigial. And sinister.
She recognized it. But yet … had never heard it before in her life.
It crept along behind her like a shadow, and burned beneath her skin.
"You will learn …"
She did not look back.
Instead, she opened her eyes.
Evelyn shot straight upright in bed, gasping air in violently as though she had been drowning and suddenly let loose upon dry land once more. A hand flew to her throat, and she flung it away. Her skin itched. Her blood pulsed oddly. But worst of all, something seemed to be rising up from deep down inside her. Black bile swallowed up her veins.
She leapt out of bed, nearly stumbling along the wooden floor of the inn room she and Imoen had taken, the other woman still asleep and oblivious to it all. Evelyn clawed at wood, throwing herself back to her feet. And then flung open the room door.
She had to get out. The walls pressed in like a vice even as her skull pushed back out. She wasn't alone inside there anymore. Her stomach heaved.
Blinding light drowned her as she plunged headlong and desperate into the hallway. Her skin crawled – like a living thing latched firmly onto her body and making her want to scream. It was all that she could do to keep herself from doing just that as she careened through the common room of the inn.
All sound ceased as she tore past the few people that still loitered in that room, wide eyes fixing in awe and surprise as she fled through their midst. She was already running as hard as she could from whatever black thing it was that was seeping into her bones and coursing into her veins. The dim light blinded, the dead silence deafened, and every nerve in her body was firing all at once. She flung the inn door open and thrust herself out into the night.
Everything was swallowed up in dark as the door swung shut behind. All feeling surged up into her skull, sucked right out of the rest of her useless body. It whirled, churning like scraping bits of metal there against the backs of her eyes. Tearing. Grinding flesh and bone.
And then it all just burst.
She was lying on the ground, panting and mewling into the dusky cobbles. There should have been sound. Horrible sound. Bloody bits of her exploded head all over the dirt.
But there was nothing.
Nothing.
She looked around, seeing little but the shadows lying over the town. That whole nightmare could have just been a dream for all it knew. And she heaved aloud above the ground, heart thumping in her head.
She was alive – still dressed in the long tunic and leggings she had gone to sleep in. Hands clawed back into her making sure it was really still there. Her hair was tangled and wild. She must have looked like some kind of feral beast just then, screaming through the town in the dead hours of night. She felt like one too, though, so it was just as well.
It was over – the dream, the nightmare … whatever it was. But, something had changed. Her skin no longer itched, eyes and ears didn't burn, and she could think. But there was …
Something.
She didn't know what it meant. She didn't want to know what it meant.
She wrapped her arms around herself tightly, body still trembling wildly. She couldn't stop it. She wanted to scream at herself inside her head. But it did little more than keep her upright.
What is wrong with me …
She barked a sob there in the cold night. They were manic tears she was desperately biting back by the time the inn door opened behind her. She twisted around in surprise, and there was a woman there – no one she knew. But she stared at the utterly distraught girl there on her knees in the dirt with wide eyes.
"Are you alright?" the other asked. She was measuring Evelyn with a heavy gaze. Whether it was for injury or madness, though, she hardly knew.
"I – I don't know," she shook her head, scraping both palms back along her forehead, almost afraid it might still come loose or bust without warning.
"Yes," she managed after a moment. "Yes, I'll be fine," she lied.
"Let me take a look at you."
The other woman took a step forward even so. And Evelyn was immediately on her feet, stepping back. She watched the woman with wide, terrified eyes.
"I am a healer," the other chided impatiently, however, and all but clucked her tongue. Evelyn just stared at her dumbly, too shaken to really do much else. But the woman took it for compliance.
She took the raven-haired woman by the shoulders, looking her over.
"It is not customary for young women to run screaming out of their rooms late at night," she mused quietly as her hands moved to grasp Evelyn's chin and turn her head from side to side, "or for them to travel to strange places alone. Did your man strike you?" she asked abruptly. "I see no bruises."
Evelyn shook her head as the woman finished that examination and released her. Those callused fingers fell away and were replaced with a frowning look.
"Well, then why such a hasty run in the middle of the night?" she demanded.
"It was – it was just a nightmare," Evelyn managed to stammer in reply, feeling her cheeks flush and then quickly drain. Whatever it had been, it had been more than just a nightmare. But she dared not tell a stranger that, no matter how foolish it sounded. The other hardly seemed to believe her, though, by the look of her.
"Hmm. Well, it seems no one has come to collect you," the woman glanced briefly back over her shoulder to the inn door across the path. No one else seemed to be about the town either. "A young woman like you could hardly be alone here, so far from home."
"No," she shook her head. "I'm here with – with some friends," she continued to rattle off, hugging her arms tightly back around herself and trying not to think too much more. "They're – they're inside."
"Oh?" the woman looked back once more. "That's too bad for you."
The end of a club forced its way abruptly into Evelyn's stomach before she could blink, doubling her over with a stifled grunt. Just as her evening meal started working its way back up her throat, another swift blow to the face sent her tumbling over backward to the ground.
The woman snatched up a handful of her hair and started to drag her away from the street. Pain shot through her skull everywhere, and she forgot where she was for a moment. But before she could more than shriek aloud, she was tossed back down into the dirt. A boot thrust into her stomach.
Her eyes flashed back open, and the woman pinned her there firmly against the ground. She cried out again, but it was barely more than a hoarse squeak. Tears burned at her eyes, and she tried to roll over. The other just dug her heel in even deeper.
"Just fancy my luck for seeing you stroll through there just now, bold as day!" the woman cast her head back toward the inn. They were hidden away in the shadows between two dark cabins across the way. "I expected a hunt and a chase from the description, but who am I to argue easy coins in the purse."
Her mind spun. She tried to cry out, but a loud sob was all that she could manage. Then the other woman reached down and hauled her bodily back to her feet. She pulled Evelyn close and raised her club high in one hand.
"May the Lord of Shadows guide you swiftly to your death."
And the club fell.
Her fierce eyes now blazed with that lust for the kill.
Her hand moved. Something seized Evelyn in that moment of stunned self-pitying despair. Muscles twitched and blood surged.
And her hand moved.
It took the other woman at the wrist first, turning the club. Her elbow came next, body twisting her around and sending it into the nape of the other's neck. Back around, and her hand was planted hard in the small of the woman's back. Muscle and bone pushed into flesh and blood beneath, pounding and pulverizing like black stone. A moment – and the other was suddenly writhing in the dirt at her feet.
The club clattered away. Teeth bared, Evelyn felt her body start moving again without her willing it. Anger coursed like hot blood through her veins – alien, and feverish. Her hands reached like claws toward the other woman, ready and desperate to tear her apart. And she almost let them. Almost let them rend the other limb from bloody limb.
But she stopped
Evelyn gasped instead, reeling back. She tumbled down to her knees, wide-eyed and trembling anew. She could only stare at the fallen woman, horrified at what she had almost done – what she had wanted so much to do. She had felt it before – that feeling – felt the bloodlust before in the past few days. But she could feel it now like something alien inside her – like a snake coiled around her beating heart. Bloody, merciless instinct. It was not her. But it was. It had overcome her then, and she had just barely managed to stop it.
It was still there. She felt it – like a demon inside her head. Just waiting to surge forth and take control again. Waiting for her to be weak.
Something tugged at the back of her mind, and she remembered Gorion. And then she understood.
The other woman was looking at her, those fierce eyes pained, but vengeful. Evelyn's foot lashed out before she could reach for the club once more, though. It took the woman on the side of the head and she collapsed, unconscious.
The sound of booted feet charging down the path toward her and rough voices shouting out brought Evelyn quickly back. She leapt upon the other woman, turning her over and rifling through the pouches at her waist until she found what she sought. Taking the crumpled piece of parchment and quickly glancing it over to make sure, she tucked it down her leggings just as several Amnish guards nearly ran her over.
"What is the meaning of this?" one of them demanded harshly as he moved to push Evelyn away from the unconscious woman. The others stood back, weapons readied in their hands.
"She-she attacked me," Evelyn told them quickly, pointing at the beaten woman. "She came after me with a club. When I left the inn."
Her voice was shaking. Almost as much as her. The Amnish man shot her a skeptical look before checking the fallen woman over once more.
"We heard someone cry out," the man said, retrieving the club from where it lay lightly in the woman's fingers. "Was it you?"
Evelyn nodded her head, not sure if it really had been her, and the man glanced over her quickly. She had no weapons to speak of though, and, though confused, he shrugged the matter aside, standing.
"We'll take her to the compound," the man said as he gestured for his two companions to grab the woman. "You get back inside and stay out of trouble, girl. And don't wander at night."
And with that they turned away, leaving Evelyn to herself once more. She stared after them for a long while, though. Until they had drifted away out of sight into shadow. When she finally returned to bed, Imoen still slept. No more dreams visited her that night.
It was the first time she had slept soundly in days.
