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Chapter Twenty: The Forest

The portal twisted around her, and her feet hit the ground. She stumbled into Imoen, and her sister held on, propping her up until the world stopped whirling. She opened her eyes, and saw the sweep of heavy green trees. Vines hung and dripped between the thick branches. Above, the slate sky rippled, and the wind that plucked at her cloak and her hair was warm.

"This…" Kera shook her head. "This isn't right. Is it?"

Imoen shrugged. "I don't know. How close did you want to take us?"

"I don't know. I tried…"

"We're not far south enough," Jaheira cut in. "If we're where I think we are, this must be the Forest of Mir."

Kera swallowed back the sudden urge to say something vicious, and stepped away instead. Somewhere close by, the branches rustled, and she breathed in the scent of rain and wet earth.

Why, she wondered, had it not worked properly?

She had framed the thought in her mind as before, desperate and febrile and wanting to be there, to be amid the Marching Mountains, and close to Yaga-Shura's fortress.

"Sarevok said," Kera murmured, and stared down at her boots. "Sarevok said the portals would take me places I needed to be."

"You would trust Sarevok's words on that?" Jaheira asked.

"Perhaps. He was right about everything else he said about the portals." About how they wound through Bhaal's place, and used something of Bhaal's power, she thought.

"So we need to be here?" Imoen scrubbed a hand through her hair. "You know, sister mine, I'm really glad it's you that gets to do all the strange things."

"You can call the next portal if you want."

"No, thank you."

"So we remain here?" Jaheira asked. "You wish to move on foot from here?"

"What I wish is not to call up another portal. Not now. I think…" She looked again at the dark, high arches of the trees. "I think we need to be here."

For a long moment, Jaheira remained wordless. Then she nodded, slowly, and said, "Very well."

The day stayed overcast and wet, and beneath the deep shadows of the trees, Valygar found a narrow trail that rolled between low hills and past high shelves of rock, slick with water. As the afternoon faded into a grey evening, the rain fell harder, and Kera glared down at the mud that caked her ankles. Beside her, Solaufein moved with measured, cautious steps. His heels sank against the mud more than once, and she noticed how he paused, righting his balance. His hair was plastered against his head, and hanging in thick, wet handfuls over his shoulders.

She touched the back of his left hand. "Are you alright?"

"The rain," he said. "I feel as if I can't hear things properly, and the ground feels strange."

She nodded. "You've seen rain before, though?"

"Yes, but never this heavy." He blinked water away from his eyelashes and scowled. "We never went up to the surface if it was raining like this."

"Too difficult to navigate?"

"Too easy to become outmatched by the surface elves," he said, and his smile was edged. "Never worth the risk. They knew the terrain and the weather, and we did not. We needed to move silently, and while the rain can cover a drow's footsteps, or his approach, it also deafens him."

She stopped, and listened to the pattering of the rain against the curving branches and her own shoulders. "I'm sorry," she said. "It must be very uncomfortable."

"I'm fine," he said, and then his smile softened. "No, I'm not. I feel very strange."

"I think I understand."

"This forest." His head tipped back, and the rain scattered against his forehead and his eyelids, and ran down the sharp line of his jaw. "It is not like the elven forest."

"No. It's not. It's feels different."

He caught her hand, his gloved fingers damp. "Will you walk with me?"

She was almost tempted to grin and tell him that she had been doing just that, and why would she change her mind now? Instead, she nodded, and murmured, "Of course I will."

The night fell over the forest, dank and dark. Imoen spun a fire spell around the collection of dripping branches that Minsc had chopped up, but too much smoke boiled up, turning the damp air acrid and thick. She flattened the fire out, and let the wood sit there uselessly, and sank back on her heels until Kera coaxed her away, and onto the slightly drier ledge of rock on the other side of the small clearing.

"Sorry." Imoen wrapped her arms around her shins. "I just wanted…"

"It's alright, you know."

"I know. I just…I like being able to make fires for us. That sounds stupid."

"No, it doesn't."

"Kera?"

"Yes?"

"Do you think this forest would be any prettier if it wasn't raining?"

She spluttered into a laugh. "No. I don't."

"No. It's strange, isn't it? You can feel it too, can't you?"

She looked at the high, black arches of the trees, and the great swathe of the sky overhead. There was something, she thought. Something old and something waiting, and something beneath the damp loam and inside the clustered rocks and clinging like the rain to the tangled trees.

"Yes," she said, and it came out close to a whisper. "I can feel it."

Imoen shifted closer, so that her shoulder was against her sister's. Kera turned, and saw how her hazel eyes flickered, and knew that she was gathering up the courage to say something.

"What is it?"

Imoen's fingers twisted together. "Alright. I have to ask you this before I go completely insane. It's about Solaufein."

Kera blinked. "Go on."

"Well…I know that I generally prefer men who are…well. Big."

"You did not just ask what I think you asked. Did you?"

"Big as in tall. Tall, broad, solid. Big shoulders. You know. And Solaufein is so…skinny. And he's no taller than you."

"Oh, I don't know. There are a few advantages."

"Like what?"

"Think about it," she said, and when Imoen frowned, she grinned.

"You don't mean…?"

"I don't know," Kera said, and shrugged quite deliberately. "Do I?"

"You're horrible."

"Possibly."

"Is it alright, though?"

"Imoen."

"I don't mean that," her sister said, and nudged her. "I mean…just it. You and Solaufein. Is it alright?"

"Yes, it is," Kera answered immediately. "It really is."

"He is a drow."

"This, from the girl whose jaw dropped to the ground the very instant she saw Xan?"

Imoen scowled, and her cheeks turned faintly pink. "He was pretty. And anyway, that was different. Xan was an elf."

"Solaufein's an elf."

"No, he isn't," Imoen said. "Not really. And not in the same way. And you know it."

Kera turned, so that they were facing each other, both of them with their knees drawn up, the way they had on the windowsills in Candlekeep, so long ago. "Are you really worried?"

"No, just curious. In need of gossip and details."

"No details."

"You're no fun." Imoen grinned. "It just seems a bit unlike you. That's all. You never gushed about beautiful elf boys and their beautiful ears or anything. And Jaheira said your last comrade between the sheets was human."

"There weren't exactly drow by the score at Candlekeep to compare, you know." Kera leaned the side of her head against her crossed arms. She tried to pretend they were elsewhere, somewhere that the rain could not touch, maybe at the Copper Coronet with its haze of blue smoke and raucous music and tables in the darkest of corners. But no, she thought. Imoen had never been to the Copper Coronet. She had been taken by the Cowled Wizards, and had never been there.

"I was so scared," Imoen said quietly. "When we went into Ust Natha for the first time. Even with the illusion, it seemed as if we were never going to get through the city."

"I know."

"Seems strange," she said, and touched Kera's shin gently. "We went in there thinking we'd never come out breathing, and you came out with Solaufein."

She looked into her sister's face, and knew better than to accuse her of prodding jealousy. She met Imoen's smile, and murmured, "It is strange."

"Good. Now that I've been suitably soppy about you two, are you going to tell me anything scandalous? I mean, he is a drow, and you know what everyone thinks about how drow are in bed."

"No, Imoen."

A single lantern glowed near the tent flaps, and Solaufein could still hear the rain, thrumming down on the canvas above. He had shed his soaked armour, and he lay tangled around Kera's equally bare form. Earlier, she had pulled him down onto the blankets and dug her fingers into his sodden hair and kissed him until he groaned. They had tried to be quiet, had stopped each others' gasps with mouths and hands and whispered words.

She trailed a hand across him, slowly and thoughtfully. Her fingers stopped at the dip between his shoulder blades, and he guessed why.

"How did you get these?"

She must have meant the curving, almost symmetrical pattern of scars there, so he answered, "When Phaere was taken into the temple, Matron Mother Ardulace had her handmaidens punish me."

"Punish you?"

"They flogged me," he said. "At least, it began like that. It was a typical punishment, really, for a male. But…it went on. For a long time, it went on."

Her fingers slipped across the small of his back, gently stroking. "How long?"

"For nearly as long as Phaere was in the temple. I don't know. Many days. They did not let me sleep."

"What?"

"They wanted to know what I had done to her. How I made it so that she cared so little for her status, and her mother's place in Ust Natha. They wanted to know how I had done this to her." He shrugged. "Interrogations pass all the quicker if the one being asked the questions is exhausted. At least, such is the intention."

"When you came out," she said, and paused long enough to kiss the side of his ear. "When you came out, what happened?"

"They healed me. They told me I had kept my position as commander, and if I failed in such a manner again, I would die. I was foolish. I went straight to the temple and I looked for her."

"Did you find her?" Kera asked, softly.

"Yes. She was changed."

"Changed?"

He found her in the small chamber, sitting in the alcove. He watched as she pressed her shoulders back against the black stone, and he remembered how he had once let her push him back against the same place, and how she had straddled him amid the dark and the swirling incense and taken him until his body shuddered under hers. He let his feet scrape against the floor, and waited until her head turned. "Phaere?"

"Commander Solaufein."

Her voice was flat. He faltered, uncertain suddenly. Where had they taken her, he wondered again, and what had happened to her? She was sitting awkwardly, as if the slim frame beneath her robes was tense, or sore, or both.

"Phaere, I…" He looked away from her face, and down to where her sleeves were bunched at her wrists. He saw the lines of half-healed cuts, and blurted out, "What did they do to you?"

"Nothing."

"Phaere." Without thinking, he grasped her arm and flicked the fabric back. He saw silk stitches winding across her beautiful ebony skin, and he could smell blood. "Phaere, where else are you hurt?"

"Don't," she said, and jerked away from him. "Commander Solaufein. Don't touch me."

He looked into her crimson eyes and something cold coiled through his belly. "Don't you remember…? Do you remember what we talked about?"

She drew herself up and away from him. "What did we talk about, Commander Solaufein?"

Escape, he thought, and his throat tightened. Leaving here. Finding somewhere else, he thought, and when he looked into her eyes again, he did not see her.

"Nothing," he said, and his tongue felt heavy against his teeth. "Forgive me, mistress. Nothing."

"Changed," he said. "She was…as you knew her. No. She became as you knew her."

"I understand. And I'm sorry."

"It was a long time ago."

"But you had to see her, and often. That would not have been easy."

"No," he said, and the confession almost hurt, and he wondered if he had ever said it aloud before. "No. It was not."

She cupped the side of his head, and her fingers brushed against the rings in his ear. "Solaufein."

"It was a long time ago," he said again, and rolled over. "May I…" He faltered, and again he could not quite find the words, not properly, not in any way he was certain would not offend.

"Go on," Kera said.

"You said before," he managed, and stopped. He looked away from her face, and to the scars that criss-crossed her slender frame and wondered why he even had cause to ask. No drow female would bear such a question, he knew, and nor would he have dared to broach it. "You said to me that you did not lie with anyone in Ust Natha, or before, for some time."

"That's right."

"May I ask why not? I find myself curious."

"The same reason," Kera said. "No one captured my fancy."

"But you are young."

"At Candlekeep, there was a boy who helped tend the gardens. I lured him into the stables one afternoon."

"Indeed?" He grinned, and was pleased when she returned it. "Temptress."

Her face coloured slightly, and she rubbed a hand across her forehead. "It was no great affair," she said. "In fact, it was all over rather quickly, and the most I got for my trouble was hay in my hair."

"And after?"

"After?" She nestled closer, and the damp coils of her hair spilled across his shoulder. "Not many. There was a man in Baldur's Gate I had a…a dalliance with, I suppose you'd call it. And then when we were in Athkatla, I met a man who wanted to be a knight. He was a good man."

"I'm sorry. I have never…I feel as if I am asking the wrong thing."

"No," she said, and she trailed a hand down his chest. "It's alright."

"Would you tell me?"

"I was not what he hoped I was, and he was not what I thought he was. He wanted someone to save. Someone to devote himself to."

"And you?"

"Me?" She fell silent for a long moment. "I didn't want that. I wanted comfort. I wanted to not have to spend every night alone. We were…not for each other. We only thought we should have been."

Solaufein found that he did not know what he could say to that. The inside of his mouth felt strange, sandy. Why had he asked, he thought, and what answer had he hoped to hear? Not for each other, she had said, and he wondered what that meant.

"Kera?"

"Yes?'

Whatever he wanted to say lodged in his throat. Some questions were not his to ask, he knew.

"Nothing," he said, and smiled slightly. He drew her against him, and he lay with her in his arms as the candle burned down, and he listened to the soft, insistent sound of the rain outside.

Kera followed the twisting path through the trees. Vines hung in thick, dripping tangles between the branches. Underfoot, cracked stone slabs pushed up through the sodden loam. Before the sun had risen and rinsed the sky the palest of yellow, Valygar and Solaufein had scouted out into the wet darkness, and reported little moving amid the trees.

Still, walking with both heels sliding on the uneven ground, she felt barely reassured. She tasted the rain with every breath, and the weight of her hair dragged against her collar.

Something, she knew, something had needed her to be here, in this forest, and beneath the darkness of the curling branches.

She remembered Spellhold, and the passageways beneath it, and their tricks and riddles and illusions. She remembered the blood of the monsters they had killed there, and how she had felt where Irenicus had been, must have been, because she could feel her soul.

"This way."

Jaheira paused. "Kera, I'm not certain. We need to wait, to see…"

"To see what? If I change into that thing again and kill you all?" Her voice split into echoes that bounced off the high stone walls. "We need to go, and now."

"And if we get lost?"

"We won't."

Jaheira caught her wrist. "You can't know that."

"He's been here," she snapped. "He's been through here. He's been through here with Bodhi."

"Kera, I don't…"

"My soul," she said, and jerked away. "I can feel it. I can feel him. We need to get back up to the asylum, and find him. If he gets away he'll take it with him, and then we'll have to follow him, and I don't know if…"

"Kera," Jaheira said, and her face softened. Very gently, she took Kera's hand again, and held on. "We'll find him. We will."

She tipped her head back, and let the rain patter against her face until her eyelids and temples were running with it.

"Do you like that?" Solaufein asked, and he sounded entirely bewildered.

"Sometimes." She blinked and mopped the rainwater away. "Is that strange?"

"Completely," he said, and smiled.

She returned the smile, and nudged him gently. "Very funny."

The path ran up around the base of clustered rocks, and the trees fell away. Somewhere close by, she heard water rushing over stone. She looked through the grey fall of the rain and saw the edges of high walls, jutting up through the arching branches. Water ran down deep seams in the dark stone, and when Kera saw it, she froze. She made herself look further, and she saw the rotten, fallen pieces of a gate, and the sprouting tangle of green leaves above.

"This place," Imoen said, and her voice was low. "What is it?"

Kera shook her head. "I don't know."

She watched the water where it ran in thick rivulets down the stone, and she knew. Knew how the stone had been soaked in more than water, and only for Bhaal, always for Bhaal. Something twisted in the pit of her stomach, and she stepped back. Her shoulder bumped against Solaufein's, and he caught her.

"Kera," he murmured. "What is it?"

"Bhaal's," she said. She could feel it, as deep and as ancient and as obvious as her own heartbeat. "This is…this place is Bhaal's."

He said nothing. He grasped her hand, and pulled her close to him, close enough that she could smell him, damp hair and skin and leather, and him, under it all.

"Kera," Imoen said, and this time, her voice was nearly a whisper. "Kera. Do you see him? Do you see him?"

She kept her hand linked through Solaufein's, and she looked up and past his shoulder. She saw Gorion, and she saw that he stood before the ruined gates, his hair and his robes heavy with the rain.