Davaeorn's Staff of Striking, black as death, worked all down its length with hateful runes, had not been on Jaheira's person at her arrest; she carried it now, like a walking-stick, striking the pavement stones as she went again down the broad arcade of the Undercellars. The sound, like a giant's footsteps, spoke more clearly than any command. The patrons' chattering stopped as she passed. A silence, tight and nervous, spread through the white-fogged halls. Jaheira said nothing. The others, following in tight formation behind – her army; her family – kept the same grim-faced silence; even Imoen.
When she reached the center of the innermost room, marked underneath her feet by a tile frieze of a red-cheeked man gorging himself on grapes, she stopped and smote the frieze with the staff and said: "Bring out Slythe."
Eyes glinted at her, shocked and leery, from the darkness. There was no sound.
"Slythe," she repeated. With a majesty still greater than a general's – a queen's, perhaps – she swung her head around to look at the men stretched out on the cushions; dull-eyed, slack-jawed. Some were thieves and murderers. Others, the innocent, had only come to seek a moment's respite from a strange and cruel existence. For a moment, she could feel pity. No matter how sorry a spectacle they presented, she could no longer insist that the problem of human suffering – the suffering even of the rich, the safe, the provided-for – was mild.
Then inch by inch, uncurling out of a mound of fragrant cushions, moving with lithe and easy majesty, a shape came up in a corner of the room. It stretched and purred. Then, shaking its narrow head, it answered her:
"No need for any bringin' out, now, Mith."
"That's the one," hissed Felix, hard by at her shoulder.
Slythe grinned.
"Pleathur t' meet thuch fine folk," he said, showing his brilliant teeth.
"You would have had us all hanged," said Felix.
"Heh. Well in that, ya'd have been lucky. Many who pass by Thlythe – well, mate, worse happens to 'em than hangin."
There was a silence. Then, as one, the patrons who could shift themselves all staggered to their feet, and ran helter-skelter for the exits, stumbling over themselves, each other, the pipes and pillows; they moved with a prey's determination, too bent even to scream.
Felix and Slythe faced each other as the Cellars emptied. Then Felix unclasped his cloak and flung it aside, and drew Khalid's scimitar to the light.
"This weapon cut down many a better man than you," he said, hoping his voice did justice to the sword's former master. "You are alone and unarmed, and taken unawares. You have no hope. So obey, slave and you will be spared—"
"Thpared, eh?" Slythe snorted, a singularly awful sound. "Thpared. Yah. That's rich. Ya hears that, Krithten me love? Eh? Thpared."
He was seized by a childish delight, leaning over giggling until he slapped his knees. Then all his humor fled in a moment. He straightened, looking at them through nearly colorless eyes that admitted no warmth.
Only Xan, hanging back, astute, had been startled by his address of 'Krithten.' The mage looked around, but the room had emptied.
"My baby," said Slythe, beginning to run his forked tongue of his studded lower lip, "she's made herself all invisible-like, tho's you lot can't be oglin' her. But she's here all the same. And what's the more…"
He knelt, suddenly, and Imoen swiftly notched an arrow to mark him – he straightened again, gripping in his left hand a familiar piece of leather-wrapped steel.
"Here'th a nice pieth, eh?" He hefted it. "Could get used to this."
"That's mine," said Felix lowly.
"Oh!" Slythe's eyes went wide in mock-dismay. "Bleth me then! You want I should give it back, mate?"
He erupted in rasping laughter. Then, as if prompted, Xan suddenly bellowed: "Sakah!"
Felix, looking squarely at Slythe, was puzzled when no brilliant spell leapt forth to paralyze, maim or destroy the killer. Then he spun around, and saw Shar-Teel struggling with a ghostly blur that had at once become visible. Xan's hand was still raised, pointing at the apparition. Slythe's twisting laughter continued.
Shar-Teel had locked both blades with Kristen, but the assassin, still protected by illusions, seemed to flicker like the black lotus smoke that wound through the room. Shar-Teel's blades slipped like a man's feet of a scrim of ice: a dagger found its mark, and Shar-Teel growled in pain. Blood sprayed the brightly-painted floor.
Seeing Jaheira move in, twirling her staff, and Xan begin to chant another spell, Felix turned back. He marked Slythe standing still as before, looking on, expecting to be entertained.
"Stand!" he yelled, leveling the tip of his blade; Slythe took no notice. "Stand!"
Finally, twisting his head about, the eyes rolling slightly afterward like marbles turning in the sockets, Slythe looked at Felix. He smiled. Over the yells and crashes of combat, he said mildly: "Cheerth."
"Oh gods. Look at you." Standing in a wide stance, the blade leveled, Felix looked at Slythe and his face melted into deep and sincere revulsion.
Slythe shrugged, and the sword in his hand jounced. "The only differenth betwixt the two of us," he said slowly, rolling each word slowly over his mutilated tongue, "ith that I – know what I am."
Felix stepped closer, holding his stance; Slythe remained standing easily, letting the sword rest on his hip like a cowherd's crop.
"What is Sarevok planning?"
"Oh…" Slythe's eyes went vague. He seemed to see a vision in the smoke. "Big thingth. He'th sharp, that one. Sharp as a – tack…"
Nervous, madly suspicious, Felix began to circle to right, waiting for Slythe's sudden violent motion—the assassin stood motionless, not even looking after him, as he went on.
"It's war," he said. "It hath to be war."
Felix was quick. "War. Why?"
"Why?" Now Slythe turned his head, and one pale eye glinted amusedly at Felix. "Why not, mate?"
Felix seemed about to speak – then he shut his mouth, and looked at Slythe with blazing eyes. "I don't care to hear another madman vomit out his crazy view of the world."
"Well. You'll have a hard time getting on then. Won't you?" Grinning, Slythe began to move himself, in sure catlike steps around Felix. "Feh – a man. What'th that, then? The truth ith we're all a bunch of beasts. So why not make the most of it, eh?"
They stood their ground. Felix dared a look to the side: in an instant, he made out Jaheira leaning over the wounded Shar-Teel in a blaze of white light; Xan stood with Imoen, facing Slythe's barely-visible partner.
In that instant Slythe moved soundlessly and was on him.
A week ago, Felix would have died where he stood; but he moved as quickly, nearly, and their blades met with a screaming toll like a great dwarven bell, drowning out the shouts of Kristen and the others. They came together and fought like dogs, without consideration or quarter, both their skill and grace reduced to a noiseless, desperate fight for the slightest gain.
Kristen had stabbed Shar-Teel four times between her breasts and belt and the girl lay pumping her life out onto the tiles. Holding the wound with one hand, attempting with her bare fingers to hold the flesh together, Jaheira gestured with the other as she desperately mouthed the incantation. Shar-Teel thrashed and whimpered, and her steaming intestines strained against Jaheira's fingers like a birthing.
Through the blurring glamour, Xan made out the long serrated knife, like a kitchen implement, that had made the wounds. Then Kristen said loudly: "Lur nah," and even her ghostly white form flickered again and vanished.
Imoen stopped the moment before she loosed her arrow, saying in a high panicked voice: "Xan where's she gone to now!"
Xan spat to the side. "Renewed her cloak, bloody hell—matah!"
He ended with a gesture and shouted incantation, and a whistling piece of visible metal, streaking from an invisible hand, rebounded off a shield in the air in front of him.
Kritsen threw again. The knife hissed under Imoen's arm, splitting her cloak, but she marked it course and fired straight back. Kristen had moved; the arrow shot ahead and broke on the wall.
"Xan Xan, do it again; do it again!"
"Do bloody what again!" Xan yelled back, moving sideways with his hand raised to fix the magical shield.
"Make her—appear!"
"I haven't got another one of those—wait a bit. Hang on."
"I'm hanging on!" Imoen wailed, as another knife narrowly missed her ear.
Xan dived. Kristen threw at him, but his body was small inside a large cloak, and the knife only slashed the cloth. Xan hit the floor and rolled and snatched at one of the metal hookahs standing by, and his fingers found the end of a lolling pipe-mouth.
Imoen fired wildly, hoping to buy a moment, and she heard Kristen stumble to dodge the shaft.
Xan sucked his lungs full of lotus smoke and exhaled violently forward. For an instant, like a chance shape of the air, the rolling smoke described a human figure flattened against the wall.
Imoen loosed her shaft. With a hiss and a thud, it went through Kristen's arm and into the tapestry behind her.
Slythe and Felix were closely matched. Although he moved with the uncanny grace of an animal, Slythe seemed to have little training as a duelist, and his only attacks were an assassin's parallel thrusts. Felix, though he had been trained with the sword, could hardly match his opponent's speed. It was Chung Kae's Walking Stick, and the unnatural way that it seemed to turn aside to deflect Felix's blade, that pushed the odds and finally crowded Felix against the wall, where it was all he could do to avoid Slythe's repeated vicious strikes.
With a feint, Felix managed to break and stumbled away along the wall, bracing himself with his hand. He had been reduced to the state of a man staving off a beating. Slythe did not smile or gloat, put only pressed on harder, grunting as each blow closely missed – then Felix stumbled.
The fall took his legs from under him: otherwise, his own sword would have parted his head from his shoulders. He rolled over the object that had tripped him, scrambling for purchase, and gained his feet but lost Khalid's sword among the cushions.
He looked at Slythe, half-standing, and felt only a dull regret that his life would end at the hands of such a small, contemptible being.
The object that had tripped him stirred. It was a human being, barely, wrapped in a dirty silk coat, and it shook itself and tried to stand.
Slythe cackled. "Hullo, old man! You want a go next, eh?"
"Leave him—" Felix choked, and held the stitch in his side, "—alone—"
"Aw, I'll let him alone all right," said Slythe, and hefted his sword. "We don't hurt old folks. Do we, mate?"
The man was not old, only wrinkled and sapped by lotus. His filthy black hair hung around his shoulders. He looked at Slythe with blue eyes that still held some measure of sense, and said with faded resolve: "You…let the boy be now…"
"Oh yah? Says who, old boy? Says you?"
Slythe's head twitched as he spoke, and he twitched his weight merrily from one foot to the other. He had entered some kind of high, exultantly murderous state, and he swung his sword without hesitation and cut the man chin to navel.
Immediately he howled and the sword fell out of his hand. He clutched his arm, tight enough to crush it, as it filled with white-hot agony.
Felix didn't hesitate. As quickly as Slythe had swung, he swung; and Slythe's head, like a child's ball, bounced merrily over the tile floor, spilling a trail of brilliant red.
Felix fell on the body and stuck his sword in several times, letting out more red. Then he took up his own sword, wrenching it from Slythe's dead hand, and savaged the limbs, striking off an arm and a leg before he finally mastered himself and fell back, gasping and sobbing.
Imoen reached him as he collapsed backward onto the cushions, surrounded by the stench of lotus, next to the corpse of the luckless man and what remained of the young assassin, Slythe.
"Felix!" she yelled, and hauled him into her lap. "Felix. Felix?"
"I'm alright," he said, breathing roughly, his eyes shut. "I'm alright. I'm alright."
Away from them, by the wall, the air flickered. A body became visible out of nothing. Jaheira, holding the living Shar-Teel, stroking her hair and muttering reassurance, stopped. Xan, rifling through the leather pack that lay by Slythe's body, stopped. Felix and Imoen, holding each other, stopped.
Kristen stood visible in front of them. The arrow held her arm, and blood pumped liberally out of the wound, but her attitude of frozen horror seemed to have no relation to the wound.
They saw a short, chubby woman with mannish hair, and a freckled face. Nothing about her seemed extraordinarily attractive. She wore a plain white tunic, and she gaped at the scattered pieces of Slythe and opened her mouth and wailed.
"No—no!"
Jaheira looked away. Xan stood up, dusting his hands. "Shut it, you. We'll deal with you anon."
Felix and Imoen, though, regarded her with a good deal more surprise.
"His bag has letters," Xan called to Felix. "They might serve to throw a bit of light on this mess…"
"Slythe," Kristen moaned, mauling her face with her free hand, straining against the arrow. "Slythy. Slythikins. Aw, no. Gods no. It aint so. It aint bleedin' so—!"
She broke off, sobbing.
"The guard will be along to take care of you, wench," said Jaheira.
She got to her feet, helping Shar-Teel. Xan threw Slythe's leather satchel over his shoulder. Felix muttered a brief prayer for the dead over the man Slythe had killed.
As they walked away, keeping silent and close together, Kristen's furious words winged after them: "Yew killed my Slythe! Bastards! Bleedin' bastards…"
Then the door to surface slammed behind them, and the words stopped.
Behind the Scenes
Felix Lightfoot
Half-Elf
Neutral Good
Kensai: Level 6
Strength: 15
Dexterity: 18
Constitution: 16
Most Powerful Foe Vanquished: Slythe
