A very big thank-you to everyone who's following this story. Reviews are always welcome.
Chapter Thirty-Four – Innocence
The sun sank away behind Amkethran, and the heat faded from the stone walls and the great sweep of the sand. Kera walked beside Solaufein, her shoulder brushing his, and his arm loosely around her waist. She ached, bone-deep, and she could smell Sendai's blood and Sendai's death, clinging to her. She needed to be inside and clean and away from the slide of the sand beneath her heels. At the tavern, she listened vaguely as Haer'Dalis assured the innkeeper that all was mostly well, the drow threat taken care of, and their leader safely dispatched. She shook her head to the man's offer of food and drink. She let Solaufein lead her away to the bathhouse, and when the door closed behind them, she locked her arms around him.
He sighed her name, and his hands ran up and down her back. "You're filthy. Let me help you?"
She nodded silently. He unbuckled her belt and eased her out of her leathers. She sank into the water, and wordlessly, he found the soap. He scrubbed the blood and the grime from her hands and her hair. He lingered at her face, and his thumbs arced across her cheekbones.
"Better?"
She nodded. She searched for her voice, and murmured, "And why aren't you in here with me?"
Solaufein smiled, and it lightened his eyes. He lowered himself into the water opposite, and he stayed patient and still, even when she fumbled the soap between slippery fingers, even when her hands shook. She found small, half-closed gashes on him, on his shoulders and his chest, and a longer slice just above his hip.
"You should let Jaheira have a look at those."
"Tomorrow," he said, and gathered her against him.
"Yes." She turned against his shoulder, nestling her face into the wet fall of his hair. "I'm sorry. I'm…I just feel so tired."
"I know."
As gently, he guided her out of the bath and onto the cool tiles. He wrapped the heavy towel around her shoulders and she leaned into him. She caught his chin and turned his head, and when she kissed him, he responded tentatively.
"Kera," he said, a little awkwardly. "You are tired, and we need to speak."
"I know. I need to…can I tell you about Sendai?"
"Of course," he said. "But not here."
She nodded, and she struggled into her clothes long enough to follow him down the corridor. She trailed him through the door and found the curtains open, the shutters flung wide, and the room all full of moonlight. Solaufein closed the door, and she shed her clothes again. She led him across to the bed and curled herself against him, skin to skin. He did not press her, did not speak. His hands ran through the damp length of her hair, teasing out tangles.
"She talked to me," Kera said. "She wouldn't stop. She wanted to know why we were different. If we were the same."
Solaufein's hand wandered down her side, cupped her hip. "Can you tell me what happened?"
She did, and the words scattered from her lips almost too fast. She told him how she had pinned the drow, how the spell had opened the shackles. How it had hurt when she had ploughed into the drow again, and taken her off her feet. How she had felt it, deep and angry and so very obvious, when the drow had died.
"I couldn't…I just sat there, Solaufein. It was terrible. I just sat there on top of her and got as close to her as I could. It was…Solaufein, I felt her death and I enjoyed it. I pushed my fingers into her throat and I enjoyed the way her blood felt."
Fiercely, he pulled her against him. His cheek slid against hers, and he told her, "I am not going anywhere."
"But, what I did, I…it was terrible."
"Yes. Yes, it was. If I had been there, I would not have let you do it." His voice roughened. "I should have been there."
She kissed him, desperately and clumsily. She trailed a hand down his chest and felt him shudder. "Solaufein."
"Wait." He caught her wrist. "Please, wait."
"What is it? What's wrong?"
"Kera." His eyelids flickered. "I am not sure how to say this."
She remembered Sendai's words, and the promise of drow hospitality, and her skin prickled. No, she thought, and made herself murmur, "Just say it."
"I was taken to the priestess' rooms." He hesitated a moment longer, and said, "She asked questions, about you and about me, and I lied. Then she had me, and afterwards, I killed her."
"She…" Kera's fingers stilled against his shoulder. "She had you?"
"Yes."
"Why…" Her stomach knotted, and when she swallowed, her tongue seemed thick and heavy. She fought to find the right thing to say, and words spilled out, shaking and cold. "How could you let it happen?"
"There was no other way."
"You're strong," she said. "I know how strong you are. I know how fast you are. How did…how could you?"
"I needed to survive. I needed to find you."
"Yes, but…" She shook her head. "Do you truly not understand why…"
"Why what?"
"Why it feels like you've just punched me in the gut," she said.
His eyebrows met. "Kera, it was not my choice. I did not let it happen because I wanted it to."
"Then you should've done something else," she snapped.
"She had me unarmed," he said, and something slid into his voice, something hard. "She had me unarmed, and manacled, and alone, and she wanted to know what a drow was doing with surfacers."
"You could've killed her. Before she took you into her bed. You could have killed her before."
"With her guards at the door?"
"Yes," she snarled.
"It was not something I enjoyed."
"But you still managed to do it."
"Yes," he said, and his eyes flashed. "As I had done in Ust Natha, too many times to count. Diaytha was not gentle, nor was she patient, and I let her do it because there was no other way."
"Did you please her?"
"Kera."
Her throat thickened, and relentlessly, she asked, "Did she please you?"
"Do not ask me these things. It does not matter what I tell you."
"Did it hurt?"
"The act itself? No," Solaufein said. "It was her hands on me that hurt. On my chest. On my back. On the inside of my thighs. She had a knife."
She wanted to push herself away from him, wanted to drag her clothes back and run outside and lose herself. She wanted to scream at him, snarl at him to leave her alone and not even think about wanting to touch her again. She wanted to wrap her arms around him and kiss him silent and soothe away the strange pain she could see in his eyes.
"Do you want me to go?"
"No," she said, eventually, and swallowed. "Not unless you want to."
"No. I don't."
Timidly, Kera touched his hair where the heavy white strands gleamed against the line of his shoulder. "You killed her."
"Yes."
"How?"
"I covered her mouth and her nose, and afterwards, I broke her neck."
"Was it over quickly?"
"No. No, it wasn't."
She looked at him, at the sharp angles of his face, swathed in shadow. "Did you enjoy it?"
"No."
His gaze flicked away from her, and she ached. She did not mean to, not really, but she was exhausted and her eyes were gritty and she felt it again, the surge and swirl of the anger. "Was there anything you didn't do to her?"
He clasped her face between both hands and kissed her, demanding and fierce. "This," Solaufein said, and kissed her again. "This."
She sighed, or shuddered, and sank into the circle of his arms. His shoulder was warm and solid beneath her cheek. He said nothing, and his hands did not stray from where they played gently through her hair. Sleep claimed her, and she fell into the strange greyness of her dreams.
The high stone arches were full of lamplight, and idly, Kera wondered why. She held her hands up and cupped the copper richness of it between her palms. "Am I here for a reason?"
"Always, god-child," the woman answered. Her golden eyes gleamed, and she added, "You killed another sibling."
"Yes."
"You are no longer the child who fled from Candlekeep."
"No," she snapped. "I'm not. Is that so surprising? After everything? After Irenicus?" After Sendai, she thought. After the death she had caused, and the blood she had rubbed between her fingers.
"God-child, it is not my place to reprimand. It is only my place to show you. Do you remember Candlekeep?"
She opened her mouth to snarl that she did, of course she did, and the stone trembled and spun beneath her feet.
Sunlight, through the high window in Gorion's study. The swirl of the dust and the smell of the parchment and the black spill of the ink against her fingers. She hurtled her way through the last few pages, and when he smiled and nodded, she was out of the chair and through the door and into the last of the autumn warmth outside.
"There you are." Imoen grinned and beckoned her closer. "I thought you were going to be shut up in there all day."
"I wanted to finish the book."
"You are so strange sometimes."
"Oh? Says she who cried like a little girl when she read the end of that story about the elven girl and the bard?"
"It was sad."
"It was also after midnight, and you didn't want to sleep on your own, so I had to put up with you sniffling and weeping at the other end of my bed."
She woke shivering that night, and the threads of the dream clung to her. There had been flame and heat and somewhere dark and old, and when she tried to remember it, the details fled like smoke. She told Gorion, and he soothed her with a mug of sharp cider and she did not miss the worried frown on his face, or the way his fingers dug into his stubble, across the small map of scars there.
"What's the point?" Kera said, shakily. "It was always like that. Often like that. The days were wonderful. Then the dreams started."
"Would you return to it, if you could?"
"As I am now?"
"As you were then," the woman said.
"What would the point be?" She shrugged. "I'd still be a Bhaalspawn. I'd still have this blood in me. Gorion would still die, and so would Sarevok, and then Irenicus would have us."
"If some things were uncertain, if some things could bend beneath the possibility of change, would you have it so?"
"I don't know. No. I wouldn't."
"No?" Something in the woman's gaze sharpened. "Tell me, god-child. Why?"
"Because," she said, and stopped. She thought of Solaufein, and the yearning, desperate way he had held her in Sendai's chambers. The way he had gathered her against his chest until she was aware of nothing but the beat of his heart beneath hers and him, whole and breathing. "I am here because of those things, all of them. I feel as I do because of them. Changing some things would change them all, and I would not want that."
The woman smiled. "Ah, god-child. You are not as lost as you sometimes believe."
"Really? Then why do I feel like I'm stumbling into someone else's trap most of the time?"
"I cannot tell you how this will end, god-child. I am here to help you through Alaundo's words, that is all. I can offer suggestion, or advice, but I cannot tell you how the world will be, after the prophecy unravels."
Kera trailed her fingertips along the smooth stone. "Then give me some advice. I don't…I feel like I'm floundering. I don't know what to do next except what I'm told, and that feels like a trap. Another trap."
"You might be the one to dampen the fires," the woman said, and her eyes blazed. "You might be the one to oppose Bhaal and his return. Would you, child, if you could?"
"Of course I would," she said, fiercely. "I have never wanted it."
"Wishing something will not come to pass is not the same, child. Not the same at all as fighting against it, as stopping it, as becoming something greater than what you are."
"Riddles," she spat. "Riddles again? I'm being pulled along on someone else's path, and since that seems to be the only way to learn anything, that is what I've done. Sendai is dead. Abazigal is still out there. Do I have to kill him as well? Will that be the end of it?"
"Child." The woman's white fingers brushed the loose waves of Kera's hair. "No, it will not be the end of it. Hold onto yourself, god-child. Hold onto that part of you that laughed in Candlekeep. Give in as you did when you tasted Sendai's death, and it will be all the simpler next time."
She flinched. "I…you knew?"
"Yes, child. I can feel it on you now, her death, and the way you reveled in it."
"I'm sorry," she muttered. "I didn't mean to. It just happened. I was angry, and then she was dead, and…"
"Hold onto yourself," the woman said, softly, and not condemning. "There is much yet that you must do, and it will not be simple."
The last hours of the night found Kera curled at the window, her head tilted against the panes, and her thoughts all uneven. Candlekeep, she thought, and let herself smile slightly. How different had she been, she wondered? How young had she been, before the Underdark, before Spellhold?
She remembered the forest outside Trademeet, and how the druids had thanked them after the freeing of the grove, and how the fires had leaped and crackled. She remembered Haer'Dalis, and how he had sung until the stars waned, and danced himself dizzy between each song. She remembered Jaheira, and how she had smiled, softly and mostly to herself, as the music soared, how she had walked between the arching branches.
She heard him behind her, breathed in slowly, and turned. Anomen smiled hesitantly, and murmured, "My lady, I don't believe I've ever seen you…I mean, you are quite beautiful. In this dress."
She laughed. "Thank you."
He kissed her beside the jasmine, and two weeks later in the inn, his affections were sweet and slow and gentle.
"Kera, I must confess that I love you."
All sorts of words darted through her thoughts, and the skin between her shoulders prickled. But he was looking at her through those soft brown eyes, and she blurted out, "Yes. I love you, too."
It was a lie, and she knew it the instant the words left her lips. But his smile brightened, and he drew her against his broad, muscled frame again, and she hoped that perhaps it might be alright.
Soft rustling startled her. Guiltily, she looked across the room in time to see Solaufein sitting up, the sheets pooling around his waist.
"I'm here," she said. "I didn't want to…I couldn't sleep, and I didn't want to disturb you."
He pushed one hand through the disheveled tumble of his hair. "Did you rest at all?"
"Yes. A little. I saw her again, the woman. The woman all made of light. She knew I'd killed Sendai."
His head lifted sharply. "She did?"
"And she knew how I'd killed Sendai." She stared down at her own fingers, clean and pale and laced together. "She said that maybe I could stop Bhaal's return. Maybe I could be different from the others."
"Did she say why?"
"No. And she asked whether or not I'd want anything to be different. If I'd have preferred things to be easier." She looked at him, at the way his hands tightened in the sheets, at the gleam of sweat in the hollow of his throat. "I wouldn't want that. It might…some things might have been easier, had they happened differently, but then I wouldn't be the same. We wouldn't be the same."
"Kera."
"Will you sit with me?"
He nodded, and swung his feet onto the floor. He did not stop to scoop up his clothes, or hers. He poised on the windowsill beside her, and the warmth of his bare shoulder settled against hers.
"Solaufein, can I be honest with you?"
"Yes."
"I mean horribly honest. Painfully honest."
Silently, he nodded.
"I didn't sleep well. I kept thinking about you and the priestess. I kept wondering if you'd enjoyed any part of it. If you'd wanted any part of it." She licked at dry lips, and added, "I wanted to make you tell me exactly what you'd done to her. What she'd done to you. I wanted to know exactly what you felt. But…"
His fingers brushed the loose ends of her hair. "Go on."
"Solaufein." She let herself worry through another instant, and then she said, "I trust you. Before we went there, and now, still. If it was the only way, then it was the only way."
"Kera, I…"
"No, wait. I need to get this out before I panic." She laughed, a little breathlessly, and said, "I trust you, and…well, if it had been me, and I hadn't wanted it, and then when I'd told you, you'd been angry with me, I don't know what I would have felt. It would've been terrible."
"Kera."
"No, keep listening. I know you're going to tell me that in Ust Natha you were made to do things like that all the time. And maybe that does mean that it's different, but that's not the point."
"What is?"
"I'm sorry," she said, and leaned her head against his shoulder. "For…I'm just sorry."
"So am I." Slowly, he slipped an arm around her waist. "Kera?"
"Yes?"
"Does this mean you still want this? Us?"
"Oh, Solaufein. Yes. Yes, I do."
"You trust me," he said, wonderingly.
"Did you think I didn't?"
"No, it's not that." He frowned. "I mean, I have never…we don't say such things. Not so simply."
"Simple or not, it's true."
"It's not simple," he said, slowly. "It's something I feel, and something I had hoped you felt as well, but words like that do not come easily to us."
Kera turned so that she could wind her legs around his hips. She misjudged the width of the sill, and when he steadied her, she found herself laughing until her vision swam. She rested her forehead against his shoulder and heard the perplexed note in his voice when he asked, "What exactly is funny?"
"Me," she said. "You. Both of us. I don't know."
He cupped his hand beneath her chin. "You are very strange sometimes, surfacer girl."
She kissed his fingers. "So are you, drow."
"You are also very tired, still." He traced the tight, strained skin around her eyes. "Will you come back to bed?"
She nodded, and let him lead her across the floor again. In the warm silence she nestled against his shoulder, and when the night gave way to the dawn, she drifted into sleep, aware of his breathing and the brush of his lips against her hair.
Imoen's dreams were filled with fire, and when she woke, the sheets were tangled and sticky around her. She groaned and pushed her hair out of her face. Across the room, she could hear Jaheira's measured breathing. Briefly, she was tempted to wake the druid, to tell her about the dreams, to complain about the stifling heat. Instead, she kicked the sheets away and scrounged on the floor for her clothes. She checked the window and saw the first grey touch of dawn and silently concluded that sleeping should be done with.
The corridor was deserted, and she paused, listening. Her sister would be with her drow, and she did not want to bother them, not after she had seen how they had looked at each other in Sendai's chambers.
Had she ever seen her sister like that before, she wondered? Shaking and exhausted, she remembered, and her eyes all full of longing when she looked at the drow.
Outside, the last of the nighttime coolness still clung crisp and serene. She wound her way along the narrow path that lead behind the tavern and meandered up to the high shelf of rock behind. She kept her gaze on the toes of her boots, and when she sighed and looked up, she finally noticed Valygar, sitting poised near the edge. "Hey. Am I disturbing you?"
"No. Couldn't sleep?"
"Woke up." She shrugged, and tried not to think of the dream, and the heat of it, and the bright letters that had glowed through the flames. "I thought I'd be all worn out after…well, you know. The drow."
He nodded.
Imoen flopped down beside him. "Did anything happen to you and Jaheira and Minsc?"
"Not really."
"No. Us neither. I was stuck with Haer'Dalis. I made him sing to me."
"Hardly a trial for him," Valygar said drily.
She laughed. "I guess. I was really worried, you know?"
"About your sister."
"Yes." She plucked awkwardly at her bootlaces. "I really thought maybe we wouldn't all make it out of there."
"We've made it through worse places."
"I know." But she remembered the wrenching, prodding certainty, that they were lost, that Kera was lost. "Valygar?"
"Yes?"
"I had a really strange dream."
His head lifted sharply, and his dark eyes narrowed. "One of those dreams?"
"I think so. There was fire, lots of fire. And my hands were all hot, and then the fire was on my hands as well, but I wasn't burning. Not properly." She noticed his level, thoughtful gaze, and grimaced. "I'm sorry. You wanted some time to yourself, and I'm telling you about me being strange."
"No," he said, softly. "It's alright. It is strange, Imoen. I cannot pretend otherwise. Some of the things you say and some of the things you see in your dreams are troubling. You and Kera both. But I will listen, if you want to speak of it."
She grinned, and levered up on one elbow. "I think it's been a while since I've heard you say so many sentences all at the same time."
"A lapse, obviously."
Imoen peered at him until she saw the slight creases at the corners of his mouth. "Very funny. It's strange at the moment, don't you think?"
"Yes, it is."
"What do you think's going to happen?"
"I don't know."
"Gods, Valygar." She flicked the side of his arm. "Can't you tell me something nice and harmless? Something about how we're all going to be fine and come out of this breathing and with no new scars?"
He shrugged. "Would you believe me if I did?"
"Probably not."
Between the white ridges of the roofs, she could see the fierce brightness of the rising sun. She let herself sit silently for a while, aware of the ranger beside her, and the way the light caught against the small golden hoops that wound through his dark hair. She thought of the dream, and when she tried to banish it, she thought of Spellhold again, as she always did, even when she did not want to.
The door swung open, and she did not raise her head. She kept her arms locked around her knees and hoped that if she pretended hard enough, the door would close, and he would leave, and she would not have to believe the terrible sounds that had rung through the walls.
"There you are, child."
His voice was the same, incisive and clipped and cold. She heard his feet against the floor, and then the creak of leather and brush of air against her arm. He must have knelt, she supposed, and when he touched her shoulder, she flinched away.
"You can walk with me, child, or I can take you with me."
She jerked her head up, and tried to meet his eyes. They were blue and jewel-bright and far too beautiful for his strange, rippling face. "Get away from me."
"Your defiance is wasted," Irenicus told her. "Come, child. There is no choice, not now. Stand up."
She shook her head, and when he hauled her to her feet, she lashed out and kicked. Easily – pitifully easily – he wrenched her arm behind her back and marched her across the room. She twisted against him, all the way down the corridor, all the way down the stairs, all the way across the high stone chamber with its gleaming glass jars.
"How long have I been here?"
He said nothing. He pushed her onto the table, and when she thrashed, he busied himself with ropes until she was pinioned.
"What did you do to all the Cowled Wizards?"
He tightened the knots at her wrists and turned away. She heard something slide against metal, and his footsteps.
"Did you kill them all? What about the other inmates?" She stared up at the high arches of the ceiling above. He was behind the table, she was sure, and she strained to listen. "What exactly are you going to do to me? More of the same? Or will you be breaking with tradition?"
His hand cupped the back of her head, and she tried to jerk away from him. Something cold and edged touched the side of her neck.
"Well?" Imoen said, and she heard the shrill fear in her own voice. "What is it? You've lost your own Bhaalspawn to tie down and play with, so now you're going to concentrate on me, is that it?"
She wrenched against the ropes again, and he murmured something, some spell that left her head reeling. She was aware of the pressure of his fingers against her nape, and the sudden, flickering pain of the knife at her neck.
"They'll find me, you know. They'll come for me. You know they will. They'll come for me. She'll come for me."
He said nothing, and even when she screamed herself hoarse, he simply waited for her to finish, and turned his attention back to his work.
Imoen stared down at her own hands, at the faint scars that mapped the back of her knuckles. Some of them were from Candlekeep, she knew, from that time she had fallen out of the tree, or stumbled down the steps after too much cider, or lost a sparring round to Kera. Others were his, and she twisted her fingers together.
"Valygar?"
Beside her, the ranger shifted slightly. "Yes?"
She summoned a grin, and nudged him. "Race you back to the tavern for breakfast?"