Chapter Thirty-Five – The Lost Paladin

Jaiyan tugged her cloak tighter about herself and swore. The snow was blowing thick and wet and cold, and she was sure her lips were blue. Valen stood braced behind her, his broad frame taking most of the storm's punishment, and his arms around her shoulders. But her teeth still chattered, and her fingers tingled inside her gloves. In front of her, Deekin hunkered down on the snow, his tail twitching like a disgruntled cat.

The day had led them on a bizarre, frustrating quest for the answers to the Sensei's mysteries. Privately wondering if Dharvana was enjoying some cosmic joke at their expense, and if she could smack the serene look from the Sensei's face, Jaiyan had snapped something about ridiculous, wordy expectations and stamped back out into the cold. Armed with nothing past five nebulous questions, she had spent the best part of six hours interrogating any inhabitant of the city who so much as looked at her.

The questions tied to the Five-Fold Mysteries were deceptively, irritatingly simple, and all tied to the Sleeping Man. Who is he? From where did he come? Why did he leave? Who did he seek? What was the answer?

Given their experiences so far with the close-mouthed people of the city, she was beginning to wonder if the answer to the Third Mystery might be because he got really, really annoyed.

Dharvana herself provided answer to the First; apparently, the Sleeping Man was a planetar. Even after Deekin explained what that meant, Jaiyan could not quite understand the look of tranquil pleasure on the Sensei's face. According to the mix of devils and sullen-looking pilgrims she cornered in the ice quarry and at the tavern, the Sleeping Man came from Elysium, left because he never found love, and was currently seeking the Knower of Places.

Though of course he really isn't, because he's sleeping. Hence, Sleeping Man, not Searching-for-Knower-of-Places-Man, she thought sourly.

She was cold, tired, hungry, and could not quite fathom why a planetar would leave Elysium and voluntarily come to Cania, which she currently considered the nastiest place in existence.

And no one in the city could rustle up the solution to the Fifth Mystery; What was the answer?

The answer is I hate everything, she thought. The answer is that life is monumentally unfair.

Valen's fingers brushed across her forehead and into her hair, dislodging rimed ice.

"You know," she said waspishly, "I think if the Sleeping Man ever becomes the Waking Man, I'll beat him black and blue just on principle."

Valen laughed softly.

"I'm serious," she added. "Just because this idiot left the green fields of Elysium to come here and conk out for an eternity doesn't mean I should be running around in the cold trying to find answers to the Sensei's questions. And in any case, why the hells can't she just tell us all the answers? I bet she knows. I bet she's laughing at us right now. And enjoying it."

"Boss?"

"Yes, Deekin?"

"Boss tell Deekin once to tell Boss when Boss gets too silly or too dramatic."

"Oh." She stared at the whirling snowflakes. "Which was I being just then?"

"Both, Boss."

Valen tapped her shoulder gently. "What's that?"

She peered through the snow and frowned. "What's what? I see white on white."

Deekin perked up. "That, Boss. Deekin sees it, too. Looks like…small dog. Maybe. Or lizard."

Jaiyan narrowed her eyes, and made out an odd shape, ambling through the snow, entirely uncaring. Snowflakes had collected on the bumps and ridges of its lean, bony frame, and it reminded her of the strange creatures that had lurked in one of the towers in Undrentide. "Deeks, is it the same as those things we fought?"

"Intellect Devourers? No, Boss. Same-ish, but not, Deekin thinks."

The thing – whatever it was – meandered slowly through the deep drift nearest, and tilted its shelled head at them. Under the huge carapace, dark eyes glinted. The thing was four-legged and squat, pushing its way mulishly through thick snow, leaving deep tracks behind its clawed feet.

The thing tipped its head to one side and stared intently at Jaiyan.

She looked back at it warily. "What? What do you want?"

The thing lifted its skull, and its eyes burned brighter. Its head shook from side to side, and one foot scraped at the snow.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I don't know what you mean."

The thing exhaled sharply, and swung its piercing gaze at Deekin.

The little kobold yelped. "Boss! This be the Scrivener."

"What?" She glared at him. "How do you know that?"

"Deekin be looking at pictures in Deekin's head." The kobold crouched down, looked directly into the thing's eyes. "Show Deekin," he said. "Show Deekin what Scrivener means."

The creature fixed its gaze on the kobold, and Jaiyan felt vaguely embarrassed. Deekin's mind is more receptive than mine? Well, Drogan always said you were thick as old oak when it came to psychic powers.

"Little Scrivener needs to write names down," the kobold said slowly. "Needs to write names of the dead down."

"So what's its problem?"

"Needs to write names of spirits down, but there be spirit in cave. Frozen spirit, who cannot talk." Deekin cocked his head. "Scrivener needs us to wake spirit up, so Scrivener can write name."

Jaiyan stared. Should I even be surprised that a small dog-like thing needs us to wake ghosts up for it? She exchanged a helpless glance with Valen and shrugged. "Go ahead, Deeks. Lead the way."

Deekin and the Scrivener wound a slow path past high rocks and tall, frost-crusted pillars. Beyond a dazzling ice arch, a dark cave loomed. Icicles plunged down from the rocks above, and the air here was still. Jaiyan looked at the Scrivener, and the little creature gestured at the darkness with its head.

Inside, the air was cold enough to turn sword hilts painful to touch, and skin to shivering blue. Jaiyan nestled inside the collar of her cloak and tried not to breathe too deeply. Faint light glowed, reflecting off high columns. Sheer ice walls rose up, curving and elegant. Snow had gathered just inside the cave mouth, but beyond, the ground was treacherously even. Jaiyan reached out for Valen's hand, leaned against him as the ground sloped sharply down. She was no stranger to ice, and its lethal effects, but this was different; there was no traction at all, no rocks poking up through, no trapped grass or ferns. Just flat, silken-smooth ice, descending down into a ring of high boulders.

And, standing before the sheenless wall at the far end, a figure. Locked in ice, and motionless. Even through the crystal prison, Jaiyan saw that the figure inside was a woman, and beautiful. Elvish, too, if she saw correctly. Finely-made plate clung to the figure's lithe, enviable frame, and the sword grasped in one long-fingered hand bristled with spikes. The woman's face was turned up, and her large eyes seemed hollow and desolate as the ice that encased her.

Jaiyan stared at her. "I wonder who she is?"

"She's beautiful," Valen said quietly. "But she looks so very…lost."

Looking against at the woman's narrow face, she saw he was right. The desperation etched in those pale eyes was that of someone who is certain of their own defeat, and soon. "So how do we wake her up?"

"Berries," Deekin suggested. "Berries Deekin bought from innkeeper."

The idea seemed bizarre to Jaiyan, but then, what about Cania did not? She shrugged and motioned him closer. "Can you light them?"

The little kobold piled a handful of dried-out vines and leaves before the frozen woman, speckled with crimson berries. His clenched hands glowed as he whispered the syllables of a spell, and flame licked up.

For a long moment, nothing happened; the woman gazed through three inches of cloaking ice with unseeing eyes.

But then, softly, spider-quiet, cracks ran over the ice, and it fell away. A staggering breath broke the silence, and the woman gaped at them. Her eyes flickered, wary and unsure. "What..?"

Jaiyan saw the woman's hand close over her sword hilt. Can you even win a fight against a spirit? "You were cold," she blurted. "So we wanted to warm you up."

The woman's hand tightened on the hilt. "Why?"

"You looked lonely," Jaiyan said honestly. "I wanted to…who are you?"

The woman looked away. A thick sheaf of blonde hair fell across the high angle of her cheekbones. "My name? My name is Aribeth de Tylmarande."

I should know that name. Why should I know it? Jaiyan studied the woman's downturned, pale face, and thought furiously. Did I read it somewhere? The recollection hit her quickly, along with the vague sense of guilt. The last she had heard of this woman, she had been branded traitor for her choices, and put to death at the hands of willing victors. "Lady Aribeth? Of Neverwinter?"

The elven woman nodded. "That is what they called me."

"Lady of Neverwinter? Who helped the Hero of Neverwinter?" Deekin hopped forward, eyes gleaming.

"Helped, yes, to begin with." The woman loosened her grip on her sword. "Why are you here, if not to torment me with old memories?"

There was pain in the woman's gaze, and something haunted. Something that carried the burden of terrible choices, and awful things done in the name of belief. Something, Jaiyan realized, that reminded her somehow of Valen.

"We're not here to torment you," she said slowly. "But…I would be honoured if you would share your story."

"My story?" Aribeth laughed, cold and bleak. "Why would you care for my story? Don't you know it already? A love lost, and a choice badly chosen, and a traitor made. What more is there?"

"Please." Jaiyan sat cross-legged on the ice, held her hands out over the fire. "Unless you have somewhere pressing to be, of course."

A faint smile pulled at the corner of the woman's mouth. "Who are you?"

"My name is Jaiyan. Recently dead, made that way by Mephistopheles."

Aribeth's mouth thinned. "Mephistopheles himself? Perhaps…perhaps we should speak. Who are your friends?"

"Deekin, kobold bard," she said, straight-faced. "And Valen, tiefling stuck in Baator."

Aribeth's eyes flickered. "You keep interesting company."

"You don't know the half of it." Jaiyan craned her head. "Sit down, Lady Aribeth. You're making my neck ache."

The elven woman stared at her through narrowed, long-lashed eyes. Then a tremor ran through her, and she sat. While Deekin curled up near Jaiyan's knee, and Valen sat behind her, the silence stretched, still and held amid the glowing ice.

"I was a paladin, once," Aribeth said carefully, slowly. "I became the pride of Neverwinter. Right arm of Lord Nasher Alagondar."

Jaiyan nodded. She had heard the tales in inns, of how a lovely paladin had defended Neverwinter with frightened fervour. Of how she had been called to help the city when the terrible plague threatened. She herself had been in Hilltop at the time of the crisis, and remembered Drogan interrogating messengers for news of Neverwinter, and of how many dead the plague had claimed.

"We needed a mercenary, and put out a call. There was a…a man, at the academy in the city. Brave man. Strong, too. Human, like you." There was an odd, unreadable note in the woman's voice. "Young and brash, but such a swordsman. He was sent into the city, plague-ridden and dangerous as it was, to find the creatures that would give us the cure. But we were betrayed from within, and when the cure was within our grasp, it was stolen."

Jaiyan stared down at the ice, and heard the ache in Aribeth's words. There was such pain here, like the throb of a badly-healed wound.

"And it was with that betrayal, that…" Aribeth drew in a deep, shuddering breath. "Forgive me. I go too fast, and hope that details can be missed. But why should they, here in Cania? When the plague began, I was in love. Or…I thought I was."

Jaiyan felt Valen's hand, gently twining in the end of her braided hair. "Who was he?"

"An elf," she said. "A beautiful, compassionate, kind elf. His name was Fenthick, and he was a cleric. A cleric of Tyr, and he loved me, a paladin of Tyr. What could be more perfect?" Aribeth's voice wavered. "He was considerate, charming, caring beyond anything I have ever known. To be loved by him was to be cherished, to be made to feel as if the world could vanish, and all that would matter was that he loved me, and would continue to do so, if all else fell."

Valen's fingers brushed Jaiyan's cheek, and she leaned back against him. "But things that seem perfect rarely are."

"True enough," she said. "He loved me, I have no doubts of that. But I…I fear I loved the idea of him. The idea of a cleric of Tyr and a paladin of Tyr, together in some blessed union."

"What happened?" Jaiyan asked gently.

"He placed his trust in a man who claimed to help us, a man named Desther Indalayne. He posed as a Helmite, and said he was helping us find the cure. As it was, he was the traitor, and made off with the cure upon its creation." Old grief clouded Aribeth's eyes. "And Fenthick believed in him so, believed that all he wished to do was help…Fenthick followed him, and was found there by our mercenary. Desther was arrested, of course, and our hero brought the cure back. And Fenthick…"

At any other time, with any other woman, Jaiyan would have offered a quick, fierce embrace, and the comfort of shared sympathy. But this was Cania, and she spoke to a spirit so riven by heartbreak that every breath she took seemed bladed. "And Fenthick?"

"Fenthick was found guilty of collusion with Desther Indalayne." Fury smoked through every word. "He…he was hanged."

"What..?" That cruel detail, Jaiyan had not heard. "Why?"

"For his blind trust, that Lord Nasher turned into treachery. He was hanged for his foolishness, and I…I did nothing." Aribeth scowled, and her fingers slipped against the ice. "And so the search continued, for those who had sent Neverwinter into such dire trouble."

She had read the books, and heard the rumours; that some terrible lizard cult was behind the attacks. Some group led by a priest named Maugrim, bent on returning the world to the lizard people who had long ago retreated from the northern cold.

"Our hero, our mercenary…oh, he was everything Lord Nasher wanted. Brave and bold, with a steadfast companion who could be swayed by neither gold nor any other temptation." Aribeth's mouth twisted sourly. "And as for me…Tyr stopped speaking to me. I no longer heard his voice at night, nor saw him in my dreams. Instead, I dreamed of Maugrim, and the Old Ones."

This part, Jaiyan knew; the great betrayal.

"So I joined with them," the woman said, flat-bland. "I let them take me, and I became a knight for their cause…a blackguard in their service. Every night I saw Fenthick swinging from that rope, and I knew that I had not loved him, but he did not deserve such an end. Such a terrible end…" Her eyes lifted, bright and burning. "And at the very end, our mercenary defeated me, and took me to Lord Nasher with some promise of clemency. Clemency at the end of a rope, just like Fenthick."

"And you came here?"

"Where else? I am traitor, and all else is worthless."

"We came in here because the Scrivener did not know your name," Jaiyan said carefully. "May I tell him?"

Aribeth shrugged. "What else can I do?"

"I don't know." Jaiyan looked sharply at her. "What have you been doing?"

"I led the souls against Mephistopheles," she said quietly. "I wanted…I don't know. I led them in as fruitless a crusade as any I have ever led. He drove us back and defeated us as if we were nothing."

What kind of end was that, Jaiyan wondered? To fail, and die under condemnation, and to be damned yet again in the cold of the afterlife. "Mephistopheles is on the surface…on our world. He has taken my place."

"Then you must stop him." Aribeth's beautiful eyes narrowed. "Why are you wasting time talking to me, if you should be stopping him?"

She smiled. "Lady Aribeth, the honour of your story. Perhaps you could offer a fabour?"

The elven woman frowned. "What kind of a favour?"

"The souls here are lost, and terrified. Mephistopheles is stealing them, taking them away, up to the surface for his conquest. Perhaps you could speak to them, rally them even." When the elven woman opened her mouth to protest, Jaiyan cut her off. "I don't mean call some great crusade. I mean offer them compassion, speak to them. Tell them that Mephistopheles will be stopped."

Aribeth lifted her chin. "You would trust me, a hanged traitor, with such a thing?"

Again, Jaiyan almost wanted to hug her, but something about the fierce tilt to the paladin's head warned her against it. "I would trust a woman of honour."

Something flickered in Aribeth's eyes, some shadow of pride. "Then I will accept."

Jaiyan nodded slowly. "I have something else I need to ask." Because I've everyone else in this damned city. "Do you know of the Sleeping Man?"

Aribeth laughed, without much mirth. "What is it you need to know?"

"What was the answer?" Simply saying it, Jaiyan felt vaguely foolish, but Aribeth only frowned as she thought.

"What was the answer..?" Aribeth stared at the ice, her face pale and sad. "The answer is this, as I have heard it on the air, and in the wind...She will find you by the gates of Cania."

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Trudging back through the snow to the tavern, Jaiyan could not rid her thoughts of the unending sadness in the paladin's eyes. Save for informing the little Scrivener of who the frozen cave's occupant was, they had not spoken, despite tracking through snow drifts deep enough to almost lose Deekin in. The blast of hot air through the inn door should have been welcome, but she could do nothing but compare the heat and noise inside to the desolation that Aribeth had chosen as self-imposed punishment.

Sitting now at a table with Valen and Deekin, and her hands wrapped around a tankard, she tried to shake her thoughts free of such things. It's not your fault she chose badly, or pretended to love Fenthick. Not your fault that the plague happened, or that she swapped sides and was hanged for it.

"Boss?"

She looked up guiltily into Deekin's black eyes. "Yes?"

"Boss be alright?"

She sighed. "No. I'm thinking…I'm thinking, how easy would it be to be her?"

Valen grunted. "You mean pretending to love the perfect man?"

"No, I don't mean that at all," she snapped. She made herself stop, made herself look across the table, and into his level blue eyes. "You know what I mean. I mean making one bad choice, then another, and then feeling as if nothing good could ever come of it."

"Yes," he said, softly. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean…"

"I know you didn't. I just…is it stupid to feel sorry for Fenthick as well? I mean, he was dragged into this whole mess because he thought Lord Nasher's wonderful paladin loved him."

"No," Valen murmured. "It's not stupid at all."

"Does faith do that?" Never one for explosive bursts of belief in all that might be holy, Jaiyan stared down into her ale. "She was a paladin of Tyr, for the gods' sake. And she fell, spectacularly."

"The higher they are," Valen muttered.

"What about the Seer, and her faith?"

"What about it?"

"Did you ever question it?"

"Always," he said, in that quiet, slow tone. "She knew I never quite believed in her visions. Oh, I believe that Eilistraee is real, along with the other gods. But why gift a mortal drow with visions? For what ends? Such visions and prophecies are so often double-pronged, and viciously so. I believed in her faith, and she knew I did not share it."

Looking at his face, at the serious tilt to his head, Jaiyan decided she could take no more. "Sounds like the relationship I had with Mischa in Hilltop."

Valen blinked. "What?"

"Well, she was training to be a paladin, and I was a silly farmgirl, about her age. We were…not similar. She was irritatingly pious, and utterly perfect. She was beautiful and kept her opinions to herself, and I…didn't. I often turned up for weapons practice hungover, and she would turn up pristine. Wild horses couldn't make her have half a glass of wine. We hated each other for a good five months before I sat her down and talked it all out with her." Jaiyan grinned. "We embarked on a 'respect-the-differences' campaign. I ignored her self-righteousness, and she ignored my temper. We got on surprisingly well after that."

Valen arched a scarlet eyebrow. "My relationship with the Seer never included self-righteousness or hangovers."

"You say that now."

"You look ridiculously impressed with yourself. Do you pride yourself on annoying pure-hearted paladins?"

She pouted at him. She knew he was trying to cheer her up, and she appreciated it. "Absolutely. And anyway, you can't talk. You're a tiefling. Any self-respecting paladin would surely dislike you on sight far more than me."

Valen laughed. "You have a point."

Deekin drummed his claws on the table. "Boss?"

"Yes, Deeks?"

"Deekin wouldn't mind being excluded at this point."

Jaiyan blinked. "Sorry?"

"This be swiftly turning into one of those situations," the kobold said severely. "Deekin wondering if Boss and Goat-man should just leave before Boss and Goat-man embarrass themselves."

Jaiyan squeezed his shoulder. "Sorry, Deeks."

"No problems, Boss." His hand caught hers. "Boss?"

"Yes, Deekin?"

"Ah…" He chewed at the inside of his mouth. "Boss not forget Deekin?"

She grabbed him and pulled him into a rough embrace. "Of course not." She stared into his narrow, reptilian face. "You didn't think that, did you?"

"Nope." The kobold extricated himself, and dodged her half-hearted attempt to trap him in another hug. "Boss definitely be embarrassing now."