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Chapter Thirty-Seven – Gifts
The water rushed and roared. Through narrowed eyes, she saw Jaheira somewhere ahead of her, lean and dark as she stroked forward. Beneath, everything was deep blue and blinding. Again, she reached up, and her fingers broke the surface and brushed against rough rock. No room to breathe, she knew, and she ignored the tightness in her chest and pushed herself forward. She kicked too sharply, and her heels snapped against the rocks. The blood pounded in her ears. She flung her hand up again, and when she encountered only air, she shoved upright. There was little space, still, and the water lapped at her mouth. She gulped down a ragged breath in the darkness.
"Oh, gods," Imoen muttered somewhere behind her. "This is horrible. Whose idea was this?"
"Less talking, more breathing," Kera said.
"That was a long stretch," her sister said. "What if the next one's longer?"
"Then go back," she snapped.
She hauled herself along, letting the current pull at her, and breathing slowly and steadily until the stone roof curved down again, and the space between water and rock vanished. She dived, pushing off with her feet, and the water tugged at her. Too fast, she was pulled against the wall. She flailed, and the back of her hand scraped against the rock. She twisted and tried to kick back out into the current. Close to panic, she stroked forward until her shoulders twinged and her head was full of the hammering of her own blood.
Slippery fingers wrapped around her wrist and yanked. Her head broke through the surface, and she spluttered. Her knees bumped the side, and she looked through running water at Jaheira, crouched on the side of the river, her head brushing the low curve of the rock. Small lanterns hung down, and tiny spots of light caught against the foam.
"Oh." Shivering, Kera scrambled over the side. "Sorry. I got confused. I didn't know which way was which, and I couldn't see properly."
"It's alright."
The water churned again, and Imoen kicked up to the surface. Her bright hair was plastered against her head, and she blinked furiously. "I think I swallowed some."
"Try not to," Jaheira said, wryly, and heaved her out.
The corridor sloped up and away from the river, and Jaheira led them beneath the lanterns. Following, Kera was too aware of the heavy, sodden pull of her leathers against her shoulders, and the way her soaked braid snaked down her back. Through a low door, four guards waited. Jaheira called up a twisting tangle of vines and toppled them, and Imoen spun crackling energy to finish them, one after the other. Kera waited behind them, dagger in hand, and when the stink of charred skin and leather assailed her, she closed her eyes and breathed it in.
She chose one of the guard's dropped swords, paused while the others purloined their own weapons. Another two doors and a flight of stairs plunged down into the gloom. The last door was rusted and flaking, and beyond, the torches threw shadows across the bars of the cells that lined the room.
"A prison?" Imoen scuffed one foot against the floor. "All the way down here?"
"Yes," Kera said, absently. A place for prisoners to be lost, she thought, a place for prisoners to be sent to be forgotten. The air was heavy with the scent of old death, and in two of the cells, she saw dead men, thin and crumpled, their outflung hands twisted.
In the fifth cell sat another man, and when he lifted his head, his eyes were hollow. Beneath the ruins of old robes, his frame was whittled down to the sharp press of bone against his dusky skin.
"Can you hear me?" Jaheira knelt beside the bars.
The man's head turned, and his lips moved soundlessly.
"Here." She passed a waterskin through, and waited while the man fumbled with the stopper. He drank quickly and greedily, and the water ran in thick ribbons down his chin. "Now, can you tell me anything?"
"Balthazar," the man said.
Kera pushed past Jaheira. "What? What about him? What do you know?"
"You know him?" The man's gaze swung and pinned her. "You spoke to him?"
"He sent us here. Sent us to find Abazigal and kill him."
The man's lips stretched into a dreadful grin. "Abazigal. Have you seen him?"
"No. We saw his son. Draconis. He's dead."
The man laughed, thin and whistling. "Good. Good. Very good. Abazigal is worse."
"Yes," Kera said tersely. "What about Balthazar? How do you know him?"
"The monastery. I was at the monastery. I was one of his."
"You're a monk?"
"Yes."
"Please. Tell me about Balthazar."
"Sent us here. Lots of us. Others are dead. Killed. Others were sent out for the drow."
"Sendai?"
"Yes." His hands twisted and flicked against each other. "Her."
"She's dead," Kera told him.
"Good. Balthazar wanted her dead. And Abazigal. And Yaga-Shura."
"Yaga-Shura?" She studied his face, looked at the bruises on his neck and his cheekbones. "Why? Yaga-Shura threatened Saradush, not Amkethran. Yaga-Shura was very far away."
"Yaga-Shura was one of them," the man said, and his voice cracked. "One of those like the drow. Like the dragon."
"You mean the Bhaalspawn?"
"Yes," the man hissed. "Them." His hands wrapped around the bars, and he said, "The dragon. The dragon waits inside. You need to find the other river. The river that will take you up to where he is."
"How do we do that?" Jaheira demanded.
"With courage. He is very strong. Through this prison there is another door, and another pool. Through that, and through the water, you will find the cavern he lives in."
"Is it far?"
"Very far. You will need courage and luck, and you will have to fight the waters. You will not do it, girl. Not alone. Not like this."
We're not alone, she thought silently, and remembered how Solaufein had clasped her face between his hands. He had never kissed her like that in front of the others, she was certain, and she recalled the bruising ferocity of it, how his teeth had clicked and scraped against hers.
"The water," the man said, softly. "The water is treacherous. The current will pull you down. You must swim quickly and carefully. We made it through the tunnels, some of us. Some of us drowned. We used rope. There are things in the walls there."
"What things?"
"Things for torches. This place was not always flooded. Maybe Abazigal wanted it to be so. We put our ropes through these things."
"Is it still there?"
He shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe Abazigal's followers thought no one else would be stupid enough to come here."
Kera nodded slowly. "If we let you out, will you able to find your way out of here?"
"And go where?" The man's head lifted, and his eyes were shining. "I have been down here for so long now. They would find me. The only mercy I require from you, girl, is that you give me my own death."
Beneath the monastery, tunnels snaked through the earth. There, amid the stifling press of the heat, she sat with her back to the stone and watched the tumble of the motes in the air. The days ran into each other down here, and long past, she had stopped caring enough to count them. She could hear the ripples of the world around her, and in any case, it was peaceful down here, and the locked doors made him think she was trapped.
Let him think that, she thought. Let him believe it. Let him come to regret it.
She stared down at her hands, loosely clasped in her lap. Pale and slender and twined with faint blue veins. She lifted them to her face and listened to the low thrum of her blood.
She had felt it, days ago. Felt it when the drow Bhaalspawn had died, felt it as sharply as if the creature had gasped out her last breaths in this cell, on this floor.
She pressed her hands to her cheeks and closed her eyes. Part of her wanted to be away from here, and out in that place that was going to be hers. That place that was all darkness and stars and the trembling uncertainty of the sky above. The wind there smelled of forges and fires, and she remembered how it toyed with her hair. It was a place that was also a maze, and she loved walking its twisting paths. She enjoyed testing its puzzles and digging through its secrets, until the stone walls rang with her own laughter. When she let her mind wander there, the song filled her, the song that raged in their blood.
Even down here, she felt them. Some days she felt the girl. She felt the girl's anger, and the girl's desire, and some days, she felt the girl and her drow lover. Not all quiet and stern, as she had pretended outside the broken walls of Saradush. No, on those days, she felt their hunger for each other, for the slide of his skin against hers, for the welcome brush of her hands on his body.
She remembered the day in the rain, when she had taken herself to the altar and waited, waited for the answer she had known would come.
She pushed aside the leaves, sodden and matted. The rain twined down her face and through her hair. She knelt, and whispered the first of her prayers. The second followed, falling in words that were tender and fierce and wanting. Slowly, she lifted her hand and carved a deep line along the inside of her forearm. As the blood fell, she watched, and she counted the droplets and saw how they fell.
Something curled inside her thoughts, and she knew him.
"Yes," she said, and touched the wet stone. She smiled. "I am here. I am here, as I said would be."
Somewhere above, she heard doors opening, and footsteps. She combed her hands through her hair until it mantled her shoulders in bright, soft waves. She heard the key in the lock, and smiled when the monk stepped through. He was swathed in his robes, and his face was perturbed.
"You," he said, and he would not look at her, not properly. "Balthazar wants to see you."
Solaufein waited, still perched on the edge of the pool. He kept his eyes on the water and his hand on his sword hilt. They had not been gone very long, but even so, his shoulders were rigid, and he tried to see through the dark ripples in the water. Somewhere behind him, the others were silent, even the tiefling, and he could hear the rhythmic snap and patter of the bard's fingers against the ground.
He wondered what they saw, in the water, under the ground. If they had stumbled into Abazigal's claws, and he briskly shoved that thought aside.
Let your thoughts play tricks on you, Jysdril had once told him, and you have given your enemies half the battle before you ever lay eyes upon them.
"This," Valygar said quietly, and knelt on the rim beside him. "This is like Spellhold."
He did not look at the ranger. "Why?"
"Waiting," the man said, and shrugged. "Waiting and not knowing. Never easy, is it?"
"No," he answered, and when he let himself glance at the ranger, he saw the man's dark eyes soften.
"Tell me, my friend," Haer'Dalis said, and jerked his chin at Minsc. "If we find it necessary to play at being fish, how will your little companion fare?"
"Boo will be fine," the big ranger said. "Boo is always fine. If we are alright, so will Boo be alright."
The silence returned again, cloaking and impatient. Solaufein counted the beats of his own heart and the way the water rippled against the side until the tiefling hopped upright and murmured, "Between the three of you, this sparrow might think that words were in danger of vanishing forever upon use."
"Better that than having them worn out by you and your chattering tongue," Valygar responded mildly.
"Perhaps, but this silence sits ill with me."
Solaufein agreed, but he could think of nothing to say. He narrowed his eyes at the pool, and thought he saw something moving, something blurred and dark. He shifted slightly, and tightened his grip on his hilt. He waited through another terse moment, and then found himself smiling slightly when Imoen hurtled up onto the surface, her mop of bright hair streaming water.
Kera followed, Jaheira behind her shoulder. He leaned down, grasped Kera's wrist and hauled her up onto the edge.
"You're not hurt?"
"No," she said, and blinked droplets from her eyelashes. She let him help her onto the stone floor beyond, and she leaned into him. Her body heaved as she gulped down air, and she pressed her forehead against his shoulder.
"Nice," Imoen muttered, and clambered out of the pool. "Seems I'll have to get myself someone to be all chivalrous to me since no one else seems to care."
"Child," Jaheira said wearily. "You can manage, I am certain."
"Well," Haer'Dalis said. "I for one am all agog, I assure you. Did you find anything?"
"We found a man," Kera said, and turned so that her hip was against Solaufein's, her arm around his waist. "A monk. He'd been sent there by Balthazar."
Solaufein listened as she told them of the river, and how the roof was too low to breathe for most of it, how the current swept and pulled. Jaheira explained the monk's presence, and how his fellows had drowned or perished in the cells or been killed.
"We can get through to Abazigal," Jaheira added. "Through the prison, he said. We'll be underwater most of the way."
"And the monk?" Valygar asked.
"He's dead," Kera answered softly.
"How?"
"I killed him," Jaheira said, sharply. "He asked for mercy. We offered him healing, food, a way out of his cell. He was nearly dead and that was all he wanted from us."
Valygar opened his mouth again, but the druid shook her head.
"No," she said. "We can argue this later if you wish. Right now, we need to decide how best to go about finding Abazigal."
When the druid turned again, and ordered Minsc to strip off his armour and bundle it across his shoulders, Solaufein walked Kera across the chamber. He touched the dripping ends of her braid, the pale skin beneath her eyes.
"I know, I must look terrible," she said, and smiled faintly.
"Just rather soaked."
"Drowned rat?"
He tilted his head. "What?"
"Never mind," she told him, and her smile widened slightly.
"Abazigal," he said, a little hesitant. "You truly think we can find him? Based on this man's words?"
"I hope so." She stepped closer, and slipped her arms around his waist. She turned her face to his, and when she kissed him, she tasted unlike herself. The river, he supposed, the water that was still clinging to the inside of her mouth.
"Solaufein?"
"Yes?"
"I missed you."
Kera knelt on the lip of the pool. Abazigal, she thought, and cupped one hand in the water. He was there, and he was Bhaalspawn, and all she needed to do was wait until the others were readied, and she could set about the business of finding him and ridding the world of him. She looked up, and watched while Valygar lashed a length of rope around his sword and the tiefling's blades. Nearby, Haer'Dalis shook his head and remarked, "I had never quite imagined that a possible fate for my beautiful swords might be at the bottom of an underground river."
Valygar grunted, and tested the weight with one hand. "Then I'll try not to drown, I promise."
They would string the weapons between them, she understood, and she tried not to let her thoughts linger on how easily such a plan could go wrong.
"Kera?" Solaufein's fingers brushed the back of her head. "You are ready?"
"Yes. How are you carrying your sword?"
"In my hand, sheathed."
"Is that wise?"
"If it is at my waist, it will drag."
"Across your back?"
"I have done this before," he said, slightly wry. "There are more than a few rivers and lakes in the Underdark, surfacer girl, and usually, I did not even have the option of leaving my sword behind."
She nodded, and realised that she had barely heard him. Beneath her skin, her blood was thrumming. "Solaufein?"
"Yes?"
"In there, if I…if," she said, and stopped. She looked into his face, into his beautiful, unsmiling eyes. "Will you help me?"
"I will be there," he said. "I will help you, should you need it."
She nodded again, and found his hand. She pressed his fingers against her forehead.
"Are you afraid?"
"No," she answered, honestly. "And I think that makes it worse."
The water swirled and pulled at her. She kicked off from the wall again, and when the current swept her on, she let it. This time, the water carried her easily and well, and when she reached out a hand for the side, she hauled herself out quickly. Impatiently, she waited while the others climbed up behind her. Solaufein emerged, following Haer'Dalis, and his white hair was flattened against his head. Water ran in gleaming ribbons down the slope of his cheeks, scattered from the tips of his ears. She caught his hand and squeezed, and afterwards, she led them on.
Through doors and down into the prison again, where the air was sharp with the monk's death. She remembered how Jaheira had nodded, heavily, how she had asked the monk to step closer.
"I'll do it."
"Why?" Imoen asked.
"Because…" Jaheira's dark eyes flicked to Kera. "Because I think it would be wiser this way. If you are certain?"
The monk nodded. "Thank you, my lady, for this."
Kera bit the inside of her cheek and said nothing, and when the dagger flashed and the monk sighed out the last of his life, she turned away.
Past the last door, the corridor opened out into another stone chamber, and the pool there rippled. Without speaking, Kera vaulted over the side. She sank beneath the surface and trailed her hands along the underside of the edge until she found the tunnel opening. Further in, her fingers bumped metal, and the tight coil of a rope.
"Down here," she said, when she surfaced again. She swiped loose hair away from her eyes, and without waiting, she turned and dived.
Beneath her, the water was deep and almost black, and the surging current was insistent. She rolled onto her back, hooked her hands around the rope, and let it take her. When her head thumped, she kicked up until the water parted around her lips, and she gulped down a quick breath. Inches above, blank stone dripped, and somewhere behind, she could hear the roiling water.
Abazigal, she thought.
Hand over hand, she hauled herself through. Overhead, the water turned pale, and she dragged herself up. She blinked through wet eyelashes and saw the scooped-out hollow of the roof, and the edge of the pool. She scrambled out onto flat ground, and damp, warm air met her. The others followed, and when Valygar paused to check the chamber, she wanted to snarl at him to move on, move faster, now.
Imoen coughed, and rubbed at red-rimmed eyes. "I am never coming here again."
Kera said nothing, only quartered the room. When Jaheira nodded, she stalked up the corridor and into the dank gloom. Small lanterns hung along the walls, and water ran between them, thick and shining.
Jaheira caught her arm, and muttered, "Slow down."
"He's here," she responded, and jerked herself free. "He's here. Come on."
She marched under another archway, and saw how the stone sloped up. Strange markings were hewn into the roof there, twisting shapes that spiraled down high pillars. He was there, she knew he was there, and when she strode between the pillars, she saw him. He was clad in the shape of a man, a tall man, and his eyes were deepest blue and implacable.
"Ah," Abazigal said, and smiled. "You are here, finally."
"Your son is dead."
Something flared in his eyes, something angry. "Draconis?"
"Dead," she repeated. She eased her sword from its scabbard, and added, "He died quickly. We hacked his head off afterwards to make sure."
She heard the others behind her, careful footsteps against the stone. Someone brushed her elbow, and Jaheira flanked her other side.
"You are foolish," Abazigal said. "You think you walk upon Alaundo's words, do you? Someone else is writing your part for you, and you follow only because the blood of our father calls you to kill."
"Who?"
"Does it matter? The children of Bhaal bring death to the land," he said, and each word rang sharp. "Does it truly matter? You are Kera of Candlekeep. You are Gorion's ward, and you are here for no other reason than that our blood is the same and calls us to kill."
"No," she said, and her own voice seemed very far away. "There are…no. I could stop it."
"Stop what?" he asked, and stepped forward. His eyes glittered, and he added, "Bhaal's return? How?"
"I don't know."
"Foolish child. You could no more flee Bhaal's return than you could run from the night sky." He lifted his hands, and something crackled between them, some pale tangle of energy. "You think because you have slain many of our brothers and our sisters that you will prevail?"
"Yes," she snarled.
"Even if you do, what happens then? Nothing, save Bhaal's eventual return, and you will become what you were always meant to be. We are vessels, child. We are his."
She fought to find words, her voice, anything. Her throat closed up, and she threw herself at him. She heard him laugh, and then her mouth was full of the scent of his blood when her sword sank hilt-deep in his stomach.
Abazigal twisted and heaved her away, and she rolled hard against the floor. His blood was bright on her sword. His smile widened, and the outline of his shoulders buckled and blurred. He was blue, and the vast wings that unfurled from his back were deep and gleaming. Claws raked against the floor, and she looked up and up again as he changed.
"Spells," Jaheira shouted. "Imoen! Spells, now!"
Something white and brittle snapped past Kera's head, shattered against the dragon's shoulder. Arrows followed, and a hissing tangle of energy sizzled against the span of one wing. There were footsteps as well, and Haer'Dalis calling for Solaufein to stay beside him, and the druid again, ordering Imoen to keep well away.
They were loud, all too loud, and Kera's head rang with their voices. Why, she wondered. Why could they not simply leave her to her business with Abazigal?
One huge clawed fist rose and fell towards her. She lifted her sword, and watched as the blade clanged against thick scales. She twisted, digging the point in between the huge bones of the dragon's wrist. Something hurtled past her, and she thought she recognized Haer'Dalis, his swords bright and flickering as he wove beneath the dragon's lunging claws.
They were still shouting, shrieking for her to move. Someone grabbed at her arm and wrenched, and she stumbled. Arrows whipped past her, one clipping too close. She shoved away from the insistent, grasping hands.
"Abazigal!" She stared up at the dragon, and when the wings cracked open again, she did not move.
The dragon spun, the tail scything out. Someone screamed, and footsteps hammered against the stone.
"Kera! Kera, move! Now!"
She knew that voice. Of course she knew that voice, but when she searched for his name, her memory betrayed her. There seemed little else to do, so she turned away. She looked up through the livid flare of some spell and saw Abazigal's head, all narrow lines and flared crest and ice-blue eyes. She felt it, her blood, herself, hers. She reached into herself and let it flood her, let it burn through her until her skin prickled and her throat was full of her own laughter. Hands came down on her shoulders again, and an accented male voice snapped, "Kera. Come with me. You have to."
She ducked out of his grasp. She looked up again, and saw nothing but the dragon's open mouth as it leaped for her. She pivoted to one side, and drove her sword into the underside of the dragon's jaw.
Abazigal roared. She worked the sword in deeper, and the sudden gush of his blood across her hands made her smile. Somewhere close by, she heard the rhythmic sound of something solid smacking against scales, and someone else's weapons sliding into flesh. Huge claws lifted and flailed towards her, and she ignored them. She shifted the angle of the sword until the tip broke through into the dragon's mouth.
"Kera!"
The same hands on her shoulders, gloved. His voice was different, this time, choked and strange. She wondered why and supposed someone would tell her, later. She felt the tremors in the dragon's great, sprawled form, and the hot, blood-rich breaths against her face were shallow. His death was not swift, and she felt it as it took him, breath by shuddering breath. The dragon's head crashed down, and the blue eyes rolled. She dragged her sword free of his ruined mouth. Kneeling, she touched the dripping scales. She closed her eyes and somewhere inside herself – inside that thing, that awareness, Bhaal's strength – the anger rose up and swallowed her.
Abazigal was dead, and by her hand, and it was good.