It was worse even than Arowan had predicted. Sitting outside Keldorn's office on straight backed chairs they found Maria Firecam and her two daughters, flanked by armoured squires. The younger of the two children was weeping, the older glared at them with red-rimmed eyes.
"And what do we have here?" Keldorn's wife asked defiantly. "Heathen my husband converted in Calimport? Travelling pilgrims he stumbled across in Saradush?"
"Lady Arowan of Candlekeep," she replied, in a withering imitation of the stable boy who had first introduced them.
Maria rose to her feet. She was a tall, imposing, thickset woman with long golden hair wound behind her head in an elegant bun. Her dress was made of thick, fur trimmed velvet adorned with jewels. It was clear what such a fashionable lady might see in the golden pantaloons man. Superior blue eyes glared down her nose at Arowan, but the Ilmatari was unintimidated. Arowan attached no significance to rank, beyond an accident of birth.
"If you're here to talk to my husband you are wasting your time," Maria said, almost smugly. "He already knows."
"Damn!" the ranger muttered under her breath. So much for her plan to get in and out of the office quickly.
"A beggar and a thief," sneered the older daughter. "Were you vultures hoping for a reward for your information?"
"What information? I wasn't planning on telling him!" Arowan snapped.
She was standing facing the girls with her back to the door of Keldorn's office, which is why she was not aware that it had opened. The knight stood framed in the doorway looking drawn and haggard. Maria, having been caught with Sir William, had decided it best to confess before someone else told him. Yoshimo had no great love for the Order, but he felt sorry for the man.
"You weren't were you?" Keldorn demanded sharply.
Arowan froze and screwed her eyes shut. When she turned around his eyes were blazing at her, as though all of this were somehow her fault.
"Come in Arowan. Yoshimo."
"Keldorn!" Maria cried. Her husband refused to look at her. "Keldorn, I beg you don't hurt Sir William. If I can't have you, at least let me have something!"
Wishing themselves anywhere else, Arowan and Yoshimo followed Keldorn into his office and shut the door. Maria's muffled pleading was just audible on the other side. The paladin ignored it. He stood to full attention, his eyes fixed somewhere above the doorway, and spoke in a stiff and formal voice.
"The High Merchant has informed us of your success in Trademeet. The Order is most grateful for your service. Now we need you to proceed to the Umar Hills with all haste."
"We have some other business we need to take care of first," Arowan said quietly.
"Other business?" Keldorn growled disapprovingly. "After everything the Order has done for you, young lady, it is your duty to put the Order first. Of course, duty is clearly an unfashionable sentiment these days." The last line was obviously directed at Maria, who was listening outside the office and Arowan winced. The knight glared at her from under his thick grey eyebrows. "How long will your business take?"
"Difficult to say, my friend," replied Yoshimo. "But it will take us as far south as Windspear. Perhaps further."
"We have more than repaid the Order for their help," Arowan said defensively. "The cemeteries are purged of undead, the citizens of Athkatla no longer risk being seized by sewer tentacles every time they empty their chamber pots. We've dealt with the slavers, the situation in Trademeet and finished off Rejiek Hidesman into the bargain. It's been over six months, we deserve a break!"
"I haven't taken a break in years!" Keldorn retorted loudly.
"And that's the problem!" Maria hurled through the door.
The paladin strode to it and wrenched it open. His two girls flinched, but Maria held her ground like an elephant matron. Considering the situation, her attitude seemed astonishingly defiant, but Arowan had learned that couples were not always as they appeared on the surface. If her experience with Rasaad had taught her anything, it was how hard it was to get the full picture, even if you were one of the people in the relationship. Who knew what was going through this woman's head?
"Tend to your daughters and say your goodbyes," he told his wife, still refusing to look at her. "No, on second thoughts, Squires! Take Maria away. To look at her is to go mad… and I fear what I might do if she continues to taunt me."
His wife was led away, while his younger daughter gave a loud wail and buried her face into her sister's skirts. She looked no older than five. Any humour that the Ilmatari had seen in the situation was now stripped away by the brutal reality.
"Curse the dictates of honour!" Keldorn cried, slamming the door shut. "The very gods demand that I bring this case before the courts. Sir William shall be hung and my love imprisoned. There is no other outcome possible."
"Hanging seems a tad extreme," Yoshimo ventured cautiously.
"Imprisoned for how long?" asked Arowan.
Sir Keldorn looked at them as though they were mad.
"Forever, of course!" he exploded. "This is not Baldur's Gate, where a Grand Duke's daughter can bed half the city, then marry some common werewolf and get away with it. We are in Amn. The nobility here recognize our duty to set a moral example to the populace!"
"Baldur's Gate is not morally inferior to Athkatla!" Arowan cried, in a sudden, rare burst of patriotism. "Your city, as far as I can tell, has almost as many prostitutes as ordinary citizens. I'm not exaggerating! I am genuinely at a loss as to how the economy here can function!"
"I don't think that's helping Arowan…" Yoshimo cautioned her.
He was right. It wasn't. The paladin was caught up in a hurricane of grief and fury, and all that Arowan was doing was whipping him up still further.
"All the more reason for the nobility to set an example!" thundered Keldorn, turning scarlet.
"Your example isn't working, the streets here are crawling with prostitutes!" Arowan snapped.
"Including my own wife, apparently!" the aging paladin moaned. He sat down heavily before his desk, burying his face into his hands. "What am I to do? What am I to do at all? Nothing makes sense anymore!"
Arowan looked desperately at Yoshimo, who shrugged. The thief was not the most persuasive man in the world himself. In the early days, when Jaheira's suspicion was at its height, the ranger had frequently bristled at his atrocious acting. Still he was, at least, more charming than she was, so he gave it a try.
"Perhaps you should talk to your wife?" he suggested, but Keldorn dismissed this idea.
Already, he had spoken to her enough to get the picture. She accused him of spending too much time with the Order and seeing her too infrequently. Since he had not given her and her daughters the attention they craved, she had found another man who would.
"Perhaps you could confront Sir William?" Arowan ventured. "I know this hurts but a life sentence is hardly proportional to the crime. Besides she is the mother of your children. You'd be punishing them as well."
"So this is all my fault?" Keldorn retorted angrily.
Just as ur-Gothoz had observed to Dorn, Arowan lacked the charisma to convince anyone of anything. Sir Keldorn was determined to follow the dictates of honour and destroy his family in the process. Nothing that she could say would dissuade him from this extreme course of action.
"Just go," he sighed at length. "Go to the Umar Hills as soon as you can, once you've done whatever you need to do and I… I will do what I must."
They stepped out into the corridor where Keldorn's daughters were still perched on their chairs. Arowan shut the door on the paladin with a sigh, and the two Ilmatari began to walk away. Carved, accusing eyes stared down at them from above every doorway. She was rapidly growing to loathe the Order and its patron gods' judgemental dictates.
"Thanks."
They turned back. It was Keldorn's older daughter, Leona, who had spoken. She was a sulky, scowling girl, though no more so than your average teenager. Her ring bedecked hand was petting her younger sister's golden locks. The smaller girl had stopped crying and was curled up in her chair, with her head on Leona's lap, sniffling quietly.
"Cut the sarcasm, I didn't tell him about your mother," grumbled Arowan. "And I wasn't planning to. I had nothing to do with any of this."
"I know, I wasn't being sarcastic," Leona said quietly. "I heard you trying to talk him out of sending Mum to prison. So. Thanks. Or whatever."
At the mention of mummy going to prison, the small girl gave a great wail and started to cry again. Yoshimo gave Arowan's hand a comforting squeeze, but she was glaring at the door, fighting an internal battle. Her free hand slipped into her pocket and pulled out the Charisma Ring. She held it in her palm, biting her lower lip.
"It's worth a shot," Yoshimo shrugged.
Taking a deep breath, as though about to stick her finger into the jaws of a crocodile, Arowan put it on. Nothing happened. Then Keldorn's littlest daughter gasped in awe. Leona and Yoshimo were staring at her with their jaws hanging open.
"What did you do?" Leona breathed.
Arowan did not answer, she was already wrenching open the door to Keldorn's study. Once she had thought that charisma enhancement was mostly about how you looked, and clearly from the others' reactions that had changed. Yet there was more to it than that.
Charisma was about how she carried herself, how she felt. Forget knocking apologetically, opening the door a fraction and shuffling in. The door burst open, its loud bang announcing her presence, obligating the world to take notice and acknowledge her. Keldorn looked up in outraged shock.
Charisma was about knowing the right thing to say to the person in front of you, to bend them around to your own way of thinking.
"Sir Keldorn, your first duty is to your family!" Arowan said.
"My first duty is… is to the Order…" Keldorn protested, but his authoritarian persona was weakened when confronted with someone equally as charismatic as he was. It did not happen very often.
"The Most Noble Order of the Radiant Heart do not care two straws about your wife and the golden pantaloon man," Arowan replied with certainty. "Helm has better things to worry about. This is between you and your family. Forgive her and take her back, or let her go, but don't deprive those little girls of their mother. Not only is it not their fault, but if you do this, they will grow up hating you and despising the Order and everything it stands for. Is that really what you want?"
For the first time in this conversation Keldorn looked doubtful.
"I used to believe that with age came wisdom," he sighed, "But I doubt it more and more with each passing day. Jail is the law, but it does seem disproportionate. Perhaps you are right. Yes… perhaps you are right. I will talk to Maria. We will see. Thank you, Arowan. Yoshimo."
The ranger stepped out of the office to find herself being hugged by Keldorn's two children. She froze, completely shell-shocked. Keldorn followed her to reassure the girls. As they ran to him, he swept them up into a great bear hug, and the Ilmatari made their getaway.
On their way back to the Copper Coronet, however, strange and unsettling things began to happen. Instead of glaring at her suspiciously, the Order's servants touched their hats respectfully as she passed. Knights who under normal circumstances would barge through Arowan as though she was not there, were stepping aside to make way for her with low bows.
In the street strangers were smiling at her. She quickened her pace with a growing sense of unease. Athkatla's stall keepers waved their wares at her as they always did, but the quality of the produce had miraculously increased. Then she realised that they were proffering their best stock to her, rather than their usual worst. What's more they were discounting it. She found herself growing quite agitated, until they ran into a clothes stall with a mirror, and she was finally able to look at herself.
The reflection staring back at her still looked like her, but at the same time, it didn't. The freckles, for example, were still present, but they had been subtly rearranged on her face. Before they were merely random blobs of brown and orange. Now, they were aesthetically spread out and flatteringly placed. As though somebody had painted them on strategically.
Her teeth were straighter and whiter. Her glossy chocolate hair was still, as always escaping from its ponytail, only instead of looking like she'd been dragged through a hedge backward, the rebellious strands hung flatteringly about her face.
"Tell me, Arowan, would you like me to let out the seams on your tunic?" Yoshimo teased helpfully. "I am quite handy with a needle. You do, after all, have more, ah… bulk… in the upper chest area."
She blinked at her reflection.
A lot of things might have been going through her mind. Like whether it was ever acceptable to manipulate someone into doing the right thing as she had with Keldorn. The dangers of accepting presents from the Blackguard of a demon. She might have doubted, as Freya had often had cause to, whether anybody would really like her for herself from now on.
Yet as she stared at her beautiful new form in the mirror, there was only one thought running through her head. She spun around to face Yoshimo with a smile as radiant as the morning sun.
"Would you look at me?" she gasped, staring down at her classically beautiful new body. "Viconia is going to be seriously pissed."
Viconia, as it happened, was already irked. She was itching to know what Rasaad and Arowan had said in private the night before, and had spent many hours lying awake mulling it over.
'I have turned soft. Thinking and acting like a surfacer,' she chided herself.
In the Underdark, when she wanted a male she would simply click her fingers and demand whatever she felt like. If a rival female did not wish to share, she would simply remove them. Not that she had never tried this in Arowan's case. Both direct and judicial murder had been attempted. Somehow, though, the wretched woman disobligingly continued to draw breath.
Watery slop was her only companion over breakfast. Jaheira had vanished into a backroom with Bernard the barman, no doubt to discuss some secret Harper business. Anomen was with Minsc's party, attempting to charm Neera and Aerie simultaneously, and failing splendidly with both. Viconia knew better than to join them. She had been at odds with Dynaheir, before the witch's death, and Minsc had not forgotten it.
"May I sit with you?"
His voice was as soft as his face was hard. Never, during their acquaintance could she recall him having been genuinely happy. Freya, with her endless barrage of irreverent innuendo had cured him of some of his innocence and occasionally even dragged a laugh kicking and screaming from the taciturn monk. Yet even then, his smile had never quite reached his eyes.
Since leaving his order, however, Rasaad seemed to have hit a new low. There was not a hint of the sun about this sunny soul. The serene act that he once put on was abandoned. Now it seemed as though something dark was simmering just below the surface, ready to burst out of him at any moment.
"You would descend from the moral high ground to eat with a lowly drow?" she asked sarcastically. "Very well, if you feel you must."
"That is still a friendlier welcome than I can expect from the others," sighed Rasaad, sitting opposite her. He had learned through long experience to take Viconia's waspishness with a grain of salt. She scooped up a spoonful of soup and let the sad little broth drip back into her bowl. It was hard to work up an appetite for such an anaemic meal.
The monk was looking at her with concern. This irritated her. Pity was for the weak, and she had never been that.
"What do you want, moon male?"
"You are changed Viconia," he observed. "It seems to me there was once light in your eyes… but no longer."
She nodded, sourly. It was true enough. Her situation had gone from bad to worse, and running into Rasaad was the first bit of good luck she had encountered in a long time. Losing her protector had been a particularly bitter blow. Anomen Delryn and a reluctant Arowan were hardly replacements for the Hero of Baldur's Gate, who could have taken down the entire party blindfolded. Security, finally, had been within her grasp. Then Irenicus had ripped it away.
"When your race is used as a bogeyman it is an uphill battle to even find a bag of dirt on a stable floor for the night," she replied. "Children throwing apples, merchants loosing their hounds. I have been chased, beaten, and almost burnt alive… and for what? So my hunters can have a good story to tell around the dinner table? It has been trying past endurance."
"I am sorry," he replied. "I have faced many trials in my time, but none compare to yours, I think."
"And now, once again, I am stuck with Arowan." She practically spat the ranger's name. "It is as though the gods themselves conspire to chain me to her! I suppose it is preferable to the alternative. Do you remember how we met?"
"You were fleeing the Flaming Fist near Beregost if I recall correctly," Rasaad replied.
"Did I ever tell you why?"
"I assume because you'd tried to murder Xan," the monk rebuked her. He lifted his own bowl to his lips and downed it in four large swallows. Watery, over-salted and with large fatty globs, but he had certainly eaten worse.
"The only apology I will offer for that is that I am sorry I did not succeed," Viconia hissed. The monk knew better than to press her on this subject. "But no. They were already searching for me. I had made the attempt to purchase land on the outskirts of the town. I remained hooded at all times, and it was only a matter of time and materials before I owned my own homestead, away from prying eyes."
"I cannot see you as a farmer," Rasaad smiled. She snorted and shook her head.
Silver hair spilled down her shoulders, and for once he did not bother to rebuke himself for admiring how it shone. At this point it was the least of his sins.
"I was not looking to keep poultry. I just… wanted a place of my own. Where I could find peace."
"Peace is not easily found," he replied. "I have spent my life searching. The harder I strive for it, the deeper into chaos I sink."
"Well I certainly did not find peace in Beregost," Viconia replied, a shadow falling over her expression. "My neighbour was Roran Midfallow, a stout, sunburnt farmer. We spoke often and over time we formed an awkward friendship. He did not ask why I always wore my hood and slowly I began to trust him. He wondered though… that was obvious."
Rasaad listened with pain, as she described the abuse she had suffered when her 'friend' had discovered that she was drow. Pain… but not surprise. He had lived on the streets as an orphan and was well aware of how bad things could get for people without the means to defend themselves. He considered himself fortunate never to have fallen into the grip of such predators. As a small boy, he had not fully appreciated the full extent of the danger he had been in until long after being adopted by the monastery. Gamaz, the older brother, must have known the risk he was taking, agreeing to go home with the strange monk. They had been fortunate indeed.
Viconia had not. She described waking up in a coffin, then added with grim satisfaction, that it had been her tormentors' mistake not to kill her outright.
"The fools knew the name 'drow' but they were ignorant of my true spirit," she said disdainfully. "Pain is the handmaiden of my people. Their tortures were amateurish by comparison. I split the coffin lid open and let the earth pour in. I clawed my way to the surface, and pain did not slow me… I would not let weakness deter me from my vengeance."
"And did it help?" Rasaad asked in the end, when Viconia had described in full the violent deaths she had inflicted on the farmers. "I too seek vengeance, but I fear that when I gain it, peace will still elude me."
"Revenge is worth taking for its own sake," she told him proudly. "You may never find peace, but in my experience, revenge is a delightful second best."
"I am… glad that you had your revenge," Rasaad said, truthfully.
"Your precious Arowan would tell me that I ought to have forgiven them," snapped Viconia, her voice dripping with contempt.
"Arowan and I disagree on many things," he replied. He put the spoon down with a small clink. "Too many things. Sometimes I envy her forbearance but… she would be wrong to forgive in this instance. You had no recourse to the law nor hope of justice. If you had not taken matters into your own hands, no doubt those men would have gone on to find another victim, and another. If you also found comfort in the act, I cannot fault you for that."
"I found no satisfaction in it at all," she spat. "I am drow, and I allowed myself to be lulled, foolishly. The vengeance was bitter, Rasaad, because my own stupidity had made it necessary."
"Then, at least, I am glad that you survived." He reached out his hand hesitantly, and placed it over Viconia's. It was a pleasant surprise to the drow. Since learning that she had been forced from the Underdark as punishment for sparing the life of a baby, his opinion of her had shifted considerably. Her worship of Shar was still a sticking point but he was no longer convinced that she was beyond the reach of the light.
"You and me both," she replied emphatically. Not least because the webs of the Spider Queen waited to entangle her in the afterlife. She was no longer confident that Shar would save her. Lolth had reminded her cruelly, that the Nightwhisperer did nothing out of kindness, and had promised that she would be abandoned once she had served her function as the Servant of all Faiths.
"I- I wish that there was something I could do," he said helplessly. "Things were simpler when I was in the Order. The light less harsh. Everything is darker now, and all the light does is cast more shadows."
"There are worse things in the world than shadows," said Viconia.
Rasaad was suddenly reminded sharply who it was he was talking to. A follower of Shar would use anything to pull him further from the light. He drew his hand back from hers. Who knew whether what she was telling him was even true?
"Excuse me. I have not yet performed my meditations," he said hastily.
"Then go, rivvil!" Viconia said, stung. Unlike Arowan, she made no attempt to disguise her displeasure, and the monk knew at once that he had offended her. "I should never have attempted to unburden myself on you. I was foolish to be so weak in Beregost, and worse yet to speak to you about it!"
"Opening up to someone is no weakness Viconia," Rasaad said, regretting his response. Yet it was too late. Her window of vulnerability had been fleeting, and now her cannons were fixed on him once more.
"I have had nothing but ill encounters with surfacers since I fled Beregost. Their constant spite burns within my soul. I spit on them! Oloth plynn nina!"
"Surely you do not include me in that?" he cried.
"You especially, with your condescending whining about light and goodness. My entire existence has been thus since I fled the Underdark. Surfacers hate drow without relent and I erred in thinking otherwise even for a moment!"
"You have been through more than I can imagine Viconia, but you are wrong. Many surfacers have been kind to you!" Rasaad retorted. The first examples who sprang to mind were Arowan and Jaheira, but even he was not so clueless as to imagine that bringing them up was a good idea. "Freya was a surfacer!"
"Freya was a dog!" Viconia snapped.
Rasaad stared at her appalled, and the cleric backtracked.
"I mean in the literal sense," she said, more steadily. "I trusted her loyalty as I would that of a hound or a pet spider. Canine affection is unconditional… well… that and she wasn't bright enough to betray me… but I stand by my point about the rest of you!"
She picked up her half-finished bowl and retreated to her room, leaving Rasaad alone. Her spoon lay forgotten on the table. The monk picked it up and twisted it back and forth, watching how the light from the window reflected from its surface. He could take it to her and attempt to continue their conversation, but perhaps it would be wiser to postpone until she was in a better mood.
Roran Midfallow's name loomed in his mind, and his fist clenched around the unfortunate piece of cutlery. When he released it, it was crumpled like a slip of card. It was the Moon Maiden who had granted him such strength. At this point his physical powers extended far beyond what mere training and exercise made possible. Battling dragons and demon lords had earned her favour. If he were to lose Selune's benevolence then he would be nothing more than a man and his chance to avenge his brother would be lost.
"I will never embrace the darkness," he told himself. Still, he could not help hoping that Viconia might be persuaded to step into the light.