Lidia backed away from the ogre, hands raised. She sheathed the shortsword. To her surprise, the ogre ignored her, pushing its way past and heading down the lane, then taking a left. She followed close behind.
The path suddenly gave way to a round clearing, where a fair young elf-maid was holding court. She wore a bright yellow robe over a sky-blue dress, her long pale gold tresses rippling over her shoulders and threaded with several charms. She was ringed with a multitude of white flowers, her wide blue eyes serene as she surveyed the scene about her. Her thin pale hand beckoned to them.
Lidia cautiously approached. She'd taken no more than a few steps, when a slime, a living thing made of green jelly and little else, wrapped itself around her leg.
She withdrew her foot in revulsion, leaving a strand of green slime behind, then looked around the clearing.
Surrounding the elf-maid were several dozen beasts: werewolves, slimes, kobolds, spiders, and others too numerous to list. They all turned towards Lidia, with a look in their eyes that suggested more than animal intelligence.
Meanwhile, the ogre knelt down next to the slime, scooping it up in its massive hands.
"Welcome, Lady, to Kalah's realm. Be not of impure heart or he will destroy thee." The elf-maid raised her hand, speaking in Aerie's voice.
"Who or what is Kalah?" Lidia asked.
"Kalah is beyond thy ken. He is the Beginning. He is the End. He is our God and our King. Tremble before him and he may take pity on thee."
The ogre raged, growling incoherently and charging towards them.
The elf-maid raised a hand, and with an incantation the ogre froze in place. "Ah, my beast, you've played your part well. Let it end here." She turned to Lidia. "Kalah's rage is awesome to behold. Let not thyself be found in its path."
"What do you want? What are you doing?" Lidia asked.
For a moment, the elf-maid's face contorted, flashing into something small and filled with rage. The illusion was fleeting, and when it resumed, the proud, serene face showed no sign of wrath. She declaimed: "Bow before the will of thy betters, mortal!"
A white glimmering light settled over Lidia, causing a maddening sensation like a whole-body itch. She braced herself-
And nothing happened. The magic fizzled, then disappeared.
The elf-maid's brow furrowed.
Lidia smiled. "You'll need to try harder than that."
And then a second maddening sensation came, like someone brushing their fingers on the inside of her head.
The tent fell away. Lidia found herself on the outskirts of the Promenade once again, ringed by a crowd, standing well back as though attending a show. She wildly looked here and there, until she found a familiar figure on the other side of the ring. The crowd parted to let him through, mostly out of concern for their own safety than anything else.
A massive man, standing seven feet tall, strode forward. He was wearing the armor of one of Bhaal's Deathbringers: black, with cruel spikes on every limb and with rictused skulls carved on his knees and chest. His helmet was spiked and opened in the shape of a mouth full of inhumanly long teeth. Inside that mouth, two eyes glowed gold.
Lidia looked again into the face of her enemy Sarevok. She opened her mouth to speak.
His black gauntlet caught her on the cheek and flung her to the ground, the hard metal ridges tearing into her face
She curled to one side as she recovered, and brushed her fingers against her cheek. Scarlet drops of blood ran down her fingers.
She had believed that this was Sarevok in front of her, for one moment. She narrowed her eyes, still reeling. "You're dead."
Sarevok's deep voice rumbled, true to life: "I am never truly dead. For we are the same."
"If you know so much, then tell me!" She knew the answer already, but challenged him again. "How are we the same, Kalah?"
Sarevok stood over her and raised his long black blade with one arm, blocking out the sun.
Jaheira finally paused at the bridge, bending over to catch her breath. She stared down at the small bronze lamp in her hand.
She considered for a moment whether or not to go further. Surely the Cowled Wizards would want to know about this, and perhaps it would buy Lidia and the others more time. On the other hand, she doubted they'd make wishes with the Company's best interest in mind.
She looked over her shoulder. Jafir hadn't pursued her, as she'd hoped. She walked off the main road towards a small shack, on a dock near some pungent barrels of fish. The only marker on the shack's door was a curlicue punctuated with a couple small circles; it was an old Harper rune used to signal a safe house.
She opened the door, slipped inside, and called out, "The winds fall silent before Eldath."
There was no countersign. None of the Harpers were here.
She closed the door behind her. The Harpers had chosen this place well; no eyes could spy her here from the street.
She held up the lamp and pronounced the command word: "Markesh."
A great wind rushed in, carrying in sparkling golden motes like sand. The lamp twitched out of Jaheira's hand, falling to the ground with a clatter. The golden shimmer swirled, tightening around the lamp faster and faster, like a dust devil. The column lengthened to the ceiling, flashing and booming like a thunderstorm. Jaheira threw herself against the far side of the room, wondering to herself what she had just unleashed.
A figure emerged from the windstorm like that of a powerfully muscled man. The winds finally settled, the golden motes of sand calming to a steady whirl around the lamp.
The djinn floated atop them, legs crossed and with a bowed head, as though he were in the middle of meditation. His coppery skin glowed in the faint golden light, and the only hair on his body was a finely trimmed black beard and strong black eyebrows. He wore no shirt, but a long robe covered the entire lower half of his body, simple white and trailing below him until it dissipated into nothingness. The only sign he bore of richness or royalty was a purple silk belt.
Markesh raised his head and gave Jaheira a wide smile. "Greetings, mortal. You are neither Kalah nor that despicable rakshasa, I see, so I must assume at least one of them has fallen."
She bowed. "Neither of them has, but they must be foiled nonetheless. I have enough to avenge as it is."
"Ah, an adventurer from the tent. Are you friends with that tattooed fellow? He seemed to think I was responsible for all of this."
Jaheira winced. "He means well. I hope you did not harm him."
"Fear not, we parted ways with hardly a scratch between us. But I imagine you want to attend to the matter of the final wish."
He spoke a word of power unknown to her. As though it had a will of its own, the lamp floated upward, raised upon a tightly swirling column of dust. "The magic word that calls me from the lamp works only three times, after which I am trapped again and return to the possession of that infernal rakshasa, with a new word of its choosing."
"Kalah made two wishes, then."
"He did, but not fruitfully. Pity. For a Prime, he was interesting." The djinn thoughtfully stroked his black beard. "Society seemed to take exception to his kind, causing his unhappiness and perhaps his demise. But I digress. You probably want to know what it was he wished for."
"Indeed. What could be worth all this pain?"
"His first wish was to be able to command the respect of others, so I granted him a ring. He knew not how to use its power, however. People paid him more attention, but that only meant they laughed harder when his magics failed. He then made his second wish in anger. He wanted sorcerous power, like that of a powerful ogre mage. So, I gave him the power and the body, but if you know of him and stand before me, that did him little good, too."
"He still has that power and could do much harm."
"But this last wish is for you. What shall you do with it?"
Jaheira considered this. Her first impulse was to free the djinn. Besides the obvious altruism, Jafir would be robbed of his sport. Perhaps the rakshasa would spend days waiting for the lamp to return, devoid of that smug look on his face. Though death would wipe that look from his face just as well...
On the other hand, her friends were likely still trapped in the tent, or worse. While they'd come through much deeper peril than some hedge mage with delusions of grandeur, she knew as well as anyone that the end could arrive from the most unexpected of places. She'd have never guessed, for instance, that Gorion would have been killed with merely a sword. On Toril, death was sometimes negotiable, but it was always inevitable.
She looked up towards his brown eyes, which were filled with the kind of patient consideration unique to immortals.
"Divest Kalah of his magical power," Jaheira said, choosing her words carefully. "Let everything he wrought be undone."
"As you wish. Farewell, adventurer!"
Markesh rose his hand and spoke a word of command. As soon as it left his lips, his body dissolved into a whirlwind, which tucked itself away inside the lamp. The lamp fell to the ground, shook, then settled. In the wink of an eye, it disappeared altogether.