45. Surgeon and Shoal

"I like you, yes I do
(Wertle, wertle, wertle, wooo....)
I know of a way to make you like me, too
(Wertle, wertle, wertle-wooooo....)
Down by the ocean, down by the sea,
A pirate ship's waiting for you and for me.
Bring me what in it but don't ever wear it
Or sure enough, soon enough, you'll wertle too..."

Onyx and Safana looked at once another, eyebrows furrowed, and looked forward again at the gnome known as Mad Arcand.

"A most eccentric gnome," Dynaheir observed.

"Is there any other kind?" Viconia declared, sounding bored.

"The riddle he poses is simple enough," the Wychalarn declared, ignoring the drow and addressing the party, and pointing with her bejewled hand coastward to the sorry wreckage of a wooden vessel.

"Of course it is," Viconia tossed her ivory hair back over the green ankheg-plated shoulders, "But what point is there bandying with insane svirfneblin?"

"That term refers to only one subrace of gnomekin," Dynahier lectured her pointedly.

Viconia made a point of not seeming to listen, but then replied, "Short and stupid, same enough for me."

Safana sneered at both of them. "The mad midget riddles of a treasure in the ship, that is good enough for me."

"A cursed treasure, obviously," Jaheira retorted, grimacing at all three.

"Um..." Imoen chirped in, but none of the four paid her any heed until she scrambled into their midst (a fortunate thing, as they seemed close to blows or spells), "The ship's right over there, we coulda like...been there by now."

This abruptly silenced the others, and the party without any more words made the few minutes' march to the edge of the rocky coast. Dynaheir cast a magic detection cantrip as she had on the supposed pirate treasure of Safana's, and at her direction samesaid thief slunk into the rotting hulk rammed into the rocks, barely causing it to creak until she slunk out a minute later, ring in hand.

Imoen's eyes brightened, and Safana flipped it over in her hand mercurially, shooting the younger thief a smirk begging for envy.

"Don't either of you dare..." Jahiera intoned.

"I know, I know..." Imoen sighed, "Ony already told me...when we found Dyna's wizard-ring outside the Arm, that story about the ring that tried to possess the halflings..."

Khalid added, "I heard J-J-Jade's evil hench-hobbit saying it was his uncle Sackins.."

Jahiera looked skeptically at her husband. "Yes, but you know the way the Harpers tell it, Elminster guided them nearly the whole way and then almost singlehandedly diverted the evil armies from their path."

"Really?" Onyx raised his eyebrows. "The way I read it growing up, that was all the heir to the throne with the hands of healing and the legendary sword..."

"Yes of course," Minsc proclaimed, "But he was a ranger."

--

"The man was also a ranger," Kivan shook his head at an attentive Jade as their party closed on Beregost, "But 'twas the elven archer who struck down more of the foes."

"Bah!" Kagain spat, hefting the axe on his shoulder, "The dwarf slew more orcs! They counted!"

"I do seem to recall," Jade frowned, "It was a mortal woman who made the greatest kill."

"...one of plainly northern heritage," Branwen added.

"After a hobbit done the hamstringin'," Montaron waggled his finger.

"Ah yesss..." Xzar slurped, playing with several fishbones from his spell components pouch, "But we mussn't forget their precious guide, musn't we?"

"Banal pseudoheroic futility," Edwina sneered, idly admriing her nails, "They never truly killed the evil wizard, who was obviously only biding his time before some greater scheme could be engineered. (And the good wizard...pah! Such a pretentious moralizing windbag, nothing more. He cast scarcely a cantrip the entirety of the quest.)"

--

"What a beautiful ring, where-e'er did you get it
(most quite likely near where exactly I put it..)
Wertle, oh wertle, oh dear wertle-wooo...
Wertle, oh wertle, oh woo...
Oh I know what you're thinking
Of Mad Arcand the Stinking
Who takes what you give him
And gives not back to you..
So, here, take this bottle but please don't unstopple
Or (wertle, poor wertle), you'll surely get burned!"

In exchange for the cursed ring the gnome had apparently left just to be fetched, he yielded a vial which Garrick identified as an oil of fiery burning, which when lobbed exploded into a fireball. The party moved on, Viconia hissing in pain until the gnome's ceaseless, toneless singing left the range of even her keen ears.

Before they had gone much further up the coast, a human traveler was spied coming south. He waved naturally enough and Onyx sensed no evil, and he stopped calmly to addresss the nine. An older man he was, in a travel-worn gray cloak, but more worn were his own features, carrying years and sorrow.

"It is not often that I meet travels in these parts of the wilderness," he addressed them.

Viconia snickered, "Funny, seems we can't help but cross a dozen a day."

The old man glanced neutrally to the drow before continuing, "If you desire, I have the skills necessary to heal you."

"Appreciated, but not needed," Onyx held up a hand, "A charitable parlance indeed, good man."

The old man nodded at the subtext. "You may call me the Surgeon. I heal others in penance for what I have done in my past. Many have died because of a foolish act of charity on my part. I have a brother, an evil man by the name of Davaeorn. He lives because I was too weak-hearted to kill him when I had the chance. Many have died at his hands, including...including our own father."

Onyx swallowed. "My own was recently slain. I sympathize with you greatly, I would despair all the more were the murderer my own brother."

The Surgeon tilted his head, and squinted keenly. "I am sure you would. I have heard that my brother has come to this region, and I hope to meet him one day, to rectify my previous mistake. Your group seem to be adventurers...perhaps you might come to fight my brother. This may be wishful thinking on my part...

Onyx shook his head, "Not at all. I shall if this Davaeorn can be found. I seek all men of evil, not only those who have wronged myself or my friends."

The Surgeon nodded with approval at the paladin. "Wisdom, for often one finds many evils flow from one source. If you are as you say, then know this - he now conspires an organization known as the Iron Throne, who have some mischief in this land with the mineral of the same mane. It is thus he came to this region, and myself too."

Onyx nodded, "Wisdom indeed, for the source of these misdeeds we already sought."

The Surgeon continued, "You will find up this stream to your source a mine deep within the Cloakwood. It is mined by the Throne while they poison the compettion from Nashkel and use highway-bandits to de facto embargo all that from afar. Precisely where in the woods I cannot say, but if your quest and ideals are as you claim, you would do well to venture into its dark heart, and pierce that of my brother."

A chorus of affirmative murmurs resonated from all save Safana and Viconia, and the Surgeon withdrew a bright yellow flask. "Take this, it would help you in an fight against magic-users."

He handed off a potion Onyx once again passed to Garrick. "Fully half magic resistance," the bard explained after peering and sniffing withing the vial.

Onyx tipped his helmed head in thanks, and without saying anything further, the Surgeon nodded in kind and passed on his way, leaving the party to look at one another quizzically.

"A lead, perhaps, but he seemed as addled as the gnome," Jaheira spoke.

"The Cloakwood is north beyond Beregost," Onyx shrugged, "Once we confer with my sister we'll all decide what do to."

"If her company has not further poisoned her young mind," she shook her head. The party had resumed marching, but at once went silent and tense and all but Safana fell back from her and Onyx.

Her charge glared at her with hurt and anger. " Further? My sister's heart may not walk our path, but her mind is quite clear. I will not believe ill of her just yet. If a paladin can make this allowance, surely a druid can, Jaheira. She is far more 'balanced' than I in any sense."

Her mouth remained tight and sour and she looked witheringly at her charge. "Your beliefs should not recognize blood," she hissed, "Blood will blind you, my charge. Love will blind you. Even less may the more." Her glared drifted pointedly past him to Safana.

Onyx looked at the ground, shaking his head angrily. "It's my life to live." He took Safana's hand, and the two looked forward without meeting Jaheira's gaze again. She sneered, and fell back.

They marched in silence until Viconia called out an alert of another school of sirens well ahead on the shores. The silent party only tensed with the recollection of yesterday's battle, Imoen whimpering with the memory of being nearly beheaded by her best friend, who exchanged long faces with Minsc.

"I'll parlay," Onyx stated.

" Wael-rivvel-sartglin! !" Viconia screamed, stomping around to putting herself square before him. "It was you and your oaf ally who feel most easily to their enchantments!"

Minsc cringed, seeming to shrink from his size to a hobbit's, but Onyx closed his eyes patiently, and spoke in a calm voice that was both tenuous and confident. "I understand everyone's obvious concern. But that will not happen again. That can not happen again."

Imoen's face grew throughtful, and she turned, and looked pleadibly at Dynaheir.

"Let him go," the Wychalarn pronounced. None others spoke as Onyx moved forward, with only Safana alongside, who stopped behind a tree when they had closed the distance to the nymphs half again. Leaving sword upon his hip and bow upon his back, he marched up, straight and casual, trying not to appear to be either slinking or charging. The five sirines soon took notice, and stood frozen for a moment with their beautiful faces hardening. Four cast their charm spells, and the paladin felt them descend about his thoughts one after the other, but now he understood each quite clearly, the tugging upon his emotions cooled, and he dismissed each as such.

The four sirines looked at each other, and cast again as the fifth stepped forward, swanlike as she approached in bare feet silent on the beach. A second round of charm spells descended, and the paladin made a point of looking lucidly at the one who approached, her face not hostile, but quite frightened, hugging her arms over the bare and perfect body her kind seemed assured to possess. Briefly, Onyx's thoughts were dragged away from the parlance at hand, wondering what he had aloud in Lathander's temple. He was torn between lusting over her form as he should, and feeling the sheer unrealness of such a perfect, sculpted form was too alien to be understood and thus desired.

"Please help me, will you?" the creature cooed in a tremoring voice that had his heart charged with sympathy and protective feelings at once, "I am Shoal the Nereid, and we are alone on this desolute dry-land, and who knows what lurks in these woods."

Onyx caught the sway of his feelings, and leaned his head back in a gesture of hesitation. "Nothing stands between you and the sea...but accompany me wherever you must go, and I will make certain you are safe."

He held out an open hand in offering, and she strutted closer, her features brightening, "Wonderful!" She smiled, and pouted her moist, silken, and pale lips. "Perhaps a kiss to show my apprecation?"

Onyx stepped back at once, trying fervently to recall his lore of fey creatures, the evil temptresses among them long the undoing of many of his own profession. "It is...not my place to do so," he nodded warily, but with a polite smile, "I hardly know you."

Her face went a bit sour, and she whined, "I am truly sorry, but I must insist!" and lunged at him. Onyx danced back, holding his left arm out before his face as he drew Varscona. He lifted it across himself and his other arm, and swung it down again at the nereid as she closed fearlessly, slashing her chest from right breast to left hip, the blade not cutting deeply as the force sent her back off her feet at to the grass.

"No!" she shrieked in chilling mortal terror. Swayed again, Onyx stayed his next blow. "This is no longer fun! I cannot die for this! They are my actions, but not my intent! I can but do as I am bid by the master!"

Onyx held his sword up more ready for another strike, and shouted, "Explain your actions, or I shall continue!" He glanced away only briefly to see that the sirines seemed to ignore him again, and wondered at this.

Shoal seemed to accentuate her helpless posture upon the ground, and cried, "I would not be here at all, but my shawl is held by Ogre-Droth. It is my essence he commands, so to him I listen. It was a lark for a while, but no longer. I do not want to harm you further, but if he so wills, then I must. It is all I can do."

Onyx's eyes widened, and at once he willed his evil detection again and looked frantically about for an ogre, or ogre mage as he suspected from this supposed ability to command fey. "Then I shall fight as best I can, to release you from his grasp," he spoke down to Shoal will looking about still.

Her voice took on a certain sadistic curiosity that reminded him sharply of Viconia, as she murmured. "Oh, that could be interesting...yes, do that."

'Droth' did indeed appear to be an ogre mage, as he teleported from thin air, a large greenish ugly brute in garish red with a nasty scimitar nearly as long as Onyx, and bellowed, "What be this trouble Shoal? Whyt you have not destrotyed this small-pink? You're not to make me angry, water-child?"

Shoal maintained her helpless prone pose upon the grass, and loooked back over her shoulder at the monster. "It is not my fault, Ogre-Droth. He alone is stronger than I."

"Pah!" Droth snorted, pig-like, "They are meat for larger and gold for purse! Kill him and friends we shall!"

Shoal shivered, and whimpered. "As you say...so shall it be."

Onyx pointed his sword in the mage's direction and cried, "By what right do you keep this creature captive, Ogre ? Return what is rightfully hers."

The monster let out a gluttonous bass chuckle. "She told you this? You struck soundly to addle her mind so. 'Tis true that I possess her shawl, but water-child my mate. Envy of all others I am! I am Ogre-Mage Droth! I kill and kill WELL!"

His voice fell into incomprehensibility that Onyx took for casting. With the abhorrent disgust of his claim upon her as a 'mate', the paladin charged, but the ogre vanished and could be heard to move. Onyx thrust and then swung about, but could find only air. Frantically, he moved about and lifted his right shoudler to grab his shield from his back and slip it on the left arm. He turned around rapidly, swinging and holding his shield high for the imminent attack, marveling also at the lack of sound he expected on the part of the beast.

No sneak scimitar swing came, instead Onyx heard a loud should and crackle behind himself. It was the first time he heard or saw a Lightning Bolt spell, and halfway through his turn to face the electric popping sounds, the bolt zoomed right through the center of his body, flying out through all his limbs and spidering over the metal that covered his body and back in again. His knees hit the grass and his teeth chattered so hard he nearly broke teeth against each other or cut off his own tongue before withdrawing it.

The ogre mage laughed, and stomped in with his scimitar raised to behead the kneeling, helpless human, when a throwing knife implanted itself in the thick skin of his throat, and another's point landed perfectly in his beady eye and put it out. The other eyes rolled up, and he howled at the sight of Safana, now approached from her hiding place. She tossed again, and the ogre turned invisible. The knife seemed to strike as it too disappeared, and she drew out her twin serrated shortswords, and danced about with feints and swipes at the air. "Get up!" she hollered at her injured consort, her voice unscolding as Jaheria's would have been, simply impersonal and harshly matter-of-fact. He finally rose, and like her resumed circling, swinging his sword in strikes that were blind, but with the force of purpose, moving his shield about himself left and right, up and down.

The ogre appeared opposite him from Safana, and threw out a lightning bolt with each of them in its path. Onyx leapt aside, taking the energy through his shield and shield-arm and shouting through the pain. Safana cleanly evaded its path and charged the ogre. Onyx moved in with her, and while the beast cast again buried his blade deep in its belly. Still it seemed to to cast, but Safana dashed around him and sliced out the backs of his knees along the way. Droth fell backwards, nearly ripping Varscona from Onyx's grip, and crashed onto the ground just as it flew were his face had been and three magic missiles blasted the warty flesh.

These were Khalid's and Dynaheir's, and the rest of the party was upon them in time to nearly be splattered with black blood as Onyx summarily buried the long edge of Varscona a foot into the ogre's trunk of a neck, ending even his persistent, odious life.

"A stunning victory once again!" Garrick declared, holding his crossbow aloft as if it had had some part in the affair.

"And the last in which we allow our brave little knight to nearly get himself single-handedly killed ," Jahiera declared. Onyx sighed, she had a point.

"He had passable assistance," Viconia murmured with a dismissive glance at Safana, "Not as impressive as my command of the dozen undead against Bassilus, but it passes muster this time."

The pirate swashbuckleress tipped her head left and right and silently mouthed along with the drow in mockery. "I'm so sorry to have missed it, dark witch."

This raised an eyebrow from Dynaheir as well, but Viconia's latest round of intraparty bickering was cut short as Shoal rose and sighed, "By the waters of home, I am free once more!"

Safana smirked pointedly at her, stopping the nereid in her tracks as she turned toward the water, and the four sirines who now approached. "Oh please. I've done my time dealing with acquatic nymphos, and after the way you sea hags charm your 'manlings', it's a fine irony to see you finally appreciating freedom of the mind."

The four sirines looked at one another in pairs as the came up around Shoal, who appraised the woman with a cool smile. "A fine irony indeed as I sense a tinge of the same magic with you, who need care not, it would seem your manling has little to fear from us now. I'll not spend another second on this hard-land. It was a fun game, but it was stale now. Thank you, goodbye!"

"Game!?" Safana shrieked, stepping right up to Shoal as she and her entourage turned away and drifted back to the water. It was as well, the rest of the party thought, the way she flung her blade-wielding arms out would likely have invited another fight had they faced her still. "Get your sylvan sorcery off my beach!"

The nymphs only obliged, drifting intot the water, and Jaheira snickered. "But of course...the land is there your domain, and territorialism is seen all about us in the wild." She smirked, and gestured left and right to the land and sea. "And even more so, it would seem, in civilization."

Safana stepped almost nose-to-nose with her, forcefully sheathing her blades.

Imoen murmured, "Reeeeowr...."

They each turned, glanced irritably at the girl, and backed from one another.

"If you're all quite finished," Dynaheir spoke, quite calm, "We might press on."

"Beregost?" Imoen chirped, but her eyes brightened even further when Dynaheir responded.

"I believe we were headed to this wondrous High Hedge."