Chapter Six
The resounding boom rattled the limbs of the trees, sending birds into flight and scaring small animals from their hiding places. Marrin Socor cursed and spat on the now smoking corpse at his feet. Damn, but why did these fools keep tracking him down? Granted, each father or brother who sought him out gave him the opportunity to further refine his original spell or practice the new legacy spell he was creating, but did not the morons understand their folly? And why did they insist on rushing to the defense of their daughters' or sisters' honor? The women were capable of making their own choices—or indiscretions, in some cases—and did not need some stupid block of a man to rush out and get himself killed over what wasn't his business.
Socor shook his head at the absurdity of it, profoundly glad that he and the men of his family were not so foolish.
The wizard shrugged off his foul mood and left the corpse on the forest floor, unconcerned with its fate. No, the only thing that truly concerned Socor was the fact that Artemis Entreri and Jarlaxle, now joined by a young cleric, were gaining on him.
Socor was ecstatic.
Yes, he was preparing for their next meeting. He would prove their superior this time, show them the true genius that was Marrin Socor. He would live up to the long heritage of the Socor name—a family of great wizards and philosophers—and would do so by killing these bounty hunters who had humiliated him. In fact, if he simply had a few more days to practice, he was confident he could kill them with not one but two magnificent spells of his own creation, both of them legacies of his brilliance.
Let it never again be said, the wizard mused, that Marrin Socor was failing to live up to his father's name. Let it never again be said that he was lazy or wasteful and was shaming the heritage of his ancestors.
Marrin Socor would prove himself to his father. He would prove himself to the whole world. He would be the most accomplished wizard the Socor family had ever produced.
And damn anyone who got in his way.
Entreri's nose announced the presence of a dead body long before the companions located the victim. The men had been catching up with Socor, they could tell, but it would take several more days before they'd actually be able to face off with him. In the meantime, they kept running across stories of some new assault or kill the man had committed, and the assassin wondered if they'd be adding yet another to the long list. Entreri led his horse off the road when his nose declared that the body was close, and moments later he found himself staring down at a gruesome sight. The corpse looked to be two or three days old, but the assassin could still tell how the man had died. "Socor-rame," he murmured, repeating the words of Socor's legacy spell.
"What?" Tai asked as Jarlaxle brought their horse up beside him.
"Marrin Socor killed this man with the evocation spell he's created," Entreri replied.
The youth looked grim; gone suddenly were all traces of the boyish exuberance Entreri had come to expect from the young man. "Socor?" His fists clenched. "Hoar will see this man avenged, along with all the other victims. Socor will face retribution."
Jarlaxle cast Entreri a vaguely amused sidelong glance, but Entreri merely nodded at the youth. "You may be sure of that."
Tai bowed his head in return, obviously accepting Entreri's words as truth. Normally, Entreri considered people fools if they trusted him, but in this case, the assassin was oddly . . . complimented. It seemed to the man that Tai simply refused to see anything other than his best qualities, although not out of blindness. It was more like the priest was giving him the benefit of the doubt, allowing him to be who he was without any preconceptions, and then respecting him for what he found.
At least that's the way it seemed to Entreri so far. He hadn't entirely figured out the boy yet, and he certainly wasn't sure how he felt about what he suspected.
"Should we perhaps scout the area?" Jarlaxle asked. "Likely this was a one-on-one fight, but there may be more."
Entreri nodded and turned his horse left, leaving Jarlaxle and Tai to scout to the right. A thorough search turned up nothing, however, and Entreri returned to the vicinity of the corpse to await Jarlaxle and Tai. He dismounted and stretched as he waited, easing his body of its aches. They had ridden nearly nonstop for days trying to catch Socor, and even someone in as good physical condition as Entreri couldn't take that kind of abuse without feeling it.
After a particularly helpful backstretch, the assassin found his attention wandering back to the dead body. Entreri had difficulty imagining the corpse had ever been a man. But it had been, his logical mind knew, and perhaps had been a man with a wife and children who were at that moment wondering and worrying where their father and husband was.
He'd never be coming home.
For one who'd lived most his life surrounded by the degradation of humanity, realizing such a thing was an odd thought. Once he'd escaped his father's and uncle's violence, Entreri had lived in streets full of starving people. Urine and filth mixed with the dirt of the alleys, corpses rotted in the gutter, and not a soul paid any of it any heed. As a boy, he'd noted that some of the prostitutes were only two or three years older than he, and likewise most of the other thugs and thieves were also around his age. An endless swarm of these orphaned or desperate children weaved in and out of the drunks, beggars, and corpses, and older thieves kicked the drunks out of the way or paid their pittance of coin to sleep with the gaudily-dressed children. And in the midst of it all was one nine-year-old child who knew such men a bit too well, a child willing to do whatever it took to survive, including theft and drinking out of sewers.
No, Artemis Entreri had never taken the time to care about corpses, nor had he wasted his energy on people he knew would never be able to rise above their miserable lives and save themselves. You could only save one person from such destitution and filth, he had realized, and if you were smart at all, you would save yourself. Compassion, then, was wasted and also dangerous because it could get you killed.
Yet his eyes now turned to the body of the man before him.
Entreri shook the thought from his mind. Prior to his trip to the Underdark and other more recent events, he generally left the past buried and refused to introspect, believing that dwelling upon anything at all—the past or the present—to be a sign of weakness. And sure enough, he didn't see any advantage to indulging himself.
A soft step on leaves was all the warning Entreri received, and he turned in surprise toward the approaching man, who gazed upon him with disgust. "Your facial expression a moment ago indicated pity for this man. You dare to show sympathy for the victim?"
Entreri scowled at Hector. "Well met," he said sarcastically. "I see you are still on the trail of Socor as well."
"You evaded my question," the priest replied bluntly as he stopped in front of Entreri.
"And if I did, why would that concern you, judgmental priest?"
"Sympathy from you?" Hector sounded incredulous. "You, the most heartless man in all Toril? I demand that you stop at once, for you make a mockery of an honest emotion!"
Entreri's eyes narrowed dangerously. "You assume much."
"I assume correctly. Dare I ask how many people you have killed in your career?" Hector drew himself up to his full height and peered down at the assassin from an advantage of a half foot. "No, Artemis Entreri, in your evil you have lost the right to show pity to anyone, even a corpse."
"That is preposterous. Just like a priest of Tyr to be so unreasonable!"
The men stared each other down, on the verge of fighting. Hector, however, visibly brought himself back under control, no doubt aware that Jarlaxle and Tai could not be far away. "Do not glare at me, foul assassin! What would you know of love or loss? You, who would likely run a child through just for not scampering out of your way quickly enough!"
Entreri sneered. "The absurdity of what you say proves how little about me you really know."
"What do I need to know, specifically, other than that you are an assassin? I know you kill; I know you are evil. I know that Tyr demands of me that I uphold the law and justice, and that as a priest of Tyr, it is my duty to hold you accountable for all that you've done and administer said justice for your crimes."
It was possible that there was nothing in all the world that angered Entreri more than self-righteous priests. "You know nothing. Truly. On my soul, you have no idea just what lies you spew. If everything you say is true, then explain to me this: my father was a priest of Tyr, and one of the most evil men I've ever met. Why did he escape the justice of his own god, then? Do you really think your god cares about you or is even paying any attention to what you do or say? He isn't. Because if he were, he would have never allowed a man such as my father to remain his priest, and he would have never allowed what happened to happen." The assassin shook his head. "No, you cannot judge me, cannot preach to me, cannot arrest me—I know too much. I've seen too much."
"Am I to assume then, based on your vague words, that your father beat you when you were a child? And am I to draw the conclusion that just because your father beat you, you now have the right to kill anyone you want? Tell me, how can you stand in judgment over your father if you both are selfish, violent, and hateful?"
Entreri almost killed him on the spot. Almost. It took a superhuman act of self-control to not lash out at the man. And the assassin wasn't sure which part he wanted to kill him for the most: the part that was true, or the part that was ludicrous. "First of all, do not even pretend to know or understand what I experienced. Secondly, I would not be alive today if I were unwilling to kill—I live in a violent world filled with death, and I learned early in life that no one will take care of me but myself. Thirdly—and most importantly—almost everyone I've killed has been someone that you yourself would order executed. The 'good' and the 'evil' alike kill—you judge them as good or evil based on why they kill, not the fact that they do. Is survival any less of a good reason than self-righteousness?"
"I order executions for the sake of justice!" Hector pointed a finger in Entreri's face. "You kill for money, and with little or no discernment."
Entreri snorted. "You kill for what you perceive as justice, and I kill by what I perceive as necessary. That doesn't make either one of us necessarily right or wrong."
"What? So it's all relative?" Hector threw up his hands wildly. "Everything is only a matter of opinion, and there is no truth?"
"No, don't be ridiculous. All my killings have been committed against members of the underworld, against people who deserved no better."
"Is that really so? Do you really believe what you say?" Hector's right hand twitched as though he might call upon divine power. "I do not believe that you do, but regardless, I will have you pay for each and every crime you've ever committed."
"What I assume about the world is not your business," Entreri snapped. "And you assume that if you kill me here and now in your self-righteous anger, you won't be committing the same crime yourself."
Hector grew very still and did not reply. Entreri smirked, realizing he'd finally hit upon something that the priest would at least have to reason through before countering. Knowing this did not help his anger abate any, however, so unless he were willing to complicate matters further by killing the cleric, he needed to leave. Entreri grabbed his horse's reins and walked away, wondering if it mattered at all, even slightly, that he'd never intended upon being a killer of any kind, that while his first kill had been necessary, he'd still been unhappy over having to take that first step down the road of becoming an assassin. He wondered if it mattered at all that the four-year-old child he had been, before his life had become a manifestation of the nine hells, would have never even kicked a dog.
Probably not. No one cared enough to consider who he'd been, what he'd experienced, or what he'd wanted life to be. And certainly no one had cared when he was a child, either. And for every family member, priest, and tutor who had looked away when his father hit him, who had ignored the way he could hardly bear to sit down some mornings, who had pretended that it was normal for a five-, seven-, or nine-year-old child to look so lifeless, so soulless, so angry—for every one of those people, Entreri believed there was a nail in the coffin of his existence that he didn't put there.
But could he not open the lid of the coffin and climb back out? Could he not choose a new road if he wished, just as Jarlaxle seemed to be pushing him to?
If anyone could even make a passing comparison between his father and him, he would have to.
From their position several yards away behind some brush, Jarlaxle and Tai watched Entreri stalk away, watched Hector turn and leave in the opposite direction, then stood in silence several minutes longer.
"How tragic," Tai commented at last.
Jarlaxle thought he'd feel a touch of self-satisfaction at having another one of his theories proven correct, but he found instead that he simply felt sad, if enlightened.
"Of course I believe one should only do what is right and just, but I can also say I now have insight into our assassin friend," Tai continued in Jarlaxle's silence. "If Macatos is interpreting our friend's words correctly, then violence is the language he learned as a child. His worldview is warped, and it is no wonder. Only in an unthreatening environment can a child produce a proper concept of reality. However, now that he is an adult . . .."
"A small touch of determinism, then?" Jarlaxle replied. "What does that mean for me, a member of an evil race who grew up in an evil city?"
Tai seemed to consider his answer for several minutes. "That you are now on the surface indicates that somewhere along the way something you saw or experienced, or someone you knew, gave you the ability to analyze and question yourself and your world." Tai turned to regard the elf somberly. "Please do not misunderstand; I do not excuse injustice. But allow me to say that I truly believe the only point at which redemption is no longer possible is death. As long as you breathe, the chance remains. As long as you breathe, you have the right to your chance. A good person cannot say that a soul deserves no chance at redemption. A good person would never wish any soul into the nine hells."
Jarlaxle smiled at the priest. "Wise words, coming from a youth."
"Wisdom comes with a price," Tai said grimly. "Plus I have trained hard."
"So you believe Artemis Entreri can be redeemed from his evil ways as an assassin?" the elf asked lightly.
"'Can be?'" Tai echoed. "Try 'is being.' His own words reveal that he was never completely beyond hope to begin with. His words suggest a man who tries too hard to justify what he knows is wrong deep inside." Tai smiled then. "He can break through. With help."
For once, Jarlaxle did not smile back. In manipulating this man, he had taken responsibility for a portion of his well-being. He had approached helping this man as a game, but it was a game no longer. This "game" involved the soul of another being, and this other being had saved Jarlaxle's own soul, in a matter of speaking, by rescuing him from the crystal shard. Against a tide of violence and abuse, a world full of overwhelming contradictions and hypocrisies, and a lifetime full of bitterness and distrust, this man had decided to offer Jarlaxle what little care he could manifest from his broken soul. And Jarlaxle, were he really the more mature and knowledgeable creature he believed himself to be, now had to return that care in earnest, to help save a soul that had drowned in lies.
And to do that, he would have to remain at Entreri's side as long as it took, even if he lost every single inherent magical ability he possessed.
"No one ever said that doing the right thing was easy," Tai commented suddenly, and only the presence of his trusty eye patch kept Jarlaxle from believing that the cleric had read his mind.