Chapter Eight
By noon the following day, the odd little group had reached the small town of Lycana, which was the last place Socor had been sighted. Jarlaxle had suggested that they enter the town through the forest instead of by the dusty road in the faint hope that they might approach the town undetected by the wizard. The drow admitted that such a thing was unlikely, but the group agreed it couldn't hurt.
Entreri, in the lead with Tai sharing his horse, was the first to see the odd heap of leaves and brush amongst the trees ahead of them. "That is the perfect size for a corpse," he noted darkly, "although my sense of smell doesn't suggest such a thing."
Tai leaned to the side to peer around him. "Do you think it's another of Socor's victims?"
Entreri smirked. "It's likely another outraged father. Poor bastard."
Tai raised both eyebrows at this assessment and smiled. "Hopefully not."
The group stopped by the suspicious heap and dismounted. "It's not a very good burial job, if that is indeed what this is," Entreri commented as he brushed aside the leaves and twigs. Tai gasped, and the assassin frowned at the pale man he'd uncovered. "The priest." He stepped back, his lip curling in a sneer.
"Is he dead?" Tai rushed forward and took a closer look. Hector was covered in burn marks, his skin pallid where he was uninjured.
"No," Entreri replied, and indeed the burnt man was faintly breathing. Tai grimaced and knelt beside him, pushing more of the leaves and brush away.
"Do we help him?" Jarlaxle asked Entreri with obvious curiosity.
The assassin snorted. "Help the man who wants me dead?"
"Yes," Tai said. "I do not agree with this man's philosophy, and I would not allow him to harm you, Master Entreri. But he is an innocent victim. He was seeking only justice in pursuing Socor, and I must respect that." With that, the cleric closed his eyes and focused, drawing upon the divine power of Hoar to heal the man. He waggled his fingers over Hector, and a portion of the burns faded. Hector, however, did not regain consciousness. Tai bit his lip and sat at his side.
"The Tyrist seeks justice in pursuing me," Entreri reminded Tai after a few moments of silence.
Tai looked up and smiled. "But there are differences. You are sane. I believe Socor to be half-mad. Macatos pursues you based on old information. I know you now. But ultimately, I admit, this is a matter of my wishing to convert you." The youth chuckled.
Again, Entreri had the faint sensation that he'd missed something somewhere, but Tai's claim to want to convert him took priority. "I will not be the slave of any god, I assure you."
"Don't think of it in terms of slavery." Tai shrugged. "It is true that submitting yourself to the will of a god is the most helpful and appropriate thing to do—unless you worship a demon, I should say. After all, deities are all-knowing and powerful, and they can guide you to answers that you yourself could never see or find. But the submission is an act of trust and respect, not a gesture of weakness. It is not meant to take all your choices from you. Remember that as a human, you always retain your free will."
Entreri crossed his arms and frowned at the cleric. Jarlaxle was watching them with a mixed look of surprise and fascination, but he remained silent.
Tai sighed. "Too bad. A great deal of vengeance could be carried out with the skills of one such as you."
"If I chose to, I could do that without the help of a god."
"Ah, yes, but the discernment of a god is greater than that of a mortal. Hoar could enhance your abilities and give you guidance." Tai's signature smile returned with his succinct answer.
The assassin shook his head. "But a god—"
"Hoar asks so little of his followers in return," Tai interrupted quietly. "Only that they share his philosophy and that they enact vengeance by poetic means when possible. I assure you, my faith is not a burden to me. It enhances my life and values. But accepting a god is not a decision that can be reached through logic—it is a decision of the heart."
Entreri was on the verge of a particularly nasty sarcastic remark, but Jarlaxle cut him off. "Perhaps if more people were as clear-headed about their faith as you, dear Tai, my friend would not so despise priests." He smiled at Entreri, who promptly frowned at him. "But we must set aside the philosophical discussion for now and attend to Hector."
Entreri groaned. "You are going to help him as well?"
"Perhaps he has information that can aid us," Jarlaxle said, ever pragmatic. "If he continues to pursue you later, we'll simply kill him, yes?"
The assassin found he could not really argue this point and nodded his agreement. Jarlaxle grinned and produced his healing orb.
He was but a young child. Five years old? Six? He could remember the way his hand looked so tiny grasped in hers, could remember the way she reached out to him with her other hand and cupped his check, covering the welt there. He could also remember her pulling away and coughing blood into her handkerchief and his chest tightening in fear as he realized he was losing her.
Artemis Entreri pulled himself forcibly from his memory, shaking his head clear of his mother's image. Sitting alone by the window of his inn room, however, he found that the memory didn't depart very quickly. The image of his mother's face returned to him, a warm ghost brushing at the edges of his mind only to vanish in the next moment. But those words! If she had really spoken them, could she have known their bitter irony?
Entreri turned his gaze away from the window and the scene below, which consisted of nothing more than a muddy street filled with people, horses, and carts. Instead, the assassin looked into the small mirror above the room's dressing table. His grim reflection stared back at him, and for the first time in his life, he realized he could be looking at the image of either of his abusers. Of course, he was much more slender and well-groomed than either his father or uncle had been, but his angular features and strong jaw line were theirs. The priest of Tyr had implied more than a surface resemblance. Entreri simultaneously rejected and pondered the accusation because it led to a more disturbing question: had his grandfather abused his father and uncle just as they'd abused him? Was he, as a man with no wife or children, the endpoint of some long line of abusers?
The thought had never occurred to him before. But he found that it didn't make any difference. There could never be an excuse for the horrors they'd visited upon their own flesh and blood.
Was there an excuse, then, for the death he'd handed to so many people?
No, it wasn't the same, Entreri immediately answered himself. He had been their son and nephew, respectively, and knowing personally what torture they were visiting upon him, they had less than no excuse. They had been family, and families were not supposed to betray one another.
Entreri, on the other hand, had been a killer among killers. His entire world was built upon the concepts of treachery, destruction, and death, and he was merely a successful player of that game.
Wasn't he? Or had the game at times played him? He'd always believed all his victims to be either criminals or misinformed do-gooders who impeded his progress. But had his path, his worldview, somehow colored his perception? Was that, ultimately, not what Tai had been suggesting the previous night? And what if, due to this colored perception, he'd misunderstood or miscalculated?
A younger Artemis Entreri would not have cared either way. That man had been only concerned with his own survival and with being the best.
The older, wiser Artemis Entreri was also concerned foremost with his survival, but this Artemis also found himself wondering if he should have been more discerning in his choices. And taking time to wonder it at all, he understood, proved he was concerned.
It was similar to the scenario with the girls he and Jarlaxle had saved from the highwaymen, he realized. He remembered asking Jarlaxle, with no small amount of contempt, what they would do with them. And by bothering to ask at all, to even waste his breath, he had unknowingly betrayed his slowly changing attitude.
With a growl of impatience, Entreri mentally shrugged and slammed the door upon all his thoughts. It was time to check on the hated priest of Tyr. With a sigh, the assassin stood and walked to the neighboring room, which he entered without knocking. A pallid Hector lay in the bed, but neither Tai nor Jarlaxle were anywhere to be seen. Likely they were eating lunch downstairs.
Entreri stood at the foot of Hector's bed and scowled at the sleeping form. How he hated the man! And how he despised everything the priest stood for in his mind: blind faith, hypocrisy, idealism, and a living lie.
Hector, apparently sensing the presence of the assassin—or maybe his glare instead—stirred and opened his eyes. "Entreri," he murmured.
The assassin just continued to glare.
"I thought about it," the priest said vaguely. His eyes were half-closed, and he seemed somewhat drugged. Perhaps it was something Tai had given him to either help with the healing or the pain. "And I finally remembered. Omero Entreri. Minor priest in the temple at Memnon. Met him once when visiting the temple there." Hector paused, ostensibly to catch his breath. "We had a particularly lively theological conversation one afternoon. Probably would've never remembered him if not for that. Your father?"
Entreri's scowl could have blasted a layer of skin off the hurt man.
Hector nodded slightly. "Thought so. He seemed . . . an upright and well-educated man."
The assassin snorted. "Educated, yes. He even, in part, passed on some of that education to me. Upright, no. Though I am unsurprised that you cannot tell the difference."
"I have no doubt that you suffered as a child," Hector said, his voice scratchy from his pain. "But that does not excuse your lifestyle."
"I never asked for an excuse," the assassin quipped, "nor do I offer one. Neither am I looking for acquittal. Least of all from you."
Hector frowned. "That is fortunate, for I shall not give it. I will bring you to justice."
Entreri renewed his glare. "What kind of justice, hypocritical priest? Judgment for inadvertently doing your job for you?"
"Guilt is not written in your book, is it?"
"We've covered this already. My victims have not received anything more than what they deserve." Entreri smirked. "And when I kill Marrin Socor, the same will be true for him."
"Evil cannot defeat evil anymore than fire can put out fire." Hector looked ready to growl, but he relaxed suddenly and sighed. "Never mind. What truce may we draw here, Artemis Entreri? For Socor is a man of many evils, and he must be brought to justice. And, obviously, you will reach him first."
The assassin shrugged. "Did you not just answer your own question? We agree on one thing: Socor is an evil man, and he will die. That is the fate of those who play any version of the great game."
"And you?" Irony tinged Hector's voice. "Will you be killed by the game as well?"
"Yes," Entreri replied flippantly. "In the end, I will be stabbed in the back, and I will get no better than what I deserve—whatever that may turn out to be. And in the meantime, I'll be doing your job for you yet again by killing Socor." He laughed at Hector's sour expression.
The door burst open, causing Entreri to jump to the side and draw his weapons. Jarlaxle rushed into the room, turning to face the assassin. He was covered in minor burns and cuts.
"What happened?" the assassin asked.
"It was Socor," Jarlaxle replied. "And he's abducted Tai."