28th Day of Goodmonth, 565 CY
Chapel of Heironeous, Chendl, Furyondy
Argo couldn't help but feel that Heironeous was watching him.
The big ranger looked away from the wall frescos and drummed his fingers on his knees as he sat on the edge of the long pew, distinctively and uncomfortably reminded of his last visit to this room.
Back then, he had looked over to his right to see Talass scowling at him. This time, there was only Unru; now dressed in a simple peasant's long tunic tied with a belt. The illusionist was uncharacteristically quiet as he sat, intermittently nodding off into semi-consciousness.
Bigfellow glanced again to the altar at the far side of the chapel and to the heavy door beyond it, made of the same white marble as the walls. The door to the Room of Return.
Beyond that door, Gaereth Heldenster, the High Priest of Heironeous, was attempting to raise both Tojo and Talass; a feat that, according to the latter's vision, would only be halfway successful.
Argo had again purchased a light green tunic worn over grey trousers. These were made of wool this time however, rather than flax. The ranger also had a new cloak, this one a dark green. Once again, it had been folded and placed underneath him as a makeshift cushion.
He had new scars. New ones to go along with his many old ones. Argo had stared repeatedly at the large scar on his chest, a long one running down his left leg and a smaller one on his right side. He had been healed, but the scars would remain.
He wondered if Caroline would care.
Suddenly desperate to break the silence that had descended over the party, the ranger nudged Unru.
"I forgot to ask you," Argo ventured in a casual voice, "but just as Scurvy John was about to run me through with my own sword, I heard the improbable sound of a rust monster in the vicinity. Now I do seem to remember telling you about our battle in the Hall of Pillars while we were hiding out, Unru. You don't suppose there could have been some kind of audible illusion at work there, do you?"
Despite his grogginess, Unru managed to assume a lofty air of disdain.
"I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about," he replied, but Argo caught the illusionist's smile before Unru turned away again.
Aslan, sitting to Unru's right; the position that had been occupied by Tojo previously, also apparently felt inclined to speak up to keep the silence at bay.
"Sir Dorbin did say you were a brilliant battle tactician, Unru, even if you did come with a rather hefty price tag." The paladin gave the Yatian mage a bitter smile.
Unru returned it in kind, and Aslan could see the flicker of the Revealing Duel in those brown orbs.
"Well, Aslan," the illusionist queried. "Was I worth the price?"
"I'm returning you to Sir Dorbin," the paladin retorted. "What do you think?"
Unru chuckled wearily, but let the silence fall again.
Aslan couldn't deny how useful Unru and his companions had been, or how elated he had been when Elrohir had suddenly shouted with elation upon receiving Monsrek's sending. Sir Dorbin had been waiting when Aslan had first teleported back to Chendl carrying Talass' body, and the knight had accompanied Aslan back to The Pomarj to speed up the return process. Dorbin was back there now, mindresting before returning the final two, Sitdale and Sir Menn. Wainold and his allies were staying behind to help the Suderham citizens find a place of safety. The druid had scoffed at Aslan's offer of coming back for them, saying that they could get along just fine in the wilderness without him, thank you very much.
The paladin took a deep breath and wondered when- or if- he'd ever be able to do that without feeling a tinge of pain. The paladin probably sported more new scars than any of his friends. The marks from the giant crawfish's pincers encircled his waist and much of his left side bore a series of gashes from the looter whose sword he had acquired back on the Aerie. Smaller signs of wounds now healed adorned his right arm and his right side. At least the myriad bruises and broken bones inflicted by Brother Kerin's vicious beating were gone without trace now.
Nesco looked to her left, caught Aslan's eye, and gave him a commiserating smile.
The paladin returned it in kind, which made Lady Cynewine glance away.
Her face flushed again, and that made the scar on her left cheek hurt.
That scar, and the now much-larger one on her chest were the ranger's only physical reminders of their ordeal, but they were enough.
Especially the latter. Examining it earlier in private, she could see that scar tissue now spread partially onto both breasts.
They looked deformed to her own eyes, and far too hideous for anyone else to ever-
Nesco blinked rapidly to head off the tears and tried to chide herself for her selfishness. There were others in worse shape than her.
Others with far worse things to dread.
She tugged on the hemline of her brown leather skirt. It had seemed longer when she'd first tried it on, but now it seemed barely to cover her knees. Nesco wore a dark tan leather overtunic that came down to her waist. It fit well, but she was starting to feel uncomfortably warm.
Nesco turned to her right just in time to catch a wizard's eyes dart away from her.
Cygnus hadn't even realized he'd been staring at Nesco's legs until she had suddenly looked over at him. Embarrassed now; he didn't know if she had seen him, and didn't dare look back, the mage made a show of going through his new salamander skin spell component pouch, his eyes not really seeing the sand, feathers, beads, bat guano pellets and other sundry items his fingers touched on. Unable to shake the feeling that Nesco's eyes were still on him, he tossed the hood of his new grey frock-style robes over his head and gave a fake shiver, despite the fact that the numerous torches lining the walls of the chapel were giving off a fair amount of heat.
The Aardian wizard was also discomfited by the silence that had again blanketed the waiting party, but he couldn't think of any words to break it that wouldn't sound hollow to his ears.
He again fingered the hilt of his dagger. His new dagger. Lamonsten's magical dagger. He hadn't made a claim on it. In fact, everyone had unanimously agreed that the weapon should go to Zantac.
Everyone that is, except Zantac.
The Willip wizard had wanted no part of the weapon, so it was given to Cygnus by default. Both he and Zantac had purchased brand new staffs, which currently lay in their guest chambers elsewhere in the Royal Palace. As it had turned out however, while the Slave Lords had a large amount of personal wealth with them in the form of gems and valuable objects of art, the only magic items besides the dagger that Cygnus and the others had managed to obtain from the three of the Nine they had scavenged was Scurvy John's cutlass and Slippery Ketta's gloves. The former had been sold. The latter had been identified by Cygnus as gloves of swimming and climbing, which went a long way towards explaining how Ketta had managed to swim over a hundred feet in a matter of seconds.
Elrohir had been noticeably keen on those gloves, and they now fitted comfortably over the ranger's hands. He paid no more attention to them now however, than he did to the new scars on his left shoulder and right cheek.
Cygnus glanced over to his right. Their team leader sat slumped, his eyes fixed on his gloved hands resting in his lap, but the mage was sure Elrohir wasn't seeing them.
The silence was intolerable now. Cygnus couldn't not say anything any longer. After all, he reasoned, not having the right words never seemed to stop Elrohir.
And yet somehow, Elrohir's not-right words always seemed to wind up being the right ones after all.
"She'll come back, Elrohir."
The ranger looked over at Cygnus. While he certainly didn't seem comforted by Cygnus' words, he seemed relieved that someone had punctured the balloon that contained the one subject that had been filling everyone's mind. The magic-user heard numerous clearing of throats.
"You know I think the world of Tojo," Zantac, sitting to Elrohir's right on the edge of the pew, commented, "but I can't imagine him returning and Talass not. Tojo died in combat. He told us himself that would be an honorable death. His soul must," the Willip wizard paused to take a deep breath, "be at peace now."
"That may not be the issue," Elrohir responded. The team leader straightened his posture, but his blue eyes turned back towards that marble door. "Talass' raising is contingent on the will of two deities: Heironeous and Forseti. The Archpaladin I admit I still know little of, but The Justice Bringer…" his voice trailed off.
"I don't understand, Elrohir," Nesco said, frowning. "Your wife was a priestess of Forseti-"
"-who I am certain tried to alter the vision He sent her," her fellow ranger interrupted. "Defying the will of the gods is not the path one takes if they ever want to be resurrected."
The bitterness in Elrohir's voice seemed almost like a poison cloud in the holy confines of the chapel.
"You still don't know that, Elrohir," Aslan argued. "Anymore than you did earlier. The Aesir teach us that our fate is immutable, but we don't know what awaits us until the future becomes the present. There's no commandment against doing everything in one's power to assure a desired outcome."
"That's what I always say," put in Cygnus with a grim smile at the paladin.
Aslan frowned at the tall mage. "Manipulating others is a slippery slope, Cygnus. The gods may not mind, but what about those whom you use, even for noble ends?"
Elrohir hadn't seemed to hear this last exchange.
"In some ways, you and Talass had more in common than she and I did, Aslan. At least in matters religious." He fell silent again.
Argo spoke up.
"I just had a thought," the big ranger announced.
"Miracles indeed abound," muttered Aslan, but Bigfellow plowed on, undeterred.
"It's not a very comforting one," Argo warned, then spoke over the resulting groans. "Come on, you all know I don't believe in sugarcoating the truth."
"As Talass would say, the first problem is identifying the truth in the first place," the paladin reminded him.
"True," Bigfellow admitted, "but just assume and bear with me for a moment."
"Do we have a choice?" Zantac asked.
"No. Hear me out. Tojo's death may not have been an honorable one. Now my memory has always been a sieve, but I think I remember Tojo saying it would be honorable if he died in battle during his quest, but he didn't die during his quest."
His voice, which had been rising, abruptly lowered in pitch.
"He died during our quest."
The silence returned again.
"I can't imagine that," Nesco said at length, the anger audible in her voice. "Who on Oerth- or Aarde for that matter- could have been more honorable and heroic than Tojo?" She looked back and forth among her fellow party members. "Come on! You all know it's true! What kind of a king or whatever his liege was called could possibly deny him that last honor?"
"I'm not talking about the perceptions of others, Nesco," replied Argo softly. "I'm talking about how Tojo viewed himself. Who on Oerth- or Aarde- was ever harder on himself than Yanigasawa Tojo was?"
"How about you?" asked Aslan quietly, but Bigfellow ignored him.
"Wait a minute," Zantac cut in, his forehead creased in concentration. "I think you're missing a key point, Argo. If what you say is true and Tojo's death was not an honorable one, then-"
"-then he'd have to come back!" Cygnus finished for his fellow mage. "His honor wouldn't allow him to accept his death; not if the option of returning was opened to him!"
"Come on!" Elrohir nearly spat out the words with an unexpected savagery. "Eternal paradise is yours for the taking, all worldly obligations wiped away with no living soul able to stop you, and you'd throw it all away to return to a lifetime of shame, dishonor, and the pain of failure?"
"Tojo wasn't like us, Elrohir," Aslan said, but the Aardian ranger waved a dismissing hand.
"He was a mortal, Aslan. That's all you need to know. No mortal could refuse that. I doubt Tojo's soul still felt the stain of his dishonor after death."
There was another silence, during which six heads turned towards Nesco Cynewine.
Nesco grimaced while fiddling with her hands. "I wish you'd all stop looking at me like I'm some kind of an expert on this subject."
"Well, you are one up on us, Lady Cynewine," Argo said with his pained smile.
"But-" Nesco struggled for the words. "It wasn't like just taking a stroll. I had-" she hesitated, "I had no sense of self, at least not until near the end, after I'd already decided to return. I had no memory of my previous life, or at least I don't remember thinking of it."
"But you were tempted by what you saw," Elrohir persisted. "The afterlife due the righteous."
Nesco was cut short in both thought and word.
She could almost see The Mountain again.
"Yes," she admitted after a long pause. "I was tempted. Very much so."
Elrohir looked both satisfied and crestfallen at the same time. "See? There you are! Tojo will take the rewards that he has earned and-"
"Why are you doing this to yourself, Elrohir?" Argo rose to his feet, shouting with exasperation.
"Don't you understand?" Elrohir stood up as well and glared down the length of the pew at his fellow ranger. "I knew about Talass' vision from the start! All of our missions to The Pomarj except the first were undertaken on my own free will! I knew one of you wouldn't be coming back, yet I let us go anyway, just because I was tired of being retired!"
Everyone stared at their team leader.
And for a while, it seemed like no one would dare to break the silence anymore.
But of course, eventually someone did.
"Speak for yourself, Elrohir," Argo Bigfellow Junior said calmly. "I went because I wanted to. I knew the danger and I went anyway. You never made me go. End of story."
Elrohir gave his fellow ranger a sour smirk. "You're saying the fact that I wanted to go didn't even factor in your decision a little, Bigfellow?"
"Did I or did I not refuse to go on your second expedition to the stockade?" Argo countered. "Did that win me any friends among the lot of you? No. Did I let that stop me? No. Seems pretty simple to me. I love you like the brother I never had, Elrohir, but you couldn't make me pick an apple against my will, let alone follow you into unending peril."
"I think Argo speaks for all of us, Elrohir," Zantac said, looking up at Elrohir. He then glanced over at Cygnus for support, but the tall wizard looked pointedly away.
"One more item, if I may," Aslan announced, getting to his feet as well and looking steadily at Elrohir, who met the paladin's gaze head-on.
"What do you call not being retired anyway, Elrohir?" Aslan asked.
The ranger looked confused.
"You know what I call it?" the paladin asked and then pointed straight up at the ceiling where an enormous fresco of the god Heironeous, with continual lights blazing from his eyes, brandished a blazing battleaxe against the infernal forces of evil.
"I call it helping people who can't help themselves. I call it doing what both you and Talass have done your entire lives, Elrohir. I call it seeing that justice is done."
Aslan shrugged and sat back down again.
"We paladins call it doing good."
This one time, no one seemed to mind the silence.
And when it was broken, it was not by any voice, but by the grinding sound of a marble door being opened.
Swinging into the chapel on dwarven-made hinges of stone, the square door to the Room of Return, ten foot to a side, slowly opened wide.
Gareth Heldenster came limping into the chapel, one arm on either side draped around an acolyte.
The High Priest's face looked ten years older than when they had last seen it less than an hour before. He trembled in the grasp of his fellow clerics, and his eyes seemed blurry.
Everyone on the pew who was not already standing now did so.
Heldenster looked from the face of one acolyte to another, took several deep breaths and nodded while withdrawing his arms from their shoulders. The two younger priests stood carefully by, ready to grab Gareth if the High Priest seemed about to collapse, but Heldenster seemed to be regaining some strength with each passing moment. His lips moved soundlessly in what the others assumed what a silent prayer.
Then he straightened up to his full height, gave his head a final shake and addressed the party.
"Blessings upon you," he intoned, but it seemed to Elrohir that the High Priest was not meeting any of their eyes. The ranger's heart seemed to twitch and tighten in his chest.
"As all know," Heldenster continued, "there is no greater miracle than the gods may bestow upon us than the return of those who have passed over the Great Divide of the Astral and onto Mount Celestia itself. Such a boon is not always granted, even to the most righteous, for it is often a selfish one, driven by our own sense of loss and not the…"
Gaereth's voice became a buzzing to Elrohir's brain as anger began to build inside the ranger's body. Why was he spouting all this mindless blather? Didn't he know what this wait was doing to them all? To him?
My wife. My dearest. Oh, God. Talass… Please, Elrohir pleaded silently; to Heldenster, to Heironeous, to Forseti, to anyone- please just let him say it. I have to know. I can't stand not knowing. I have to know. I HAVE TO-
It was not Heldenster's voice that snapped Elrohir back to attention, but the sudden movement of the High Priest's arms, which suddenly swept wide, seeming to encompass the whole chapel.
"All hail the power of Heironeous!" Gareth suddenly and unexpectedly shouted, causing not only his audience of seven to flinch slightly, but his two acolytes as well.
"Nothing is beyond the power of The Archpaladin!" Heldenster continued to shout. "His strength and his valor encompass not only his faithful, but even those of like mind and like heart!"
The High Priest's chest swelled with pride, his face broke out in a gigantic smile and his final pronouncement swept through the chapel like a magical tide of irresistible force.
"By the infinite grace of the Invincible One, both souls have returned!"
There was one final moment of silence.
It was very brief.
And then the chapel exploded in shouts of relief and screams of joy. Elrohir didn't even register who he was hugging or who was hugging him.
And then after; who knew how long it was, when he thought he had screamed himself hoarse and cried himself dry, Elrohir could see the same sense of wonder in the eyes of his companions.
A sense almost of disbelief.
"I'll never forget to honor this day for the rest of my month," said Aslan, wiping the last of his own tears of relief away, "but I'll be the first to admit I don't understand it."
"Same here. How could the vision have been wrong?" Cygnus wondered.
It was with some reluctance that Elrohir turned his attention away from his new-found happiness to this question. No easy answer came to him, but he couldn't see its importance at this point anyway.
"It was wrong. The vision was wrong," he said, shrugging. "Either Talass misinterpreted it in some way, or maybe it wasn't a vision at all. Merely a bad dream. Maybe-"
"Elrohir," Argo suddenly interrupted.
His team leader looked over at the big ranger.
Argo wasn't smiling anymore. His face was looking back towards the High Priest.
Elrohir turned to follow Bigfellow's gaze.
Heldenster wasn't smiling anymore, either. A new solemnity rested on the cleric's lined face. It seemed so incongruously deep that it was almost a sorrow.
And he was looking directly at Elrohir.
"Normally," the High Priest began, casting his gaze down to the marble floor, his voice no longer booming, "it is mandated that those who have made this greatest of journeys must rest, alone and undisturbed, for a time. But the priestess Talass has given me a message of such urgency that I feel I must pass it on to you immediately. She has asked to speak to you, Elrohir."
Gaereth looked back up to meet Elrohir's eyes.
There was no mistaking the sadness in them now.
"I think you should go and see her."