The Korcari Wilds, 9:28 Dragon
He came around slowly. Wherever he was, he felt warm, safe. He could hear a fire crackling. The naked flesh of his back was resting against something soft and yielding. It was even more comfortable than his bed in the Keep.
His right hand stirred the surface beneath him. An animal pelt, as silky as rabbit fur but much thicker. Scents of smoke and meat and herbs and seasoned wood vied invitingly for his attention.
It would be a shame to open his eyes. For once, everything felt right. He felt right. Peaceful.
But his deep sleep was drawing away. Full consciousness loomed. He reached for his pendant. Fingers touched nothing but the cool skin on his collarbone.
That juddered him wide awake. His eyes snapped open. The ceiling above him was unplastered: wooden boards resting on heavy beams. To his right, they were blackened. He dropped his gaze.
The druid girl was there, squatting beside a large fireplace. She was turning her wand over and over, giving it a sulky look as if it had wronged her. So it had really not been a dream. He had somehow been flung into another world, far away from the people he knew. Far from Elanee, and far from his god.
"Your pardon…?"
She stared at him with a scornful curl of the lip. He had been expecting that. The girl reminded him strongly of one of his sister's friends during her rebellious years.
He mimed putting on a pendant. She rolled her eyes, then pointed her wand towards a corner of the room where his armour lay heaped on the floor. The bronze Eye of Tyr hung above the pile, sharing a hook with a bunch of dried leaves. It looked like the mint that grew in lavish quantities around streams in the Sword Mountains, flourishing even where nothing else could.
The sight of the pendant calmed him. Now that he knew where it was, he did not feel he needed to put it on immediately. Instead, he became aware of his next problem, which was that he was naked from the waist up. His shirt must have been removed to allow the wound in his side to be dressed.
A bandage held a poultice in place. He sniffed. There was the smell of vegetable matter, as well as something more astringent in the mix, but he could give nothing in it a name.
Even if he had excellent reasons for reclining on furs without a shirt, Brother Ingelnicht would not have approved. The strict seminarian would have condemned even more vociferously lying around without sufficient clothes on in the presence of the opposite sex, no matter their age or character. Casavir almost smiled as he imagined how the old priest would have reacted if he had met Harcourt and Sand. With an apoplectic fit, perhaps…
Immediately afterwards he felt a pang of guilt. Ingelnicht had been set in his ways, but he had been a kind tutor on the whole, especially with his favourites, of whom Casavir had been one. It could not be right to laugh at his memory. Could it? There had been far worse men in Neverwinter occupying far higher stations.
Something poked him in the bicep. It was the tip of the girl's black wand. That was all the warning he received before she dropped a hot plate of food on his chest. The roasting hot earthenware on his flesh caused him much more pain than her ice cantrip had the other day.
He winced. She smirked, and stalked back to the fire.
The food smelled undeniably enticing. He moved the plate hurriedly to rest on the pelt away from his skin. Bread fried in dripping. He could not remember when he had last eaten.
He forced himself to eat slowly, taking moderate bites and chewing ten times before swallowing. But he was ravenous. Had he been alone in the room, he would have devoured the greasy bread by the handful. The taste reminded him of the simple meals they had made in the mountains, those times when it had been safe enough to light a fire. It was not quite the same though: the fat was not sheep fat, the bread came from a different, denser grain.
After finishing every morsel, he looked round for somewhere to wash his hands, but saw nothing. Then he realised that he was extremely thirsty. He mimed taking a drink from a beaker. The girl pretended not to notice him. In any case, it was poor manners on his part to treat her as if she were paid to wait on him.
He stood up. His side twinged a little, but felt much improved on yesternight. Whatever was in the poultice was working. Despite the high ceiling, a couple of the beams that supported it were so oversized – like tree trunks – that he realised he would have to stoop to cross the room.
He looked round, and spied his shirt balled up at the far end of the animal skin bed. There was a proper bed in the room too, perhaps used by the girl or Flemeth or both. In Neverwinter some of the most impoverished families had to share one bed. If they could afford a bed. Or a house.
Sometimes he wondered why he had not done more to help the slum dwellers. He had certainly known about them. Seen them sloping through the alleys with pinched cheeks. But it had always seemed simpler to leave those matters to the Ilmateri. Tyr stood for justice through martial valour above all. It was outside the seminary and Church that he had learned more about other kinds of courage. Or started to.
His shirt, once unrolled, proved to be a mess of blood and sweat, and had quite literally been cut from his body. It would need soap, water, and an hour of work with a needle and thread to make it remotely wearable.
The girl snapped something in her guttural language, and a heavy cloth fell over his head. It proved to be a clean shirt made of a dense, light material akin to linen, and a woollen overtunic.
"Thank you."
She threw a leather belt at him. She really was very like his sister's terrifying friends.
He used his old shirt as a rag to wipe the grease from his hands before pulling the new clothes on, and loosely fastening the belt so that it held the tunic closed, but did not put pressure on his injured side.
The girl pointed to the door, and poked his back with her wand.
"That is not necessary," he told her. He was sure she understood his essential meaning because the next time she jabbed him, she did it harder. He moved to the door, feeling like an ox being driven by a short-tempered wagoner.
Outside he was glad of the wool tunic. The contrast between the drowsy warmth within and the bite in the wind across the threshold was stark. All the more so in the dawn. Pale light was eating into a charcoal miasma. The light came from behind the house; if the heavens were not utterly alien to his own, then that meant the east must lie in that direction too. A mist clung to the ground to the west as far as the limits of his vision.
The thought that he was going to be driven away into the unknown landscape, away from fire and food and the abode of the woman Flemeth who knew his language, hovered uncomfortably at the front of his consciousness, in the way that, according to his experience, disagreeable ideas tended to do.
But he need not have worried. She pointed to a bucket containing water and a metal ladle, and then to a small hut a few yards away from the main building. The privy, he assumed. This world could not be that different.
He knelt by the bucket, and brought a ladle of water to his lips. It looked fresh. It smelled fresh too. Feeling very aware that the girl was watching him as if he were an animal on display in a pleasure garden, he slaked his thirst, then emptied another ladle of water over his face and hair. If she had not been there, he would have stripped and washed himself all over.
It was a relief when he made towards the privy that she did not attempt to follow him. Instead, when he emerged into the open air a short time later, he found her dropping a pile of gear against one wall of the house. There was a roll of weighted net, two hand nets, a sack, and a broadsword on a leather baldric. Without thinking, he walked across and reached for the broadsword.
Both belt and sword were old, but seemed in good condition. The grip was worn, though pleasantly so. It let the hilt sit smoothly in his hand. He drew it, and tested the edge. Sharp enough. A whetstone could have made it still sharper. He resheathed it.
The girl had been watching him. Se gestured to encompasses the nets, sword, and sack, then pointed at him.
"Now?" he asked.
She made the same gesture again, and this time muttered a string of uchs and esses. The aspirate sound at the end almost certainly meant "idiot!"
So he was to be her packhorse, not her draught oxen. As a knight, and thus, as his parents had enjoyed boasting about, one of the nobility, he should perhaps consider it beneath him. Instead the prospect of simple work felt like a gift. As the Keep's garrison had expanded and submitted to Kana's organisational energies, there had been less and less for him to do. Since no one had needed meals preparing, wood collecting or the horses grooming, in the end training and prayers had taken over almost everything.
First he shouldered the sword. It was frustrating to be unable to ask her what kind of danger the girl anticipated. What lurked in the wildlands? Frustrating too that he could not ask her where Flemeth was. Flemeth, who was her…mother? Grandmother? Guardian? She had been left to her own devices when he arrived, and again today. Whatever they were too each other, overprotectiveness did not seem to feature markedly in their relationship.
He scooped up the fishing gear, crouching rather than bending to keep his side straight. As soon as he had tucked the roll of net under his arm, the girl was off.
She started out by taking light, sure steps in the direction that he thought of as the west. The direction he had approached the house from yesterday. After a short distance, the form ahead of him changed, flowing smoothly into the shape of a grey wolf. At the edge of the clearing, where long tawny grasses sprouted, and bent trees bore leaves criss-crossed with yellow veins, the beast paused. Pricking up her ears, she gave one short huff of a bark. Her tail brushed the ground.
"I will follow," he told her, knowing that she would not understand, but wanting to speak anyway. He moved towards her; once he came within a spear's length of her muzzle, she turned and trotted away.
The walk was long. They passed through areas of bog, and over the barren, pebble-strewn crests of shallow undulations in an unpeopled landscape. Sometimes they crossed streams, or trod soft-footed through stands of pine. Birds fluttered here and there, haunting patches of tree or shrub, but he could not say if they were different to the ones on the Sword Coast. Most were small and brown and dull.
That could be deceiving. Elanee had told him that, before transforming into a mistle thrush that perched on his wrist. Let him stretch out each wing in turn for examination. What seemed like grey at a distance was revealed to be lines of cream and silver feathers tipped with coal. The breast was white, but marked all over with tiny brown scallops that a skilled clothier would have rejoiced to have designed.
The wolf often ran ahead, then pelted back and woofed at him to hurry. Once he lost sight of the shapeshifter altogether, and was just ready to believe that he had been abandoned in the wilderness when she reappeared from a thicket, swallowing the last of an unfortunate rodent.
The sun was high as they reached the shore of a pool. He had never seen the like, not even in the mountains. The base of the pool was a single piece of smooth rock, the colour of a midwinter sky. The surface was large enough to contain Castle Never twice over, but for as far as he could see, the water was never more than a couple of feet deep.
Fishing was not a skill he had ever cultivated – not even after Shandra Jerro had arranged for carp ponds to be dug on the Keep's western fields. After watching his bafflement for some minutes, pink tongue lolling out in what looked like amusement, the druid girl had returned to her human form and stomped over to him, muttering and hissing under her breath.
She grabbed the weighted net from under his arm, and marched along the shore with it, stopping at the point where a wide, shallow brook fed the pool. Unrolled, it emerged that the net was about seven yards long by one deep. Each end was attached to a sharpened stake. With the aid of a pebble from the riverbed, she hammered one stake into the earth on the near bank The ground in that area was covered in a low-lying plant with small leaves like clover. Under the pressure of his feet, it released a sweet scent, not comparable to anything he had met in his past life.
The girl was not inclined to let him linger and appreciate the local fauna. She shoved the other stake into his hands, and pointed to the opposite bank. He had suspected she would. He pulled off his boots, and rolled up his leggings to the knee. The water was very cold, though he had been through much worse. In the winter, there were streams in the Sword Mountains that had chunks of ice floating down them. This river crossing only served to refresh his tired feet. The bed was smooth; utterly without weeds.
He stepped out onto the farther bank, feeling stronger than he had since the last battle. They stayed by the pool for some hours. In her bear form, the girl waited on all fours a few feet from the bank, her black nose almost touching the surface. Every now and then, she would lunge, and sometimes her jaws would snap shut on nothing save water drops, but occasionally they would close on a fish. She ate the smaller ones on the spot, and threw the larger specimens onto the shore with a twist of her neck.
His efforts with one of the hand nets were less successful. He saw the fish gliding like dark ghosts under the surface well enough; still, the light on the water played tricks on his vision. He would swish the net down, and next spy his target some yards to the right. After something bit his calf muscle hard, and he started in pain and shock, he retreated to the bank. He now knew what sound bears made when they laughed. The one in front of him was overcome, sitting on her haunches in the pool, breath wheezing in and out as if in the throws of an asthmatic fit.
After that, he confined himself to retrieving the fish thrown onto land, and storing them in the hand nets that he rested at a secure angle in the shallows. He had heard that this was the correct thing to do; perhaps Arleg the gamekeeper had told him that when he was a boy.
During a pause in the onslaught of flying fish, which the bear had been aiming at him deliberately, he wandered up and down the shore. It seemed wrong that he felt…well. At ease. He was in another world being looked after by strangers. Tyr was gone. The god had no presence here. He was far away from everything he had ever known and loved. He should be in the depths of misery, and yet was not.
There's never a stream or roadside bare
Too mean for the low gods to abide there…
The harmless piece of doggerel was one he had heard from poor Grobnar; he had been attempting to ignore him at the time. Like many of the gnome's verses and queer notions, the lines had stayed with him after the serious matters he had been considering had diminished into long-gone nothings.
He felt sadness when he thought about Grobar; intense concern when he thought about Elanee, and sick to the heart when he remembered Katriona. Dead over three months, Tyr preserve her soul. And if he could feel that much, then his own soul must be intact. The dislocation had moved his body, but he was still himself. He was still Casavir of Neverwinter.
The bear threw a fish at him. Sometimes it was a relief to be hit by a fish, even a vast one with spiny purple fins. He stowed it carefully in a hand net.
By the time the girl was ready to return to the house, the sack was crammed with eight fish caught by the bear, and another five from the weighted net. She had killed each one by sticking a heavy claw through its brain before letting him pack it away. A sign of the decent nature that might lie buried under the adolescent discourtesy.
As before, she turned into a wolf and ran ahead of him. The way was slower this time – thirteen large fish made for an awkward extra weight; every mile or so, he had to change the arm that was holding it. Aside from that, the sun began to set at his back soon after they departed the pool, and he had to concentrate on where he put his feet.
It was when, by his reckoning, they should have been a mile away from Flemeth's abode that he saw a straggling copse some hundred yards to his right beyond an area of bog and small rocky tumuli. The trees were not pines. They looked like the kind that had surrounded him when he found himself in the Korcari Wilds.
It would just be a small diversion; one that was necessary to satisfy his curiosity. Of the wolf there was no sign again. He would not be surprised if he found the girl already sitting by the fire when he returned with her catch.
Even if there was a portal within those trees, he told himself as he picked his way around the reeds and patches of standing water, it would do him no good. Merely return him to the uncanny Marchers' Way. Having already been trapped there once, he had no wish to be so again. Though Flemeth seemed to understand its workings…
There was no portal in the wood. No sign of the little track he had followed. He was not sure if he was in the right place at all. What he did find, surrounded by a wall of spindly bushes and trees, was a ruin. Slender columns and arches encircled a floor of smooth white tiles. Leaf tracery decorated a few of the standing remains, losing a battle for prominence against the green of real leaves. Creepers and ferns were advancing across every carved surface.
He had seen many fallen wonders: an abandoned clan seat of the dwarfs, a few discreet survivals from the age of the Kings, burned-out mansions of the Oligarchy, and the monuments of an imperial people who had loved the earth more than the heavens.
This place was different. Even desolate, its lines forced the eye upwards. He stood at the jagged limit of the floor tiles admiring. A few hours ago, he had seen a still pool that seemed to merge into the sky. In the embrace of the curving stone walls, he could believe he was a minnow being drawn up past sea-smoothed rock and fronds of kelp towards the gaze of the setting sun.
Then suddenly the girl was next to him, a human once again. She said something long and rolling and completely incomprehensible. But for once she did not sound scornful.
She walked directly across the middle of the floor to that part of the wall where the creepers grew thickest; so thick that he was not sure how much masonry remained underneath them. Pushing the creepers aside with her arm, she beckoned him.
He wished she had not shown him what lay there. A face jutted out of the wall. It had powerful snarling jaws, and staring eyes. In shape, it could have been a bear, or a wolf, or a dragon. Its sculptor had been more interesting in hewing the sharp teeth than in the detail of the snout and ears. Time, too, had worn away many features.
"A foul creation," he commented in a heavy tone. The girl raised her eyebrows, and shrugged. She let the tendrils fall, so that the leaves covered it again. He wanted to believe that someone had placed the face there at a later date; an ignorant newcomer with no understanding of the purity the first architect had achieved.
Purity. He was a stranger dressed in a borrowed tunic carrying a sack of dead fish on his back. To think of such a word now…but that should not matter.
A man was free to strive to be better than himself, nobler-spirited, whether he was a beggar or a lord. Old Ingelnicht had been fond of lecturing on that point.
They retraced their steps across the paving. He wandered; she strode.
A few yards into the forest, she stood stock still. Listened. Human hearing was clearly insufficiently keen, for she shifted back into a wolf, her head cocked, ear twitching. He understood what the stiff tail and the rapid rise and fall of her ribcage under the thick grey fur meant.
He dropped the sack and fishing gear, drew the broadsword from his sheath, and threw the baldric to the side.
"Get behind me," he told the wolf. As she turned, he pointed to show his meaning.
She ran straight towards him. At first, he thought she was intent on spitting herself on his broadsword, but the flap of black wings much too close to his face for comfort explained her plan. The wolf was gone; to judge by its cawing, the crow was some distance above and behind him. In a sense, she had followed his instruction. He smiled.
Three figures ambled out of the tree cover. They were humanoid. Two were the size of humans; one approximated a dwarf. But their faces were wrong. Distorted.
They reminded him of the spasming corpses he had seen in the lair of a Shadow Priest. Yet these creatures appeared to be alive. In the way that maggots were alive.
They paused at the edge of the ruin. Sniffed the air. Brandished their weapons. Yowled. Grunted.
It was his duty to make peace. Sometimes only the final peace would suffice.
How foolish of them to waste time on display. The little one had a crossbow; he could neutralise that easily. If only the girl had provided him with a warhammer instead of a sword. This would be butchery; with a hammer, he could have ended it all in three strong blows.
He charged, quickly closing the distance between them. The one with the crossbow was still spanning the string.
Far too late. He was at close quarters now. He liked the look of them even less.
The two tall ones both swung at him wildly at the same time. Two notched long sword blades looping through the air. He parried both.
With a quick step to the side and a twist of his wrist, one of the longsword's was dislodged from its owner's grasp. The creature – its face was like a skull with mummified skin stretched over it – seemed to have enough emotion to be taken aback.
He delivered a savage kick to its head as it bent to retrieve its sword, then parried another clumsy blow from its doppelganger.
He had not forgotten the archer of the group. It was hovering, trying to find a clear shot and failing. Soon it would realise it had to retreat to get the line of sight it needed. No chance.
He caught the arm of the remaining sword-creature with his left hand, and bent it up and back. The resistance was more than he expected. But it still ended as he thrust the whole length of his broadsword through its stomach, right to the hilt.
Black slime poured out of its mouth. It stank like rotten flesh. Disgusted, he propelled the twitching, stinking carcass backwards at a rush.
The crossbow went thunk. He observed the head of the bolt emerge from near the spitted monster's breast. Remarkably, after two death blows, it still struggled weakly, reaching towards his throat, or towards the hilt sticking out of its torso.
To his side, he could hear the creature he had kicked start to pull itself up, giving a gurgling snarl. Quickly, he calculated the angle necessary.
With a wrench, he pulled his sword free. The thing's guts spilled over the grass as it collapsed. A sweeping cut decapitated its pathetic crossbow-bearing adjutant, that had been sheltering stunned behind it.
The last survivor of the trio had learned some caution. It circled him, snarling, but staying out of the immediate reach of his broadsword.
He feinted. It jumped back.
He made another feint. It hopped to the side, and made a rattling sound that might have been laughter.
It had completely failed to notice the wall at its back. The third time he lunged, it had nowhere to dodge. Its retreat hit solid stone.
Panicking, it raised its longsword ready to parry a downward swing. He gritted his teeth, and changed direction at the last second to make a brutal cut that bit deep into its wrist. The blade of his broadsword lodged in bone.
He could pull it free, but there were quicker ways to end the business. Without hesitating, he seized the monster's hand, which stubbornly retained the hilt of its longsword, and bent it round. He gave it no chance to defend itself.
It screeched more as he snapped its mangled wrist than it did as he drove its own sword through its chest. More black slime flooded from the wound, and the horrible mouth. The teeth within were small and needle-thin, like a pike's.
He turned away in revulsion, lingering by the corpse only long enough to pull his broadsword free. If more of these beings were at large in the area, he did not want to be unarmed. Admittedly, to judge by the skill of the ones he had encountered, he could despatch more of them bare-handed.
The thrill of battle began to subside. He felt sick. His head swimming, he made his way back to the spot where he had abandoned the fishing gear and the day's catch. He knew the nausea would vanish in a few minutes; it always had before.
A crow swept past his shoulder to perch on the nets. It spread its wrings, croaking raucously.
"I am sorry you had to watch that," he said to the bird, though nothing he had seen of the girl made him think she was likely to be sensitive to such bloody spectacles. He supposed he spoke out of habit; to hear his voice utter the words of care and fine-feeling that became a paladin.
The girl took the place of the crow. She stood a moment with her arms folded, regarding him with an inscrutable look. Then she rested her fist on her left breast, and bowed.
"You're welcome."
That was his allowance of friendliness for the day. Immediately afterwards, she shooed him away from the fishing gear, herding him from the ruin as far as the bank of a woodland stream.
There she made him wash his hands first, thoroughly; after that, she signed to show he should take off his tunic. It was covered in spots of the black ichor of the beasts he had slain. He obeyed, thinking she meant him to wash it. Instead, she used a branch to drag it onto a shingle beach, and set fire to it with a simple cantrip. His shirt followed. It was darkened with blood too.
He understood what he had to do as his tunic and shirt crumbled into ash. He washed his torso and arms, immersed his head in the part of the stream where the water was deepest and fastest flowing, submerged the broadsword afterwards, holding it under and wiping the blade with a strip of moss until every speck of pollution was gone. Finally he scrubbed his hands again, letting the gravel of the streambed rub against his nails.
Even so, the girl would not let him shoulder the sack of fish until he had shown her his clean palms.
His regret at leaving the beautiful ruin behind was obscured entirely by his relief at leaving the corpses. The headless trunk of the crossbow wielder was still jerking like the carcass of a chicken with a wrung neck. He gave each ragged heap a wide berth.
For the remainder of the journey, the girl kept to her human form. Sometimes she walked beside him, shooting him side-long glances from her pale eyes. At other times, she dashed ahead, then waited for him to catch up with a bored pout. He did not want to consider why she had decided to offer him closer company on this last stretch. He was cold and self-conscious enough without the tunic as it was.
Their return to the bent old house did not mean immediate rest. The fire needed to be laid, the extra fish to be hung in the smokehouse and the ones for dinner gutted, and fresh water needed to be drawn from a small well that lay concealed at the back of the dwelling. The girl proved as adept as ever at showing him with signs and expressions what tasks she required him to do. He suspected that she could have fit in seamlessly with the matriarchal drow of the Underdark.
He tried miming to show that he would like a replacement shirt. She shrugged, and very firmly indicated that if he was cold, he should put another log on the fire. Or put himself on the fire. One of the two.
He was not cold. He put another log on the fire anyway.
The largest of the fish was sizzling in a tray of butter above the flames when Flemeth at last reappeared. She was in her peasant garb. Her hair looked windswept, though when he last went outside, the night had been still. Her yellow eyes raked over the scene: him squatting by the hearth, the girl peeling the bark from a branch with a pocketknife.
"Fetch the man something to wear. We are not quite Chasind yet."
The girl jumped up, and began to speak quickly, pointing at him at intervals with a manner that seemed more excited than was her wont. When she put her hands together in order to swing an invisible sword through the air, he realised she must be describing the fight by the ruin.
"That's as may be," said Flemeth, "but he still needs a shirt. Off with you, girl."
The druid girl threw up her hands, and stalked away. She was disappearing up a ladder as he turned the fish over to fry on its other side. Then he looked at Flemeth.
Her chin and cheekbones looked rather sharp as she returned his gaze. Her mouth was turned down at the corners.
"That girl is not destined for you, man of Neverwinter. Her fate lies elsewhere."
He was surprised that she addressed the topic directly. Surprised too at her precise choice of words. Destined? What was the girl destined for?
"She is far too young for me," he hastened to assure her. "I would never touch a child."
"I have heard many men make such promises before, and break them too."
"I am not many men."
Flemeth gave a dry chuckle. "No…you're not, are you?"
They made eye contact again, briefly. He broke off to add another handful of dried herbs to the melted butter. They smelled appetising. Like pine needles mixed with thyme and sage.
"Who is she?"
"Morrigan is my daughter. The last of all my daughters, but not the least, as I am sure you know by now."
He nodded. The girl – Morrigan – had spirit, even if he was not sure where it would lead her. He hoped for her sake that it would be down a lighter path than Qara's. And a happier one than his own.
"The fish is ready," Flemeth remarked, as Morrigan herself reappeared feet first, scuttling down the ladder with the ease of a Luskan sailor. She threw a clean shirt at him.
Feeling huge relief in receiving such a simple thing, he pulled it on. He had set a platter to warm by the hearth, and deposited the fish on that. It was so large that its head stuck out over the rim.
About to ladle some of the butter and herbs over the pink-tinged scales, he was forced to stop abruptly when Morrigan darted forwards, her pocket knife drawn. Before he could say anything, she had cut several thick chunks of flesh free from the bones, and fled. The door fell shut behind her.
Bemused, he emptied the ladle onto the much-diminished fish.
"She is lacking in manners," said Flemeth. "I am at fault there. Living in the wilderness as we must, the tedium of tutoring her in the art of sitting at table, making small talk and using the correct cutlery at the approved time seemed an unnecessary burden on my time and patience." She gestured to the fish. "Eat."
"Will you not - ?"
She shook her head. He was starving again. Despite knowing that she would not care a fig if he tore the meat off with his teeth, his habits of restraint and neatness, ingrained long ago, obliged him to divide the fish flesh into small chunks before allowing himself to eat.
The first bite melted in his mouth. It was excellent. So different to the white bait stew the cook at the Keep had tormented them with at the end of every ten-day.
"Of course," Flemeth continued, "we are not utterly bereft of company here. In less than six nights, for example, a party of templars from Lothering are going to reach this place. They will have blood on their minds."
He was glad he had not rushed his meal. He might have choked on it. "Lady, do you mean to say that they seek your death?"
As he understood it, a templar was a warrior sworn to defend the shrine of his god. Not someone who went on missions to kill women and children.
The old woman was serene. "Of course they do."
"But – why?"
"Custom. Ambition. Malice. I live with my daughter outside their rule and strictures. At liberty to use our magic as we see fit. This wilderness is our refuge and our domain. Such freedom is intolerable to them, brought up to revere the yoke and the whip from their earliest years." Her gaze intensified. "The stories – myths - about me only serve as a spur to their bloodlust."
That was clearly not a full explanation. Yet it was not completely incredible either. He could well remember walking through a deserted lodge on the eastern side of Neverwinter Wood. The corpses of its half-orc owners were laid outside on the grass, the consequence of a visit from a party of Greycloaks who had heard a rumour of misbehaviour, and taken both matters and the family's valuables into their own hands. There was no penalty for them: after the war with Luskan, able-bodied soldiers were too precious a resource to be yielded up to justice. Of course, if a baying Neverwinter mob had called for their lynching, it might have been different.
He put the dish down, finding that his appetite had vanished. "If such propensities drive them, then I deplore it."
She did not seem to be disturbed by his cautious phrasing. "When they come, they will hunt for me, and find me nowhere. They know nothing of my hiding places, and less of me. But Morrigan – should they catch her, they will not be gentle. She has said many times that she would rather die than be trapped like a bird in a cage. I do not know if they would even give her the choice."
He was aware that he was being manipulated. He had no doubt at all that both Flemeth and her wild daughter could escape from almost any threat imaginable. But he wanted to know why. So, naturally, Flemeth changed the subject.
"I have passed my time today most pleasantly." Her dark voice was all at once brightened with a note of sweetness. "Your world is far more interesting than I had given it credit for. So many living gods and spirits, and enchanters held in positions of high honour. Such civilisation!"
He stared. "You travelled to my world?"
"Why, certainly. I wished to know more about the stranger I chanced upon on the Marcher's Way, and what better way than to visit his homeland?"
A flood of recollections surged through him. Elanee. The Keep. The city, evacuated and guarded by a skeleton company of soldiers and a few officers of the Watch. He had left it all behind. Not intentionally, but the result was the same. At least he was missing the redoubled political manoeuvring that would be proceeding now the crisis was over.
"Was it well? Did you see many people? Were the refugees returning to the city?"
Flemeth shrugged. "I saw no refugees. The one town I passed through was covered in garlands, and music was playing in the streets. The people there were celebrating the departure of the local chief and his warband for a battle somewhere." She waved a hand in dismissal. Battles did not interest her.
"What was the chief called?"
"He had an odd name. Let's see, the common folk were shouting it as the procession passed through the gate…Neverthorn. That was it."
Recognising the name instantly, he nevertheless had to question his memory. His attention to his history lessons had not always been flawless. Still, the story of Neverthorn had been of the sort to catch the interest of a ten-year-old boy.
"Lord Neverthorn was the last of the Kings of Neverwinter. He was killed in the Battle of Blackbridge along with most of his army. About three hundred years ago."
His host had been wandering around Neverwinter, a town in her estimation, over two hundred and sixty years before he was born. That could not possibly be right.
Flemeth clicked her tongue. "Such a shame. He was a handsome boy. Reminded me of a young prince I met once. Or was it a king-in-exile?" There was absolutely no confusion in her tone, or in the keenness of her eyes.
For the first time that day, he wondered if he had gone mad, or was trapped in a strange dream. Perhaps in reality he was stumbling blind in the dark around the lost corridors of the Illefarn palace.
"Princes come here?"
"Only if they are brave. And need my aid, for they certainly do not visit for the pleasure of my company." Her lips twitched. "I make…bargains. Are you willing to make a bargain with me, Sir Casavir?"
The yellow of her eyes darkened to amber. Hawk eyes, snake eyes, dragon eyes. There were paladins who would have clutched their holy symbol and prayed at the mere sight of her. He had no wish to make a bargain with such a woman. Yet he also knew no ill of her, save that she had had the temerity to give him shelter and healing when he was lost.
"What do you suggest?"
"Kill the templars. Do that task for me, and I will ensure that you reach your own land safely. If I am feeling particularly generous, I will even send you back to your own time. You do still wish to return, don't you?"
He paused. "I do wish it." He thought his answer was true, but he was full of doubt. Back to Neverwinter and the power games, the corruption. Aarin had been a good man, and he had left. Casavir had stayed. Which of them had been right?
He winced. The injury in his side had stung him, though it had caused him no difficulties throughout the day.
"If I refuse, what will happen to me?"
Flemeth gave one of her disdainful smiles. "That I cannot answer. Probably you will be very cold – you may find it less than comfortable to shelter in a house after fanatics have burned it to the ground."
"Fanatics? You mean the templars?"
"Of course I mean the templars. Overgrown children dosed on lyrium to keep them sufficiently insane, and given swords to play with instead of dolls." The contempt in her voice was entirely real, he believed, and not assumed for his benefit. Such a note of bitter sincerity was new from her.
"I would not let these people hurt you or your daughter. Not while I live. No bargain or pact could bind me more than my own word. Nevertheless…"
"…hmm?"
"…I am a knight. Not a butcher or a soldier or a bodyguard. I want to talk to these templars. I want to know who they are, and what drives their actions, in their words, or as close to it as possible. You could be the interpreter."
Flemeth laughed aloud. The laugh was pleasant – gentle. It was the only aspect of her that was untouched by a painful sharpness of mind and manner. "I fear the only way such a scheme could work would be if each templar was laid flat and bound with triple knots. Of course, if you could arrange that, I would be happy to translate for you. It would be a novel experience. My advanced years don't allow me many of those."
"If it must be. They will speak, and be made to listen." He was not agreeing to any bargain, he told himself. In Neverwinter, merchants made deals by shaking hands – the left hand though, always. To shake with the right was considered bad luck. He did not know how Ammon Jerro made his pacts, and preferred not to.
"There may be a simpler method. I favour simple solutions, provided they do not abet stupidity." She stood up. For an old woman, her movements looked fluid and effortless. She noticed him watching. "I have lived a long time. That is not the same as being decrepit, senile, or at the mouth of the grave."
She rooted around on the shelves near the hearth. After removing the lids from a couple of earthenware jars and sniffing, then giving the contents a look of revulsion, she found what she sought. He braced himself for what was coming.
"Drink," she said, handing the vessel to him. A dark fluid lapped against its sides. "It will permit you to communicate with the templars. If I had a choice, I would choose not to understand them. Their ideas are inevitably primitive and violent. But you are stubborn, so I expect you will persist until you have discovered your error for yourself."
It did not look appetising. He did not think she would try to poison him, but the possibility that the drink had mind-altering – or controlling – properties was more plausible. What was the name of the substance given to templars? Lyrium? This was one of thousands of situations that his training in the seminary had not prepared him for.
Impatiently, Flemeth recaptured the jar, and took a gulp herself. "Thirty years old, and as fresh as if it were set down yesterday. I am not trying to kill you, young man, I assure you, and the only enchantments I am working on you are my powers of persuasion."
He paused again, then nodded. If he had been on the Sword Coast, he would never have touched the brew. He was not on the Sword Coast. He took back the jar, and drank. The taste matched the smell.
"What does it contain?" he asked. It was the question he should have asked before he let his lips touch the stuff.
"Only a few ingredients. Chalsind brandy, dragonthorn, felandris. The active element is blood."
He considered sticking his finger down his throat to make himself throw up. She shook her head in amusement.
"My blood, naturally. Well, what did you expect? I am a witch, and an apostate, and live almost alone on the edge of a swamp." He half-expected to hear Lila Farlong butting in to dispute the nature of the terrain beyond the house: fen, bog, or marsh. Definitely not a swamp. "Did you think I would make my potions from flower-dew and starlight? Really. Your world is not so different to mine."
He was about to ask what the potion would do to him when Morrigan returned. Although she had left via the main door, she re-entered the room by sliding down the ladder. That puzzled him, until he remembered the crow.
"Has he not eaten his fish? What a waste." The girl grabbed the plate from the floor, and set to work on the remains. "Perhaps there are not fish in his world. His idiocy at the lake was a thing to be seen. A Chalsind infant would have had more skill."
He blinked, then felt a smile spread across his face. She sounded exactly as he had imagined she would.
"Why is he smiling? I have taken his food away. The fool should be angry."
"He's not a bear, girl," said Flemeth. "He has agreed to deal with some templars for me. By talking to them."
The girl scoffed. "Talking to them! I saw him turn Darkspawn into mud with a few strokes of a sword. Why waste time -" she broke off. Her eyes narrowed as she looked at him.
"Conversation, I was once told, should be the first weapon in a knight's armoury." It had been useless against the orcs. And in Neverwinter, speech served to conceal as much as to display people's true nature.
"What do these knights do after they have had their throats torn out?" Morrigan demanded. She had adjusted at once to his sudden ability to make himself understood. If she felt any embarrassment over what she had said in his hearing, which he doubted, she did not show any sign of it.
"They go to their god in peace, with clean souls." She did not like that answer. He would have been shocked if she had.
After eating some leftover bread and cheese, he retired to his makeshift bed of fur. Flemeth departed into the night without explanation. Morrigan, apparently used to her mother's behaviour, sat cross-legged by the fire with a book open on her knee.
He was tired, but it was a good kind of tiredness. Tomorrow, he could worry about the templars, about Flemeth, about what he ought to do. For now he had warmth and food. If more of those creatures came to attack the house – Darkspawn, the girl had called them – then he would kill them. But he did not think they would dare attack a house owned by Flemeth. This place felt safe. Homely, even.
He closed his eyes. His thoughts drifted to Elanee, her many looks that shifted like the light and shade on a forest floor. One particular memory inveigled itself into his mind, as it did too often for his liking.
West Harbour. Spring. The last of the fire elementals crackling to an ember on the cold earth. Pieces of a golem lying mangled at his feet. His back to the wall of an abandoned house. Legs stretched out in front of him.
"You're hurt." A delicate face appeared out of the night, and drew closer to his own. Green eyes flecked with gold looked at him in concern.
"A scratch on the forehead. Nothing serious…"
"Let me look…" Fingers reached out and stopped a needle-point short of his skin. "It's shallow, but still needs treatment. Was it the Reaver?"
"Yes, his scythe."
"Foul things," she said, as she poured clear liquid onto a cloth. "Hold still – let me clean it. It might sting, but it needs to be done."
Auburn hair brushed against his shoulder as she changed her position. He felt a new warmth over his thighs, and realised that she was kneeling over them. So that she could see his face more clearly. Of course.
Her expression was cool and collected. She dabbed the cloth over his skin with soft, steady movements. Not lingering like a seductress. Not brisk like a nurse.
It had seemed to go on for a long time. He had not noticed any pain. Had only seen her eyes and lips.
And in unfeeling reality, the most sensual experience of his life had ended when Captain Farlong had roughly ordered the focus of his world away to tend to someone else. But many times afterwards, when he relived the episode, he had allowed himself to be alone with Elanee, and events would run on a very different course.
He rolled onto his side. It was wrong to think such thoughts. Wrong because he was in the presence of an adolescent girl, and wrong because it revealed his own baseness. Away from the druid, it was not her purity or her kindness he remembered. It was what he wanted to do to her.
He pulled one of the pelts over his shoulders. If there was any chance of sleep within the next few hours, he was going to have to find something more dull to occupy his mind. Something that would take him away from her soft hands and slender figure. Her hair brushing his cheek.
Sighing, he rested his head in the crook of his elbow, and imagined himself walking along the chalk track of the Marcher's Way, the violet sky unfolding above him.
