„Tales Forgotten and Tales Told"
„Dear diary" Daria scribed carefully on yet another piece of paper that accidentally fell in her hands. Somehow she never managed to get past that part. Imoen always advised her to let her thought flow freely on the paper and just write what came to her mind, but it never worked out that simply. Her sister on the other hand easily filled page after page describing their adventures, adding new facts along the way. Daria had a tendency to end at 'dear diary'.
It would be useful to arrange the team's trials to rescue Imoen in neat order or write down all the visions coming and going as they pleased to somehow keep track of them, so with determination worth a better cause the diviner kept stubbornly writing 'dear diary' on every free scrap of paper she possessed. She even caught Yoshimo with one of such scraps, sprinkling it with some shimmering dust in one of many dark corners of the Sphere. He probably thought the rest was written in invisible ink or concealed in some other way. She tore the page from his grasp and threw it into fireplace on the next occasion she had. Filled or not it was her diary and she'd rather not let anyone beside her read it.
"It's been five days since we met Aran Linvail" she inscribed on a particularly clean and plain piece of paper. She was unsure whether she should have used the Shadow Master's name, in case her diary fell into much worse hands than Yoshimo's. She decided not to pursue the subject, not that there was much to pursue. Since their first meeting they were only assigned to do minor jobs like uncovering few thieves who decided to change their alliances, and gathering resources to fight undead, especially vampires. Aran was yet to mention the subject of her divinations in rare conversations they had.
"Tonight will be the first night of full moon this month" she wrote underneath. But then again about this issue she didn't want to write. Yet another round of nightmares and horrible visions was something she'd forget about rather than keep reminding herself, at least as long as she could do that.
She didn't want to write about her every-month problems, couldn't about the Shadow Thieves… "Viconia appears to fit in perfectly into our little group of misfits" she began once again. It was the truth, the drow smoothly picked her likes and dislikes in her first day with the team. Daria was counted into the first group immediately. She was a leader after all and it was only logical that the priestess of Shar found it to be in her best interests to be on her good side. Plus, fighting with the use of divinations clearly fell to Viconia's taste. On the other hand Jaheira and Xan fell to the second category just as quickly, becoming the main antagonists. While between the two women verbal fights became a new tradition, Xan was taking all the insults with the ferociousness of a wall, which seemed to anger Viconia even more.
But, though vicious, Viconia kept herself in line. She proved her usefulness in their first battle with vampire Lassal, turning undead and using spells granted her by Shar, goddess of darkness. She never gave Jaheira any reason to use anything more than harsh words.
All others the drow tolerated. Minsc she ignored, treating him as a slave kept around for his strength. Valygar and Yoshimo were branded as males she wasn't interested in and thus left alone. The pact worked for all sides involved.
Daria looked at four short sentences she wrote on her page. She was getting better at it. She recalled the events of past few days looking for something more she could write about.
Most certainly she wasn't going to write about the events in the Harper's Stronghold in Athkatla… She still couldn't look Jaheira straight in the eye after what she brought on her head. She should have listened to her bad feelings, she should have stayed in the Sphere or do something else from the long list of their tasks to be accomplished…
But it was planned from the very beginning. Jaheira was meant to bring her before her brethren Harpers to the hold not to be fairly judged for her actions, but to be sentenced for what she was. The conflict could only end in battle. The only thing the Harpers failed to foresee was its outcome.
Jaheira had to now cope with being branded as a traitor and Daria could add another organization to a long list of people who wanted her dead. Neither of them felt any kind of satisfaction because of it.
The diviner sighed sensing someone sneaking behind her back.
"Stay away from my journal, Yoshimo!" she warned.
Valygar came out from the shadows behind her back, coughing awkwardly and walking away with haste. Faking innocence certainly wasn't his strong point.
What was wrong with them? First Yoshimo, now Valygar… Come to think about it the two were often to be found together, talking with hushed voices in abandoned rooms of the Sphere, falling silent immediately once someone got near. There was surely some ploy going on. "Valygar and Yoshimo are acting strange" Daria added to her diary.
Now she had a list of things about she didn't write from various causes or knew nothing about. And diary was to keep track of recent events… She crumbled the paper and hid it in her pocket. She'd try another time. For now there was another mission for the thieves to be done.
"Siiir! Mister!" a quiet call of a child sounded when they were once more crossing the ever crowded passages between rich temples of Athkatla. No one from the party paid any heed to the call, they were used already to various calls in the one of the noisiest district of the city, differing only by the time of the day. Those who were sent to contact them usually preferred whispering to shouting.
"Mister, please wait! My lord!" the cry sounded much closer and after a moment a child sprung from the crowd, running straight on Xan. The elf held the little girl so she wouldn't fall and carefully guided her to side trying to pass, but the girl caught his robes and didn't let go. Only then he noticed her pointy ears, slightly narrowed face and slanted eyes underneath the dirt on her skin. The child looked like a street urchin, but after taking a closer look her tangled hair was a mass of blonde locks with leaves and twigs in them, showing that the girl had a long way in the wild behind her, rather than a life on the streets. Her clothes were completely sprayed with mud and dirt.
"An elven child, here?" the enchanter stopped astounded. The whole team surrounded the panting and tired girl, holding to Xan as if afraid he'd walk away the moment she'd let go of his robe.
"Please, help me!" the girl sniffed and began to cry loudly. Daria immediately kneeled before her and took her in her arms. That startled the girl enough to stop crying, but the moment she realized what's happening her tears began to fall with all again.
"Shh… It's all right" the elven woman lifted the girl from the ground and began to cradle her in her arms in a calming movement. "It's all right, you're safe now. We'll help you" Daria whispered into little pointed ear. Her party watched her with a mix of surprise and worry about the child. Viconia added contempt to the combination.
"Seldarine, what brings you to Athkatla, and where are your parents?" Xan turned to the girl once she stopped crying, now huddling to Daria. She turned her teary eyes on him.
"M-my mother died, long ago" the elven girl began, swallowing with difficulty. Daria's hand squeezed her hand shortly and the girl shifted in her arms to put her head on the sun elf's chest. She looked uncertain who should she address.
"It's fine sweetie" Daria kissed child's mass of hair. Xan couldn't help but stare. It seemed that the diviner gained the girl's trust already, after two minutes. He simply never saw her from this side. "Tell my friend what happened."
"Y-yes" the girl nodded, looking back at Xan. "My name is Taira and my father is in danger! He is a mage, and teaches me to be one! And he also collects old things."
Xan groaned already suspecting what they were going to hear next. "Don't tell me that…"
"…he calls them artifacts" Taira ended.
"Just put this brat back on the ground and let us leave. We have work to do" Viconia crossed the line of her toleration to kindness for today, breaking into conversation.
"We will do nothing of the kind!" Daria stated dismayed, when Taira began to tremble in her grasp at the sight of a drow. "Tell us what happened that your father is in danger?" she asked the child. Viconia only shook her head with irritation.
"One of this artifact turned out to be cursed, did it not?" Xan asked with his gloomy certainty.
"Yes, h-how did you know?" the girl looked at him wide-eyed.
"Believe me, child, I just do."
"What happened when your father found the item?"
"He became all strange. He dropped his pack and began to walk south and I had to run after him all the time, with his things and mine, but then I lost him in the crowd. It was so hard…" Taira looked at Daria expecting more compassion. The sun elf immediately shared some. "And he was saying Ko-zah all the time." She ended her tale.
"Kozah… an ancient deity of chaos and destruction. He has other name now… Talos." Xan shared a bit of knowledge. Daria had a feeling she heard the word Kozah somewhere before, but as always couldn't recall where. She kissed Taira sobbing again in her arms and asked her to look at her.
"Taira, listen to me now. You are going to help me do some magic" the diviner explained slowly. "When I tell you, you are going to think about your father, as hard as you can. Ready Taira?" The little girl nodded. Daria closed her in an embrace and gave the signal.
"You were right, the father is in the Talos temple" she confirmed once the divination ended. "He's alive, but a little… unstable. You'll need to negotiate with the main priestess to break the curse somehow."
Xan nodded grimly. From his face she could read that he wasn't as optimistic about the rescue plan. "You're not coming?" he asked, only now realizing the little detail of her talk.
"I'm taking Taira for a good dinner" the sun elf explained. "Gooseberry!" Taira squeaked when one of the pockets of diviner's cloak began to move, producing a rune-covered rat. Daria passed him to Valygar, holding the rat by the skin on its back.
"Keep me informed." She looked at Xan, before leaving her team, carrying an elven child on her arms.
After chasing through half of the city, which after revealing some of its darker secrets they began to know at the back of their hand, they finally found the ring the Talos highpriestess Ada was willing to exchange for Taira's father's freedom. Then, this time with Taira's father and his newfound sanity, they had to visit the other half of Athkatla to find Daria and her newest protégée in one of the most expensive inns of the City of Coin. Worn and exhausted they had to face the innkeeper trying to chase 'the vagabonds' away from his respected hotel. When they finally managed to get past this last obstacle, they were greeted with most peculiar view. Taira, now clean and with brushed hair, in a new dress, styled for a mage's robe, squealed happily seeing them and shouted loudly. "Mommy! You're friends are here!" Then she brought Daria blushing in a deep shade of crimson, pulling her by her hand.
"Mommy…?" Jaheira articulated slowly.
"It's just a nickname" Daria explained, deeply embarrassed. Then she noticed the elf with the same color of blond hair as Taira's standing among her companions.
"Daddy!" Taira squealed again, now running in direction of her father, straight into his grasp. The man cried seeing his daughter happy and safe.
"Excuse me, mister, but do you have any idea what your daughter went through? What were you thinking, taking a child along for dangerous adventures?" Daria began to rant just like Jaheira.
"We already gave him a lecture." Valygar quietly cleared.
"Oh. In that case fine."
"I can't thank you enough for taking care for my Taira. I promise this will not happen again." The blonde elf stated solemnly, hugging his child do his chest.
"Mommy Daria bought me a dress, daddy!" Taira was completely happy now. "And you know what? She lives in that Ball you wanted to see!"
"It's a Sphere darling." Taira's father stroked her hair. "And no one leaves in it, because no one can enter."
"I only let my guests in." Daria interrupted them.
The elf just stared her with awe, not quite believing his ears.
"If you want you can stay for the night. It's getting late and you're both tired after today… It's not a luxury, but we have many free rooms."
"We could? Really?" Father and daughter asked in one voice. Daria smiled at them at them both.
"Mommy, I want a bedtime story!" Taira demanded from the position of her bed.
"It's all right, Taira. I'll tell you a tale" Rotan, her father, sat on the edge of his child's bed.
"But I want a story from mommy Daria!" the girl demanded even louder.
"It's fine. I can do it" Daria agreed. "Yoshimo, could you show Rotan the other free room. The one…" she bit her tongue before she finished '…where the sea monsters were'.
"I believe I know which room you have in mind." Yoshimo sent her a chipper smile. "Follow me, my friend."
"So, my little, what story do you want to hear?"
"I don't want a fairy tale, like my father always tells me. I want a real story!"
Daria smiled at her, tucking her in tighter in a blanket. "I'll tell you a real story about a little elven girl, just like you, who used to live in a high, sky-scraping tower, cut off from the whole world. About what was outside her tower the girl could only read in her books and many she had in her room and beyond, in many rooms her home had. Her favorite stories were about beautiful princesses and courageous knights who protected them, and passionate romances. The girl dreamt that one day her true father, about whom she knew nothing, would come to see her. He would turn out to be a mighty king of an exotic and foreign country and that he had to hide his daughter in the tower so no evil witch would catch her. Then, as every princess, the girl would have a handsome knight to protect her, who would fall in love with her."
"But it's not real! No girls live in towers!"
"I only tell an honest truth! Well… the girl did leave her tower finally, when she got bigger, but not as she always dreamed. Her tower wasn't a safe place anymore and she had to face what lied behind its gates. The outside world wasn't as she expected it would be. It was full of monsters and dangers, but lacked the knights to face them. The girl had to learn to fight, every day, and hunt little bunnies, just like the ones Trevor used to keep behind his barn in wooden boxes, and let the girl play with them sometimes. The little girl was very disappointed and scared of this outside world.
But then she found her knight. He wasn't like the other knights she read about: he didn't wear a white armor shining brightly in the sunlight, or had a brave stallion named Roderick, not even a lance or a castle with huge four-poster bed in which the knight and the princess… er, never mind.
Anyway, the girl knew it was her knight, despite he didn't look like in the books, because her heart told her so. Hearts do such things, you see. And so she did what all girls in her books did. She fell in love on the first sight with her knight. But then again the reality turned out to be very different from what the girl read in her books. The knight didn't love her, he thought of her as of a child she was. He helped her to understand the harsh outside world and taught her many useful things. Thanks to her knight the girl could defend herself from all evil witches who would want to curse her and all sorts of monsters. But he never brought her roses or read her poems or brought her jewelry from the foreign places he visited.
Time passed and the girl grew up. She became just as strong or maybe even stronger than her knight. She wasn't reading any romantic books anymore, but she could hunt a rabbit in the woods or find clean water and fight. She and her knight became good friends and could always count on each other. The end."
"That's it?" Taira made a disappointed face. "But what about the girl? Did she stop loving her knight after they became friends?"
"No, she never stopped loving him."
"So she wasn't really happy?" the child pushed further. "Even if her knight was her friend?"
"No, she wasn't." Smile faded from Daria's face. "You wanted a real story, my dear."
"But why didn't her knight love her?"
"Because some things are not meant to happen. Sleep well, my dear." Daria kissed the little blonde head and put the light off. Upon leaving she saw Xan walking off to his room a touch too casually.
"I'm awful at telling tales" Daria grumbled, walking into what passed for the living room in the Sphere, now occupied by Jaheira, repairing some tears on her cloak. "I just told Taira the most depressing fairy tale ever told. I should have told her one of Gorion's. Like the one about the fearless group of musicians who banished a red dragon from the spine of the world."
Jaheira smirked, but immediately covered her lips with a hand. She seemed to recall a familiar story, though her old friend never told her any fairy tales.
"You're not going to sleep tonight?" the druidess asked, rather rhetorically. What Daria knew she meant was 'are you getting yourself drunk tonight?' It was the only alternative for the full moon nights.
"No, I think I'll pass. I'll try making horoscopes for each of us. It might be the best time now." The idea was seasoning in her head from the time she got runes from Xan.
"You need any help?"
"No, it's a work for a one."
The druidess cleaned the remnants of her work and went to her bedroom. Daria stayed alone in a twilight chamber, lit by the ever-present magic candles of the Sphere. At least ever-present from the time she ordered golems to place them everywhere where light was required. She drew her runes and moved to the fireplace, where a blanket was left on the ground by someone, igniting the fresh logs with one fluent spell. She prepared some clean pages to write down the results of precognitions and then began her work.