Author's Note: I apologize for the long update time, Dear Reader, but sometimes that bizarre sequence of events known as 'real life' manages to force itself between me and my fictional life…

Ch. 6…The Failure of Love

I followed Irenicus to his rooms. I went to take the lute from its case but instead he told me to pour out wine for us both. So we were going to talk, it appeared.

I could not understand him at all. He had tortured me, he had made me hurt my friend and he had forced me to kill. And now he expected me to sit with him and drink wine. And I was going to do so. Not simply because I was afraid to disobey him (although I feared him more than I had ever feared anything) but because…he fascinated me. And I wondered what was wrong with me.

I watched him surreptitiously as I fetched the drinks. He sat in his armchair with his long legs stretched out before him. He looked tired. He took a deep swallow from the glass I handed him and then set it on the table by his side. I sat in the chair across from him and barely wet my lips with the wine before setting it aside.

We sat quietly for a few moments. His eyes were hooded but I could feel him studying me. I watched him through my lashes and waited.

"Tell me how you come to know Imoen," he said.

I could think of no reason not to tell him and I knew all too well that he could compel me to speak, if he wished. I did not want him to force me to speak. I should be grateful to be here in this beautiful room, curled up in a chair, and not stretched out on a table, waiting for the knives.

I was grateful. I was pathetically grateful.

"We were children together in Candlekeep. Although there were other children in the village, we were the only two who lived in the monastery itself, so we became close. She was an orphan, like me."

"Was she, too, left at a shrine of Ilmater?" I didn't understand the sarcasm in his voice.

"No, I don't think so. I don't actually know," I said. "She was brought in by one of my guardian's friends. I was maybe eight when she came to Candlekeep and she was much younger. I was never told where she had been found and she was too young to remember, I think."

"You had no curiosity about your origins?"

"She did," I said. I shrugged. "She was told her parents had been killed by bandits, but…"

The mage raised his brows.

"She didn't believe it," I said. "She thought Gorion—my guardian—had made up the tale to spare her feelings. I don't know the truth."

"And you were never curious about your own story?"

"My own tale seemed plain enough. If my mother had even survived my birth, neither she nor her kin wished to rear me. It is not uncommon for half-breeds to be cast aside, after all." I took a sip of blood red wine and spread my fingers to examine the webbing. "Later, when I learned who my father was, it became clear why he had never claimed me."

I felt the mage's eyes searching me, as if he could sense the childhood pain that my matter-of-fact tone tried to conceal. If so, he said nothing. Perhaps he would ask again, the next time I was strapped to his table. I got up and refilled his glass.

"So you and Imoen were childhood friends."

"Yes. We were five years apart, however, which was a vast gulf at that age and she was just a child when I left. We've become closer friends this last year, when we started traveling together." The mage frowned a bit.

"When you left?" I drank some more wine.

"I ran away from Candlekeep when I was fourteen," I said. "So we had been apart a long time. Six or seven years, I guess."

"You ran away from the monastery? Why?" The weight of my braid slid along my shoulder when I moved my head.

"The usual reasons, I suppose. I was restless. Candlekeep was a place of rules and order and I found that very…constricting." I looked up from my glass. "And then I met a woman."

"When you were fourteen?" He sounded amused. "Was that not rather precocious, even for a half-human?"

I flushed a little. I would have liked to say our relationship wasn't like that—but as it turned out, it was.

"She was a bard and rather well-known along the Sword Coast at that time," I said. His lips twitched in deeper amusement. Bard is not actually a synonym for promiscuity, although in her particular case the stereotype held true enough.

"Since I was small, I used to slip out of the keep to go to the village tavern. Traveling entertainers were not permitted in the monastery itself. There was music at Candlekeep—a surprising number of the monks could play instruments and I had been instructed in the lute and the harp from an early age—but it wasn't the same. To the monks, the music was…"

I frowned and thought about my wording.

"They saw music as something to be scribed and dissected or studied as a vehicle for oral history perhaps. But she understood the true power the music held. When she sang, I could feel the music run through my veins like magic. It was a revelation." It was like the night I had dreamed of the gods and had known that my heart and my soul would belong to Sune.

Irenicus propped his head on his hand and gave me a slanted look, still smiling a little.

"When she left, I went with her," I said. "I persuaded her to take me as her apprentice."

"She took you away without your guardian's permission?"

"Yes. He would never have consented but she didn't care. Silke had few scruples. I did not realize that at the time. Growing up in Candlekeep, I was terribly naïve."

"Did she take you as her lover as well, at that tender age?" I sighed.

"Yes." I had left Candlekeep with nothing but the clothes on my back and a handful of coppers in my purse. She had dressed me richly; bought me a fine lute, provided everything I needed—but it all came at a price. It was a price I had been eager to pay, at first. Only later did I realize the true value of what she wished to take from me.

"How old was she?"

"About forty, I think. Like many human women, she didn't care to share her exact age."

"You must have been a comely youth." His look embarrassed me.

"She was striking and I was completely smitten," I said ruefully. "But Silke—well, Silke loved her music. She loved herself. And that was about it, I think. It took me awhile to figure that out. We traveled together for several years."

I fiddled with my glass. By the time I was a man she—and those she chose to share me with—had begun to lose interest in me.

"And then the apprenticeship was over. I had learned what she was willing to teach me." I got up again and poured wine in both our glasses. "So I moved on. I traveled up along the Sword Coast, sometimes alone, sometimes with other bards I met along the road, playing at festivals and in taverns, occasionally in the homes of lords or wealthy merchants. Then one day, a message caught up with me. It was from Gorion, calling me back to Candlekeep. So I returned and that was when I met up with Imoen again."

And then Gorion was killed. And Imoen and I—and the companions we met along the way—sought his killer. We found him and destroyed him. And now this mage had found us.

"Please," I said. "Will you not let me see her and Dynaheir?" I was afraid if I begged, he would refuse me. Yet I had to ask. He looked at me a long moment and then he inclined his head slightly.

"Tomorrow," he said.

"Thank you," I sighed.

"You care deeply for these women, it seems," he said neutrally.

"They are my friends and companions. I love them."

"A Suneite," he said, shaking his head and looking a bit contemptuous. "Love is your weakness and your downfall."

"But no," I said, a little surprised and slightly offended as well, although I am well aware that there are many who belittle my goddess' teachings.

"You were snared easily enough," he said mockingly. He was referring to my capture, I assumed.

"Lust has led me astray many times," I admitted. "But not love. There is nothing stronger than love and nothing more beautiful or enduring."

"You are a fool to think so."

"Surely if you knew love, you would not speak so," I said softly.

Irenicus' eyes narrowed and he was out of his chair before I could react. He grabbed me by my braid and yanked my head back to look up at his face.

"You dare to prattle to me about love?" he growled. For a moment, I wondered if he would kill me then and there. If he did, would I dissipate into nothingness as my brother had done?

He released me and spun away. I huddled in my chair, afraid to speak or move. He picked up his glass. The wine was strong but he drank it like water.

"Love is the chain that binds you and the fetters that keep you from your true power," he said at last. "Love is the spell that saps your will, keeps you contented and complacent when you could be growing into your capabilities. Love blinds you, Lorian, and I shall strip your blindness from you."

He strode to a cabinet and yanked open the door. He pulled out a dagger in a jeweled scabbard and belted it around his waist. My eye was drawn to a small flask tucked in the back of the highest shelf. It appeared to be an empty glass bottle, such as might be used to hold scented oil, but I could sense the power within it. It must be the device that bound Malaaq to the mage's service. He had said I would know it when I saw it.

My eyes came back to the dagger. What did Irenicus want with an enchanted weapon?

"Attend," he told me. "I will show you the difference between love and power." He opened the door and told the golem outside, "Fetch the Rashemen witch. If she cannot walk, drag her."

A chill ran through me.

"Please," I said, coming forward but not quite daring to touch him. "Do not hurt her because you are angry with me."

"I am not angry," he said coldly but I thought he lied.

In a few moments, Dynaheir stalked in behind the golem, wearing the same bloodstained clothes I had last seen her in. Her dislocated joints had been reset and her wounds healed but her unnatural pallor told me she was far from well.

"Hold," Irenicus said to the golem. "Take her back out into the corridor." He turned to me with a glimmer of a smile. "There is no need to ruin my carpets with this demonstration." This time I dared to touch him. I clutched his arm.

"Don't," I said. He shook off my hand and grasped me by the nape of the neck. He pulled me out into the corridor where Dynaheir stood, with her back straight as a post and the shadow of fear in her eyes. Irenicus stared at me with the fey smile still on his lips.

"Lorian," Dynaheir began. The mage turned his head.

"Silence," he said and there was power in that one word. Dynaheir gasped and said no more. He drew his dagger and her eyes opened wide. His other hand tightened on my neck and he yanked me closer to her.

"The power in your divine blood could stay my hand, if you knew how to use it," he told me. "But your love is powerless." The blade flashed. A line of blood painted the wall. Dynaheir sank to the ground, one hand rising to the deep slash in her throat. Her life's blood poured out and then she died.

The mage released me and I fell to my knees beside my friend. I touched her hair, her face. Dynaheir, with her dry wit, her brilliant eyes and her stern adherence to duty, was gone.

"Behold the failure of love," Irenicus said and then he actually laughed. I felt all the blood drain from my face.

"I swear by Bhaal's taint that I will kill you," I said. The mage laughed again and that should have driven me wild with rage. Instead the fury that crept over me felt icy and controlled. My lips pulled back. I wondered if I could possibly be smiling. I still knelt but my eyes were locked with his. I don't know how long we would have been frozen there but then I felt a tremor from the ground beneath my knees. Irenicus blinked and his expression became irritated.

"An intruder has set off the wards," he said. "I must attend to this, Lorian. Whoever dares interrupt me will soon regret it. Wait here." He cast a spell that stole all the strength from my limbs and then he gated out of the room. I fell to the floor, helpless. My eyes were open but I could not look around or even blink. I had fallen in such a way that I could not see Dynaheir's face but only her torso and the growing stain of blood on her robe.

She should never have been here and she wouldn't have been, if not for me. She should not have died. Irenicus was wrong. It was not love that had failed; it was me.