Author's Note: Some of Zhjaeve's little pep talk towards the end of the chapter is stolen, I mean borrowed, well let's just say gleaned from Planescape: Torment which, of course, I own no rights to. (Don't own Neverwinter Nights 2 either, come to think of it. If I did, the female PC's romance would have been a lot different!) Know that I feel no shame for this blatant plagiarism.
Chapter 16…Shadowed Homecoming
Ammon's firm hand at the small of my back propelled me through the Song Portal. We stepped through and found ourselves deep inside the Illefarn ruin. So the portal worked properly this time. That was something of a relief. Last time through, the King of Shadows had tampered with the portal and we'd been diverted to what had been left of my village. If I had been controlling the portal, I think I would have dumped my enemies into a convenient patch of quicksand but luckily for us, the King of Shadows didn't think like I did.
Or maybe he had other plans for us.
At any rate, we weren't immediately sucked dry of life upon entering the Claimed Lands. Aldanon had been right after all. Directly before us was another broken statue but I'd actually witnessed this one's destruction. There were still dark stains on the stone—blood. Most of it was mine. I'd met my first Shadow Reaver here and bore, as a memento, a scar that stretched from my shoulder to my elbow. I set a ball of light bouncing over our heads and stepped carefully, mindful of the rubble underfoot. Breaking an ankle now would not get me out of the task before me and would surely earn me censure from my warlock.
We emerged into an eerie twilight. The King of Shadows did not have the power to blot out the pale winter sun (not yet anyway), but a pall hung over the Claimed Lands. The unnatural mist dampened sounds as well as my spirits, but perhaps there were no sounds to be silenced. Certainly I heard no insects or birds and there was no breeze to lift so much as a whisper from the dying trees.
At first, I thought the fog that concealed the destruction of my village was a blessing. But the fog flirted with my vision, first concealing and then revealing. These sly revelations were more shocking than having the horrors laid out plain to view. Bodies still lay where they had fallen. Inevitably I was reminded of walking through the destruction of Ember—except this was my village. None of the dead here were strangers. And although sunken in as if they had decayed from the inside, the bodies were almost untouched by the rough kindness that nature's depredations should have wrought upon them. Where were the scavengers, small and large, that should have ravaged and transformed the dead and returned them back to the earth? Like all other life that belonged here, they were gone.
"We're no better than the Luskans," I murmured. Only Casavir understood my reference to Ember. He nodded in grim agreement.
"These people deserved proper burial rites," he said. His face was tight with suppressed anger. His eyes seemed focused on something I could not see. I did not know what he was sensing and for that I was truly, deeply thankful. I had often suspected that being blind to evil was more of a blessing than a curse. "There is no justice in their deaths or in this further defilement. We have failed grievously in our duty to them."
I could not help but flinch from the truth in his words. Casavir had rarely rebuked me and never so harshly. His words hurt me more than I would have believed possible. No fresh tears came, thank the gods, but I felt sick—literally sick. I could taste bile at the back of my throat.
I still felt guilty when I recalled first leaving West Harbor. Daeghun had ordered me to take his shard to Neverwinter. He couldn't go, he said; I had to do it. I remembered standing in the shelter of the Starling's barn, with the priest's prayers and the cries of the wounded a soft and disturbing background to my father's whispered instructions. I had shouldered my travel pack and walked past the bodies that lay in the field awaiting burial and, despite the shock and sadness I had felt a shameful bubble of excitement rise within me. For I had been desperate to escape the confines of my village and leaving was all I had dreamed of since my early teens. And even then, knowing nothing of the path that stretched before me, some childish and irrational voice within me had feared that my wish for escape had somehow brought disaster upon my village.
That childish voice was wailing within me now.
"I'm sorry," I whispered, as if words would help.
"Ah, my lady, no." Casavir's attention turned to me from wherever grim place it had been. He looked at me with worried eyes and his mailed hands closed over my shoulders. "I meant no…if there is blame, we all share it."
"No. The responsibility was mine. These were my people yet I gave no thought to this." I gestured with my hand at the fallen. "I forgot." And I added the shameful truth. "I didn't want to remember."
"You were severely wounded, Jess, and we did not know what other forces…"
Ammon interrupted.
"These self-recriminations serve no purpose. We must move and quickly."
His brisk business-like tone rubbed me like a rasp. Casavir released me and we both turned to face Ammon. I had been so preoccupied by the unburied bodies that I had actually lost sight of how they had died and why. Daeghun had warned the villagers to leave but most would not listen. Hard-headed Harbormen—it took more than withered crops and a migration of lizardfolk to make them feel threatened. And they had not died without a fight. Almost without exception, every man, woman and child I'd seen had a weapon in hand when they fell. But who had they been fighting? Shadows or…
I took a step towards the warlock.
"How many of these people were killed by the King of Shadows and how many were killed by your demons, Ammon?" His dense brows began to form a scowl.
"What are you talking about?"
"It is plain to see that some of these people were struck down by demon fire." He opened his mouth but I kept talking. "I guess you turned your hordes loose on the village again. Must have been like old times for your allies. Back at your haven, your boy Zaxis bragged about all the souls you let him devour." Of course he been talking about the first attack on West Harbor, when I'd been a baby, but it was all the same.
"I did not 'turn my hordes loose'…"
My hands were icy. I realized that I had a death-grip on the hilt of my sword. I let go. My hands were shaking and as soon as I noticed that, a tremor ran all through me. I wrapped my arms around myself and shivered.
"Jess, West Harbor was a trap. It was an ambush. The village was overrun with shadows and no doubt most of the villagers were dead before I arrived. My 'demon horde' held the reaver and his minions here so that I could slip past to the Illefarn ruins and get to the statue."
"I don't…" believe you. "That makes no sense."
"It didn't make sense to me at the time. I believed the reaver was tracking me by my shard like the githyanki but my presence was as much a shock to him as his was to me. I could not understand how he arrived here before me, for I move swiftly and secretly, as you know. Only later did I realize that I was not the target of his trap. You were. The King of Shadows had become aware you were performing the Ritual of Purification and he meant to stop you."
I couldn't help it; I looked up at Casavir's face to see if Ammon was telling the truth. Ammon, being Ammon, both caught and interpreted my questioning look. His eyes hardened and narrowed.
"Dredging up the past now accomplishes nothing and serves only as a distraction we do not need." He spoke as if through gritted teeth. "Castigate me later if you must. Time is of the essence now."
Zhjaeve caught my arm. Her touch surprised me for it was rare.
"Ammon is correct," she said. I expected a reaction from Ammon, if only a snide look but he acted as if he hadn't heard her. "The power of the King of Shadows is strong here. He seeks to divert and distract you from your goal. Clear your mind, Jess, and bring your focus and discipline to bear."
Even rarer than her touch was her use of my name. I nodded and she patted my arm before she released me.
"There is danger here," she said. "The shadows gather." I nodded again and, forcing my mind to an artificial calm, cast Stoneskin upon myself. Consciously touching and drawing upon the Weave, the very embodiment of Mystra, steadied me like prayer. Having the spell armor in place, knowing that I'd likely soon be drawing my blade, also steadied me. Focus and discipline, focus and discipline—I spoke the words as a mantra and begged Mystra that they would be enough.
The open door to my old home sagged on its bent hinges like a drunk holding onto the wall. The house's obvious abandonment made a guilty grab at my heart but I ignored the feeling. I knew now what I hadn't known my last time here. I knew Daeghun lived. The house was unimportant.
Then my heart gave a lurch as my eyes registered movement. There was someone on my porch. I ran forward as the figures moved down the broken steps to stand before me.
"Jess, you've come back!" Webb Mossfeld said.
"We didn't know where you'd gone," his brother Ward said. "We waited here for you."
"Knew you'd come back," Webb said. They looked at each other and identical smiles crawled over their faces.
"Where's Wyl?" I asked. My voice was steady despite the inward creeping of my flesh. From the corner of my eye, I saw Casavir draw his hammer. I didn't really need the warning look he gave me though. I knew they couldn't be alive.
"Wyl's…gone," Webb said.
"He's gone on. A shame, that—he always liked you." Ward moved closer and his voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. "He was sweet on you, Jessie, even though you never gave him a second look off the practice field. You had more time for that sour old wizard than any of us dumb old farm boys. Always too good for us, weren't you, girl?"
"Now that's just not fair." Webb smiled at my hot words.
"Too bad Wyl can't be here now. But we're here and we can help you."
"Oh? And how exactly will you help me?"
"Walk with us and we will tell you."
"Tell me here," I suggested. I unsheathed my sword.
"Have it your way," Webb said. His face darkened. His eyes flashed red and suddenly the semblance of flesh he wore burned away, leaving nothing but shadow behind. Many other shadows poured out of the ground like black mist and surged toward us. Like Casavir's hammer, my sword gleamed with the blessed enchantment that Crossroad Keep's priest Ivarr had woven into it. Faced by two holy weapons, it seemed that the wave faltered for a moment.
And in that moment, Ammon's magic ripped through them like a dark vengeful flame. Shadow met eldritch blast, sword and hammer—and shadow was gone.
"Was that really the Mossfelds?" I asked Zhjaeve. "Is the King of Shadows just playing with my mind or did he take them like he took Garius and his Brotherhood thugs?"
"Garius and the other reavers gave themselves to the King of Shadows," she said thoughtfully. "What you saw here was no more than an echo of those you once knew. From his prison in the Shadow Plane, the King of Shadows' power over spirits is…limited."
I hoped she was right because something in her tone made me think she was speaking from less than total certainty.
We moved quickly along the path through town until we came to the next obstacle. Someone had destroyed the bridge.
"Isn't that grand," I said. Just what I was in the mood for: a nice refreshing dip in a frigid and murky river. "The water's only about waist deep though." By the time we crossed, we'd all smell like Harbormen (if we didn't already). I thought about taking off my boots but they were already pretty wet from the slog through the swamp.
"Stop!" Zhjaeve ran forward. "The water bears the poisons of shadow."
"That's…" Impossible, I wanted to say. How could an entire river be poisoned? But I remembered Elanee's maddened druid friend, Kaleil. He had warned us of the waters of the Mere. I had thought he spoke some woodsy druid metaphor but in light of Zhjaeve's warning I wasn't so sure. "That's inconvenient," I said weakly. A lot of people used skiffs or canoes to navigate the Mere but I had no idea where we would find one.
Ammon muttered something behind me and suddenly I found myself scooped off the ground by long, strong and bony arms. I looked up into a long, strong and bony face. The giant skeleton waded across the river, carrying me with all the tenderness appropriate to a sack of dirty laundry. The creature dumped me in a bank of dead ferns. I landed hard on my rear.
"Thanks," I said sarcastically, checking to see if the damned thing was smirking but it had already turned to fetch Zhjaeve. Unfortunately the shadows weren't chivalrous enough to wait for everyone to be shuttled across before they attacked again. I found myself facing them alone.
Some of them were wearing familiar faces and forms—children even, meant to tug at my heart but I was starting to run out of sorrow and regret. With a kind of relief, I sank into anger's warm embrace. The shadows approached but I didn't wait for them to speak. I pulled hard upon the power of the Weave and it felt weakened. Here in this place of death and destroyed hopes, the Weave felt as thin and tattered as a gauze scarf. Still, the power was there though I had to strain to unleash it. I lobbed a couple of fireballs at the dark swarm. There was none of the popping and hissing you'd get from frying living creatures—and no screams—but it was still satisfying to watch them burn. I felt a bit like Qara.
But the weakness in the Weave frightened me. When the King of Shadows escaped his imprisonment, would the Mere become a place of dead magic? Would the Shadow Weave supplant the Weave itself? Was that even possible? I'd only been interested in the practical arts and my theory was weak. I needed Sand or even Aldanon to explain this to me. I wished I had thought to ask these questions of the historian Balaur when I was in the ruins of Arvahn.
Between us, Zhjaeve and I wiped out the shadows before the men had crossed the river. When Ammon walked near me, I could feel his energies seething under his skin. If the change in the Weave affected him, he did not say. His head was up and his eyes flicked about. He was a daunting man in this state of hyper-alertness, scarcely human at all.
He did make me feel safer though.
I led Zhjaeve to the blasted spot she had told me once was sacred. Sacred! Obviously she and I did not share the same definition of the word.
But there was power here and I could feel it now more clearly than I ever had. Had something changed within me? Was it the eight shards I now carried? Had they, along with the ninth shard in my chest, reached some mystical number or mass to trigger this effect? Or was it a reaction to the shadow that now claimed the town? At any rate, when I stepped onto the dark scar, power passed through my feet and up into my body. It did not feel warm or cold; it was not the buzz of electricity or the living charge of the Weave. I couldn't describe the sensation of the power but it rippled up through me like the toll of a bell. My voice caught in my throat. My sword fell from my hand and I dropped to my knees. I threw out my hands to keep from smacking the ground with my face and the power intensified.
"Stay back," Zhjaeve said behind me, a warning to the men, I supposed. "Let her find her balance."
I thought the sensation would pass but it didn't. I stayed on all fours a long moment, all but panting from the strain, until at last I gave up on the idea that the feeling was going to go away. At least I became reasonably certain I wouldn't vomit or soil myself.
"Mystra's Breath," I whispered. I tried to rock back on my heels. It felt like I was trying to move through thick cream. "What…is it?"
Zhjaeve pushed lightly on my shoulders.
"Sit," she said. "Let the singing of the shards fill you. Their voice is powerful here, for this is the spot where the blade was unmade and it still holds some of the blade's strength. The shattering of the blade against the shadow caused a wound upon the land. You feel this wound cry out for healing." Her hands steadied me. I sat on the damp ground. She knelt before me, leaning forward and staring into my eyes.
"Is your will here, Kalach-Cha?"
"I…am not certain what you mean." My voice was as thin and reedy as that of a scared child.
"The Blade of Gith is not simply a thing of pieces. When you bring the shards together, your will is what makes it complete. Your mind must be focused and clear. Your thoughts and your heart will be the furnace upon which the blade may flow."
"My heart…" I looked up at Ammon, whose eyes searched the mists for danger. His head turned and he stared down at me. His eyes were fierce and his lips were set in an uncompromising line. There was no reassurance in that severe look but neither was there any doubt. If any heart was a furnace, then surely one burned inside his chest. Despite the daily training and meditations I had received from the githzerai from the day Sir Nevalle had brought us both to Crossroad Keep, my will was weak pot-metal to his adamantine. Yet he had told me that his will had failed and the blade had shattered.
Surely Tyr laughs at such irony.
Or maybe not.
"Pray for me, Casavir." I didn't turn to look for him; I was certain he was at my back. With prompt obedience he began. I heard his words, calm and measured and familiar, and I shifted to sit more comfortably on the ground. An expression of disdain or contempt passed over Ammon's face.
"It is not the gods we should turn to now," he said. "Prayer is for the weak-minded and those who lack direction." He was looking over my head, straight at Casavir no doubt, but Casavir's voice did not falter.
"Yet what is the Ritual of Purification but a prayer to unmake the Guardian?" I said. "The priest Annaeus inscribed the words on the statues of the Triune Goddess to remind us of that. You have undergone the ritual not once but twice and have felt…" My words slowed and I gaped up at Ammon. "But you didn't. Did you? That first time when you fought the King of Shadows—you hadn't performed the ritual."
My words were a statement. The question was in my eyes. The answer was in his.
"The githyanki did not know of it. They did not have the benefit of your githzerai spy's omniscience, it would seem." He cut his eyes towards Zhjaeve. "Neither did Nolaloth." His jaw tightened with suppressed anger. "The Still Lord told me that Gith's Blade could wound the King of Shadows and I thought that would be enough!" His hands opened and closed and suddenly I could smell hot iron, a scent Ammon sometimes gave off when he was agitated. "He did not tell me…and I neglected to ask if anything else was required. I only learned of the ritual recently when I…" He stared off in the distance a moment as if he heard something. "When I escaped my imprisonment," he finally said.
There was no surprise in Zhjaeve's eyes at this revelation. No doubt she had figured it out some time ago.
"You were deliberately misled," Casavir said. "Your allies meant for you to fail." Ammon's eyes flashed with fury but his mouth clamped shut and he made no reply.
Perhaps it was Casavir's prayer that calmed me or perhaps it was simply the realization that, unlike Ammon, my allies meant for me to succeed. I had something Ammon had always lacked. I took a deep breath. There was a rotten scent overlying the peaty richness of the Mere and I knew that this wrongness would spread throughout what had been the Illefarn lands if not checked. The Weave would be torn asunder and perhaps the Shadow Weave would take its place.
This was unacceptable.
"I am ready," I told Zhjaeve. Her veil hid all of her face but her eyes but I could still sense her warm approval.
"Take the shards and hold them in your hands," Zhjaeve said. She sat cross-legged in front of me, so close that our knees were touching. My hands felt clumsy as I fumbled the sack of shards out of my tunic and unwrapped them one by one. The shards were warm from being kept so close to my skin but they glistened with a cool white light. We had all suffered much to reach this time and place, to collect these eight jagged pieces.
"The knowing of how to mend this blade lies within you," she said. "Grasp the hilt. Close your eyes, if that helps you focus, and hear not just my words, but the meaning behind them." What Zhjaeve called the hilt (now missing whatever pommel, guard or tassel it had once had) was Ammon's shard, the one that had been passed between Lord Tavorick and his cronies in Nasher's court. How they had ever gotten their greedy fingers on it was still a mystery to me. It felt rough and uncomfortable in my hand.
Instead of closing my eyes, I stared down at the shards in my lap. With every slight movement of my body, with every breath I took, the light shifted hypnotically. Zhjaeve spoke quietly of Zerthimon, who had forged this blade for Gith so long ago, before the Pronouncement of Two Skies, before the People had been divided. She had told me this story before. Her words were soothing and familiar.
"Gith knew war and the paths of power," the githzerai said softly. "Her will and her blade were as one. Gith was but one but her strength was such that it caused others to know their own strength."
My left hand caressed the shards. They were stronger now, it was true. They were stronger together. Their power resonated from being together.
"The will and the hand must be as one. Know that there is nothing in all the Worlds that can stand against unity. When all know a single purpose, when all hands are guided by one will and all act with the same intent, the Planes themselves may be moved. Many in unison can accomplish more than many alone."
The light of the shards winked and flickered as Zhjaeve's words flowed over me. Circles of meaning, she always spoke of circles of meaning. She wanted her words to circle my heart, to find their meaning there, where the ninth shard was lodged.
"Here the sword was sundered, broken upon shadow, yet it still is more than a thing of pieces. The blade has a knowing of itself and it also has a knowing of its enemy. And this knowing is within your heart as well. All that was scattered will be made whole again by the heart that guides the will."
There was a stirring in the shadow around us, like fireflies glowing pale in the mist above the ground.
"Tyr's blessing upon us," I heard Casavir say in soft wonderment. The points of light rose shining from the dead earth. Like slow and stately fireflies, they flew towards me and circled my head like a floating wreath. They were shards—bits of the sword too small to be easily seen or recovered, no doubt blown deep into the earth when the sword shattered. There were dozens of them. The smallest was about the size of the nail on my pinky and the largest was the size of my thumb. All these years they had laid buried in the muck and now they had come to the call of the blade.
They had come to my call. They had answered my will. If I stood, would they follow me like the Tears of Selune? They would. I was their moon and I knew that they would. The breeze raised by my thoughts sent them whirling around my head like a handful of leaves.
Elation ran through me. Forged by Zerthimon, wielded by Gith, and now the blade had come to me—and it had come for one purpose. I could feel the blade's will and it was my will. We both knew the King of Shadows. He had wounded us, shattered us and left us for dead. But we were not dead. It was our will to wound him as he had wounded us. It was our will to shatter him.
"There are three in shadow, but two shall walk in the light," Zhjaeve said. Her voice droned soothingly on, perhaps repeating the vow she had made me beside the broken wall of Crossroad Keep. The words were no longer important for their meaning was plain. I knew that her will was joined to mine. She walked in my thoughts and I could feel the warmth of her presence like a mother's protective arms wrapped around me. But this time the loving arms did not turn me away from the battle, shielding me from it. This time, she turned me to face the shadow.
"Neither hatred nor fear will serve you against our enemy. Know that what is required from you is no more and no less than your total resolve to put an end to him."
I rose to my feet as fire ran through me. There must have been pain since it forced a scream out of my mouth but my heart felt ecstasy. The shards in my lap flew up past my face and the hilt in my hand burned like the hot end of a poker. Silver poured before me in a scalding sheet and I was blinded by its light. I felt a weight in my hand that was not there before.
"The Blade of Gith," I heard Ammon say with more satisfaction than I think I had ever heard from him, up to and including the night he had made me a woman. He took two steps toward me and his tone changed. "But...why does it look like this?"
"The blade has molded itself to the need of the Kalach-Cha," Zhjaeve said. She still had that proud mommy sound in her voice, and it was untouched by Ammon's consternation. I blinked furiously. My eyes were full of tears and I could see little but white spots and afterimages. The sword glowed like
it was forged from light itself. The grip had shifted to better fit my hand. It wasn't until my vision fully returned that I understood Ammon's reaction.
I had fully expected the blade to appear whole and perfect. It didn't. Despite the glittering throng that had joined us, we still didn't have all the shards. Those that were missing were still missing, leaving a ghostly outline behind. There were places it looked like you could poke your finger right through the blade. (I wasn't ready to try that experiment just yet.) And the individual shards had not welded themselves together into a perfect shining whole. The image that leaped to my mind was that some child had dropped his mother's favorite vase and had stuck the pieces back together with clay and spit.
"Well," I said. "How about that." I gave the sword a tiny little shake. Nothing rattled or fell off. So that was good. I tried a short gentle swing. Despite its appearance, the blade was as light and quick as a rapier.
"Doubt not," Zhjaeve said. I swung around to look at her. Her veil hid her features but I could have sworn…was she laughing at me?
Weeds and brush grew thickly near the river bank. They were all dead now, it seemed. Right in front of me was a stand of cattails. Growing up, I'd been served cattail shoots at every possible meal throughout the spring and into the early summer. They're not bad but if I never eat another I'll die happy. I swished my blade through the tough stalks. The edge was sharp enough to send the fluffy seed heads flying. Interesting. I took a couple of quick steps and chopped at a sapling a bit thicker than my wrist. A slight shock ran up my arm and the blade sheared right through the trunk. I'd spent more effort slicing cheese. It was my turn to laugh.
"I cannot wait for Khelgar to see this! His eyes are going to bug out of his head." Casavir gave me one of his rare smiles but it disappeared when Ammon whirled to face the burnt-out shell of Pitney Lannon's house.
"Be wary," the warlock growled.
We had company.