Tarsakh, 3
To the honourable Sand of Neverwinter,
Your note arrived last week. I have decided that you may call on me tomorrow at any time after noon.
With the best compliments,
Lucia Veres
Tarsakh, 3
Dearest Harcourt,
She's agreed to a meeting. There are many ways in which this could end horribly. I have considered each one carefully. As long as she doesn't cry, I believe I will be able to forgive you for bringing up the ridiculous notion in the first place. I've told you many times that the best place for the past is in the past. I fear I can no longer complain when my advice is ignored, since I myself am setting this awful precedent.
Your faithful
Sand
Seen In Amethyst
Sst. 856 , Athk. Fae. Contents: Blank. Status: Sold Buyer: Sand of Neverwinter
I stared at the door. It was wedged shut with the lid of a sarcophagus. Something – some things – were there on the other side. Scratching. Whispering. Embrace. Smother. Kiss. Sleep. Die. Die. Die. The three humans couldn't make out the litany. Elvish hearing could be more of a curse than a blessing sometimes. I wrapped my robe more tightly around me.
"We went the wrong way," said Qara. With all colours turned into grey and black by the ball of mage-light, the wound on the side of her face seemed to be oozing ink. Considering the beating she'd taken from that maniac Arval, she was quite chirpy by her sullen standards. Not that this meant much. "We should have gone in completely the other direction," she said, speaking with difficulty through her swollen jaw.
"We'd have been running a gauntlet of shadows with a great mass of them waiting for us in the vestibule," I pointed out to the girl that must be a contender for the title of Faerun's most blockheadedest. If that was a word. "Here we have a chance."
"This is the worst rescue ever," said the increasingly annoying Lisbet Bryce. "Next time, I'll cross my fingers and hope a trained band of sentient pistachios arrives to save me."
"We wouldn't be sitting here waiting to die and be turned into horrible bloodthirsty echoes of ourselves if you hadn't insisted on completing the ritual, Miss Bryce," I reminded her. She shrugged.
I looked at the fourth member of the group. "What now, glorious leader?"
Shandra winced. "Don't call me that."
"You were the one who said we should go and explore the immense dark crypt full of aspiring necromancers without reinforcements, dear girl."
"Well, Lisbet would be dead if we had waited for help."
"Whereas now -"
She gave me a sidelong look. "We'll all be fine. We'll get out of this." I felt my eyebrow raising itself of its own accord. Seeing it, she breathed out heavily, and her shoulders slumped. "That didn't sound totally convincing, did it?"
"Not bad. I confess I felt a flicker of hope. The way you squared your jaw was quite reminiscent of Casavir."
"Gods. I like Casavir, but he owns an encyclopedia of sacred tombs and mausoleums. He'd be enjoying himself here a bit too much."
I wanted to laugh. The shadows, the creeping dampness of the air and, above all, the whispering coming from the other side of the door conspired together to choke the laugh before it could ascend my trachea. What came out was a gurgle. "Still, if you want to become a paladin, the best time is about – oh – now. Pray very hard to your god -
" - Chauntea -" said Shandra, as she leaned her head against a stone pillar, closing her eyes, perhaps trying to imagine herself back on her beloved farm.
"- yes, to her – renounce all worldly interests, flagellate yourself once or twice. A holy symbol with the power to repel the undead could be really unbelievably useful in the near future."
"You think?" she muttered in response. A silence fell. I was trying to plan our escape. I supposed the others were too.
"I'm sorry about Qara," said Shandra. She spoke so softly that I didn't know if I was meant to hear her or not. I could, of course. "She's sixteen years old."
"And you're an old lady of what – twenty?"
"Twenty-four."
"And I'm – well – never mind. But you're not her mother. She chose to be here."
"Yes, but -"
"- I know you're talking about me. I'm not stupid," said Qara in an ever so slightly plaintive voice. "Shandra – you watch my back. Bryce can open the door. Sand should just keep out of my way. I'll blast every shred of shadow I see back to – to -"
" -to the Plane of Shadow, maybe?" I asked. "It's a place described in an famous essay called 'Cities of the Mind' by an anonymous writer working in Tethyr in the eleven nineties. Oh, but silly me. You've never heard of any of them because you are only interested in yourself, like all infants."
"So does that mean you are volunteering to fight the shadows? Why don't you read aloud to them from your precious books, since you have so much faith in them. You can send them to sleep, while we sneak out to get the others. But I wouldn't count on them coming back for you afterwards because the only things you're good for are making spiteful comments and running away from danger with your tail between your legs!"
Die. Drown. Surrender. Yield. Love. Kill.
The door rattled. A few beats later, and it rattled again. And again. The room was becoming hot and cold at the same time. Goosebumps ran up my back like the pricks of a pin.
"Quiet, both of you!" said Shandra, though I had lost the will to argue at the instant the door shook. By the bloodless look on Qara's face, so had she. I didn't think she could have enough power left to destroy even the dozen or so creatures waiting for us in the dark a few feet away. I certainly didn't have enough spells memorized. "What would Lila Farlong do in this situation?"
"Play dead and wait for her enemies to get bored and wander off," I suggested, and, "Pull a shadow-eating rabbit from out of a hat."
"Drink too much," said Qara. "Try and sell them life insurance."
"Not be here?" said Bryce. "I mean, I don't know who this Lila is, but clearly she's not – you know – around."
Shandra looked so guilty and miserable that I wouldn't have been surprised if she'd turned into a paladin on the spot. The more so when she stood up, careful of her injured leg, and took out her weapon of choice – a sickle. As we sow, so do we reap. The enchanted words glowed faintly on the crescent blade. "The way I see it, we have three options," she said, twitching rather self-consciously. "We can stay here and hope for help to arrive. Kyli knows we're here. She'll tell the others when they wonder where we are."
Qara laughed derisively.
"Second option: we open the door and make a break for it. We can't fight all the way out, but if we refuse combat and -"
" - run like a buttered pussy-cat in a gnome's kitchen -" supplied Bryce.
"What?" I saw Qara mouthing at the ceiling. If I hadn't felt such a perfectly reasonable antipathy for the sorceress, I might have smiled.
" - and evade the enemy, I think our chances of getting out of this alive are quite high." The idea did indeed sound promising. I had only one potion left, having failed to pack my usual battle kit that morning on account of not expecting any battles. Such innocence! But with the last potion being my emergency extra-strong invisibility serum, a break for it would suit me extremely well.
Albeit not Shandra.
"And the last option?" I asked.
"We open the door and fight the shadows in here. That way, we can keep them from surrounding us, cut them down a few at a time. Once we've cleared the next room, we can catch our breath, then do the same with the ones in the outer passages."
I was inclined to favour the invisibility serum.
"All of those choices sound terrible," said Young Necromancer of the Year Lisbet Bryce. She might actually be worse than Qara. The latter had yet to set fire elementals on herself and then whine when she got burnt.
"And do you have a better idea, Miss Bryce?"
"Of course I do," she answered coolly.
The sarcophagus lid crashed to the floor, as the door slowly, so slowly, began to open. Shandra flung herself against it. "Then get on with it!" she shouted at Bryce as she pressed with all her weight on the thick wooden panels.
A long dark tendril wrapped itself around Shandra's wrist. Her hand was turning white. "Sand!"
I didn't know what to do. None of my spells would break its hold without first damaging the flesh in its grip. My mind went blank. The only thought I could get hold of was: she should really have been wearing her gauntlets.
"Sand!" said Shandra again. "Knife!"
My mind cleared. I rushed forward and slashed at the shadow, missing several times and hitting the stonework, the door-frame and Shandra's mail shirt in my excitement. But it withdrew. The door shut, and with both of us leaning against it, stayed shut.
On the other side of the chamber, Bryce and Qara were removing the lid from the second sarcophagus. They inclined it carefully against the wall, as I noticed with a large degree of trepidation that the decorations appeared to date from a much more recent period than most of what I'd seen in the crypt. The enamel on the face of a beautiful long-locked woman gleamed as richly as if it had been set there the day before.
And before I could beg her not to, the infant necromancer reached down and knocked on something. I suspected, upon the lid of a coffin.
"Sorry to wake you up." The girl's voice sounded an octave higher than before, and made her seem like a child in the nursery. "I know you were hoping for a long sleep, this time. But I'm in a bit of bother. It really can't be helped."
First, a kind of grey mist exploded into the air between Bryce and Qara. Immediately after that came the sound of hinges squeaking in protest.
"Amazing!" was Qara's only response to whatever had been revealed. Then a long arm wrapped tightly in linen snaked out of the sarcophagus, and took Qara by the throat. The rest of the body followed. Eyes shining with a pale green luminescence were all that could be seen of the creature's true face, for everything else was hidden beneath an elaborate mask that seemed to have been moulded from the dead face of its wearer. Dusty blonde locks tumbled from the back of the head down to the middle of a jewel-coloured kirtle.
A dry hiss came from behind the mask, and, drawing itself up to its full height, the undead creature shook Qara by the throat. How I recognised that urge.
"No, no, mummy," Bryce said. "She's not the problem. These people came here to help me. Unfortunately, they're about as competent as a bag of dead herring, and so I had to ask you."
The – mummy? or was it a lich?- dropped Qara at once, and the girl landed choking in a heap on the floor. I tried to memorize her expression, which seemed to vacillate between horror and wonderment.
"There are shadows outside that want to kill me. They killed my friend Savanna. You remember Savanna, mummy? We used to have dolls' tea parties together by the lake."
The mortal remains of Lady Bryce reached out a bandaged hand towards its offspring. The nails were visible, and quite black. They brushed against the cheek of Lisbet, who smiled tearfully. Then it shuffled back to its not very final resting place, and proceeded to rummage through whatever was left inside.
"They're normally under the cushions at the bottom end," said Bryce.
A few silken cushions were thrown onto the tiled floor, and a fur-lined blanket landed on Shandra's head, while a heavy leather-bound tome bounced off the vaulted ceiling near my right ear. At length, the creature discovered what it had been looking for: a slender flail and a wand of fireballs. It clasped the flail in its right hand, and the wand in its left, and moved slowly and unstoppably towards the only door in the room.
I jumped out of its way, and pulled Shandra after me, still with the blanket on her head.
The hissing sound came again from behind the pale mask, and the late Lady Bryce shambled through the door as if it wasn't there. She hadn't knocked it down. She had simply...rearranged the physics to suit her.
Through the keyhole, I saw the adjoining room turn red. The oak panels felt distinctly warm under my touch.
Shandra pulled the blanket off her head. "What's happening?"
"Option Four." I replied, against the sound of metal snapping on limestone. I was curious to learn to what species of undead the thing we had just seen belonged. It did not resemble anything that I had ever encountered, and in Luskan I had had the dubious pleasure of meeting a great number of beings who viewed death much as others view a few days in bed with a chill.
"She's amazing!" I heard Qara tell Bryce, looking hugely impressed. "I wish my mother could do that." So the little sorceress had a mother. I'd thought Qara might have burned her to death in child-birth.
"She was dying," said Bryce. "When my father knew he couldn't heal her, he got her to agree to - to that." She paused, and looked away. "Now he protects our family house, and she protects the house of the dead. He got the idea from a history he was reading about the old empire."
"That's – uh – very - " Shandra was struggling. I could think of a great number of possible adjectives that could start her off. Disturbed, was one. Cruel and demented, they would do as well. However, since the undead monstrosity was busy saving our lives, I decided that it was not the time for an ethical discussion of the issues surrounding maternal necromancy.
"Don't tell Kyli. She's not supposed to know about it until she's older. Mummy made Dad and I promise before – the change."
"We promise not to mention anything about – her - to Kyli. Don't we?"
"Oh yes," I agreed. I wasn't going to cross the girl who had a powerful immortal undead mother on call.
"What?" said Qara.
"She promises too. And now- I think we should go. Before our friends wonder where we are." Shandra pulled herself up. "Qara, could you lend me your shoulder? I can't walk very well."
"Don't you want to stay?" said Bryce, seemingly bewildered that her new friends wanted to flee the haunted crypt full of the bodies of dead shadow cultists. "I'm sure mummy would love to meet you properly. She can't speak, but she's a very good listener. She always loves to hear about what's happening in Neverwinter."
"We'd like to, but we have an appointment at Castle Never this evening, and we need time to prepare," I hastily interjected, before Qara could get any ideas. As Bryce began to pick up the cushions that had been thrown from the sarcophagus, I noticed the fur-lined blanket lying at my feet. Folding it into a neat equilateral triangle, I handed it to her.
"You should come and visit us at The Sunken Flagon sometime," offered Shandra, no doubt motivated by the same feeling that had prodded me to fold up the blanket. "A friend of ours runs it and gives us good prices."
"Daddy wouldn't like that at all. He's very against alcohol. He would be furious if he found out I was hanging round taverns. But thanks for trying to save me, anyway. You did pretty well, really, until I insisted on casting that stupid spell."
As I walked back through the silent passages, trying not to step on any bodies or in the puddles of ash left by the destroyed shadows, I watched Qara and Shandra limping ahead of me. The farmer was a nice enough young woman; the sorceress, on the other hand …
I nodded politely to the late Lady Bryce when I saw her stooping by Arvel's fresh corpse. It paid us no heed, being too preoccupied in trying on a silver bracelet and hissing in pleasure as the metal glinted in the green light of its eyes.
"I could have burnt them all without her help..." Qara muttered. The most frightening thing was, she was quite possibly right.
Tarsakh, 4
My dear Harcourt,
In the matter of your hierarchical discomfort, I hesitate to offer you advice without meeting the particular discomfort concerned. They can take so many forms: there is the thorn requiring immediate extraction with forceps; the blister, whom one should cushion with an even larger sack of air to prevent it doing worse harm; the leech – left alone it will sate itself and fall off of its own accord; and of course, the bad tooth, whom one can remove only with the help of an experienced practitioner of such surgeries. You have surely already acquainted yourself with the benefits of applying a poultice of lard batter to the place under stress?
Were you expecting a letter about something else? You must wait till tomorrow!
Your faithful
Sand