"Rook to queen's rook three."
She felt almost—contented. As if some of the bitterness of Gorion's death had been removed permanently, through sharing Marl's loss; she knew her resolve to continue. Outside, it seemed a bright day had come; she'd wakened before sunrise, repacked for the road, taken herself running and through each standard sword-form. Fresh air in her lungs, exercise, the sheer physical pleasure of challenging her body; truly invigorating.
Upon returning to Feldepost's to share in breaking the fast, she'd been tempted by Xzar into chess. Without the aid of a board. A challenge of memory, even without his unconventional ruleset.
"Knight from king's four to king's knight three captures priest." If she remembered the position rightly.
"You were on king's six. My caster yet lives," he gloated.
"I'm not sure I believe you. You did say misleading the opponent about the location of pieces was in these rules." She'd lost five pawns, a rook, and her other knight to his queen's priest and two pawns; but she was in a position to make him find some losses in return before the inevitable checkmate.
"It's a classical game of wit—misinformation has to form part of it, much as I despise illusions...but this time I insist. King's six."
"King's four. It can't have been king's six."
"Six." He crossed his arms stubbornly.
"Four," she maintained.
Imoen interrupted. "You moved to king's five, and do you know how incredibly boring you are?" She lightly smacked the back of Prudence's head. "Boring's still better than crazy-creepy, though, wizard, I'm not complainin'."
Already past time, she supposed, to leave for Nashkel; Imoen seemed ready, Jaheira nearby. "Concession in return for a rematch, Xzar?" She would have lost that one, eventually; but it had been interesting. He adapted quickly, brought together combinations that she hadn't thought of before. And there were counters that she wished to try in a second chance...
"I barely got to start to unleash the black queen's devastating power," he sniffed. "Build a Mystra's Strike and in six moves annihilate the white armies—"
"You couldn't have moved the queen's rook in place for that," Prudence said, carefully picturing the board; she'd a left flank ready to advance. "Azuth's Gambit, maybe, if I didn't block..."
"And if you did: I'd lose the other priest, but you'd gain a pawn's change. But I'd take your other queen in the Sothillisian's Deceit—"
"Bailan's Entrapment, perhaps..." she tried. "You'd win the war of attrition, but I'd guess not inside fifteen moves..."
"Incredibly boring!" Imoen repeated.
"Yes—we should go. Basileus tethnekenai; but we'll settle it again later," Prudence said.
"They call me mad," Xzar said, standing and brushing his robes; "if they're courteous they call me fey; they call my mage's speciality iniquitous; they call my experiments insane—but they have never called me boring."
Imoen giggled. "Boring, boring, boring. Now I know what to say to you."
"In that case, you're pink and annoying and practically a reincarnated chipmunk," he said loudly.
It was childish. Prudence snorted.
"Aww, shut up, ya plug-tailed trollop."
"I cast Insult Turning before you said that!" He waved his hands dramatically in the air. "It bounces back and lands on you!"
"Oy, that gullynapping necromancer just called your only sister a trollop, Pru!" Imoen complained. "Defend me?"
"It's wrong to call people trollops," Prudence recited from Winthrop. "Or buffleheaded, gullynappers, rumdukes, or mutton mongerers; or annoying, or chipmunks." There, approximately fair and even-handed.
"You're quite right, young lady," Xzar said in Imoen's direction, adopting the tones of the most fussy of senior monks. "She can be rather prim and proper—repressed, by my diagnosis, as a consequence of the profession—"
"Hey, I'm not that repressed—"
"Heh. If'n rumjake vealmongering riffraff like that are sayin' it—"
"Compared to those who are goody-goody slanderous fiends as those inhabitants of the third plane on the left turn of the lower reach—"
"Look, if you start talking about the finer and totally eww points of demon summoning, I'm totally out of—"
"Yes! Start with the mortal skull of a scorpion—the exoskeleton's cephalothorax in its innard-stripped glory—against a candleflame, white wax—and perhaps a demon or devil's—"
"If you gain some impulse to summon a demon between here and Nashkel," Prudence lectured—which was an unlikely prospect, but the man was unpredictable—"then we'll all die yelling at you—"
"Yeah, yer all fluffyheaded an'—"
"And you're a big meany and I'll tell Monty!"
"And I suppose you are amusing...in a what in all the Nine Hells is wrong with you kind of way," Jaheira's voice rang out strongly; and conquered all that lay before it.
—
Still early morning outside the inn. Farmland surrounded the town, and they skirted the fields of growing crops and cows. Perhaps staying longer and properly seeing Beregost would have been interesting—Firebead Elvenhair maintained a house here—but they'd the task to complete. The southbound road lay to the east; but Jaheira's path led them through forest trail.
"We ought to have some sort of strategy in mind, if we do come suddenly upon—bandits or more ogres or similar," Prudence said.
"Ye attract attention and blows—th' rest of us get the job done?" Montaron said. The thing she found most annoying about that, Prudence thought, was the assumption that she wasn't capable of being discreet. It wasn't as if she dressed like a Tormtar (not that there was anything wrong with that). But giving Montaron a chance to use his ability for stealth; that had worked with the wizard on the inn's steps.
"Well—a frontline distraction along those lines seems to work, if a smaller number." Ogres supposedly tended to hunt in small groups or alone. "If it's the bandits, with archers—" By the rumours, they'd formidable bowmen equipped with strongly enchanted arrows—ice that froze their victims to death, by one tale, black demonfire by another. "We've cover on this route, so if it's Jaheira casting herself and staying near Imoen and Xzar, while the three of us get to them..." Jaheira was both a powerful caster, and had the ability to protect the least armoured of the group.
"'Tis w-wise to exercise caution," Khalid said. "P-probably we will not be attacked, but..." He lifted his shield briefly; Prudence nodded.
"And enemy casters—" That man who had called himself Tarnesh, one of the Friendly Arm's guards had said. "Xzar's energy drain spell worked well against the protective magics, and—"
Montaron grunted. "Ain't no caster functions long with a sword located in the guts. Don't fancy it up."
"And first," Xzar added, "I've a real daisy chain—" He held three genuine flowers, plaited together in a passable chain. "And secondly, you're wrong, Rue—Larloch's minor drain does not subvert on the protective axis at all. It was those cursed Mirror Images, which appear at the three-fourth point of the second spindle-turning of illusive distraction—"
"—Law of Opposing Schools, then," Prudence said automatically. She could remember Gorion teaching the Circle of Eight, illusion's silver diametrically across from necromancy's black. Fighting alongside and against spellcasters, one ought to know these things, though not the casting details. "You should do that again if we have to fight another wizard, unless you can think of something better."
"I have every confidence in the vile necromancer of daisy chains to do so," Jaheira said flatly.
"Dead flowers?" Xzar suddenly looked...wrongly enthusiastic. "Yes, I killed the flowers, didn't I? I could create rotten zombie reanimated daisy chains, and—"
"And perhaps the only things they'd be useful for would be provoking Jaheira and maybe tripping very clumsy people," Prudence said. "Stick to counteracting illusion."
"It's a complex strategic web," Xzar said composedly. "The illusion could be an illusion of an illusion, if the bad wizard expects me to try that. Or I could expect that the bad wizard expects that I expect him-or-her to try that. Or the bad wizard could expect that I expect that the bad wizard expects that I expect him-or-her to try that, or—"
"You're familiar with the spell Occam's Unnecessary Confusion?" Prudence said.
"There's no such..." He placed the flowers securely inside his robes and stared frostily at her. "You're very bad."
"Hold," Khalid said. "T-there are voices..."
Two ogrillons, crashing through the forest. Neither as large as the lone ogre; but equally willing to attack travellers.
"Unnatural creatures. Oh, omnipresent authority figure?" Jaheira said in Prudence's direction, her hands already moving towards a casting. "Pray, what meagre task would you care to assign—"
The ogrillions covered their ground quickly; long legs almost the girth of treetrunks. They'd mottled skin some shade between green and grey—smaller than the other ogre, and hardly anything like illustrations in instruction manuals— A heavy club swung through the air; Prudence's hilt had found its way to her hand, she was grateful to realise, and she slashed to the ogrillion's right side, but Jaheira's casting stopped abruptly. The druid, forced to step back from the club's path, took up her staff. She dealt the ogrillion a hefty blow, but it barely faltered. Its meaty fist cut through the air; Prudence ducked below it, just far enough to escape.
Khalid held off the other ogrillion, standing his ground; she could hardly spare to look, but one had to know what was happening. At first she couldn't see Montaron, then it became clear; he hacked efficiently at the ogrillion's kneecaps from behind, hamstringing it—
Jaheira's oak met the club, and her body bent into the blow; too strong to fully meet. Prudence slashed forward, while the ogrillon flailed. It seemed to lurch forward, as if trying to brush Jaheira away. If it did—
Imoen was behind them; an arrow, fired high into the air, flew above the ogrillion's head. Jaheira kept control of the battle; the regular beat of her staff hardly faltered. It ought to be an obvious rhythm—Prudence tried to keep up with Jaheira, to read the gaps where a sharp point could break through the ogrillion's reactions. In truth the staff seemed to bruise the thick skin little, and the words if treating it as another test flashed across Prudence's mind. As if distracted by thought—the club caught her a glancing, painful blow on her left shoulder; she stumbled back, her grip on her shield suddenly numb and limp.
"Your death is divined; watch this face of it and know your end!" Xzar's voice, loudly projected. In the air was a vision tangible in its form, one such as to be terrifying to most: the large skull of an ogre or ogrillion, bleached white and surrounded by licking flames of green, hurtling quickly through the air and above Khalid's head—
(Query: how exactly was he carrying an ogrillion skull?)
Couldn't lose concentration, couldn't lose here— She'd cut into the ogrillion's flesh, but its wounds had seemed only to make it more infuriated. Its stained fist swept toward her face, and she heard the sound of the skull exploding nearby. A flare of brighter green, pale fragments falling about it like snowflakes. The ogrillion's fist went above her helmet as she leaned down and struck forward, her left arm still numbed.
The end of Jaheira's staff hit firmly to the ogrillion's windpipe; it fell back. The slashes and arrow-wounds on its flesh seeped ogre-like blood. Khalid and Montaron had brought down the second, in brief advantage of the distraction. Prudence saw the ogrillion yet breathing, Jaheira's staff subduing it; it was not as if they could escort a monster to the town as prisoner, and it carried a human scroll bound to it, and it was slowly bleeding.
She angled her blade carefully, for the ogrillion's throat. A quick death. Montaron, she noticed, seemed to be doing rather the same thing; and Jaheira watched her again, that expression upon her face.
To Mirianne of Beregost. My dearest, the note read, I have arrived safely in Amn...The halfling I hired to carry this struck me as an honest enough chap...
So the ogrillion carried evidence ready-made of preying upon others; so close, withal, to the town. Prudence looked down at one of the white fragments, blown by the wind, and saw a small cocoon where bone had seemed to be. Lying near the ogrillion it had injured was what Reevor's fanatical discipline had her know for a rat skull. A transmutation; dramatic indeed.
She had to heal herself; it took more than she had expected. The pain hit her at the moment the battle was clearly over. But she could piece her own shoulder back together in the quick space of a prayer, scapular and humeral head settled in place, nerves and muscles set to proper structure. Khalid and Montaron seemed unharmed.
"That we were attacked so near to Beregost," Jaheira said, "betrays the state of affairs."
"Right, yeah," Imoen said. "Guess they weren't as big and scary as that other ogre, but flaming skulls flung around by your own side... Um. Pretty jewels?"
"That may have belonged to the author of that letter," Jaheira said.
"No, thankf—" Prudence broke off; the letter-writer hadn't been the messenger attacked, but either way someone had probably been murdered. "We're still close to the town. Better go and deliver it." Mirianne of Beregost would want news of her husband; would perhaps have been worrying for some time.
The generous gift of a ring of protection triumphed over Montaron's attitude; in the straw-drawing, it went to Imoen, which made tactical sense to protect a lightly armoured archer (and she would have wanted to protect her sister, Prudence knew—).
The retrodden path at first loomed before them; and then they moved deeper into the wilderness between Beregost and Nashkel. To take the main road would have only invited ambush. Muddy ground; it must have rained here in the recent past. All but Jaheira squelched uncomfortably through the darkened soil. Evergreens stood in ragged clumps, near the edge of a brownly clouded pool; and the wizard muttered and gestured to himself, stepping across the thick pale roots of a wide-spread yew. In the shadow of a small hill grew a yellow-shaded moss, narrowly leaved and blooming: sphalotha.
Jaheira said the name, pointing. "Have they taught you that much of the healing arts in that fortress?"
"Dried, can be used on clean wounds as a coagulate. Possible substitute for cessatre leaves in healing potions. Otherwise used with fennel in a liver remedy," Prudence said. A qualified herbalist she was undoubtedly not, but within limited bounds she'd the relevant portions of Koushan's Compleat Herbal to memory.
"That only shows me of your memory," Jaheira said; she bent down in a quick movement, and efficiently detached a few of the plants. "Nature's resources ought not to be wasted. Have you used this in reality, or read a few books?"
"It's fairly rare near Candlekeep. Sometimes in autumn it's gathered, cleaned, and dried over heated stones for a day. How do you prepare it?" Prudence said, politely enough, she thought; as a druid, Jaheira would know some useful facts.
"Over artificial heat? 'Tis not the way," Jaheira said, and looked rather satisfied at the chance to correct. "The natural air preserves texture and properties much better. I would be surprised that it was of any use whatsoever to those monks."
Candlekeep's procedures were founded on a history of rational, recorded experimentation of over a thousand years. Jaheira was an expert in this area. Where they disagreed—was it not a fact that a caster's own expectations and will would guide the path of a potion or spell-brewing? "It was of considerable use," Prudence said, "the priests kept a continuous heat casting in the cellars and—"
A high scream behind them; and the wizard fell forward into the muddy pond while Imoen, behind him, dived down as if to grab something scuttling through the wilderness. Jaheira twitched, and made no move. After a second Xzar raised his mud-soaked head; like a—half-drowned and entirely furious cat, being the metaphor that came to Prudence's mind. Khalid, nearest, gravely offered him a hand.
"Got it—!" Imoen stood up. "Big bad necromancer, attacked by cute little baby bunny rabbit who's a little dearum sweetum..." She carried a small white bundle of fur and cooed to it.
"Ye caught midmeal?" Montaron said. Imoen stamped a foot.
"No! That's just cruel and mean! It's only a baby!" Imoen had both cooked and eaten veal and lamb with appetite and enthusiasm in the past, Prudence knew well; but...
"Release the wild animal back to nature where it belongs, Imoen," Jaheira commanded. "Is none in this group possessed of right mind?"
"Stop touching me!" Xzar cried out; he pushed aside Khalid's gauntlet, and walked resolutely forward, ahead of the group. Dripping badly.
"You should try and walk more to the right, wizard," Jaheira instructed; his path changed slightly, but he continued to lead in bitter silence.
—
"And halt! You're under arrest for banditry and highway robbery!"
Well-shined plate glinted under the eleventh-hour sun and a closed-faced, red-insignia'd helm. The mud covering Xzar had solidified into light-coloured flakes slowly scraping away from him. The lone Flaming Fist held a longbow drawn tautly in their direction, the few segments it was possible to see of his face unmoving.
"We are—"
"We're not bandits," Prudence said over Jaheira's voice.
"You skulk in the wilderness instead of the main roads," he said—and it would have made an atrociously smug textbook homily on openness, Prudence briefly reflected, that when they failed to take the main road on the grounds of practicality of course a paladin would be mistaken for a bandit— "Surrender to the Flaming Fist!"
"The bandits are supposed to be humans and hobgoblins, aren't they?" Prudence said; argumentum ad group dynamics. "We're only adventurers, bound to investigate Nashkel..."
"They'd all say that," the Fist retorted. "Give yourselves up now...or you can be sure there'll be trouble."
There were other glints of bright armour between the trees, of course; Prudence was sure that at the least Jaheira and Montaron knew it (probably before her). Nobody was fool enough...
"If there were bandits who outnumbered a Flaming Fist sixfold, wouldn't they have already attacked?" she said; framed it as a pure hypothetical. Jaheira's head seemed to turn slightly to her direction, and fortunately, the Fist's bow wavered. "For his...highly polished iron." She wasn't fond of flattery. "We did encounter two ogrillions not far north; and delivered a waylaid letter to Mirianne of Beregost from her husband. Do you patrol near there often?" Likely enough; Beregost was tied closely to the Gate, the Fist's base of operations.
"Yes, he does," said the Flaming Fist closest to him, stalking openly out of the trees wearing the insignia of a lieutenant, his bow also drawn; "Let these folk pass, Arcen. I'm acquainted with Mistress Mirianne and her man Rodolf these past—"
"Roe," Prudence said; and there wasn't a chance that these Flaming Fists were not what they seemed, either—no; easier for them to risk an attack than to reveal a second man—
"Roe, these past twelve years. Tymora keep him if he's taken it into his head to travel back this season." The lieutenant seemed to smile; he'd a weathered, tanned face, thick-jawed and black-stubbled. "Doubt I need to warn you of much more, travellers. Try not to be mistaken for what ye might have been."
"Yeah, ye can shove it up yer..." Montaron muttered under his breath, one of his scowls fixedly set.
"Thanks for the thought," Prudence said, addressing the leading Fist. "And your name, sir?"
"Officer Ferren. Move on, men!"
"If that is the standard of the Fist's recruits," Jaheira said almost primly, marching onward; "then 'tis small wonder they find the roads so plagued." They travelled on no road but rougher trails between the trees; a bearlike growl sounded some distance away.
"Usual standard of the stinking lot of 'em," Montaron said. "Go wrap your mouth over yer stick, druid, I'm liking the quiet for damn once." Xzar had not ended his silent, fixed sulking; Prudence saw the mage rub grimly again at the dried dirt at his left ear.
"D-do not talk to m-my—"
"Thank you, Khalid, but 'tis no need," Jaheira said. "Honour your own precept, halfling. Ground tongue makes excellent fertiliser, especially with the kind of filth you're spewing."
"And ground druid be extra valuable to the soil, eh?—"
"That's quite enough!" Prudence said. Death threat from Montaron, mutilation threat from Jaheira. "How badly do you want to solve this problem of Nashkel, Montaron?"
"Badly enough, for these purposes—" It was Xzar who replied, turning back and speaking again; "A dagger against someone else isn't one that finds its way to you, Monty, haven't you said so?" Not a very positive characterisation of the group's usefulness.
"I prefer to work alone." Montaron's scowl again compared to Jaheira's was approximately equal in expressiveness. "Ye'll learn it's unwise to test my patience."
"As you test mine," Jaheira said regally.
"I hate to state the obvious, but this isn't helping," Prudence said. "I'd almost suggest, go march on opposite sides of the group; but you're too experienced and practical to need to..."
"Child, you're right that it is far from your place to meddle with what you fail to—" Jaheira said.
Montaron, simultaneously; "Think ye can make us play nice-nice? I've suffered yer company about as long as I'm going to!"
Well. That had worked, in a way. She waited for Khalid's words; "C-come now, dear. No point in this s-sort of thing."
Jaheira walked again to the front, setting the pace and the route; Khalid behind her, Imoen next. A close grove of pines; Prudence watched the scenery. She would have thought that the Watchers' regular drills and marches should have well prepared her for the adventurer's trek through the forest; but there was more to carry on one's back in this circumstance, even though she'd tried to pack for utility. At any rate, they should be slowly nearing the Amnian border, a land she'd never travelled to before.
"We're delayed. We need to get to Nashkel." Xzar's muddied face drew next to her. "It's all your fault. Rescuing kittens and delivering the post and all that. Why bother with these petty things?"
"Don't pretend you don't understand why," she said.
"Well, you don't know the lady wanted to hear from her husband again. She managed to send him far, far away from her in the first place."
"You heard her, Xzar."
"True; and you could have provoked the same illusion of temporary happiness if you had known enough to forge the document."
"Happiness isn't itself an illusion, however temporary. And that, of course, would be wrong."
"A courageous anti-forgery position! I won't feign surprise." He sharply brushed back a section of tangled hair from his face. "Such indiscriminate deeds; of what strange substance do you conjure them?"
"It's a good life that's conjured of good deeds," she half-quoted in return.
Xzar shook his head. "You know, it's that sort of comment that makes Montaron keep saying you're going to die quickly."
"He says the same thing about you," Prudence observed. About everyone, really. She spoke quietly, still watching the area; beyond birdsong nearby, there seemed nothing immediately afoot.
"...Monty's overly pessimistic." Xzar waved away such speculations, gesturing through the air and flaking dust to settle on her forest-stained mail. "The beneficent time is one spent to understand life—which is to say, the knowledge of the leaving of it. The likes of the lady Mirianne will make no intriguing discovery."
"You can't be sure of that," Prudence said. "Take note of her example, because—it worked out." Bringing her husband's letter had been the right thing to do; and would have been even if she had not rewarded them.
"Do not take examples as a whole—the note could have been one of those poisoned ones where the ink rubs deadly; or its recipient a falsehood," Xzar said.
"It wasn't. Examples are evidence; find sufficient of them and one has proof. This one counts."
"Very smug of you."
"—Smugness I'd deny. Not that my reasons—why do you make this journey to Nashkel's petty problems?" she said; —mercenary reasons, it seemed, but even a paladin did not usually refuse a reward from those who could spare it.
"The same reasons of personal duty that everyone else here would claim," he said, smiling; "—because a travelling mage might find interesting new spells—because the killer rabbits will win if I don't? I don't think we'll be killed if not, but you should never trust dragons with feet like rabbits; or banshees—I have divined tales of banshees." He spoke no longer of the purpose for which he worked, but spun quickly into his account, speaking with gesture as much as voice; "In the furthest south of Toril, they say there are lands of ice and snow like the north, but with no people in its reaches and valleys, nor any creatures; if there you search for the floor of a cave cut into a black hexagon—or improvise with suitable components—and stand at the very centre at it for as long as a night where there is no day, you will hear the howl of the abandoned banshee from that which once lived there. Poor men will be given the iron keys to the dead silver city one hundred and thirty-two feet below the ice; mad men made sane; rich men will have tongues taken out by the roots and eaten in saltwater; —and nobody knows what happens to sane men. They are rarer than one supposes."
Another sudden change of subject; fascinating—Prudence had herself read geographical treatises theorising of continents even further south than Maztica and Lapongo, likely as frozen as the northern lands out of Toril's symmetry, perhaps even inhabited. She wanted to see such places, someday, if within her duties. "You came from north of here; have you travelled to—"
"Almost went to Candlekeep once, I believe; not further south—one gets out so rarely when one is embroiled in the study of magic. In any case," he continued rather quickly, "I was busy nagging you in most vociferous terms that we have to get to Nashkel soon; our delay is making me rather tense. I'm not nice when I'm tense." He continued to move his hands through complicated patterns; during his loretelling he had plucked a leaf from a tree with a cantrip, and glowing an icy blue it circled each of his wrists in turn.
"Is anyone?" she said lightly. Nice was an adjective she would never have considered applying to Xzar, in any case; 'surprisingly lucid at times', perhaps, or 'creative', or 'unconventionally rather clever'.
He shook his head fiercely, thereby scattering more dust from his misadventure. "You have to be," he said. "And if you're not I'm telling Helm on you, so there." He even stuck out his tongue.
She laughed; someone who gave long discourses on banshees in the southern continent one moment and was so juvenile the next— "Somehow I haven't met many gods who care about mild impatience. Actually I haven't met any gods in person, but..."
"Your nasty tense not-niceness promotes poor precedent, paladin. Ooh, alliteration," he added in aside. "One day you're tense, you start making excuses for yourself, you build up a little habit, and next day you explode in a fit of temper and kill cute little orc babies. Then it's Blackguardism and free rabbits for all."
"I'm not going to kill—where do you get your ideas? And," she finished, "you said you were tense. I'm simply...mildly amused, at present. At you."
"Don't I make you tense? People are supposed to be tense around necromancy. A few quiet conversations about hobgoblin fingernails as a distinctly inferior reagent vis-a-vis acidic constructions and—"
"Necromancy's only an illegal practice in nations where all spellcasting is restricted," Prudence said. They might have already crossed the Amnian border by now, but the frontier towns such as Nashkel looked more kindly upon mages than the large cities. "If you'd complain of professional stigma, talk to Imoen... Not that I disagree with property law, of course."
"All a grand illusion," Xzar said serenely. "Gold is the uninteresting kind of dead and takes on only the symbolism that people raise it up to be; such notions are a phantom and formless void, a shapeless function and fragile pretence. A convenient lie they tell each other that a few bits of metal that are worth twenty vital components; only the Weave that casts the results is real. Demolish that, I should say; one shouldn't believe that illusion of owning when only what you think and do are real; and extend that to the fictioned laws that always pretend application beyond their factual scope, because if none believed in such they would no longer exist—"
She'd just heard one of the explanations for why Montaron carried coin, Prudence thought. "They tried that in that part of Tethyr after the civil war, didn't they?" she said. "A free state of neither property nor law."
"And again you drag matters to the mundane. Do you object to kicking and screaming?"
"Yes. The Kolkhozia worked for a while, on a small scale." She'd read of the Tethyr rebellion, not only about its battles; the changing governance had interested her. "They'd a good idea, I think. That people can share everything they truly need between them and through cooperation no longer need law. But then Iimerandi and his soldiers took over."
"And purged everyone and danced on the remains and built secret enforcement guard companies and all that," Xzar finished. "Thereby serving as another single example; and by no means proof that law is not a collective illusion—"
"You're being deliberately contrary," she answered back, "illusion isn't the word I'd use for social institutions, but Tethyr is an example that groups over a certain size need law to function—"
Jaheira, suddenly, turned back, something like anger in her face; "Enough of that! That grave time is not for you to make light of in your foolishness—"
"Sorry," Prudence said, "I didn't intend to treat those tragedies lightly—"
Jaheira said a few words to herself, in which the phrase 'foolish child' seemed to be distinguishable, and turned again to lead on with a particularly forbidding set to her back.
—
Six birds burst out of the trees above Imoen's head; she startled, stepping back and watching them take flight, and Montaron had already grasped his crossbow. He shot neatly and quickly; one pigeon fell dead before him.
"Something disturbed them—not you, Imoen, though you could learn to move with a more natural discretion—" Jaheira said; Prudence stepped next to her sister, loosening the pack's straps on her own shoulders, ready to drop it if need be.
"Do you s-see much?" Khalid said. Daylight remained; it was the eighteenth hour or so, Prudence estimated, Nashkel's road to the west of them by Jaheira's reckoning and the town itself yet some hours away.
"I believe I feel something in the forest that should not be. If the rumoured bandits indeed," Jaheira said, her face set like stone, "then you know what we must do."
For the sake of other travellers—if they really are bandits, if we're justified— Prudence thought, feeling suddenly nervous; they themselves had been mistaken for such—
She could hear the sound of the winds in the trees. Montaron looked down at the fallen bird for an instant, and held his crossbow still ready; Prudence shrugged off her pack, nudging it with her foot into the cover of a bush, laying hands on her own ranged weapon. Imoen held an arrow in her right hand.
I pray for protection— Prudence whispered, and touched Imoen's shoulder briefly; pale blue light flashed into her sister's body, a small gesture of defence against evil. Likely her casting would not be long sustained; but—
Jaheira nodded to herself. "Humans," she said. In the direction she looked, one could conjure up shadows in one's sight, perhaps, or translate slight noise into the sounds of something coming; but still Prudence heard nothing—no, that sound was close to human movement; and that from the left perhaps a voice near them, as the group stood in relative coverage, between tall trees—
Then the first arrow pierced past them and she heard Xzar's scream. Not bleeding, as far as she saw; pinned to the tree behind him, arrow near his arm and through the sleeve of his robes—Montaron leaned forward, slashed with his shortsword—Imoen ducked down—
A shape, something, perhaps sixty yards away; Prudence loosed a bolt in its rough direction—she did not think of the steps of the action, the motion practised enough, simple worry flashing through her mind. Three more arrows came to them, one blurring inches above her head, Jaheira charging out. Her own aim did not seem to have made true; then sound, a man's voice—
"We've you surrounded! Drop your weapons—"
Had to be a lie, that; couldn't be more Fist, they'd have announced— There she could see the shape in the woods that had spoken, more of a target; Prudence thought she had the shot lined at last, aimed the bolt and heard a cry.
"Ye can stay," she heard Montaron saying; saw him running into the shadows behind Khalid, taking the left flank. Imoen was down behind a trunk, loosing an arrow of her own; Prudence reloaded the crossbow and launched again in the direction of what she could see.
Arrows returned on them. She dropped flat on the ground; a projectile whistled above where her head had been—enemy's aim close to them—
"And then, after Mister Tree began to move, it's so cold and the crows came to rest on the black towers and the gutters fell and then there was a griffin in the shape of a hungry jackal—" Xzar's eyes seemed to stare in their direction, but he looked past her and Imoen as if he could see neither of them; fallen to the ground, one hand clutched over where Montaron had bared loose his arm, freeing his robes from the arrow. An odd pale blue taint on his skin. As long as he and Imoen stayed down—
Prudence raised her shield, drew herself up; she'd seen a second figure in motion, a man in dark mail, carrying a large bow. She saw the string release, the arrow toward her, but her shield was ready— She felt first the impact, then a strange cold on the inside of the metal, rimed by thin and new-formed ice. Enchanted arrows—the tale of them— Imoen shot quickly in reprisal; the man had raised his own shield, but Imoen's aim was true enough—Prudence, briefly resting her shield, reloading her own weapon, saw the arrow meet his shoulder, on the left. He seemed to stumble, but Imoen's attack hadn't penetrated through his scalemail; and he drew his sword, running to attack. His wide shield was enough against the bolt she released.
The bandit was upon them; Imoen scrambled out of the way of his sword, and Prudence had her own blade drawn. He expected her move, it seemed—moved his shield easily to block, while his sword sought her head in a strike that seemed formidable enough to decapitate—
She moved under the shape of his blow, turning the action into an attack at his legs, not so well-protected by his mail (as her own—but she could move quickly; she evaded him).
"Get back!" she told her sister, and Xzar if he listened, who whispered something cold and eerie now, looking down at the ground. Imoen scuttled back almost like a crab, about to ready her bow again. The man Prudence fought—she could smell him, at this distance, oiled mail and sweated cloth and leather, leaves and mould—he was a few inches shorter than her, thick-built, and when their blades met she thought for an instant that she saw another's face on him, the man called Shank—
A second man; near Imoen—of course the man in black armour had expected a comrade—it was horrible strategy to place oneself between two, and this was no training but the reality; but obviously— She moved between them; tried to distract the second by her blade, use her shield against the other. Imoen had moved back, though her bow was under the foot of the second bandit. Leathers, rather than the mail of the other; the longsword he swung was chipped and stained. Hardly time to think; there was fear for her sister in her, and the simple reflex to keep fighting.
Two pines, close together, surrounded them; a branch was at Prudence's back, pressed by her shoulders. Likely enough to get herself killed; both men moved in. The second man was slow, but the first— Had to get him out of the way, the trained impulse came to her; needed to be quick about it—
She slid to the side and down, away from the second man; and the branch swung back into the first's face. Her low slash was as fast as she could attempt, to his right side, below his raised blade; she cut into his mail where it joined, but he came again at her. He bled. That was a motion she recognised from his longsword, a swift thrust in seconde—yet with his movement conserved as it ought to be, his shield still ready—
She hadn't given way to fear, or lost control; she saw the details before her, knew where her feet stood on a mound of higher ground, and what in that moment seemed had to be done. Prudence turned to meet the attack with the edge of her shield; raised it and his sword—her reach would have to be sufficient, let him begin to move as if to block a low riposte. Instead her blade went up, as fast a movement as she could; a weakness at his neck, between termination of armour and neck of helm. She was just tall enough for it to be a strike from above, and the weight of her blade carried it through. The throat cut, jugularis, karotides vessel, against her will her mind leaping to the words—he was down, dying. More by fortune than by skill. It had taken but a few seconds of time.
There was the second man. He couldn't ignore her in favour of Imoen. He was much bigger than her sister, taller than the armoured man had been. The jerking path of his sword was almost as if he thought it a club, unpredictable and novicelike. It flashed through her mind that it was better to be cautious with an opponent like this, the very unpredictability could be enough to decide the fight in his favour; but Prudence fended away a mad strike from him, pushed closer; and against him alone she would likely win—
"Ye killed Charilan," he spoke. He seemed of Imoen's age, despite his bulk.
"You could surrender," she replied, because one had to say it; she had killed his companion, and perhaps she herself would not have—. He did not reply but gave another of those strong but slow blows, and she moved easily aside from it. You didn't drag out a fight; he did not seem to know it, perhaps relying on his broader shoulders, but she was close to finishing. He left the right side of his torso open, and he would not move fast enough to protect himself.
Then a single, high word sounded behind her; Xzar's voice. Like a frightened rabbit the bandit instantly turned and ran from her as fast as a deer, his face white as a sheet, almost tripping over Imoen in his hurried flight. It had happened almost too quickly to do anything; their attacker was gone between the trees, and there was only the other man there. Dead already, still and quiet; Prudence saw the blood about him on the forest floor, and looked away. People were fragile, bodies were fragile, she'd learned in theory in the course of her studies, felt it here... Xzar had raised himself to sit on his haunches, still clutching his blue-tinged arm, silently watching.
"Imoen?" Her sister was already bending down to reclaim her bow. Imoen was unhurt; as for the others—
"That was a horror?" Prudence interrogated Xzar; they should go quickly, move on and help.
"A wide-area effect; cast from one's own fear—I hate being so cold—it ought to have spread far—" He sounded relatively lucid, speaking calmly as if lecturing on theoretical magic; she should heal his arm, when they could.
"Fool wizard!" Montaron's voice called; near him were Khalid and Jaheira, Jaheira's skin a thick dark brown of a druid's protective casting. She held her quarterstaff grimly ready. Montaron carried a jagged half of a broken shortsword in one hand, and a long dagger in the other. "Ye drove them away whilst we were near-done."
"By my witness, two escaped free." Jaheira looked briefly across at the dead man.
"I stuck the one the knightling pegged, saw ye and yer man dispatch the other two," Montaron said. He stared darkly at Xzar. "If ye'd but stayed silent a moment longer, I'd have sent the last down, fleeing or no. Missed a bolt through him by an inch at that."
"She must have killed the Talon, while I was...busy," Xzar said, releasing his left arm for a second in order to point at the body. "Then I think there was another. I can't move my hand, Monty, it's so cold. I couldn't cast anything else; I'd like healing."
Talons, Black Talons—that would fit the dark armour and insignia, Prudence thought; she'd read of them as a northern mercenary company, known for ruthlessness. She bent down next to Xzar. His forearm was cold as ice, frozen solid by the arrow's mark; she tried to think swiftly how to deal with that.
"And it was an act spurring the bandits to flee to seek aid from their fellows," Jaheira said.
"Yeah, even the druid—" Montaron said, and briefly snarled. "Get on yer way again, mage."
"Indeed," Jaheira said, her tones low and disapproving, as if highly reluctant to agree with Montaron, however briefly. "It would do no good to us if they returned with reinforcements; and this is not our true purpose here." She was right, Prudence thought; one task at a time—
Enchanted arrows; the cold was an arcane effect. She'd read treatises on the type of injury. Prudence hastily stripped off her glove for added precision in the casting; she could sense the damage spread through each layer of the arm, suspended at the moment of the arrow's trauma. What blood there was formed reddened crystals over the skin. No wonder he claimed to be unable to move the hand; and a lack of circulation caused dire consequences in but a short time. Yet there was warm blood near enough to it, a gradual transition between healthy and blocked. She would start there and try to restrain the casting to a gradual path, for warming a part not capable of receiving renewed blood would be pointless. Even the person attached to the injury receded into obscurity; the challenge of the wound new to her experience occupied her thought.
"What do you k-know of Black Talons?" Khalid spoke; Prudence heard Montaron grunt as she began the prayer.
"Reckon what Xzar knows be the same as ye, except for the bats in his belfry that might have 'em tea-partying with crows or somesuch. Now what did this bright boy have on himself?" The sound of cloth and leather tearing; out of the corner of her eye Prudence could see Montaron examining the Talon's possessions. She felt warmth gradually channelled through her, the healing mercifully granted; the true heat had to come not from the casting but the body returning to its usual state, fresh blood from the main brachial vessel where it branched into radial and ulnar, winding down the flesh and restoring it to life, moving away the old blood through softer veins. The detail of what she intended to do travelled through her mind's eye, and her focus held. She felt the healing end correctly. She stood again; in the minutiae of the casting she'd not thought of the man she had killed. She noticed that she was breathing harshly, though she had not thought of any tiredness while fighting. That had probably been the last healing she'd have the strength to cast, until she could quietly pray and rest.
"No volunteers to carry the armour? Yer own loss. Gold, halfway decent dagger—pox on the iron crisis—three arrows for ye, girl." Imoen carefully and quietly took what Montaron gave her, placing them within her quiver. "Should've shot the runaway; ye had a chance, didn't you?"
"Shoot someone in the back? I don't think so—" Imoen said.
"Ye learn or ye die; 'tis yer funeral." Montaron was ready to go; Prudence reached for her own pack. She could see the utility of not remaining here in case of a renewed attack, perhaps in revenge; but still it felt wrong to leave dead people like this.
"Jaheira? Could you do the same casting for the spiders, to at least...bury these people?" Prudence said.
"It would certainly prevent any possibility of raising," Jaheira said; Prudence wanted to correct her, to say that denying the men any slight chances of life certainly hadn't been her intent, but... "'Tis a rough method. The ground is much more dry here, so the disturbance to the earth will be great," Jaheira continued. "Once you are well out of the way I shall cast, and then return to you."
Jaheira had begun her chant; Prudence marched on with the others. The earth unevenly shook below her feet, and sunset and approaching shadows came. The barkskinned Jaheira had returned to the lead. They moved quietly enough, until darkness began to cause the humans to stumble; even Imoen.
"All right?" Prudence asked her quietly. They had to have covered some fair distance.
"I will be, I think," Imoen said. "Closer than that other guy; not so bad as I thought, maybe." Prudence saw her shrug in the darkness, crossing nimbly across a well-grown root. "Was there more I should've done? Maybe tried to shoot when that man ran?"
He was a bandit; likely enough he'd attack others; and yet trying to kill someone running in fear felt wrong, and was by some laws of chivalry... "You shouldn't have to," Prudence said. If Imoen had not aimed her bow, then she herself had failed to take up her crossbow in time. Circumstances in which that...
"Fine." Imoen half-smiled in the dark.
"A stream not far," Jaheira said. "I hear you three fumbling in the back. There exist humans capable of mastering something of a ranger's respect."
"Blame the man in the dress and Dame Clanky Armour over here, not me," Imoen said, cheerily enough; she jumped neatly on a thick fallen branch, walking it as if it were a tightrope.
"Robes. And pants," Xzar corrected, to which Montaron appended a note of gratitude. "Graveyards are better at night," he said. "It's easier to see the ectoplasm coming." He didn't have the same easy balance as the half-elves or Montaron, but he moved quickly, Prudence thought; flighty in his odd whims, but precise.
A long day; they ought to rest, if it were safe. She'd almost want to face ten hobgoblins alone in a quick battle rather than march out the night.
"I know well enough where we are. And I do not intend to continue to tramp about as if pushed by a slave-driver," Jaheira said, and Prudence thought there was almost a trace of humour in her voice.
Clear water nearby; a defensible position near a small hill; and Jaheira's advice that a fire would be acceptable.
"Spices," Imoen said suddenly, at Khalid's elbow; "you said you have some?"
"Old recipes," Khalid said gently, "from m-my homeland; useful on the trail."
"That's nice—" It was good, Prudence thought, to see Imoen taking an interest in talking to Khalid of details of roasting the bird Montaron had killed. She herself was capable of cooking, and further capable of living upon what she could cook; but Imoen put the claim that most of what Prudence set her hand to inevitably drifted toward the taste and consistency of plain porridge. Hence the labour division of washing up.
She ran through the familiar phrasings of a prayer in her mind; the small fire's light was not enough to read by. She'd gone from Candlekeep's vast library to but a tattered, simple book of devotionals, the only tome she had brought away, and one she had half-memorised already through use. Where there is doubt, let there be faith. Where there is darkness, let there be light. Where there is death...
Montaron had been the one to kill the man at the inn, and she had hardly objected. This was the second human she'd mortally wounded herself; it felt different to hobgoblin or ogrillion. She had to feel some manner of regret over taking a sapient life. There was little guilt in her over this death, her prayers of relief that Imoen and the others remained unhurt seeming to be accepted. And still it was no easy matter; and if it became so that would be far worse a concern; and yet of course she could not complain of it, especially if others killed to defend her. Khalid and Jaheira, like her father, had faced far more.
Jaheira, her complexion once more its usual light brown, drew a rag across her quarterstaff. Prudence joined her, similarly paying attention to her own weapon; improperly kept arms would kill one in battle. There was blood she had not before noticed on her chainmail, not her own.
"Where were you from, originally, Jaheira?" Prudence asked casually; she wished she'd more aptitude for languages, but by accent she couldn't place Jaheira anywhere more precise than some distance away from the Sword Coast. Nor did she speak like her husband, from Calimshan.
"A druid grove." Jaheira efficiently twisted her cloth about the staff, cleaning and readying it for its next use. "The enclave raised me from a young child. 'Twas in Tethyr," she added, seeming to glare as she spoke; "My family by blood did not escape the mobs within the country."
Small wonder she objected to the country's usage. "Are you still with a group of druids?"
"I felt it best to leave, once I had grown. I am enabled to take a more active part in the protection of nature," Jaheira said. "Your father was a good man in our cause. I expect that whomever was responsible for his death will suffer an equal fate." The tone of her voice was quiet, relative to her usual speech; but it was impossible to doubt her fierceness.
"If they...continue to conveniently leave clues of what happened," Prudence said. Such as bounties with written descriptions of target and reward. It wasn't possible to follow where the armoured man had gone, on that night; the only chance was if he continued to seek her, or if she heard a tale of the location of powerful warriors with strange, bright eyes. The former she feared, however much she ought to conquer that; perhaps let it be the latter, for the man was a murderer.
"Yes, I gathered that you discovered no trail," Jaheira said, placing emphasis on the second pronoun and her tone disapproving once more; and Prudence could not dispute her rightness.
—
Her watch, and a waterlogged thing seemingly shapeless in the darkness dripped its way near, quivering like a damp bowstring, a trail of moisture falling from it like a kraken's dark reach.
An excuse to stop the exercise she was pushing herself through, staring into the darkness around throughout. Her arms screamed for a rest; she lowered her blade. "No fish ate you, then, Xzar?"
He shivered, and sat himself carefully near the still-warm embers. "Clean." He hissed, running a hand through soaked hair. "Nobody looked?"
"Probably much against a paladin's code," she replied. Archaic and thoroughly outdated treatises, usually titled along the lines of Upon The Hygienic Conduct of the Young Gentleman, with a plethora of complex botanical metaphors and dire admonitions against looking at or thinking about anything female. She sat near him, sprawled into a comfortable posture that such volumes would have condemned for the young gentlewoman.
"Considerate as the sea monsters." Xzar stared at a point six inches behind her left ear. "Can one use the concept of the infinite mirror in the transmutation of water?" he said, probably not to her at all, though quietly enough that it did not endanger the group. "Endless light—sunfire spell, very powerful and not relevant—reflected substance; the casting component is sympathetic manipulation, silver mirror or fish-scale might suffice, drop against drop in the alchemic effects..."
He continued the soft, animated conversation with enthusiasm; it was beyond Prudence's studies, a technical discussion on transmutation spells. A distraction for her to try and halfway decipher the theories he attempted to defend; she kept her eyes open, watching the forest around them. He ought to rest, once he was a little drier. It was difficult not to think that Xzar needed some degree of Looking After.
"And so a small whip of water—conjuration side effect, they say transmutation cannot inherently multiply matter that cannot multiply itself, it would be as if you raised your head with your own steam without summoning it yourself—but if you change it, you can always change it, the Weave reaches everywhere, transmute across space as well as time; the second path then a quarter of a turn, pretend not to be doing what you're doing if it's impossible— That's very helpful, you're dismissed," Xzar said to the non-existent entity. "How many possibilities are there to water-summoning in a fight? It's not always easy to tell when one is shot by icy arrows."
Her mind raced to chances before she could stop herself, whether it was her or some other entity he meant to ask. Strategy was an excuse. "Fire creatures, for the obvious—I'd think of salamanders, mephits. Weaken the earth under an opponent if suitable terrain. If insufficient mass for strong impact in itself, the pull of the earth or the energy of movement could turn it to either shield or weapon. It would have a flexibility advantage there. Heat it to boiling, as in siege warfare. Hold it around someone or something's head if they need to breathe, though that's too slow and wrong..." She stopped herself. "Sorry. I shouldn't be morbid." There were few she could win against on muscled strength alone; the strategic treatises she read focused on thoughts of innovation, trying to use circumstances to advantage. Such as the dishonourable trick of sweeping branches, or the unpleasant thought of asking a mage to drown people.
"Is there a meaning to your tattoos?" she asked instead.
Xzar seemed to half-laugh, and continued to speak quietly in the darkness; "Never. I wanted something utterly meaningless. It would be a—an insane Loviatan to try again—a lot of needles—" So one could imagine; they crossed his face in tangled, symmetrical lines, and even on his upper arm below his robes there was a trace of black ink. "But everything's echoed in the Weave somewhere—always unpredictable and following universal—" He nodded sagely, and she couldn't disagree in so many words. "Scar on the left of your face, warrior?"
"Lost a fight to a quintain years ago," Prudence admitted; mundane and less than impressive.
"Needs more bears and gold to the tale. And, what, no cruelly heartwarming moral to warm the cockles?"
"Would you pine for a thing so ill-timbered?" Her sense of humour...degenerated, upon occasion.
"That's awful," he denounced. The call of a bird echoed loudly from the trees nearby, and silenced them; Prudence narrowed her eyes, staring in the direction from where the cry had come, searching for any signs of hostility. The last attack while they had attempted to rest had been quite enough for her tastes.
"Spiders have eyes..." Xzar whispered. He held something small and dark, and chanted. It flew into the air, a few stray viridescent spots glittering on its surface; and then the spider's separated eye opened, shining an unnatural green instead of its expected black. It bobbed once in front of them, and then flew to the trees beyond.
"I could read with this." Xzar's own eyes were closed, and he whispered another arcane phrase. "Oh, hello, it's an owl. Please don't eat the spell components. Go find a preying rabbit with dragon feet. Trees closing in, stream, insects with chitinous eyes. No—" He raised a hand to his forehead, as though in pain. "The spell mars; diagnosis of local fauna negligible. Consummatum est."
"That was a wizard eye?" Prudence guessed.
"I don't know that divination," Xzar said in rather sulky tones. "The eyes were in a praesine solution to bind the essential properties, half an enchanter's link to see from them, duration disturbingly limited—" A clever improvisation from him, then. "But you're dead to the Weave," he accused. "Unobservant. None of your casting leaks into other domains and you walk through leylines without shifting. Thus your idle curiosity is puzzling."
Her studies on magic had a 'how-to-defeat' objective. "I wasn't always cut off. My father taught me a little of his craft, but I lost that after—well, the obvious." She and Imoen had both fallen away from Gorion's field of study; it was just that her severing was more complete.
"Then they took it from you. That's the worst thing I've ever heard." Xzar shook his head. "No, it's really not. But—you'd magic, and let it be sealed away? Choose to give away that power?" His voice rose in mad, shocked excitement. "That's bad—nobody should allow it—"
"Talk so loudly and I don't doubt Jaheira will overhear—" And whatever she said would be much deserved in her case, Prudence reprimanded herself; and yet she replied to him. "He who gets his arm halfway bitten off by gibberlings complains that a sword's inadequate? And you know what they say about those who crave raw power."
"That they're rational people who understand what happens if they don't? No—two, three—a case different, utility of armour duly noted," he partly conceded. "Is it wholly for power to bedim noontide sun through tides of blackened smoke; call forth the mutinous winds of the planes; set roaring war 'twixt green sea and azured vault; give fire to rattling thunder; order graves to wake and let forth their sleepers?—" He spoke quickly, waving his hands to conjure the imagery of magic; from a well-known tale of a Chondathan wizard duke.
"That particular speaker drowned his book; a poor example. The purpose of gaining power makes a thing evil," she lectured. Obvious theology.
"For he abandoned the Art for rulership; 'tis nigh unendurable to study whilst dealing with large numbers of live people. One ought not to mix one's forms. Is the subtext of your inquiry Do you intend to conquer Faerun with a thousand skeletons wrenched and reanimated from their graves, Xzar?"
"I'd hope not." She suppressed the flippant thought that one thousand mindless undead lacked in military logistics. "Do I need to ask it?" He was far from as powerful a wizard as the likes of Ulraunt or Tethtoril, that was readily apparent, vulnerable in himself—
"No, I think that's one—I am no Red Wizard, for that confusion of temporal and true," Xzar said. "In fact power and the wish to know are one; that to understand the Weave and the secrets of the life's energy is man's chief end; that I seek and I care not what they call it." He spread his hands across his knees, raising his head as though in pride.
She had seen his enthusiasm on magic for its own sake. For now, that could be enough. Man's chief end is to glorify the true gods and serve with honour forever—
"I call it an improvement on fictions of world conquest."
"And there lies the heartwarming moral: that to shiver in darkness and see out of spider eyes must cause some sudden threat. Astral scorpions?"
"How tangible are astral scorpions?" she asked; and watched the forest darkness in case he meant some graver threat.
"It depends." Xzar paused. "Would you object to—no sudden movements? For the next minute or so?"
"For what reason?" Prudence said. Probably always important to ask that, in his strange banters that changed like threads flashing silver and sunlight on a loom, a thousand different patterns woven rapidly into each other.
"Astral scorpions," he repeated, as if it were obvious. "They do chase everyone, and you are here." Xzar raised a hand slowly; she had seen his dismay of others touching him, and chose to sit still. His fingers felt along the line of her jaw, as if brushing away something that only he could see. His hand was still a little damp, the fingertips lightly callused. Neither the hands of a warrior nor a sedentary scholar.
"Dark blue for a caster's signature, though the divine meddling axis changes the dimension, it's green for the druid. Uniform, it seems," he said. "But they say it always leaves a mark, livid and ripped, it doesn't matter the reason of commission. Sometimes truly impressive ones..."
She drew back. Of course it had to come to that; the taking of any thinking life leaves always a stain— "Don't try to read," Prudence said roughly.
"But I haven't cast any divination spells on you!" Xzar protested. "Of course, I don't know so many, yet. I said 'impressive'; I cannot measure weapon skill, but 'twas a success in battle with one lying there..."
"Nothing like that should be impressive," she said coldly. The reasons for the Black Talon she thought sufficient, the reasons why a paladin carried a weapon. There were reasons less convincing for the man called Shank: bled out in the priest's hut while she went to seek others, though by duty she ought to have ensured him only subdued for the Watchers' judgement. By the grace of the gods that had been the case for Carbos; it should be done only under law or by dire need.
Xzar's hand dropped back to his side. "A step on the path," he said, "the art is less in love with the easeful than with subversion of it, but the ability for it will ever imprint; balance it as you choose, as yet I've no dreadful complaint."
Cryptic as usual. "It's Jaheira for balance," she replied. The trees were dark and still around them, and she kept to her watching of them.
"Between moving trees and cold fortresses," he said. "Tell oneself that there are no borders, like a story about dragons. Travel through that land and the border is gone; that the dark trees are taken and in the chests and changed to walk again..."
—
Gibberlings plagued them, on that last day of the journey; one of the diseased bands that roamed the Sword Coast, to Jaheira's voiced chagrin. Where the trees thinned, there was space enough for distance attacks, taking advantage of the creatures' massed movement for bolts and arrows to pierce through their crowd. Perhaps being attacked by monsters was becoming habit. For the mines, it would be wise to replenish her store of crossbow bolts. Thanks to the Friendly Arm, Imoen still carried far more arrows than she had run from Candlekeep with.
The town of Nashkel, at last, weathered wooden buildings, Amnian soldiers patrolling the few cobbled streets; and the woman at the inn they had needed to bury.
Two of them in the small store that morning of the mines, Montaron searching for a replacement sword, her bolts already purchased. Prudence turned over a set of brass knuckles, one of several similar instruments in a small box in a dark corner of Nashkel's store. A set with inch-long spikes rising from the rings, like claws-she could imagine the pain from a hit like that; and several sized for halfling or dwarf, thick and heavy. Prohibited in Candlekeep.
Montaron seemed to have finally chosen a shortsword he considered satisfactory.
"Few places don't have-special items for the discerning rogue," he said, prodding about this section of the establishment. "Thinkin' of one o' these, pally? Yer gloves weigh more than they look."
She'd stitched powdered lead into them; it served in defence as well as offence. "I'd rather proper gauntlets, to be honest."
"Depends on where you're expecting trouble," Montaron said. "Doesn't always happen when ye wear shiny armour. As ye ought to know by now, but some fools don't learn 'till they're dead."
"Two hundred. What kind of price is that?" she said quietly. For the second bounty notice she had warned the others of the update in the description of the company, and burned. Implication: that there was another in the Friendly Arm; that a message of six passed faster than overland travel on foot...
"Means ye shouldn't give yourself airs." He examined a concealed blade that slid out of a long black handle; "Fancy amateur stuff," he muttered, and returned it to its place. "Could take ye if I wanted, but it's not worth the while."
If he was going to be aggressive; "Care to test that? I wouldn't object to sparring." Montaron's skill she couldn't doubt; more experienced than she, practical and careful, and very good at hacking at kneecaps.
"Yeah, save it for the battlefield, kid." He scowled. "I've had about enough in here." It was a poor selection; the town suffered from the iron crisis. There had been a hauberk of overlapping metal scales that Prudence had thought seemed sturdy enough if a little heavy, sized for a human woman, but it was far beyond her funds. She left an extra coin on the shelf behind them; she had seen the storekeep watching them from his table, though not Montaron trying anything. There were soldiers from the garrison marching across the stone path through the centre of the town.
"Thought much of what that father of yours was up to?" he said. A reasonable inquiry.
"Retired to Candlekeep for years," Prudence said promptly. She'd implied as much before. "He'd have made his share of enemies when he adventured." As a Harper, at the least. Gorion had not liked to talk about his past, and she knew few specific details of his battles with slavers and other evildoers. Assailants had come after his ward before they had murdered him; and that condition she'd speculate on herself.
"A clean job, then, ye as well," Montaron said. "That sister of yours can't properly be your sister. Ye might both be humans, but there's scarce resemblance beyond it."
She had used to imagine points of likeness between herself and Gorion, attaining his height and conjuring a similarity to him in the lines of her chin; but with Imoen there was little to none, different in height and feature. That was good, for they could not be mistaken one for the other. "Not by blood. If she was also wanted, then I...I don't know what I'd do," she finished somewhat lamely. She'd have to-somehow get Imoen back to Candlekeep, probably by no means a paladin ought to consider to gain funds for the required tome; there was the triangular-merchantry scheme, the Phonzi Jansen trick, the soft kind of banditry practised in tales flashed through her mind despite any attempts to resist. But even Candlekeep was not safe; try to establish a tale that the corpse of a female attacker like the cleric belonged to Imoen? -Thanks to every god that existed that she did not have to face Imoen in that danger. "There are many people taking an interest in this crisis, aren't there?" she said carefully.
"It ain't that important. Die here and ye die a fool," Montaron said; and asked another question after the pause. "You, and those friends o' yer pa's. Happenstance, ye say?"
"He knew it brought his old friends to the general area." Also truth; there was no evidence that the iron crisis was in any way intertwined with the hurried flight from Candlekeep.
"And they brought ye," Montaron grunted.
"No; you did," she said. "It seemed a worthy cause."
"And every day ye keep reminding me why I prefer to work alone." His eyes narrowed. "Suppose you aren't lying, as far as you know. More than one interested party, ye might say."
"No doubt," Prudence agreed smoothly. The Harpers did not wish to discuss the details of their interest.
He seemed to start suddenly, and glared up at her. "Enough out of you lest ye wake with a blade in your gullet."
"That's a bit unnecessary. Shall we see this through?" They were close to the mines, now; at the destination.
"Ye've adequate skill to keep from hindering me. Keep to that, and mayhaps you'll live longer."
—
Chondathan wizard duke—named Prospero, of course.