Mere Glimmering and Decay

by Blue-Inked Frost

There was an Attic challenge for Romance Wot Should Or Ought Not To Be. This is a fic about those halcyon days of early adventuring from Candlekeep...with a certain amount of Xzar. Likely to end. Unlikely to End Well.

4. Chapter 4

In the night...

Dark and quiet in the Nashkel Inn, those hours of rest. Along the two short lines of silent rooms, only one door showed the light of a flickering candle through the space between frame and the floor. Imoen's. Prudence had quietly knocked, slipping back into the small room; traces of gravedirt still lingered on her hands from the assassin's burial, though she had tried to scrub it away.

"Evenin'." Imoen seemed to be sharpening some sort of...metal object she held; small, sharp, and probably one of the devices she had inherited from Winthrop. Several more were laid out near her on the bed, spilling from a leather pouch.

"You're not tired?"

"Am, a little." Imoen stretched up her hands, briefly knotting and unknotting her fingers together. "The mines, tomorrow. We're really doing it, aren't we? And what're you going to do after? It's getting kind of really incredibly obvious the Harpers and the whatever-they-are don't want to be buddies, and they keep threatening to kill each other. You should've heard Monty and Jaheira going at it again after you left."

"They'll both likely have other concerns, once we're finished with the mines," Prudence said, and thought she had managed to sound confident about the adventure's outcome. If it was already time to talk about this, with Imoen...

Her sister frowned, the freckles on her face creasing together. "Do we keep going with Jaheira and Khalid, then? I like 'em...well, I like Khalid. Maybe Jaheira grows on you, like ferocious deer-eating moss or something."

"Jaheira's very good at what she does," Prudence said. "She's experience; she's every right to lead..."

"But you're almost as blockheaded as she is and you're about to suggest leaving them," Imoen said. She'd never been able to conceal anything from her sister for long, Prudence thought.

"It is mostly my fault." Prudence sat in the room's single chair, backwards, her arms folded over its rickety back. Shouldn't have threatened to kill them when they'd met. "But they're Harpers, they're for balance—and that's not identical to my calling. The ideological difference's bound to show sometime."

"And the other two?" Imoen justly prodded.

"Montaron's pragmatic." If violent. "One can work with that. Xzar's...complicated."

"As in: necromancy's eww and he's blatantly crazy?" Imoen screwed up her face in a scowl as if she'd bitten into a lemon.

"Armour stinking of gibberling blood isn't much better and that's not his fault." Prudence could remember Gorion animating five tiny skeletal rats to dance across the floor whilst trying to instil magic's basic foundations into his wards; an invoker himself, he'd even tried to teach a cantrip or two from the necromantic school. Of course, gods' service and roguery had called to them instead.

"Right." Imoen took up her device again, and slowly sharpened another sliver of metal from it. "Don't think I haven't noticed you keep chatting. You can't fix him, y'know. Not even with the oh-I'm-ever-so-holy powers."

"I know," Prudence said. "I'm not that stupid."

Imoen sniffed in her most patronising manner, which produced a sound suggesting a very confused frog with a sore throat. "At least you're stuck with me to look after you. Montaron's a decentish thief, but proper rogues are supposed to bathe at least once in a while."

"I wouldn't assume that, Imoen," Prudence said, making a token moral effort to dissuade her sister from a life of thievery.

"Sorry, who's the rogue expert here? I've learnt a few tricks from him, but I think it's time to go on without those two." Imoen shaved a final spark from the device she held, examined it carefully, and began to return her tools to the pouch.

"I like them. But Xzar talked only of going to Nashkel. If that's what happens, then..." Her last sentence trailed off.

"Then good!" Imoen said. "And you really think we could get along without the others? Survive?"

The assassins; being held helplessly, being attacked. "Jaheira offered to help us find our place, if only for Gorion's sake—and that was generous of them. If we meet others, perhaps. They've fought red dragons, you heard them. Perhaps we'd only drag them down, instead of better learning to protect ourselves..."

Imoen beamed. "Hey, I was eavesdropping in the inn while you went out gravedigging with creepy necromancers. Heard of the Carnival coming up, quiet 'cause of the iron crisis—but might be some adventuring folk there. Blockheaded paladin and beautiful roguely young lady seek helpful adventurers who are definitely not trying to kill us or our friends, that sort of thing." She reached out to stroke the hem of the dark pink cloak slung to the edge of her bed. "I might miss Jaheira the Bossy, but I'd not mind getting out on our own, if we can."

"Thanks, Im," Prudence said. "I should ask—how uncomfortable are you with Xzar, going into the mines with him?" Imoen seemed uneasy at times with his stranger behaviour, but unintimidated.

Imoen spread out her hands, sitting back on the bed, and her light brown eyes seemed to take on a searching look. "I don't like the crazy. He's not done anything awful, but I never liked necromancy, and it gets creepy. He acts like he's seen too much weird stuff. Maybe it's a bit like the time I saw you do that spooky thing with your eyes. I really don't want to go on with him and Montaron. At least as crazycreepy necromancers go, I guess he's...kind of wimpy?"

That was—fair enough, Prudence supposed. Xzar had insight alongside his strangeness, his tangled speeches, and it interested her more than otherwise. But her sister was more important, if Imoen still felt strongly against it when they had to decide.

"Both you and he need to be careful," she reminded Imoen. "You're not carrying strong armour. Try to stay back."

"Aww, it's nice of you to lecture about it, Pruney, but I can really see why you and Jaheira don't feed off each other. Same kind of thick skull—"

"All right, Imoen." A yawn crept up in her throat. "I guess we'll both be useless down there if we don't rest."

The mines...

—

They were monsters. They were not demons. They were worse. Above eighty days by his reckoning of each hour, reverieless, the useless occupation of his training betraying the endless time he was trapped in the underworld away from star or sun to mark the passing of days.

I will die here. I will die and it will be a welcomed release. No. That would be a mercy that fate will never provide. I will die separated from the sword and my spirit will linger desperately and futilely searching for it within this prison for eternity.

There were no dreams for him. Waking nightmares. The kobolds came to torment him, prodding his body away from any tatters of rest, scaled claws and jagged, painful blades. The skeletons and walking dead, bones risen, pacing the dark miasma, touching him with sharp bone at the orders of the Cyricist. The necromancer.

They had taken the eyes and the tongue of a small gnome before murdering him; feeding it, the body, piece by piece, to the kobolds, incomprehensible screaming that lasted cruelly longer than he would have imagined possible. The inevitable had come at last, for that—fortunate—soul. Whereas his own torturers denied him any pretence at blank oblivion.

The thick iron chains bound him to the dark earth; scraped his wrists bloody, severed him from sword and book. The blade was somewhere far from him, cut away, where perhaps the precious pages of his book of spells had been flung to the black tainted mud of the ground. He choked on the foul cloth thrust into his mouth, gagging him on mud and some oily substance. At times he shivered in the coldness of the wet mud always around him; and at times it burned like the hells themselves, when Mulahey lit fires for his vile sorcery. Scorches marked black patches across his skin and the soot soaked deeply into his throat.

The worst was when the demon came for him. When there was no reason beyond this torment that he ought to have been left to die like the gnome. The half-orc lived in a cavern of luxury where the foul smell of offal penetrated like the taint of polluted wine, where the thick Calimshite rugs hardly concealed the rotting waste below. A thin disguise for the maw of death it stood upon; much like all efforts of putting off failure and inescapable ending— Mulahey controlled countless skeletons and ghouls and his undead swarmed his quarters when he chose it, robbed from graves Xan knew not of what. Some were dead kobolds and human bones of recent slaughter; others yellowed, older and more terrible.

He would be thrown chained before the half-orc's thronelike seat. A crude display of dominance were it not so much of a nightmare that could not be dispelled. "Little elf," Mulahey taunted, and he gripped the tattered robes with talonlike nails. "Greycloak," he raved; "Do you think I do not know what you are?" The once-clean material, the symbol of his purpose, ripped easily away by the filthy hands. "The damned elf city. Twelve blue hills about the bloody place they call grey. Cursed pointy-ears point their noses to everything, as if Tazok's not bothered by you cursed gologs."

It is the twelve hills of the Shaeradim that surround the fair settlement, the Blueleaf trees growing azure and not yet extinct; the Greycloak Hills lie instead to the north of Evereska and are peaceful and quiet; the half-orc is ignorant and...

The number of days he had not seen his home and the days he had not seen the sun were mounting so high as to be almost united. He could not quite remember the crystal spires and balconies of Evereska, the dark restful trees and the sanctuaries. The city itself would pass as humans and beasts such as this invaded the lands. It was cruelty to so much attempt to think of it when it was gone forever from him even before its inevitable extinction.

"Not a measure of ore leaves these mines unspoiled. Tazok will never—hah, that know-nothing ogre. Can't read, can't haunt me here..." The residue of thick, dark smoke lurked in the Cyricist's quarters, about a glass pipe device of Calimshite design; a drug of some sort. He would blame it for the Cyricist's insanity, but there were so many other reasons. The dizzying perfume was below the other scents Mulahey flung about like sickly water, laid over the overwhelming stench of waste and death in a worthless attempt of disguise.

"Little elf," Mulahey repeated, "little wizard, thought you could outsmart me? Thought you could come down here, give me away to Tazok? Thought you could spell?"

Xan made no reply to the taunts; it would be pointless. Mulahey kicked at a table, and pages and quills fell to the ground, about the chains of his prisoner.

"Fine writing from weak gologs. Fine wizard thinks he's clever. Cleverer than Tazok. Cleverer than—that would be telling, wouldn't it?" The breath from Mulahey's yellow teeth was foul beyond belief. He shook his prisoner like a street dog worrying a rat in the lowest of human alleyways. "Write what I say like an elf would. Pretty writing to confound Tazok and the other, I will not give that away. Write only what I say."

His wrists were wounded and chained, his hands numb, the quill forced to his hand shaking. There was no temptation to scribe magic instead, to pen some mystical runes with the promise of escape. There was little he could have done anyway; his spells were blocked from him and his body wasted away with the loss of the moonblade. And Mulahey would know; Mulahey watched each stroke of ink with reddened, piglike eyes. There was an old story that orcs and the People had once been connected, but the orc race had been made as twisted as the drow, with brutality that equalled the most cunning of drow evils. This at least he believed. Mulahey stepped forward, his boot upon Xan's ankle, and the bones cracked and splintered.

"Write, little elf," Mulahey ordered. Bent to the floor, Xan found no choice. To resist his insane captor would result in worse; and then a healing, finally, to against his will return him from the very brink of annihilation. His hand shook. "J-h," Mulahey slowly spelled. "J-h-o-r-y-e-l, call him. The spore plagues flesh in the attic ripe as worms. You don't know what that means. Too clever for Tazok. The rats in the field in the east; then say guojd..."

Information; but in Xan's mind he could not seize it, shattered and slowly breaking in this doom. The code of words the half-orc used was beyond sanity, incoherent and rotten as the nature of this place. Even a few words that sounded as if they belonged to the vile tongue of the orcs, skag, thauk, dhaub. His letters were weak, blotted and shaking and frail on the parchment; and still better than the clumsy taloned hands of the half-orc. Any elf would have condemned it. He wrote as Mulahey demanded, lines of blood spilled on the parchment.

Scribe for me, little elf... the dark voice echoed. He would never wake from this nightmare.

—

Something was different about her sister's appearance that morning. Prudence couldn't pin it further than that, and Imoen herself seemed cheerful. She'd challenged the village fool to a game of hide-and-seek, where he hid first, and therefore secured the release of his endless questions before Montaron or Jaheira could strongly react; and paced brightly along the way to the mines. Nashkel's fields yielded to barren ground, which would come to yield to buried, tainted iron.

"Imoen? Have you d-done something new with your hair, of late?" Khalid said.

"Indeed, Imoen. Is it some alteration in your clothing? The colour is loud, but I told you that it was not entirely unsuitable in material," Jaheira said, frowning.

"Oh, no. It's just me, little ol' Imoen." She giggled, shaking back her hair from her face, over the cowl of her cloak.

"Still th' same overly chirpy longshank." Montaron's pace kept steady, and he hardly looked at Imoen.

"This time I have the true spell to hand!" Xzar looked jubilantly in Prudence's direction. "Shall I divine the nature of the oddity?"

"Y' really don't need to." Imoen's tone of voice was suddenly uncomfortable, and one that Prudence knew very well. She looked more carefully at Imoen: her pack seemed approximately as full as the previous day, red hair twice-braided and otherwise loose about her chin, her only jewellery a simple necklace Winthrop had given her last winter solstice and the ring protecting her, her purple-dyed leathers and her cloak... It was a shade of dark pink much as usual for Imoen; she'd had her sister help her with the dying, many repeats of diluting the rose madder to proportion and steaming the material in the monks' vats. Looking more closely at the cloak: it seemed somehow different to the cloth from Candlekeep, a slightly more vivid colour, and it began to seem blurred to the eye if one began to focus upon it...

"Where did you get that cloak?" Prudence said.

"Found it? Lyin' around?" Imoen offered.

"It's magic," Xzar contributed. "Tell me I can cast the spell on it?"

"Imoen!" Prudence said, shocked. Wherever she had obtained it—wearing an unknown magical item! If it hurt Imoen in any way—

"It doesn't hurt people, I know that," Imoen said with scorn. "Mightn't have seen its enchantment at first glance, but I'm not stupid."

"Identify it, Xzar," Prudence said firmly. "Im, you know you shouldn't—"

Montaron laughed. "What'd she get away with, mage?" he asked.

"In a minute." Xzar gestured into the air, and a white glow appeared before his eyes. He took up the hem of Imoen's cloak, and studied it carefully. "I see...strands of hair."

"That's kind of eww," Imoen muttered.

"Nymph hair," Xzar finished. "Distorts, deceives and illudes the eye and the ear; the bearer takes on the quality of the hirsute original. Not merely that, but the deliberate ability to enchant others to become your best friend—and a splendid permanency arrangement underneath."

"Oh, that sounds better than just hair," Imoen said. "I can live with glamorous nymph hair."

Xzar continued to speak, the white sparks of his spell still brightly active; "No, really, the permanency's the most fascinating part of it. Marvellously intricate—wind the caster's own magic as part of the cloth and make it parallel the Weave and sustain an independent existence. It really ought to be necromancy, this kind of wonderful spell. You make them by sacrificing a part of yourself; it's only because the mysterious conspiracy demands it that it's not formally classified under it. A small number of illusionists are capable of it, or so they say, I'd blame divine cheating for that; gnome gods and their bizarre prejudices. This example—so many threads, such a pattern; I'm not sure if I could do the untangling; sempiternal and braided and I see past it and into the one from whom it was made green grass and strawberry hair, yet how the weaving, how it was formed..." The spell faded, leaving his eyes green once more, and Imoen snatched the cloak back from him; but he said a few more words to himself on the complexities of the magery of it.

A powerful enchantment too expensive for them to buy. "Imoen, where did you get that?" Prudence said; this wasn't a simple inkwell. "You can't go around pickpocketing valuable magical objects—who did you steal it from?" she demanded, and Imoen answered.

"Fat guy at Feldepost's, his name was Algernon or Ambeyson or something. It's pink so I...Wearing it didn't do him any harm."

Not the cloaked, stout man she had noticed as incredibly handsome in that inn? "We have to return it to this Algernon," Prudence said. Of course Imoen had her knacks and her talents; it was clear and undoubted that she meant well and could achieve a lot with her abilities; but in the case of an object like this...

"Young lady, you shouldn't be wearing any garments whatsoever made out of nymph hair," Khalid said, with as stern articulation as if he were Winthrop or Gorion.

"It may be tainted by necromancy besides," Jaheira said, aiming another grim look in Xzar's direction.

"It's a magic cloak for adventuring! I'm an adventurer!" Imoen defended herself, twirling the pink cloak's right edge.

"Her skill fetched it," Montaron declared, actually backing her up. "How much of the take do I get for advice, kid?"

"None you can't filch from me, rogue." Imoen grinned.

"'Tis my own fault ye learned a few tricks."

"Heh, partway," Imoen said. "I'll be good with it now I know what it does, you know I will! And just think of all the unscrupulous deeds a bad person might've gotten up to, with a magic cloak like this."

Prudence couldn't restrain herself from the sarcasm; "Such as tempting others to deprive them of it?"

"Aww, that's sweet of you to argue it for me, sis," Imoen gave one of those smiles that was usually successful in getting her out of trouble for her latest adventure.

"Look, was this Algernon doing anything unscrupulous with the cloak?" Prudence said. Certainly such powers could be misused, and that disturbing thought worried her...

"Well...technically, not that I know of," Imoen admitted. "He was just some sort of merchant. But he could have?"

"Then we'll go on with the task for now, use it if we have to, and you can return it to Algernon, next time you see him," Prudence said. It was valuable, it didn't belong to them, and a paladin had to say something along these lines. Stuck-up and sanctimonious she might be to Imoen, but under the circumstances... They started to move on once more.

"And what if he turned me over to the guards?" Imoen said. "You'd come and see me and smuggle me my tools, wouldn't you, Pru? Bake a pie with them in it and make me eat it so's I could escape, or pretend to be the warden's daughter with an extra large laundry basket, or cut out the pages of a boring book and stick a file in there, or... You would, right?"

Of course I would, paladin conduct or no paladin conduct! was Prudence's thought; "Maybe," she said. "Try not to invoke it?"

"Oh, not a problem there, I'm getting better at the shadow trick," Imoen said, unrepressed.

—

"—And they found Joseph the miner," the young guardsman said, fair-haired below his helm. "Two days ago. He went deep; they say when one of his friends took him out, most of the body had been...eaten. It was only by his ring they knew who he was..."

Men who were dead, Prudence thought. If somehow they'd arrived earlier, then perhaps... They had tried, but it wasn't good enough.

"Clear the way for those of us who ain't gutless cowards," Montaron said, and she glared at him.

The guardsman flushed pink; "I'm not here to deal with demons!" he said. "We're grateful enough to you adventurers, if you don't die like the others, but we don't do what's not in our charter." His armour was in poorer condition than her chain, rusting, and his helmet and scabbard were badly tarnished.

"These demons," Prudence said, trying to return the conversation to improved channels, "they...eat flesh; they make noises in the walls—"

"High yips, the miners in the deep used to say when they could still be paid to go down there," said the second guard, short and dark, "and those still alive say the things you bring down there will burst into fire without warning; shadows you'd swear were there a moment ago disappear when you look behind you; and the curse on the iron itself, as if something's been wakened from the deeps that rightly shouldn't be. We lost good men of ours. It's no place for a man to be, down there."

"Yipping noises," Jaheira said thoughtfully. "We have heard enough, I think. I thank you for your information."

There were torches set into the walls, on the upper level; a flickering, yellow light that Prudence could imagine to look hellish. Guards, red-faced and armoured, walked regularly between the lights. The heat was strong and suffocating, and the miners themselves wore nothing but loincloths as they quietly went about their work, subdued and cautious to look over their shoulders, rolling heavy carts and carrying heavy tools. She could believe it a place of human misery even without the present troubles. Outside, they'd walked past the shantytown of tents, where most of the miners lived eight out of a tenday and only returned to their homes for two.

The mines covered area vaster than Prudence had pictured, which showed the number of mines she'd travelled to before; at least five main tunnels branched from that first broad and wide cavern.

"I've seen them—" One of the miners stopped his carting of a wheelbarrow to speak. "Alak saw them, I heard him scream of yellow eyes, I brought back the guards, and two of them never returned either. Hauled Alak out of there, and the garrison's cleric couldn't heal his leg. Scaled demons, they are. Little scaled demons straight out of the wall with teeth and fire and smelling like death, something worse under them. You'll find them? Will you find them?—" The miner reached out and grabbed Prudence's arm, his own eyes wide and almost feverish in fear. "Kylee's down somewhere. Give him his dagger. He'll need it, he's still down there, or will you disappear like the others?"

"We'll try," she said, trying to sound reassuring. "What does Kylee look like?" A mundane question; the man gave a a reasonable enough answer. That he was another miner; that the previous day he had been posted to a darker depth; that he had not been seen since.

"On this way," Montaron said roughly, jerking a grimy thumb at a tunnel that seemed indistinguishable to the others near it.

"You are certain?" Jaheira said. "You are no dwarf, though one could mistake your grime for an inadequate beard."

"Got this, don't I?" Montaron waved a dirty piece of parchment, marked with dark ink. "Reckon that lump o' flesh stuck to yer bootheel might've something to say of travelling with a banshee's scream in his ear...if'n he could."

"No unfortunate comparisons to other humanoid species, no remarks on relations, no insults on language delivery..." Prudence said. It wasn't very successful. "Very practical, a map," she said instead. "Could you lead on, Montaron?"

"I did not see him request it from the proprietor," Jaheira snapped. The red-clad Emerson had only allowed them a day in the mines, not enthused about another group of adventurers investigating; Montaron had done some of the talking to him...

"Master o' the mines would have plenty of copies for himself, wouldn't he?" Montaron said.

"Never mind it, Jaheira..."

"So," Imoen said cheerily, "it's okay to pickpocket maps but not to take magic cloaks? Then again, I guess you know all about how to do cloak theft properly, Pru—"

That story about the Blackstaff had followed her around for long years even though she couldn't remember it herself and Imoen hadn't been at Candlekeep at the time. "There's at least a quantitative difference," Prudence said quickly.

"Ooo, subtle, yet insulting," Montaron said.

I really shouldn't encourage them—

"Yeah, it looks like I win," Imoen boasted, patting the enchanted material. "Want to see my Wand of Magic Missiles?" Prudence had not asked where she'd obtained that in Candlekeep.

"...Nah, too easy, kid..."

Xzar gasped loudly, and pointed dramatically at a torch on the walls. Its flame flickered in wild directions, casting strange shadows on the group. They'd not yet stepped a great distance within the mines, but at the moment there was no nearby sound of other human activity. Then Prudence felt a cold wind across her face; at that moment the torch died. The first fiery arrow came at them in the darkness.

"Im! Get back, light tinder—" Prudence rolled forward, away from the heat; she'd been slightly singed, the arrow hadn't been very close to her. The direction of the arrow—she'd her shield raised, running against it and hoping for protection.

Certainly not demons—

She ran into something sharp that scraped the side of her arm, and brought her shield forward. It rammed into the small creature half her height; there was a yipping noise. Its blade darted at her again, a painful impact that did not pierce her mail. She swung her own weapon in a low arc. Cut into something, metal striking against hard bone. A high cry. A fast-moving projectile by her face from behind; they were ambushed and Jaheira and Xzar chanted in the back. She flung herself aside and down again, the moment before the blazing light briefly filled the passage. The very creature she'd attacked was itself seared by the flames, and she saw it clearly: scaled, a doglike muzzle, slightly taller than a gibberling. By description: kobold. Arrows of fire, and movement behind the others as well—surrounded—

Jaheira's chant finished. A faint firelight, continuing, appeared for them; Imoen had done it, lit her tinder. Distantly Prudence saw a pale spark lance from in the shadows, arcane magic. Had to stop the arrows, she knew, and was already sprinting; Khalid was near her doing likewise, his shield raised, a light glow glittering briefly upon him and seeming to fade into his skin.

Therefore Jaheira and Montaron for the ones behind—

There were four shadows before them, their bows raised. She was ahead of Khalid, and with little finesse struck forward, quickly. Three of them jumped back from her blade; but the fourth had loosed an arrow, the fire exploding beyond her at Khalid—

And he made no cry; he still ran on. The arrow was in his left shoulder, apparently not piercing far through his armour. If she'd been but that little bit faster—the last kobold drew a shortsword in place of a bow, and the four of them swarmed her until Khalid joined the fight. They were small and thin, and quick; an attack with one of their swords pierced through her thick trousers. Not rusted or falling apart, these. In battle Khalid seemed to lose uncertainty, expertly moving forward, cautious with his shield and without a wasted movement for his longsword. Prudence used her own shield to push the two attacking her away; used the space to swing her blade. They were fast. Her scimitar left a slash through flesh, though in the low light it was hard to see the extent of harm. Khalid easily killed one, and the small body fell to the ground. Four kobolds— No more fiery arrows shot by them. She killed one of the creatures by a downward slash, breaking open its skull; and then the last was down, to her and Khalid both. Small creatures...

"I can heal you," she blurted out to Khalid, but he easily withdrew the arrow from his shoulder.

"C-caught in my gambeson; and Jaheira protected me against fire," he said. "You are— Jaheira?"

"Three sneaking kobolds here," Jaheira called dourly, "no harm done. Imoen, relight the torch if you are able."

Jaheira half-smiled in the firelight, transferring her hold of her quarterstaff from one hand to the other. "Yipping demons indeed," she said, "the signs of the guard indicated mere kobolds. Still, they seemed organised; there must be some guiding force..."

"Druid, get to casting," Montaron said; the right sleeve of his leather armour was blackened by burning. "Try anything else and I'll know it." Jaheira glared at him as she spoke the words of her healing spell quickly.

"Do not presume on my generosity for you, thief."

"Fiery kobolds, not from the Nine Hells at all, and I stole their energy and it feels good—" Xzar brushed some traces of smoke from his face with the sleeve of his robe. "Can we go on now? Do we have to waste these moments of irritating repose?" He bounced lightly on his feet.

"Yeah, that really helped ever so much," Imoen said, with a degree of sarcasm. "Can't you do something useful? Magelight or something? I can't use my bow if I have to hold a torch myself."

"How long can you keep a light sustained?" Prudence said; they were still in an area lit for the miners, even if the kobolds had the ability to extinguish the flares. Montaron pulled away from Jaheira as the spell finished, scowling and brushing down his wounded arm.

Xzar smiled. The shadows cast dark and shifting patterns between his tattoos, and his eyes narrowed to a sharp, bright stare. "Duration can be changed by components chosen," he said, and rummaged with enthusiasm in one of his mage's pouches. They had been scrubbed to a clean white, and there was quite a lot of them.

"Vitiumque in lumina mentis..."

It had been the bird Montaron had killed. The skeleton reassembled itself in Xzar's hands; the bleached bones quickly returned to their shape, transfixed by magic, and a green glow suffused it. A full skeletal bird, shining with pale light in place of the flesh and feathers it had in life. It flew above their heads in complete silence. The white bones of the bird's wings glided without motion, and within and about its skeleton the artificial green light rained over them all. In a way, it was almost pretty.

"Unnatural," Jaheira said flatly; "Come, we shall find their other nests and clear this area. I cannot believe that these kobolds have the daring to come so close to the upper part of the mine."

"Too damned slow," Montaron said, tossing and catching a throwing knife in his right hand.

"They have the mobility advantage up here," Prudence said. The accounts of the miners: lightning-fast attacks out of the walls. "We should warn a guard that it's kobolds—I suppose other yipping demons have been disposing of other bodies of their own—and go deep. That's where whatever's organising them ought to be." If you can remove the firewood from under the oven the heat can no longer be stoked, the metaphor ran.

"You are not concerned for the nearby miners?" Jaheira said. Jaheira was right even if she felt the accusation undeserved, Prudence told herself; the lives of the people working here weighed far above any other reasons for investigating the iron crisis.

"That's our duty. More easily accomplished by finding what the miners claim lies below, first," she said. Chasing gangs of kobolds through terrain they knew well, while other things still waited below to prepare; not the best choice...

"For the group, then," Jaheira said, and scowled down at Montaron, rummaging across the body of a fallen kobold. He flashed a mocking grin up at her;

"Fetch th' spare fire arrows whilst ye can."

—

A screaming human man. Jaheira had cast protections on all the group; at some effort, for her preparations had focused upon the more directly unnatural. Arrows flared in the air, but the fires caused them no harm; the attacks ricocheted off their shields—

Their way had been before besought by kobolds, and yet more of them fought here, a line of three archers to the back, four of the creatures dancing around their victim, a human man. Montaron had been ahead, looking through the darkness ahead before their light could attract attention, but at the cries they had all rushed forward. She and Khalid both had their shields raised around the man; Prudence saw Montaron's blade fall swiftly into the nearest kobold, its scales a sickly yellowish-brown under Xzar's light. An arrow burst to fire against her shield; had to stop the archers—

Jaheira had scattered seeds to the ground across from her position, had chanted; dark vines ripped at all of the creatures, reaching up to tangle their arms as well. She continued to cast to manipulate the plants; Prudence ran forward, slashed through—small creatures, but their fellows had caused Jaheira to use several healing spells already, from arrows and attacking in their groups. Jaheira's strong voice moved the vines still, her power restraining the kobolds against running back into their darkness.

"Kylee," Prudence said, turning back at the man; he stood next to Khalid, surrounded by the small bodies. He carried a short sword that he had not used with particular ability, and fit the description. "Your friend Dink wanted us to find you. He gave us your dagger. How did you come here?" Dink had not been able to direct them to an exact location; it was a great relief that they had come upon him alive.

"Much obliged to you. 'Twas a dead guard, poor bastard, that one o' Captain Fals' they couldn't find again—took his sword, took his water. Clutched the walls, needed to stay out of sight of them yipping ones, needed to escape. Fell down from the south pits, lost my light—" He shook his head, staring wild-eyed. Jaheira calmly offered him a flask from her pack, a tincture to settle the mind, and after he drank he seemed better.

"Would you like us to take you back?" Prudence offered.

Kylee wiped a hand across his mouth. "This path...I remember it when times were still good." He looked around in the light. "Did you clear the way as you came?"

"Yes," Montaron said. He raised the map, and would have shoved it in the man's face were he of the same height. "Went thisaway. Look clear enough to ye, fool?"

"Actually, yes," Kylee nodded. "Give me a light and I'll be up there to tell 'em I made it. Know where I am, now. You wouldn't believe that once these walls were full of good iron." He brought the hilt of his dagger to a grey seam in the stone, and chipped at it; a dark substance crumbled away from it. He nodded glumly. "You work on getting those kobolds."

Imoen lit a torch for him; and carrying his dagger in his other hand, he left them.

"We should continue quickly while Silvanus' protection lasts; we have prepared the way for him," Jaheira said.

Imoen was bent down over a kobold's body; Montaron, likewise, searched for their arrows. She straightened up with a green flask in her hand. "Here's some kind of kobold drink, or I suppose healing potion—there's others that've got the same," she said.

"Mage, ye've a use at last. Just don't drink it," Montaron said gruffly. Apparently none too soon, for Xzar was quick to take hold of the vial, tilting it above his head.

He poured a drop of it on his little finger instead. "Highly corrosive. The smell of rust the smell of blood of acid instead of iron vitriolic scattering smell of saltpetre; I must a boiling point experiment and addition of water absorption test."

"You've hurt yourself," Prudence said. The liquid rotted away skin; and he was watching it, a stain spreading— "Stop it—"

"Certainly effective upon organic material," Xzar said, not looking at any of them, the sound of his voice betraying no pain and talking of analysis; "a liquid reaction of positive thermic transfer; I sense power and unstable bonds between its particles; Monty, could you hand over your blade?—" He passed the vial to his injured hand, and dug quickly in his robes for a small dark lump. He sniffed it and quickly raised it to the bird's green-tinted light.

"An' they dare call ye halfway competent in alchemy," Montaron muttered.

"A blade; my—necromantic experiments, well, the less interesting ones—for someone else's blade—" Xzar said.

"Look, do you want healing or not?" Prudence confiscated the vial from him; that was the white of his bone, becoming visible under the effect; it was a terrible poison—

"A concentrate into the isolated purity of air over burned acid, I would guess—it's for experiment, this, I've seen worse—" Xzar added to her, though he didn't pull his hand away. "Blade, Monty."

Corrosive and ugly and dark it was, the poison; Prudence cast—it was still eating away at his right hand, he was reckless—a liquid; there ought to be no trace of malevolence felt, that in a quick use of healing she should sense nothing but the shaped prayer. But to her there was a trace of something disturbing in it, as if below the alchemic smell of the compound something that wasn't Xzar's spell components rotted in the background. Something of the anomaly must have showed on her face.

"That's interesting," he said, flexing his restored, pink hand. "Religious types who hurt themselves! Sensing things, the ones they say are mad—" He stepped sharply backward. "Pour what you took from me on that kobold's sword if Monty won't give you any, witness the effect."

She'd an idea of what he guessed at, if hardly what he had been thinking; careful that the substance did not touch her armour, she quickly poured it on the stained blade of one of the kobolds, and hit it against the wall. It fell apart, tarnished.

"'Tis the solution to our quest! Let there be warmth and rejoicement—no, experimental verification, allow for confirmation—" Xzar bent and scooped up one of the fragments of the kobold's sword, and compared the result with his first dark rock of tainted iron. His mouth moved into his wild, lopsided grin, and he danced. "Merriment and libations of serous ichor, everyone! For such is the nature of the iron crisis, by important thaumaturgic art proven—"

"It's hardly over. Curb your theatrics," Jaheira ordered coldly, and then seemed to reconsider slightly. "On the other hand: if you wish your part in resolving the iron crisis to be done, I withdraw my objection."

Montaron, carrying his shortsword unsheathed, slowly looked up at her. "Ye've still got to find the reason for Ghastkill's enjoyment. Isn't that right, lady?" Mayor Berrun Ghastkill had known and spoken to Jaheira, the only female half-elf in the group.

"Our motives are none of your concern, halfling. Silence yourself, before I do it for you."

That was Jaheira's overt aggression, this time. Prudence added it to her mental tally of the ongoing dispute. "You were right before, Jaheira," she said; "we need to move on. Perhaps even quietly, in case we bring too many kobolds upon us."

"We are not at all finished yet," Xzar said. He'd abstracted a second vial from the kobolds, hanging it from his belt. "For we are inside the onion, not outside it!" Montaron brought a hand to his forehead. "Peel a layer out, and a larger remains further up and further beyond, a circle out of a circle the instant something appears to have been unravelled—"

"You were quite c-correct about the kobolds and noise, Prudence," Khalid said.

—

They were all singed, scratched, and scraped; the fire protections had been worn down, and they waited.

"Heaps of 'em! It's a big encampment in that cave." Imoen emerged from the darkness, Montaron not far behind her. "Counted twenty-six, armed and everything."

"Twenty-nine." Montaron said. They were deep in the mine; they passed occasional signs of humans still, but the miners' arrangements of torches were long gone.

"Xzar—another Grease spell?" Prudence said. She wasn't sure of his state; he stood quietly for the time being, having cast several times.

"Five rabbits tearing by small claw; perhaps, yes, I will. Clever and appropriate!" he said. "—If you were thinking of that..." he added, watching her.

That advantage, of course—not pleasant to think of it, but Jaheira had healed Imoen of a deep scratch to her thigh, and kobolds weren't usually assumed sapient. A plan which achieved the objective with minimal damage to the group.

"All right, we'll do it. If we finish them quickly," Prudence said. "Im, you're ready?"

"Sure, I'll do it."

"An added trigger," Xzar said complacently.

Jaheira frowned, giving Xzar in particular the benefit of her glare; Khalid and Montaron also bore looks of slight confusion. "Exactly what are you talking about?" she demanded. "I am capable of entangling them myself."

Imoen spoke up to explain. "The Grease spell's usually got oil as a main component—catches fire easy. I remember that much."

"I see." Jaheira looked rather grim, and nodded. "I cannot object, I suppose."

Grease, the spell component of oil-soaked cloth loosed from a borrowed crossbow at a distance, and multiplied itself quickly into a vast field underfoot. That alerted the kobolds, of course; a first group of them broke from the spreading oil, where Prudence waited next to Khalid and Montaron. A fire arrow Imoen had from the kobolds whistled above her head, and landed; and the trap of grease exploded, burning with fierce heat, but confined to the extent of the oil. A smell of roasting flesh, and the high yipping screams of pain. There was guilt at that, but resolve, that it was necessary— Prudence aimed bolts from her crossbow while there was yet a chance, bringing down two of the burned kobolds, and then drew her scimitar.

If you have to, do it quick; for sometimes that's the only mercy you can grant—

Some of the kobolds had clambered to the cavern's roof, and jumped, shrieking, down at their heads. Imoen cried out the incantation for her wand, quick flashes of bright pink that impacted without fail; Jaheira likewise threw sling bullets carefully past those fighting. Prudence felt the heat almost palpable on her face, though it began to die almost as quickly as the fire had exploded in the field of oil. Not as strong as a mage's fireball.

She heard Jaheira's shout from behind. Kobolds from that side as well, not entirely unexpected; she had to trust that Jaheira would take them. No more help from Imoen and Xzar here, then. She raised her shield against an arrow aimed from the cavern's roof, of mundane wood rather than fire.

"Khalid! Bow?" Prudence said; she stepped in front of him, trying to distract the kobolds. Let them have to pass her— She used her shield in defence; Montaron was more aggressive, cutting through, but best they kept together. Khalid's aim with his longbow was excellent even in low light, and she saw a body fall quickly from the cavern's ceiling. Burned bodies were left where the fire had flickered, and the numbers decreased; kobolds, a mass of them, but angle swiftly and they scattered. Then she slashed widely to keep them from Khalid—an arrow in flight slipped past her—

"Nature take the life she gave—" Jaheira called triumphantly from behind, and her husband cried out.

It pierced him; Prudence saw the spreading bloodstain on Khalid's chest when she looked, and there were fewer kobolds before them now. She lowered her defences in favour of speed of attack, fortunate that she escaped the kobolds taking advantage; killed another of the small bodies, let it die while Montaron stabbed again. She turned away. Speed was vital, everyone travelling with them was vital—

She grasped at the arrow; the upper right of Khalid's torso, near the thin kleis-bone, at an iron-weakened point in his armour. First, to understand it—the position of the arrow was near to the artery, and from the way it bled likely that. Important not to leave fragments in the flesh, to heal properly as well as quickly; the instructions were there for her mind to call upon even as the kobolds yipped behind. She laid a hand on the wound, focused upon slowing the bleeding, isolating the position of the arrow; then pulled carefully. The head came free and intact and bloodied, and she gave the casting direction to mend the wound and piece the flesh back together. Control the healing through glove and clothing, let the impurities be removed from the blood—

The injury took little time to heal, though it sapped at her—behind her the kobolds moved, as she ought to well know their placing. She flung the stained arrow to the ground as one of them lunged at her; but it was Khalid who helped, simply stepping forward with his longsword. It would have been a backstab to her kidneys, otherwise.

Dead kobolds littered the ground.

"S-so many places I would rather be," Khalid sighed, lowering his shield.

"You did a foolish thing, child," Jaheira lectured, stepping across to them, her quarterstaff stained with blood and brain matter. "Stepping away from the battle for that time—" She looked more softly in the direction of her husband. "Not an ill instinct, Prudence, but misplaced. An arrow itself slows bleeding if left in place, and there may not be need to heal until after the battle is done."

"Clever sermon, taskmaster." Montaron returned his stained blade to its sheath. "Better t' spend your time dragging him off." He gestured behind, to where a flash of green robe suggested that Xzar knelt behind a crevice in the wall that partly blocked him from view.

"Monty, don't be so aggravating, I'm very busy and this one is quite perfect for my needs."

Jaheira sharply stepped forward. "I will tolerate your arts no further, necromancer! Do not dare to—"

"Arise, stripped fragment of a mortal shell, pretty shards of onyx, sprinkling of gravedirt. Arise, undead minion, and become my...kobold zombie."

The kobold had scales mottled between red and dark brown, and had been killed by a single arrow through its throat, the body otherwise undamaged. It stood to its full height of a little below Montaron; it shuffled slowly and mindlessly forward. Undead; slow-moving; incapable of thought; able to take more physical punishment than a living entity. Xzar cackled, and his excited laughter echoed in a manner not advisable through the caverns. His grin stretched wide as if surprised at his success; green light danced in his eyes. A wild and compelling enthusiasm. And as lacking in conscious malice as in sensible moderation.

"It works—" A threatening gesture from Montaron temporarily stopped Xzar's voice.

"Well, I guess it's sort of cute if it's downwind and really far away from me," Imoen said, looking dubiously down at it. "Little Boldy the Kobold Zombie."

"'Tis unpleasant enough when accomplished by divine means," Jaheira said, breathing heavily, "but by the unnatural arts it has gone more than far enough—!"

"I don't suppose," Prudence said, "that keeping it downwind from you as well would work as a compromise?" It wouldn't hurt to have a cohort of skeletal minions summoned by a cleric to our side, like the accounts of Vrelle Taturga of the Red Knight, not that we can't accomplish this as we are...

"D-dear, I think we should remain calm...no matter the p-provocation," Khalid said.

"There is a limit as to what is expected of us," Jaheira said. Druids and necromancers; as much in common with each other as Helmites and Sharessans, Prudence had known from the start. Or was there more to the hostility than that, with Jaheira's claim that she failed to understand?

"Don't see me complaining, do ye? Suck it up, druid," Montaron said.

"Your assistance, halfling," Jaheira snapped, her eyes flashing with a dangerous brightness, "is hardly needed against such small foes. You tread on thin ice indeed, and Eldath would hardly welcome the likes of you."

Montaron snarled, his face twisting; "Ye'll learn not to make light of me, wench. My purpose is greater than you can—" He moved his wrist, and perhaps there was a glint of metal under his sleeve—

"Decide well your next move," Jaheira said, her quarterstaff waiting between her hands; her pose was ready to snap into action. "I doubt the necromancer and his abomination will prove of assistance to you—"

"No, we should surrender to your superior force, oh green-casting lady of the well-mulched forest," Xzar interjected, a casual tone to his voice; he leaned on the cavern wall with his arms folded across his chest, one boot raised to rest vertically against the wall. "So many castings left to you from the oak-leaved daddy, isn't that right, xylocephalous one?" Deliberately nonchalant, as if this were a game.

"'Tis true I could strike you down with Silvanus' power," Jaheira said, the sharp edge of her voice making the threat very plain. "And were you to surrender in truth, you would be treated with none less than the most complete degree of justice."

"This needs to last only as long as it takes to clear the mines," Prudence said, irritated—angry, she thought, at both of them. Solve it. "I don't believe anyone here to be incapable of reason." Montaron mentioned Xzar's name; a good diversion from his fight with Jaheira. "It's foolish to come to blows here; at least wait until afterwards, which shouldn't be long—and not even then!" she added. "Go your separate ways, if you must."

"Oh, why not indeed," Xzar said, his voice smooth and rich, and unceasing. "Certainly Monty and I have our own leads to pursue following this diversion, our own commissions to execute and all that along those general lines. We may do so very well without interference, with a sort of haphazard treatise, that we stand as different contractors of different roles. Reach a quiet settlement and depart upon very unmelodramatic terms. Why not, from this merry band? None would pretend to be a rooster-feathered basilisk, the deep centre of kobold alterations. Nuggets of ruthless reason and natural decision upon knowledge available, a response to diverse choice."

The mines, Prudence knew; keeping everyone together was the most important thing at the moment. Everything else should be spoken of later—her sister, Xzar.

"Ye spoke basic sense th' first few lines there, fool," Montaron said. "Our own purposes indeed."

"It would be wrong to waste your time," Prudence said to him, "look ahead for shadows and traps; Im, if you would—"

"Hey, don't even need to ask. I'll keep an eye out for everything, y'know?" Imoen strung her bow behind her back in an easy movement.

"And Khalid—if you could otherwise lead," Prudence said. He was strong and the best-armoured. "And the zombie in the back."

—

Down under here there was the faint sound of water; perhaps an underground river flowed somewhere, some distance away. There was a touch of moisture in the air, clammy and cool in its staleness. The tunnels were rough, and seemed at least partly natural; obvious signs of human labour had faded away.

More parties of kobolds had blocked their path. Prudence reflexively moved her hand again toward her waist, and stopped herself; there had been an arrow implanted there, the smell of roasting on her burning flesh, pain that had shocked her by its intensity. She felt drained of her own capacity to turn prayers to healing, and Jaheira had cast far more druidic spells upon all of them. They stepped around a large grey rock, and then across a bridge where Imoen had cut down a tripwire. The traps indicated habitation of a more threatening sort.

She looked across at the kobold zombie, which was damaged by several arrows and a slash that had almost severed its right arm, continuing to shamble near Xzar. Its wounds had not bled much, as an ordinary corpse after death. Its creator walked near to it, and had hid behind it at the last small group of kobolds.

"Necromantic minions." He giggled softly in the darkness. "If you truly have the Art, and you let them stop you using it, then it turns impossible. Ever so very useful. Yet nobody appreciates skill, do they? Keep walking, good zombie."

I'm sorry, I do like you but my sister's not interested in travelling with you, she might have said in a more peaceful environment. It lacked a certain finesse.

"You're out of spells, aren't you?" she said.

"Perhaps! One tries to learn and to advance; yet every capacity exhausts itself; yet the thing is elastic and supposed to be ever expanding among the headaches—perhaps I tire, and what then? The Weave is obliged to grow constantly; I try and still cannot saturate in it." He looked slightly miserable; tired, as she was denying in herself after the kobold battles and this lengthy, stoned path to the mines' depths. "At least I have this consolation." He placed a proprietary arm on the zombie's shoulder, leaning upon it. "Sometimes it fails—concentration, size of necromantically compelled object. A void and a cell memory of what used to work and the coalescing field of the caster." He paused briefly. "And as for your own vaunted powers over the undead?"

It was...easy to talk to him. For now, the dark tunnels were well-surrounded by thick rock, and quiet. "I've only faced illusionary zombies. I don't know." The comforting weight of her symbol of divine focus lay at her neck below her clothing; she could pray for that holy power to destroy or confuse antagonistic undead, but she'd no practice against creatures outside Obe's images.

"Illusions," he said, lending the word all the standard contempt of a mage's opposing school. "Or the healing hands: if you place your hand across the zombie's heart and make it to beat new blood through red arteries once more, do you torment it then?"

The positive energy of a divine casting against a negative arcane casting; one would damage the other. A dramatic, if gruesome, image. "Given that zombies don't feel pain, it wouldn't be torment."

"Are you certain?" He stood straighter in his walk, the cowl of his robes loose behind his head. "This very one has made little noises at being hit—they usually do, if they've enough flesh remaining on their vocal cords. It doesn't stop them from obeying the commands of their dread masters until they're torn to pieces, but—little pained noises. Poor underappreciated undead. Torture them if you feel like it."

He'd know, she supposed; information was useful even if her vocation concentrated upon the destruction rather than manufacturing stages. "Surely that's some physical reflex—dead, mindless, soulless. Less self-aware than, say, cows." Of which there was dried beef in all their packs bar Jaheira's. "Not to want to torture them, but..." The kobold zombie shuffled quietly on.

"'Mindless'? An exaggeration. It's all in the preservation," Xzar said. "At least as far as I have learned it's a positive correlation with the degree of preservation. Theoretically one could also soul-bind. But not that!" He shook his head forcefully. "Don't want hidden eyes in the gems and the... How I do become occupied by tangents."

This was the sort of conversation that Imoen started to think of as creepy.

"By my calculations, if the process is activated soon enough with the right preservatives: something remains in the brain," he said. "There is supposed to be that which lies beyond the patterns of impulses in the cells, empirically unreachable; it ought to disappear, but what can be left behind? Where lies the border of what can be imitated?" His voice changed suddenly to a high wail, spoken as a ragged whisper; "Xzar! Xzar...come here...my Xzar...don't run..."

He talked, and so much of it was obscure to make sense of; perhaps it was part defence of vulnerability, but in fact the more anyone said, the more they gave away to others. "Book four of Gallen, isn't it?" Prudence said. Calm normalcy; she drew from her studies and labour in the Candlekeep temple. "His scried observations of tissue degeneration. Brain matter is fast to decay and difficult to regenerate, which is why only powerful priests can even try to return people's souls to their bodies." If they were young enough to still wish to come back.

"I remember well. A necromancer's anatomy," Xzar said. "Comforting equations and figures, or not. An hour's space of time and much was dissipated; less with the cold equations of temperature. It's why the part that can think for itself must be preserved, in these planes where there's so much left to learn...And better to do so."

There was a smell in the air of something else decaying, some stench that all was not quiet here. Prudence went forward, closer to Khalid and Jaheira; the mine's walls were a maze of rock, jagged and pointed spars casting long shadows, stalagmites rising below a damp roof.

Jaheira sniffed the air. "Fouler than that necromancer," she said, and Prudence thought she shared something of the feeling of negative anticipation, the sense of moving closer to the source of the mine's corruption. Jaheira stopped, and stared at the widening walls about them; Prudence tried to search for what might be sensed there. The trio of giant spiders descended swiftly from the dark irregular shadows of the cavern's roof, and Imoen screamed that she saw a ghoul.

Jaheira had moved in time and brought her quarterstaff to the eyes of the spider attacking her; Prudence felt spikes cutting her forehead and back. Her shield blindly hit up, the pressure of the cutting weight slightly raised from her; she went down, an undignified roll that turned into a stooped stance. Blood ran into her eyes; she knew she was weakening, the wounds stinging badly and she could guess it to be spider's poison.

Imoen was near Khalid; he fought a monster with swollen, melting flesh—so many different things were called monsters, this was a humanoid probably-human corpse, degenerated, walking, shimmering with a sick animating redness while its long nails struck at its opponent—and Imoen darted behind him, her hands reaching to free her bow from her back.

The spiders; a fight on at least two fronts; ground of the enemy's territory— The spider rushed toward her: a dark body, two pale spots on its head, a strangeness about the edges of its form as if its black colour bled into the shadows around it. Not much strength left to her; had to fight quickly, Prudence thought, her head muddled by pain. She lunged forward and the blade fell short of its goal, lightly touching the spider's flesh. It moved, lowered its body briefly; and those limbs stretched again, at almost impossible speed. It jumped—above her height, falling down, a harsh impact on her shield, the sharp limbs reaching around it to wound her. Larger than Landrin's collection; faster, at that, or was it her own body that faded? She disentangled herself, stepped back; the spider followed easily. She'd expected it to do so. Her scimitar was where its eyes moved to, but she'd not the strength left for a followthrough. The spider bled, undeterred; she tangled her blade between its legs, delaying at the least. She withdrew, then; her body's weight drew the scimitar with it, cutting into the leg. She nearly fell to the ground, the wounds inflamed by poison, something virulent that sapped quickly away at health—

A column of rock nearby. There was a quick flare ahead that had to be Imoen drawing her bow; behind, a spider much larger than the zombie. The stone was half cover and half support, and she leaned upon it, letting the spider come. Had to put strength into it, she thought, her head muddled by pain; or second-best blind it. The spider's legs and fangs reached for her around the stone. She raised the scimitar high; crudely, near to the head—the blade's own weight carried it further, cutting the creature's eyes. Stopped its vision, she hoped. It knew where she was; it came along the ground. Blood dripped from her arm to the stone. It would tense, prepared to jump again; it lowered its body for that moment and again she sought for fading strength. Brain matter of a sort behind the exoskeleton in the head. Close enough aim—she dropped her shield, a foolish move, but needed both hands pressing down—forced the weapon to pierce through that thick head. The venom of the bite drowned her veins.

Jaheira behind her. "Poison," the druid flatly muttered, "no teneros root? You can do nothing; I will heal you—"

Montaron and Khalid fought three of the ghouls, Imoen behind them, running back, an arrow undrawn on her bow because she was chased too closely; a spider killed by quarterstaff lying dead; Xzar, backed against a cavern wall by the same kind of giant spider, the zombie failing miserably to fight it.

Jaheira's spell caught; Prudence felt her head clear and the pain taken from her body.

"I will aid the necromancer, little as he deserves it—" Jaheira said; she went to the spider menacing Xzar. Jaheira could have easily dealt with the creature; but it needed to be done quickly, and Prudence followed her.

"Where is the water source?" she said. Jaheira had reached the creature more quickly than she, at the moment the zombie was trampled and those fangs reaching down to bite a huge chunk from head and torso. They both turned it from the trapped wizard, Jaheira's staff giving her excellent range.

"You want to—" Jaheira's eyes slipped across to the ghouls, four of them, ordinary blades doing little against skin that barely bled and Imoen still seeking a clear shot. "Running water; yes, I sense it is close enough."

Prudence's blade cut beyond the spider's legs into black thorax; the end of Jaheira's quarterstaff slammed down upon its head. The fangs turned to Prudence and she flinched away in memory, though not so badly as the wizard's flailing, a dagger fairly useless against a creature that size. Unwise to get poisoned again; she cut into it, the dark shell parting, though it was Jaheira's beatings that likely did the most damage. It fell on top of Xzar, tangling him in its spiked limbs;

"Follow me," Jaheira called loudly, and turned; she ran at an easy jog to the right, unerring through the shadows. Khalid turned after her willingly, the ghouls pursuing him; Imoen's pale face moved through the darkness, Montaron next to her.

Prudence pushed aside the spider's body, helping the wizard to their undignified retreat. He was bleeding through his robes, taking a potion; she would have worried for him, but he stood and ran despite a paleness below the black patterns on his face.

Then the magelight blinked out; she could see only by the faint red light of the ghouls' energy, and follow Jaheira by ear. Dark and almost nightmareish, easy to stumble, with the knowledge that the ghouls behind them had the power to freeze movement with a touch—

Khalid slashed across, guarding the rear; he was fast and untouched by the ghouls' clawing hands, and of course he could see in this light. Prudence felt a rock in the path hit her shins, and tried to guard against crying out; Jaheira was ahead, there the sound of her sure steps.

"We near—hold them off," Jaheira said. Khalid turned without reluctance and held his shield steady, blocking a clawed attack and stabbing a ghoul's face. There were perhaps five of them now, in that narrow passage, difficult to count without light.

A torch bloomed to life in Imoen's hands. The undead disliked fire; "Give it to me," Khalid said, stutter temporarily gone from his voice, and he stepped back and lowered his sword in preparation.

The ghouls were bloated as the victims of drowning were said to be, or the late states of putrefaction; stages beyond which most healing abilities could hardly help. A stench of their decaying bodies, and beyond that a sense of corruption that she did not wish to feel in greater depth. She had only to shield, Prudence told herself; Montaron had become more circumspect in his approach to a fight, halfway falling back and stabbing to block a ghoul's claws rather than to sink his shortsword into already melting flesh.

I fight in defence of others—she prayed, though underneath that was a simple plea that she would not run. Imoen, Khalid, Montaron, Xzar, Jaheira, the miners fallen to such creatures. Then the claws darted inhumanly fast to her shoulder; scraped her chainmail, and she feared piercing pain through it—ducked back, quickly, no fresh wounds opened in her, cloth intact below ripped mail. Khalid stepped forward again with the torch, and thrust the fire into the face of the nearest ghoul. There was a moan from it—Prudence wondered if such did feel pain after all, in Xzar's words, but the brain decayed, they had only the ill intent a creator animated them by—and it fought still, its rotting skin blackened but the taint of its animation as strong as ever.

"P-powerful, these, or well protected—" Khalid said. "Hold back—shield—" She did not need encouragement to use that strategy, Prudence thought, and hoped that she was not too greatly a coward.

"The water is tainted by waste but yet within Silvanus' power," Jaheira's strong voice rang out. "Lure them; I will cast." She called to Silvanus, speaking a druid's language of earth and living water.

Imoen held tinder steadily enough to see by; Khalid fought with fire, but it hardly wounded more than the sword. Prudence stepped back again with Khalid; by the direction of Jaheira's voice there was some leeway of distance. The casting continued; the ghouls swarmed.

"Im, arrows—give the light—" Prudence said. There was little Xzar could do; but he was standing there, relatively unhurt— Imoen handed him the flaring tinder, and held her bow ready.

There was little space for proper aim for Imoen; Prudence took care to duck, partly stepping aside, covering the gap with shield held low lest the ghoul break through, and one of the kobolds' arrows burned a ghoul's flesh. They kept them back, until Jaheira was done.

"Imoen, through," Jaheira ordered; "necromancer, in front of me; I hold the casting—"

She had parted the waters, marking a dry path through the underground river. It was a better plan than to simply hope to push the ghouls into the water.

"I think we can r-run," Khalid said, stuttering but not afraid; his great skill almost opposite to his gentleness of character. There was a brief pause before the first move—Montaron, in fact, was earliest to obey Jaheira's orders, turning to follow the path she had made. Prudence and Khalid did the same, running from the ghouls; to the mud of the riverbed, expecting the pursuit.

The path between the waters was the width of a tall human's armspan, dampened by mud that clung to her boots. Prudence stood in the middle of it, sheets of rising waters upon either side, raised and kept there by casting, as a stilled waterfall.

The ghouls seemed to hesitate at the bank. They had brought an enemy to a site for the battle of their choosing; and here at the end—

"I cannot hold the casting for an eternity," Jaheira said, upon the other side; "cross—"

Ghouls had no mind to be prompted by taunts; —as if she and the others had not already bled, did not already smell of it. Prudence raised her left hand in the thick strap of her shield, flexed her glove from her palm, and cut; a slight injury. The fresh blood she flicked in the ghouls' direction; and they came to the path of the floodwaters, after prey. Five paces away, four paces, three and they were upon the river's floor, two bending to taste at the red on the ground; then Khalid left, running for the opposite bank, the undead in chase—

She was soaked from her waist down, clambering late above the river's border; but the waters swept over where the ghouls had been. Flesh destroyed by the ongoing tides, water passing over their bodies and dissolving to a more usual rest— Khalid, similarly half-drenched, sat by her on the bank. A clawed dead hand reached up from the water, for a long moment, as if it sought to wound one final time, and fell down below the dark waves.

Imoen released a long breath. "It's...unnatural here," she said, borrowing Jaheira's word. "I hate those—those things..." Jaheira, behind her, quietly rested a hand on her shoulder; and that strength seemed to Prudence to help her sister.

"We must find what sent them," Jaheira said.

From the flickering tinder, this place was a wide cavern near the flow of the underground river; there were shadows upon the ragged rocks and dark patches of the high ceiling, and Prudence stared as carefully as she could in case of spiders. Nothing moved, and Jaheira seemed confident enough. Xzar held the flare in his left hand, sitting on the river's shore, his knees curled into his chest.

"Did the potion work?" Prudence asked. "Are you still injured?" He'd gone quiet; she slowly reached out a hand toward him. "We're going to move from here. Probably a bad idea to stay somewhere that smells so much like kobold." She sniffed the air.

"Those were wraith spiders," Xzar said, whispering; "They give them a taste for dead flesh and make them halfway between." His voice rose to high-pitched tones, almost a shriek. "And ghouls and ghasts; they want to eat you and I want to know how to eat them right back—"

Sometimes Jaheira could express a lot with a few words; and sometimes she could express the same by a single look. It was a great gift of the succinct.

"But my head hurt when I tried, I kept trying with the fangs in me. That's why, that's why you need to change your mind, so it doesn't hurt any more and you make them leave you alone..." The plight of a mage with mental reserves exhausted. Xzar closed his eyes and shook his head, and when he spoke again he was calmer. "Anyway, if you'd explained you wanted some blood, Rue, you had only to ask me to give it." He shook a silver vial that contained something that sloshed inside it.

"Cutting oneself is a...j-just a touch m-melodramatic," Khalid said cheerily, and perhaps slightly unfairly for a man whose wife regularly called loudly for Nature to take the life she gave. "How are your healing spells, d-dearest?"

"You have found yourself in quite enough trouble," Jaheira said, moving to rest a hand just below her husband's shoulder, looking into his face. The two shared a private glance and smile that made Prudence stare quickly away, to avoid any intrusion of that intimacy between them.

The group moved on within the darkness; there was waste in corners of the cavern, a few small bones with signs of gnawing, crudely shaped devices of stone, scraps of human-made cloth.

"A kobold dwelling," Jaheira said. It was deserted; perhaps they had already fought its usual inhabitants. Only one small group of kobolds had been left behind to guard it, and those Jaheira took with a casting of entanglement, warning that her ability to cast drained. Down further paths, amidst the twisting of the low caverns, they came to a grey wall stained by markings.

"Necromancer, hand me the light," Jaheira ordered impatiently; she took the mundane tinder with a firm grasp, and held it steadily before the dark patterns.

Prudence examined the drawings with the others under the rippling firelight; they seemed vivid, recent. In the centre was a large, crudely drawn figure, given a mossy colour to what was probably its face, perhaps wearing dark grey armour; small scaled-down figures painted using a material that looked like old blood danced around it, presumably meant to represent kobolds. The central figure stood with outstretched arms and wide legs, bearing a dark spiked rod in its right hand. Signs of bloodstains and burned material lay on the ground before it.

"Not exactly Lyonhardus of Iljak," Imoen muttered.

"A kobold deity," Prudence guessed. It did not resemble Kurtulmak; his motif was a skull-on-black-on-bloodstain, she remembered. There were at least two other kobold gods, 'Gaknulak' of trapping and 'Daklamak'—or something of the sort, an exarch of Kurtulmak; in Candlekeep's library it would have been easy to hunt through the works on reptilian theology. "Not any I've read of."

"It carries the—the world's overbright candle in black—" Xzar pointed to a dark spot on the large figure's waist: an irregularly shaped black area that might have passed for a stain on the rock, a lighter stain overlaid on it. His arm shook, and a note of fear was carried in his voice.

Jaheira looked dubious. "A simple splotch. I would say at least that the green skin bespeaks an ogre or orc of some variety; halfbreed, no doubt."

Xzar's hand was raised to his mouth, his nails bitten nervously. "No! I know the Dark Sun when I see it, I do—it's very bad, they're chasing you, chasing all of us—" He looked ready to flee; Prudence stepped closer to him. "Say the name and they hear you! They come after you—isn't possible a trick, not by choice working for this, Monty, there's no great plan for that—"

"For Mask's sake shut your mouth, damned madman," Montaron said, unaffected by the image, his arms folded impatiently.

"Then if it is a part-ogre or orc masquerading as a kobold deity," Prudence said—which would explain the facts adequately enough, she thought; "a cleric; then we'll need spells that can disrupt casting—"

"If it is not a simple spot," Jaheira said.

"A caster of some sort, if that's what the kobolds follow," Prudence said. "You'd want arcane or divine abilities to pretend to be a deity, and if you're a priest, then Cy—" Xzar made a short, pained noise, rocking back and forth on his feet. "—Then that particular deity's more tolerant of such blasphemy than most." The Mad God, the Lord of Three Crowns: Cyric. He had risen from mortal to god by taking much of the power of the Dead Three in the Time of Troubles, with authority in the domains of Bane's tyranny, Myrkul's death, Bhaal's murder, and his own madness.

"Indeed, m-many find strong reason to fear that god," Khalid said. That was certainly true; in none of the books in the main library of Candlekeep was Cyric praised, only in a scant few of the restricted volumes...

"When they're as afraid of their own shadows as ye," Montaron said; a grave underestimation of Khalid.

"There's reason, I tell you!" Xzar snapped. "All of them are that way! They want you, they want everything, they play knucklebones with your soul and they think they own you and keep the world and it's not true that principles wouldn't work without them, that's why they take us and keep us locked up with heavy keys and feed—"

"This representative of a god," Prudence said, "has lost already, by his own efforts alone." She spoke over Xzar, looking at him; he met her eyes, and lowered his hand slightly from his mouth. "Either he was a fool to start with, or he has lost control over his servants by degrees."

Imoen snorted. "Yeah, the spiders and the ghouls and the tough kobold archers with the flaming arrows are very out of control all right."

"No. He's failed," Prudence said. It was confidence she did not feel herself; but the reasoning held. "The miners—" That man called Joseph; the others who had died in this crisis. "The kobolds attacking people at all is a fail. They had only to poison the mine and remain out of sight. That's what I'd have had them do, if my object was to ruin Nashkel with this plan. Not hurt anyone." Xzar was silent, listening.

"Ye've missed a crucial-aspect-of-your-analysis," Montaron mocked: "Not everyone's a goody-goody." He was quite right.

"—Because it's the killing that brought adventurers here," she said. "Emerson would have assumed a defect in the mines themselves. A natural iron plague."

"Ah. Go on," Montaron said.

"At the very least, I'd have made the bodies disappear," Prudence said; Imoen looked as repulsed at the concept as anyone would be. "If I were as unscrupulous as this person, of course. That would leave it open to believe that the miners ran away for reasons of their own. Or then I'd try and lay the blame on Emerson himself; I can't believe he's not ashamed to walk around in those expensive red clothes and jewellery given that his workers are in rags and loincloths, under deadly peril, and earning only a pittance even when the mines operate—"

Jaheira sighed. "If you were causing an iron crisis, child, then I'd rather you not explain your plan in such wordy detail."

"Er—indeed," Prudence said. "Shall we confront this entity, and explain why he shouldn't?"

Xzar nodded; for some reason, a mad smile spread across his face, and he jauntily adjusted the light pack he carried to walk onward.

—

In the centre of the underground lake was a grey cave, a narrow entrance, accessed only by a bridge of stone that ran to it. Jaheira sniffed disapprovingly; they stood over dead bodies of kobolds, their supplies of healing potions used, Imoen's left sleeve burned to fall loosely around her arm.

Prudence felt a difference in the atmosphere, and looked at Jaheira to see if the druid perceived the same; Jaheira scowled, and it seemed that she measured the same thing by her own divine patronage. There was a stench of decay in the air, but there was more beyond it that was sensed by other than nose and mouth. Something wrong, something she might call evil, or else diametrically opposed to what she held faith in, Prudence thought; something that to deliberately open her senses to would hurt and ruin any sort of readiness for a fight. As if some subconscious instinct sought a deliberately mundane metaphor, the uneasiness expressed itself in her body as the regular cramps that were relieved as a secondary purpose of nara-root tea. If there were a particularly likely place for an active cleric of ill intent...

"This," Jaheira said; they had travelled some distance beyond the limits of the map Montaron carried, and the lake seemed the effective end of the mines. "I feel the unnature of a presence; you ought also to know it." Prudence nodded in assent. "This is where the offence to the Balance springs from." She tapped her staff once on the stone ground; it did not break before her. "I would call a brief rest, within that deserted cave we passed earlier. It would be sensible to pray for castings with that goal in mind; there is enough disturbance that to prepare is wiser."

Prudence leaned against the cavern's wall, seated, her armour dried and proofed against rust from its dousing. Jaheira knelt, speaking in a low voice to Silvanus; Xzar studied his spellbook by a white, fatty-looking candlestick, talking to himself. She prayed; it was necessary to rest and meditate to renew casting strength, restore healing.

We near the domain of possibly-a-half-ogre-Cyricist; this is the path I prayed to walk. I pray that we will serve by ending this; that there will be no deaths further. That I might regain healing and protection against evils. That I can pursue duty to accomplish this; that I can protect others...

There were shallow dreams; half-dark, as if she could wake any moment by the choosing, on some border between consciousness and the complex, tangling subconscious.

The towers of Candlekeep. A light shone in the window of her old room, a magelight cantrip that faded into the candles she had needed ever since she had been sanctioned upon this path. Prudence watched its glimmer as if she were a bird with a cross-sectioned view of the fortress, floating somewhere high in the air. The very bricks closed over the light, as if the walls themselves conspired to keep her at bay. She saw it fade, slowly; and then found herself standing on the road in the dark of the night she had left Candlekeep. Where Gorion had died. She saw the appearance of her father, a faded spectre of his true self. Even in dreams he was dead.

You cannot go back this way, child, he said; but she had known that already, and he was only an echo of the parent she had loved. Two paths ran through the blackness of the wood; one smooth, the second overgrown and thorned, and it was the second that promised interest. She took a step upon it, willing to traverse its difficult turns and byways.

A voice distinct to that of her father whispered. Taunted: Do you imagine you have the strength? she heard spoken in her ear. You, who faced no challenge, who became easily what you are?

She would rather face an accusation than avoid it, or so she wished to do so. It was almost true. She'd the benefit of Sir Rolland at Candlekeep, that the old knight had chosen to retire with his friend Tamas of Oghma; and sheer nepotism that her father had known Hvaltha of Eldath from his days as an adventurer and that she had visited.

The peace of Candlekeep's grounds were as yet not far behind. She saw still the wooden quintains she knew each splinter of, memories of cheerful camaraderie with Erik and Jondalar and Hull and all the others in the practice field alike; and turned once more to the road bordered by barbed thorns. She would claim that she had worked for years, trained out of countless weaknesses, devoted tendays to learning a single form of a blade's movement, forsworn other studies to read all she could of healing and strategy and theology. She had laboured in the Watchers until without exception she had defeated all of them in practice matches, not by natural strength but by long hours of work and careful tactics. None of that entitled a claim to be a paladin, only divine grace—but she had been slightly above the average age when she was granted the abilities of the role, it had not been entirely easy—

The path through the dark woods was rocky and sharp, and a monstrous vision lay within it.

You are afraid that you are a coward. You are weak, that dark voice murmured, a quiet rustle in the depths of her mind.

The yellow-eyed giant of a man; she feared him. He was stronger than her, far stronger... But of course I am mortal and I gain the strength of the service; for the future I can only pray and therefore fearing fear itself can do no possible good—

Again, that vestigial corner, that black voice of the underside of her mind. Can you call yourself a paladin for sacrificing nothing? You craved this, craved adventure and exploration; you joy in physical expression. You have done nothing more virtuous than follow your own inclinations and lusts.

I'd hardly be a better paladin if I dreamed of a small farm and raising children instead of travelling the realms— she thought. I do not need to desire such a life to protect it for others; I wanted this; I still do— she spoke against the dream-voice, with something of defiance. There was misery and death. On this path they rose in smoke like the fraction of an iceberg above waves of sorrow, only a sampling of what could be expected to come. Gorion; the miner of the greenstone ring; the halfling messenger; the other adventurers that had come to the mines. Pain for their loss; the pain of wounds she had known, the burning of an arrow under her ribs; pain and agony that her sister, that her other companions, might fall. The fierce excitement of motion, of fighting.

I still desire to follow this. I still try to act in duty—

She could not believe in coincidence entire; that both sets of travelling-companions had wished this cause was a sign of what she followed, and there was proof that it was a right thing to do. Candlekeep was far behind and the steep path continued to open before her. She walked past dark thorns.

You will learn, it whispered.

She woke to something tugging on her like one of Reevor's dogs gnawing on a rat.

—

Onion metaphor: CS Lewis.