Warning: This is the highest rated out of the three Cloakwood chapters, and indeed as high-rated as this fic gets. Please take caution if you have triggers.
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7. Eldoth
If there was one thing he loathed above all, it was tedium. The slaves were sheep; herding them was dull work.
And they milled about him precisely like sheep. Perhaps if even one of them were a moderately attractive and terribly grateful woman he could forgive, but this he could not. (The cook certainly failed to fall under the description.) His invisibility had dissipated, though its restoration was but a simple melody from him. He hummed three low notes and at least gained vision in the darkness, the layers of darkened planes and the more vivid colours of the living. The air was still filled with smoke and caused both the slaves and the mooncalf boy to cough. Obviously not jaded sufferers of black lotus.
On the opposite bank, ashes lay on the ground, and armed figures trampled the wreckage; two ropes had been stretched across in place of a proper bridge, such that the crossing was possible though no easy affair. Simple enough to swim, if it came to it.
He watched and waited for the guards across the way to notice something wrong; to see and disbelieve that their orders were so foolish when they saw the hordes gathered here. He hefted his flute ready in his hand; better a coward than a dead man, and better yet a prepared man.
Yet Garrick the mooncalf was already trying something highly counterproductive.
"Davaorn's orders!" the foolish boy called across at them; at the least he had completed some slight cantrip beforehand to give him more than a female adolescent's voice.
"Yeah? So they got those bastards?"
"Yeah!" There was a rather excessive dose of the party paladin in Garrick's yell. "You get to patrol and look for their friends, Davaeorn says!"
"—Hey, that you, Frias?"
"Sure!"
"Nope—hey, wait—the slaves up here? Come—Calban—"
They were not quite yet in the position he would have wanted them, but with the potential of a mob at his direction it was simple enough. These odds certainly favoured him; and as in any gamble, favourable odds dictated an action.
The melody Eldoth cast from his flute was a variation upon an old dance tune, a rill of high notes that were crafted to make anyone wish for hornpipe or tarantella. When combined with one or two low notes that could force anyone to cease all motion: it was a satisfying spell to cast on enemies. The four guards were close enough that its effect spread against all of them, and each became immediately paralyzed; it could have been one, none. He allowed himself a slight sigh of relief.
"Go ahead and take your righteous vengeance," he inflamed the mob.
"To—kill—" Garrick stared. Some of the former slaves were already clambering across the ropes as best they could; his darkvision showed him one more in the patrol, racing to the defence of his fellows. Eldoth wasted an allotment of magic-forged missiles at him. "What's that spell?" Garrick burst out.
"An unpleasant little number trying to replicate a trifle of divine power. Entertainingly sadistic if coupled with a herd of summoned monsters; but these slaves will have to do for now." The guards were falling easily to the slaves' improvised weapons—a rock here, ripped timber there, even a dropped dagger or two. With the infravision he could see the amusing look of popeyed terror in the eyes of the frozen guard in the forefront just before he was dragged down.
"What they're doing—" Taking a bloody revenge on their erstwhile owners, of course. The true tragedy in it was that the pest had probably not been dropped on his head as a child as an explanation for his mind. "I'm not sure. It's—"
"You've no idea how those bastards treated us," said a slave, standing away from the massacre. "Ilmater may not condone such things, but I'll not stop them." Whip marks ran down his back; he looked at Garrick. "The way's clear for us to leave. A blessing to you and your friend."
"The Cloakwood's dangerous," Garrick said, again stating the obvious. "I'll—I have to find Yeslick, don't I?" he said, nervously, looking again briefly to what the slaves had done to their erstwhile masters; and back to the slave leader. "And...and I have to come back. You need help."
"We waste enough time," Eldoth sneered. Skie's little revelation of bastadry had denied his plans; at least this mine had sounded to be a venture of some potential profit. The note to recall his invisibility was simple, quick, and high. He snapped a prepared eyelash between his fingers, and remained unseen.
The mines were emptier now; and Garrick and his bright clothing, in as dreadful condition as it was, would divert attention away from Eldoth himself. It was easy enough to follow the trail of bloodshed to where that boar of a woman et al had forced themselves to.
"Eldoth, why do you treat Skie so badly?" the boy attempted in conversation with his better.
"Why did Skie lead me to believe that she was her father's trueborn daughter?" Eldoth said. This was the room where they had killed the mage bitch and the others with her; a guard's slit throat grinned red at him. He'd already taken what was worth thieving from their corpses, and the mage's robes still gaped open across her bare breasts. Garrick looked carefully aside from the scene.
"Because it's some mistake. Because she thought you could sort it out for her." Some vestige of immature chivalry; how quaint. They stepped through the large kitchen area; Eldoth had done enough wandering to search for slaves to incite that he knew the way to this point, at least. The long tunnels were cursed confusing, and if Garrick the simpleton continued to gasp every time he ran into something in the dark, he might even have to teach him to cast infravision. Softly and repeatedly calling out directions past the invisibility was another irritant.
"Daddy dearest would hardly listen to the likes of me," Eldoth said. Build enough of a habit of wives and daughters opening their legs to one, and jealous and wealthy men started to become...mildly peeved. It was also, of course, that to them he was nothing: a Ruathym northlander, a bard schooled in New Olamn and the son of fishers and poisoners. Skie had thought it terribly exciting that he knew how to steal.
"She deserves better than you! You keep telling her, be quiet, your opinion's not worth anything, you're not worth anything—and you're wrong."
It was the boy's poor taste that flashed sheep's eyes at the insipid brat; particularly when there was such a charming drow also in the party. Bodies fell at the end of this particular passage, marking their way clearly. "Speaking frankly, Skie is a particularly feather-brained female talented at spending her father's gold."
Bodies in here, also. One guard appeared to have fallen some distance from his fellows, and the number of wounds upon him seemed slightly more than necessary to have killed him. Scorching spellmarks also marked the path before them; the young wizards had been busy, it seemed.
"That's horrible, and you're wrong," the boy fiercely lectured. Another realm of rough stairs further into the Cloakwood's hidden secret; more marks of their delightful companions' passage about them. Eldoth impatiently waited for Garrick to slip upon them; if he was lucky, the boy might even break his jaw in the course of the fall. "She's—once she ran into a vampiric wolf to save me. She's stronger than you think."
A stone door swung open on hinges almost destroyed. "You praise women for their strength? I'm afraid I always imagined your clumsy flirting to consist of boasting to a lady that you are now enough of a man to shave each Shieldmeet, and perhaps soon you may even start to drink ale," Eldoth said.
More bodies lay beyond. The boy's cowardice showed itself again in his pale face and trembling step. Eldoth rifled through the corpses in case of valuables missed, not heeding Garrick's distress.
"It—doesn't matter what you think," the boy said, when they had passed by that scene. "I know what I have to do now. You only wanted to use her. But Shar-Teel hates you even more than I do, Imoen sees right through you—and Skie is strong. Stronger than either of us; than you. In some ways."
Ridiculous. Eldoth was a strong man, Skie a weak girl; and though he would freely admit his studies in the Art did not transcend dabbling—spells were useful enough, but he'd no care to bury himself in books for long years and small returns—he was still beyond the younger Thayvian and the childish Imoen when he deigned to cast, knowing more powerful ways and turns within the Weave by song's instinct.
There were the sounds of battle, audible now; "Hurry, whelp," he ordered. They passed through; down; and looked over a small army of hobgoblins making easy work of their fellow adventurers within a place marked by the Dark Sun.
Were the odds more favourable to retreat? No, Eldoth thought; they had come so far, and the rewards might be considerable. Garrick gasped, loudly; it was an intimidating enough sight—only Shar-Teel's height and, partly, Viconia shielded by her goddess were visible amidst the attack; all others presumably far within the thick groupings of hobgoblins. From Garrick's white face, Eldoth did not trust the boy's courage to hold; but instead of running, or of futilely charging in and having himself killed—he stood his ground. For the time being.
"Perhaps you know what we have to do," he told Eldoth, who wearied of cryptic pronouncements; "—have to, together, because—" So it was that particular song the hapless child wished to attempt.
"Phrygian mode on the third key," Eldoth ordered. He gave Garrick a soft tuning note, repeated it once more; they could afford no mistakes. As little as the boy's voice was to his own musical tastes—slovenly technique, thin, overly sweet—it found the Weave as well as any other bard's. And two combined could attempt to be exponential in effect.
Garrick began to sing the melody. Eldoth held the counterpoint, depth, strength, and careful fingerings, the elaborate and complicated harmony that progressed from discord to resolution in half a breath. Enthrallment, this; he reflected briefly that hobgoblins had small minds, and that tactical reassurance alone cost him effort he should not have spent. Songs were usually a means to an end for him; but in the sheer physicality of it—breathing sparingly in the few times permitted him, air hastening to his lungs; mouth and teeth and tongue and spit calling the notes; fingers precise and careful and beginning to sweat—beyond the palpability of it lay the power. He piped the notes demanded of him such that the cantors would become transmuted by the canticle, seared by its inferno into faded and falling ashes tossed to the wind. Crescendo, Garrick's voice still clear enough, Eldoth's counterpoint labyrinthine in its details and flawless in execution—
The hobgoblins began to look to them. Supple-limbed Viconia drove her dagger through the neck of one that had flagged its attention to watch. It was the goblins, not their acquaintances, that they sought to subdue, and Garrick's voice sharpened to direct the spell in such a manner. A quick arpeggio flashed across Eldoth's fingers; a hobgoblin had started to advance towards them. Fortunately the boy adapted to it, indeed singing well enough to halt it temporarily in place.
Potent enough music to briefly capture all of them; Eldoth felt a prickling of fear at all the yellowish eyes turning their direction. He played steadily even as an arrow was loosed and fell inches above their heads. A single falter in the song and they would both be lost. Subdue the archer. A bloodstained Imoen, perhaps weeping, stabbed a hobgoblin near to her in its spine. She thieved its sword to replace hers and attacked; near to her were two fallen figures, an unknown girl and the paladin.
The web he and Garrick cast trembled like rain-soaked goassamer, filling this Cyric-marked domain. Fragile and intricate, in the sight of the Weave the dull silver strands of his flute entwining the pattern against sunny yellow. Flimsy as the slightest disruption or discord would break it; a thing of complex allure in its way, deadly as the strands became soaked in blood. As much as he generally believed Shar-Teel should shut up and off herself as a service to all humanoids, her battle-cries blended into the song as a counterpoint again to his and Garrick's careful timing. (If playing at an exhibition of animal tricks: the music is matched to the pace at which the horses dance, not the horses to the music.) The web bound the hobgoblins; a sputtering cantrip spilt from Edwin's hand, a bloodied Skie seemed to fade from vision behind the shadows of her enemies, a dwarf's body jerked slightly upon the ground. All tremulous portions of one spellbinding.
And the black-clad priest sought to utterly destroy it. He stood on his altar, a prayer raised against the song's influence. In Eldoth's manipulation of the Weave he felt it as a nauseating darkness, the spreading control of a blackened sun. Garrick's voice wavered, and the Cyricist's power spread; arrows flew about Shar-Teel and Viconia.
The girl Imoen cut and run, gathering her wizard's robe about her. Eldoth knew he'd no such luxury of turning back. Garrick's voice deepened; Eldoth lowered his flute's tones to imitate it, and would have cursed his growing-ever-more slippery fingers if he'd either thought or breath to spare. Many hobgoblins yet lived, and the priest's directions worked against the spellsong.
Cease; must hate and death return; cease! must men kill and die; cease! drain not to its dregs The urn of bitter prophecy— Garrick's words sounded; not at all the lyrics Eldoth would have chosen. The frail web faltered, the hobgoblins within it almost ready to attack its creators. Eldoth could detect a note of hoarseness, now, in the boy's voice; he sweetened his flutesong as best he could. If they chose, they could control these array of brutal servants.
A brighter Toril rears its mountains, from waves serener far; a new Chionthar rolls its fountains against the morning star—
Cruelly and pathetically optimistic. Yet that much, Eldoth supposed, was somewhat antithetical to the Dark Sun. For himself, let it be the negative beauty of the Maid of Misrule, as she had no doubt turned her eye to him from birth—but there was no time. Soon the hobgoblins would end the music in the simplest possible manner. While it bound the creatures, let those who could murder as many as possible do so. The unknown girl raised herself slowly from the ground, making as if to cast a healing upon herself.
The Cyricist's chanting stammered for a bare second; and for that moment many hobgoblins stopped under the song's power. The exertion of it had begun to pain him; Eldoth would swear that it was drops of blood and not water running from his forehead. Such joined spells exhausted. He and Garrick would transform to ash indeed, desiccated dust upon the wind. Many of his songs ran so, for man's cold grasp at these matters could never last for any great time.
Someone was loosing arrows at the Cyricist, and a third found its way to the priest's neck: Imoen the wizard. These noble-minded fools could be relied upon to risk their lives, after all. The song flowered; the hobgoblins were arrested to his will; and Garrick sung between the flute's subtleties. Shar-Teel behaved as expected.
'Twas Garrick first to slump silent and hoarse to the ground when the need for the song was ended; but Eldoth would have admitted truly that he also was an exhausted man. He wiped an arm across his forehead and found it damp; he crouched leaning against the wall and let others plunder for the time being, if they would. They had bound a force of goblins in place long enough for them to be slain; perhaps he would place that within an epic chant at some time. Leave out, probably, Shar-Teel's credit; dark elves, though, were ever a fascinating subject to the fantasies of a small-minded audience.
"Yeslick!" cried Garrick, and Eldoth would have taken the word for simple brain-damaged nonsense, but the boy's path took him to kneel beside the fallen dwarf. A name, come to think of it, that some of the slaves had muttered, of little importance as that had been.
"Knight! Silvanus bids you to rise!" the girl's harsh voice commanded; the paladin was in the position of a pincushion amidst dead hobgoblins, and Eldoth dared to hope the tedious imbecile had met a deserved end.
She began to chant something, pulling the arrows free and laying her hands where blood gushed. "No. I shall not allow Nature's despoilers to—"
"Viconia!—It's Yeslick, he needs—" There were tears upon Garrick's stained face.
"Force a healing potion down his throat, rivvil," she throatily commanded. She devoured one herself, her fine body smeared by offal and blood. With Shar-Teel, she leaned against the wall; both, it seemed, taken to their limits.
"But I don't have one, I—"
"I think there's a trap." Imoen pointed to the Dark Sun's altar; three potion bottles stood above it upon a shelf. "Magic. I can't, it feels all...I don't think I...Edwin, you?"
The wizard, pale and moving slowly, had himself swallowed one such potion. "Subtle. (Probably harmless.) If I truly must—"
"Yes. You should," Imoen said.
Ajantis coughed and spluttered, the girl's hands upon him. (Likely he would cough and splutter at any female's hands upon him, given paladins' acclaimed prudishness.) "Hurts—" The pathetic squirrel companion leaped from the roof to his side.
"I shall cast more blessings upon you shortly, I promise. Shall I next heal the dwarf?" the girl said.
"Hurry," Garrick begged.
"Simple, simple, little magic traps," Edwin muttered to himself. He stepped gingerly to the altar to Cyric. "(Do I need to understand its pathetic intent? I think not!) Scarce above cantrip level, I imagine. Easy to avoid—(There is not much to it, is there?)—easy to lay hands upon. (I think I see...half of a conditional rune; perhaps leading to further beneath?—But it is inactive, apparently wizardly might is not the intruder designed— Enough. As if I were a useless diviner to care.) Several potions of healing among other things. Behold." He gathered the bottles into his hands and backed away from the altar. "Very useful, indeed." He immediately drained one himself, and was met by various glares from most of the others.
"Give them to me, iblith," Viconia hissed, the wall at her back supporting her upright.
"Hush, dear, don't fuss." Nevertheless he yielded to the drow; no wonder she had no respect for Edwin as a man. Viconia and Shar-Teel passed the flask between themselves as if it were wine.
Skie rested quietly on the ground; she was draped upon a hobgoblin's large corpse as if it were some silken divan within her father's mansion, the enchanted sword fallen beside her. She said nothing. Her pale skin was crossed with blood and dark bruising; not all of the blood was hers. Give anyone a sword of that nature and even emptyheaded noblewomen like her could...
"You're old," the healer girl announced, bent over the dwarf still.
"Mock if ye must—but I'll swing an axe as well as any of ye pipsqueaks, I'll see this mine beaten back to the watery tomb it belongs—"
"Age and experience are a part of Nature's cycle, I intended no insult," the girl said. "It is only that you must rest; I cannot fully heal you of the damage—"
"Yeslick, she might be right; don't hurt yourself—" Garrick said.
"Nay, give me a breath to catch and I'll cast the healing myself, I will. I must—"
"Heal Shar-Teel whilst your power remains, jalil," Viconia ordered the girl. "She is the strongest of us."
"Of course." Fortunate that they had found such a stray, Eldoth thought; soon he would have to stand once more. He'd still the spear he had gained, even if the threads of his music hung tattered and torn about him and his body exhausted.
"Then Skie," Viconia continued. "She's no caster to need rest."
"(That is because masters of arcane knowledge are simply more powerful—)"
Skie. The drow indeed hated men, to choose her. But the girl showed enough healing talent to cross to each of them in turn, ending with Eldoth.
"This will grant you vitality," she said; her light touch restored some potency to Eldoth's limbs, though his ability to cast yet scarcely flickered inside him. One of those deranged forest druids, from her speeches; this Faldorn was quite a pretty girl below the battlestains. In two or three years and cleansed of dirt she might make an attractive woman. He stood.
"Kill the mage quickly," Shar-Teel said. His chambers stood behind a secret door; protected by guards.
"I'll kill the bastard; I'll see to it the rats don't—" Garrick tried to plead with the ranting fool of a geriatric dwarf again. Eldoth took out the scroll he had plundered; he should have sold it for a pretty enough sum upon abandoning this place, but it was not the only scroll he had obtained, and ought to aid them in their escape.
"Murdering wizards works best quickly, doesn't it," Skie chattered.
"Indeed." Shar-Teel watched her.
"I could be invisible enough; I might even be fast enough. Varscona isn't even the only weapon I can use on him," she said; and yet again Eldoth doubted her mental stability. Then again, her foolishness was precisely what he had counted on within his now-ruined schemes.
"Quiet; fast; and you've seen magical traps," Shar-Teel said. "Then why not send you first?" Eldoth had heard her whining about Daddy's leaving of magical traps around her bedroom: to be more specific, non-lethal magical traps around her bedroom. She'll probably die, Eldoth thought, and believed the same idea rested in Shar-Teel's eye; but a distraction for the wizard was worth a trifle of sacrifice.
"I'll enchant you if I must, Skie dear. And cast a spell of hasting at that," he said aloud.
"A scroll? That's mine by rights. Hand it to those of arcane superiority!" Edwin said; Eldoth was gratified that the fool would perform the labour for him. The blindly egotistical were so easy to manipulate.
"I wish you wouldn't, Skie," Garrick said. "But—if you are—the boots of speed, they'll fit anyone..."
"Cast without meaningless chatter, rothen." Viconia moved more closely, for the spell of haste to spread properly across the group.
"Kill the chief of this unnature." The druid girl smiled with slightly crooked teeth. "Power remains to me to fight his bodyguards whilst his door is opened, for the woods themselves cry for the destruction of the mine. A blade of flame to slay them." Blazing fire appeared between her hands, and Eldoth leaned away from it. "The strength of the bear." Her chant wrapped a pale light about her short frame, and her stance shifted into one implying greater mastery of a sword. "The agility of...the squirrel, perhaps, good lady." She took the paladin's animal to her shoulders. "It will last long e—"
The spell of hasting ran through him; Eldoth took in his grasp a poisoned arrow and held it ready.
—
8. Shar-Teel
If you could have asked of Shar-Teel her exact feelings at that time, she would have said that she could scarcely remember being happier.
Certainly there had been other battles that had equally excited and challenged her; but this was the most recent in time. And it had been too long, a part of her exulted.
A pair of unnatural warriors wielding swords glowing the colour of blood, in addition to all others she had fought. The world was filled with males to slay. She almost appreciated that incompetent boy's heavy footfall which had set this merry couple upon her path, nearly tearing him to pieces. She could hear noises of the battle with the wizard ahead. Any half-decent woman or man with a sword could slay a mage if they were close enough to them; grant her these undead horrors.
Davaeorn's human bodyguards, behind the door, had proven to have another cleric amongst their number. The numbers were not ill, but given weak casters against strong metal— The girl Faldorn's blade from its sounds set them afire.
To think that two nondescript girls and a couple of scrawny males wandering near basilisk country had brought her to this point. The lair of the mad ettercaps; that snaga of a half-ogre she'd yet to kill and his camp; the spiders and various repellent creatures; a few mages, a large number of pathetic hobgoblins; and this.
Behind their helmets was the same red light that shone from their blades. Their black armour fit man-sized about what a rational guess would have placed as empty space, or cracked old bones; bulky, it gave no impression of mere nothingness beneath, and she would rather fight than idly calculate. Shar-Teel kicked at a table, overturning it between herself and them. Delicately filigreed crockery smashed to pieces on the stones. Her sword first blocked the attack of the one nearest to her, and then slid to score a hit across its metalled chest. The deep scratch she left was bright silver, briefly; and then it reddened and turned to black as if it had never been made.
She looked again at what they were: the armour that appeared to move on its own; the swords; a blood-coloured substance that was not fire, greatly different to the druid girl's efforts. As if from something in those other planes—well, male wizards had the worthless ego to try to play with things that would happily destroy them.
Her sword met the red blades again; for a moment she saw her own face reflected in the light gathered about them. Tazok—forcing her to kneel to a male—
She yelled a battlecry. These probably-male things would—
Ten years ago. The damned Red Falcon lot—led by a woman, avatar's light shining from her eyes, routing the mercenary forces arrayed against—
The time when gods set foot on mortal planes and made work for the likes of her. The reflection filled her vision; as if time had ceased to run. Tethyr, that invasion. She'd hired with a band mostly of useless males, half-orcs and half-ogres besides the humans. Tear up the country, seize the loot, set a few villages on fire. The promises of pay and carnage had been good enough for her.
They were destroyed by the Bloodhawk. Shar-Teel remembered the red-armoured woman upon her warhorse at some distance from her, the standard of her Knight flapping against the sky—the glow of a deity's power behind her face. Avatar of the Red Knight, goddess of strategic warfare. Her company of the bird-blazoned, red cloth with bloodstained beaks and claws, not faltering regardless of what was done to them. The Order of the Red Falcon. There were times Shar-Teel would have enjoyed such odds, and at that time at the least she had been older than the girls with her now, but on that battlefield she had known discretion was the better part. She'd tripped over a corpse opened from head to groin whilst running for cover, stumbling over wastes of males lying dead on the ground. That long-distance sight of a part-god had been enough for her. Now she was a greater warrior than she had been, but yet these extraplanar scum brought back to her such failures and fears—
The ground shook below her. She moved again; the air was cold, and that long moment was the work of sorcery—
Her weakness was allowing them too close to her. A blow touched her armour, and searingly melted it to her skin. She continued to watch those swords. There were other fears waiting there, she knew of herself, and her strike to get the horrors away from her was not as powerful as it ought to have been.
Perhaps she could call for a spellcaster's dispelling of their powers, as if she needed any kind of help. No. She was a stronger warrior than that, she would swear, lacking in male weakness; she would defeat these—
"If it bleeds, I—" Her sword sunk into a joint in the shoulders of the left-hand horror; the unnatural red light trickled from it, and again the armour merged whole across the wound. These did not bleed. And there was fear within them.
She did not fear males. She had never feared males. She would not see within the substance of those swords.
No time to yell a grim battlecry. She felt herself backed against a shelf, stocked with strange components in jars; her elbow sent eyeballs marinated in liquid scattering across the flagstones. The swords swept close to her and she blocked with her enchanted steel.
Fear gripped her. If this pathetic witchcraft spared her those memories, that would be enough.
She stepped forward. The attack of one seared her armour again; her sleeve below it was caught on fire. Her arm burned. They were close to her. She raised her sword, and aimed for a clean slice across the neck.
Cut off the head, store under running water, light a holy candle in the mouth? Almost anything dies that way.
A helmet clattered to the floor. She kicked it far from the body; red gathered at the neckjoint, over empty space. That one's headless frame flailed at her still, but the fear in its blade was dead. It fell slowly, the armour unravelling into dust.
"Feeling—lucky, are you, scum?" She faced only one now. It gave no sign of hearing her. In its sword remained—nothing worth the noticing. It tried a sudden attack, its strength weaker than hers. She forced it back, step by step. It fought in ways that nothing in the mortal planes would, the armourjoints contorting into shapes none could imitate, its battle carried with no concern for its wounds. A dark shape; she gave her mind to the movement of its gauntlets more than the blade.
She had it into its corner, triumphant. Cut off the head— The second black helmet fell to her. Whilst it crumbled into dirt, she beat out the fires upon her arm. She had paid no attention to the battles extending beyond these horrors; now it had ended, and she heard.
Somewhere behind her, Ajantis' voice was loud.
"He is evil. Kill him," the paladin said.
—
9. Skie
We had passed by the torture chambers. There were parts of men fixed to the walls; various devices hung upon a mounted display; two braziers filled with burning coals. The owner, I supposed, had left abruptly to fight us. The metal devices in the flickering light were pincers; long claws; knives strangely shaped such that they would cut in interesting ways; spiked objects the shape of pears; iron boots with screws hanging from them; bridle-like instruments sized for humans. I didn't really know the names of many of them. Partly it smelt of roasted meat, above the taste of blood. It doesn't seem that a person smells too differently from an ordinary roast.
There were two arms mounted on the left side of the wall. They seemed to have belonged to different people, one bulkier than its neighbour. Next to them was a torso, maybe once female, but hard to tell. It was just the torso, skinned, with breasts and all else removed from it. Next there was a bent leg tied to a shield. Male genitalia. Female, splayed out and nailed to the wall; difficult to tell what that was. A hobgoblin head, spikes passed through its eyes and tongue. A left leg fastened to the right of the wall.
"Just a dungeon in here, Ajantis," I said. "Don't bother coming in." One's voice seemed to coldly echo in here. It was a relatively small room. Screams, probably, would be suppressed and confined within this place, turning back upon themselves.
A table with thick straps attached to it stood near the centre of the room. Next to it was a wooden frame, manacles bound to it. Dark fluids patterned those fastenings. There were also four stakes driven to stand tall between the stones of the floor, one shorter than its siblings.
There was faint moaning, actually, in the corner of the room, that scarcely gave an echo at all. It used to be a man. They had taken his limbs from him and left black marks upon the four stumps. Burning so as to stop the blood loss from killing him too quickly. There were branded marks on its chest across whip's wounds. Dark emptiness at its groin. A small portion of what smelled like flesh seemed to be burning in the brazier next to it. No ears. A red wound in the centre of its face that snuffled a bit. Bloodstains to the corners of its mouth; it seemed to lack a tongue to speak past its moans. And its eyes could not close any more. It would have taken a fine dagger to slice through eyelids and leave those staring eyes unable to look away from what was being done; that might have been the first step.
"There is—nobody we can aid, then?" Ajantis called, in his place outside the doorway.
I stabbed down at it. Ice gathered around its heart. The man stopped trying to move.
"No. There's nobody alive in here."
Murdering wizards works best quickly, doesn't it?—Invisible enough; fast enough; and not only Varscona to fight with—
It was one mistake, I swear.
The others were attacking Davaeorn's guards, who separated from the secret door. I could open it, the lock not beyond me, its intricacies bending away from its secrets. Inside the master of the mines' chambers was not dark, but a gold-coloured space well-illuminated by magelight in crystal spheres and torchlights bright against the wall. Eldoth's invisibility spell held, and there was no time. I could feel the redness gathered in my hands that froze other people stiff as if they were dead.
There were traps on the ground, small tripwires, a space upon the edge of a rich red carpet that did not quite look right. I ran forward; jumped over. The boots had me flying faster than ever before in a dance, a quick twist in the air for a quieter landing. A soft and graceful landing is part of every good ballet leap. Running further, there was something in the air that smelled like death; the eyes of a floating skull seemed to follow behind me.
The heavy footfalls behind me were probably Ajantis bursting through to help as he had planned, and the mage himself walked to find us.
He did not see me; he looked about himself, his hands reaching for the components he wore attached to his belt. I was close; had only to find my way behind him. He reached out an arm whilst I passed by; I spun out of its path, and he did not touch me. Ajantis was making noise far behind.
"I can hear you. Why have you come? To steal my riches; or seek to righteously punish me for my affront to your morality? In any case; —I have little desire to become acquainted with the dead." He blinked into thin air, beginning to chant.
I reached for the back of his neck. My hands were cold. The grave's touch in my hands failed to hurt him; and then his contingency of protections came around him. Eight—or nine?—of him, moving back and forth, plucking spell ingredients from his belt; a shining cylinder of purple about him; pale blue light over his form with its sharp glowing shield. I skidded back when his protections expanded into being, the invisibility vanishing from me; he cast his spell and disappeared into a glistening silver door in the air.
A race to find him, then. Shar-Teel saying, Bloodlust is acceptable; a voice in the dreams. Why think at all about it when one could kill?
The boots carried me quickly, running into his tapestried rooms. He chanted beyond; suddenly a lightning bolt flowed from his hands, and I somersaulted below its luminous blue. It burned, ricocheting and sizzling at the edge of my waist. My chin hit the carpet; the glow of red in my hands was no more. Pain, but not death. Ajantis' voice cried out in greater shock.
Chanting. I flung myself to my feet; the sound was near enough. Quickness of feet could find a clear shot. An iced arrow to the bow, flying; I did not know if it could hit the real wizard, but it pierced at least one shield of purple. The second arrow, perhaps, distracted him enough to make him flee again through his magic.
Ajantis ran past the passages; as I sped to the wizard I saw three figures fighting at the back. Two of them bore blades the colour of dark blood—
Another arrow. The wizard stood in front of a shrine, before the symbol of a skull blazoned upon the wall. The images of him flickered and died simply enough, even if enough were preserved to temporarily shield him. Three arrows of magic remained; I had wanted to kill Sarevok, but now it was the mage of the mines. Killing wizards. He deserved his death. Sinking a shaft to his heart would be fun. Piercing the tortured thing had been stronger than backstabbing hobgoblins, and this the more so—
He chanted. The protections of his images replaced those that had fallen. The final ice arrow seemed to meet something, for this time he squawked while disappearing. I ran searching for the mage's door; Ajantis hit the skull suspended in the air.
An explosion shook the chambers and fragments of bone erupted about the room. I rolled out of the way of the debris; the knight's steps shuddered back.
The wizard's voice grew in strength. I lowered the bow, took Varscona to hand; stabbed forward, carried by the magic in the boots. Danced forward, prepared to finish the ballet's steps.
Curse wizards' disappearances. "There!" Ajantis pointed; I overtook him in chasing Davaeorn, and then a forest of ogrillons appeared out of thin air. Hefty fists, frames scraping the ceiling. Surrounded—
Ajantis, caught up. His shield opened enough of a path for me to dodge away from the vast fists; he faced the monsters efficiently enough, blocking and striking. I heard him yell about evil, that the wizard had to die— Davaeorn was ahead of us. I ran after the wizard; Ajantis held back the summoned creatures.
The spell he cast was complex, in a language I knew nothing of. Its flow seemed to fill the air of his halls.
Wanting to kill—
The spell finished before I could lunge forward. We were all frozen; not simply me. The torches and magelights did not flicker or lower in their blaze, and yet the air was cold. The images of the wizard first appeared to still, and then faded from sight. I could hear nothing but the wizard himself.
"Are you the one the Iron Thone seeks?" he said aloud; he was the only thing I could hear or see that still possessed power to move. The chambers had become still, no overheard battles or screams remaining; feeling the coldness seep through my body, one could not imagine that it had no effect upon the others—
There was a brightly polished dagger in his hands, and I saw him walk slowly closer. If it had frozen everything, then perhaps it was no ordinary holding but a binding elsewhere, compelling over—
"I don't expect you to answer, dead one. Either way, I can find uses for you as a spell component," he said; and the dagger fell closer.
But there was a sound, behind; made by a creature large enough that his walk on the stones was easy to hear. And a roar overheard; but its attack was not for me, the wizard—
"You mess with me, you make us cold—"
Davaeorn called the words of another spell; red light spilled from his hand that I knew had the power to hold the ogrillon in place. Iron dust crumbled from his fingers.
"Fascinating. Summoned creatures must take offence to that," he said; and then the ground shook again below us. The master of the mines looked almost startled, turning his head quickly from one side to another. "You, however, have no more time—" The dagger slid forward.
The ground shaking—Things started to move again, and that was the end of it. The dagger reached my neck, but slid shallowly to the edge of it; I slipped to the side and forward. Ajantis ran with me. Ogrillons chased him, but his sword was reaching the wizard. We beat at his protections. Davaeorn chanted; there were two blades on him, and that distracted the spells. There were images—one or two—remaining; the purple shielding fell, and to fight searching to hurt the real wizard was not impossible. It might have been Ajantis' anger to bloody and destroy him at the last, or it might have been Varscona and my hand—some lines of red iced over, some marks of Ajantis' fury. When the last image faded, Davaeorn fell to the ground; cuts at his thigh, his arm, his face, a deep wound on his side that finished him. His eyes were open, and frozen. The ogrillons disappeared at the moment he must have died.
There was a broad stain of blood on my left hand, and both of our blades showed what we had done.
"He is dead," Ajantis said; and the pale light behind his eyes was uncompromising. "But—that, over—"
i'd heard the movement. The boots carried me easily to the evil henchman trying to run—a boy. Several years younger than Faldorn or me. He tried to gasp out a spell while I caught up to him; but it failed when I found him, had him pinned to the wall. I held Varscona to his neck.
He pleaded, and cried. "I'm just Davaeorn's apprentice! Stephan Capetri. Please—"
"Tell us more about the plan," I said. A slim line of blood already ran down the boy's neck, since I had pressed a little too hard to simply threaten him. I passed a hand over my own; the cut the wizard had left slowed in its bleeding, so that I could concentrate upon this.
"I'm just the apprentice! I don't know anything—I—I know just a little! Please!" Snot and tears ran down his face.
"Who are the leaders?" Ajantis said.
"—I don't know! I swear it! The Iron Throne—there are three I think, three leaders but I don't know their names—one's a wizard and I don't know the others—"
"Sarevok. What does he have to do with this?" I said.
"I tell you true, I've never heard the name but there was someone besides the three giving Davaeorn orders—south west of the city's the Iron Throne building! I've never been there but you can—"
"We know where it is."
"What was your evil purpose?" Ajantis demanded. He faced the boy, standing over him far taller and broader; even without the sword pinning him back, Stephan could not have run past him—
"Please—um—in war! If there was war—they could ride in and pretend—raise iron prices and get rid of the competition—but that's all I know—"
"War with Amn?" I said.
"Yes, with Amn—if an Amnish attack, all those rumours—raise the prices to sell the weapons—"
"And the bandits?" Ajantis pushed.
"Bandit raids—" Stephan gasped, crying still. "Raiding the iron for the shortage—Nashkel too—he was called Mulahey and a half-ogre I don't know—if you killed him—I never met—all I know—"
"All you know?" The cold sword had turned the line of blood to red ice. It must have given him pain.
"Only Davaeorn's apprentice—only that—" he begged.
"Then you have told us all?" Ajantis said. "I do not sense a falsehood—"
Stephan Capetri knew what we knew; he had not been lying.
"All true! Please don't kill me! You said—please let me go!"
"Should I kill you?" Fear of death reigned over the boy's wide eyes; and I held it there, on purpose. I spun it as a piece of ribbon, unravelled it for amusement's sake. "Ajantis, do you think I should kill him?" The sword remained at his throat; beads of thick sweat ran down the boy's face. I could feel his desperation, and at that time it was sweet to me. "What do you see when you look at him, paladin?" I said, and Ajantis turned those pale eyes at the boy Stephan. Probably not on me, at that time.
"He is evil. Kill him."
I did—
It was Ajantis who screamed. Not the apprentice, who had died quickly. I looked back; I saw Ajantis upon his knees, staring with blue eyes at us, at the body and its slit throat falling to the floor.
One mistake. That's all it was, for Ajantis. It wasn't even him to do the killing. And yet he was on the ground crying to a god that didn't seem to hear him at all.
"I can't see." He could see me well enough; it wasn't that form of vision he had been talking about. "Helm—Skie! I can feel him no longer—I know it has happened—separated—"
He raised his right hand; no twists of bright blue came around it, as it did when he healed us.
"I—asked you to kill an evildoer; I told you that boy was evil and he was; but what have I done that I should lose—"
"Ajantis, it was me—"
I murdered a boy. I sat beside Ajantis. The crime shared between us, both of us doing the act— But if he had said nothing, it could have been done nonetheless; or if I had only ignored him—
"Get some sleep," was all I could say. "Maybe once you've had some rest—Viconia needs to rest and pray about her spells, I don't know anything about it really but maybe if you calm down like her and wait—"
"You dare to say—I am no evil Sharran! Or—but I know this; Helm does not heed me—I am F—"
"Don't say it!" As if saying it or not saying it would make any difference as to the cold reality of it.
"Fallen; I still hardly understand—but a child is dead—but he was evil—I beg forgiveness—I ought to be dead myself rather than this—"
Shar-Teel came; the dwarf and Garrick weren't far behind.
"Get up—" I heard her say; Ajantis appeared not to hear her. "Find that key; take what you can— That includes you, bard—"
"Fallen—I am Fallen—" Ajantis muttered, still staring at his hands, as if some vanished power still remained with him. I remained next to him.
"There's some jellies—help!" Garrick said; Shar-Teel and the dwarf, it seemed, quickly fought them with him. The others had started to find their way.
"Then I'll smash it open if you can't pry it—"
"Protection spells; and scrolls, here—"
"The key. Find the key."
"A glorious robe—a spell in here, perhaps, that halts time— (Spells! Even if I must wade through—)"
"I'm keepin' an eye on you—that spell, I felt it, very bad—"
"Well, I am studying this book myself; so kindly go finger a lock or whatever it is you—"
"I don't care about you being a jerk, I care about gettin' out alive—"
Ajantis and I waited. I think he wept; there was something in his eye. I looked at the boy, made myself do it; brown hair, a mostly-smooth face, very young. I can remember Eddard being that age. Stephan Capetri. A child with a slit throat.
"I believe I do sense it." Viconia came to stand above Ajantis; and she placed a hand upon his chin without much resistance from him, looking scarlet-eyed into his face. "You no longer belong to your god, nau? I feel your despair, your loss; remember that I—"
"Stay away from him!" The commanding tone was the squirrel. The druid had come to us; she stood straight as an oak despite the absence of her flame blade and the bruises and cuts she bore. Aquerna rested at the back of her neck.
"Ajantis," Faldorn called his name; the squirrel left her neck, proving that she was no illusion. She rushed to Ajantis, scuttling across the floor; and seemed to leap into his arms.
"As if I did not feel what has happened—I know what you helped her do!" Aquerna stayed with him nonetheless.
He stammered. "You—then if I am truly fallen, then you must—"
"No. Don't you dare banish me to the planes—" she told him. "You wouldn't get on without me—If you do that, I shan't be able to fight my way back through Helm and the other troglodytes who'd take a companion away from a boy when he's in trouble—as if you don't need me more than ever! That was wrong—you know you made my boy do it—" she snapped in my direction.
"And what do I do? What can I do against it?" he pleaded; Viconia made as if to speak.
"You can get out of the mine," Aquerna instructed; that seemed enough to make Viconia reconsider.
"Someone speaking sense at last. Rothen, I command you to get up," she ordered.
There was Imoen, I remember. Skie? What have you done—
I'm sorry—
Stumbling into a rough lift; Edwin firing a cantrip to make it go. Eldoth was alive; he'd found Garrick, they were here again—all of us. If only we had not—
Ghouls wrapped in rags lurched toward us, crudely, while we searched for the gate of the flood. Dressed like the slaves—
"That one used to be Joryval," Yeslick said, grey-faced, "and the other has Karan's eyes—" People. But we still had to kill them.
Imoen's voice sounded bright and clear, and an arrow of fire materialised in her hand; she flung it, and the first ghoul burned and collapsed. Shar-Teel finished them.
"I told you my fire spell was better," Imoen said in Edwin's direction, "and can we get out of here now already?"
"Turn the key to loose the flood," Yeslick said. "For Clan Orothiar. Best start running, friends."
"So you need magic to pull the plug and speed to run away?" Imoen said. "Skie, I don't want to know what you've been stepping in, but hand the boots over. I bet I can fix this and escape fast—"
"'Tis my clan—"
"I might be lacking a bit on spells right now, but sure as the Nine Hells I'm a lot lacking in patience here, Mr. Dwarf." There was little more resolute one could see than Imoen's scratched, dirt-stained face at that moment; she stared at the lock as if another flame arrow were about to burst from her eyes. "So that's how this key fits. I got it. Get to the surface!"
The dwarf looked at her, then slowly nodded. The mines were dark; we left them behind, and at the surface the time was at a dawn.
There were people waiting for us; for Yeslick. Former slaves, ragged, hungry. Imoen was last, running quickly from a tide of rushing waters; I waited near the ladder and gave her a hand to help her up, and the waters came crashing behind and over us as we fell to the clean grass. That marked some sort of boundary. It was cold; below us, the dark waters rose high. Darker shapes whirled within them.
"We've been waiting for you," a bearded man said to Yeslick; the group of people milled around him, above the flood.
"Ye fool. Then we'll travel together," Yeslick returned gruffly. "There's much to be done—we'll all march, ye hear? To that rat bastard Rieltar; tell the Grand Dukes what he's done—"
They were free. I saw that something like a bridge had been restrung between the isles, that the burned buildings had stores piled in front of them, brown sacks and boxes. That there were armour-clad bodies on the ground.
"It was time itself that Davaeorn stopped," Edwin pronounced gravely, "(and curse him for illegible spellbooks—) and for us down there it won't have been alike to here—"
"'Twas nothing my clan's knack couldn't end; for these folks, it's not been so long as all that, and for you adventurers, a little younger than ye ought to be makes no difference—"
I had seen the mage-lights freezing against the walls; Davaorn moving within his suspension to speak. It was a dawn here; and which dawn I didn't know.
Garrick came with spare cloaks from the packs we'd left stored behind; Imoen and I were shivering and wet, soaked by the flood. I did not feel cleansed by it.
"Skie, I wanted to talk to you—I don't know what happened down there and—" We hugged; he was warm. "Do you need me? I mean, here with you?"
"No." Garrick's innocence—from the view of cold kill things cold, it was useless runs away not very strong however much that was false because his songs were beautiful and his spells helped us and his crossbow was quite good; and from the view of friend, it's best they all leave. "What do you want to do?"
"I'll go with Yeslick. Help him make sure these men are safe," Garrick said. "This I can take care of; I've thought that I might be better at writing songs than living them, but Yeslick helped me—and I want to do this, because I think I can."
"That's good, Garrick. Take care of them." He could save people; Garrick always was a kind and gentle person.
"If Eldoth tells you that you're worthless, he's wrong," Garrick said, strangely enough, "and you're braver than I am, I think—you're a good friend, and no matter what, I think you're a beautiful person—"
I murdered a child. In other times, I might have also said that Garrick was only being kind, especially with Imoen and Viconia in the party. "Good luck. You should go."
A final hug. Garrick—everyone—we could hardly think clearly, exhausted. Dirty. Finding places to rest, taking the slavers' buildings that were not flooded. I had Eldoth there with me.
"I ought to congratulate you, dear," he said; we were alone, in a small room of the guards' lodgings, near to a fire made with stray pieces of wood. "Success in battle."
"It wasn't anything like success. I don't want to tell you."
"You don't need to, my angel. I know such things must upset your feminine temperament. But don't you feel just the least little excitement at a victorious conquest?" He crossed the floor in a smooth movement, and took me in his arms; I clung to him, closing my eyes. It was Eldoth, and in him was the comforting familiarity of the days before everything happened.
"It must have been interesting for you, watching the knight kill the master of the mines," he continued. "The inevitable physical excitement. One feels at first, that the scheme is highly impractical; but after exerting oneself, and seizing the day..."
He kissed me; somewhere near my ear, working down slowly to my mouth. As intensely as if each one left a bleeding wound, a burning brand rising between us. It was true that I had felt something when I had killed—guards of the mine. Killed guards and bandits.
"Keep doing that—" I asked of him. Eldoth was right; there was an—exhilaration about it.
Not the comforting familiarity of the old days at all, really. It was Eldoth carrying the spear, Eldoth fighting the guards, that was behind this. My wet clothes slipped from me. There was the smell of smoke in the air, the thick taste of drying blood; and through it all I wanted Eldoth as much as I had wanted to kill. Fighting stains your body, and that too was the choices rooted in flesh—
He pulled me down; we were on top of his cloak, near to the flames. Naked. I felt his teeth on me, his forceful movement; tasted his skin in return. Called his name.
We were together; there was pain like the pain of a fight at first, but it faded. Sweat and fluid between us, blood warm in our veins, his strength holding me under him. Using our bodies almost to the extent we fought in the mines. At some point, entangled with him, I fell exhausted into darkness...
It was cold when I woke.
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A/N: Garrick quotes from Shelley's poem Hellas, slightly baldurised. The time-stopping spell mentioned is not standard.
—