16 Flamerule - Durlag's Tower, Upper
Dark warriors with flaming, searing swords. My arm became charred and burned. They came quickly upon us as if rising from the dirt, though the swirl of the dustclouds made sight a difficult thing, in the path to the tower itself.
They were fierce in the attack. Shar-Teel evaded them, but Ajantis was stabbed and burned, his armour melted; it was Viconia closest, to reluctantly heal him. I felt the sting of the fire; my own flesh roasted, and they pressed Shar-Teel closely. Inhuman and worrying. I couldn't yet feel the pain that I knew would come.
"Druid! Cast a dispel, immediately—it is their weapons that hold power! Hurry!" Viconia commanded. She lithely dashed away from the battle, hiding herself behind the falling stone columns that no longer guarded the path, breathing harshly in desperation when a searing sword cut deep into stone not far above her white hair.
Faldorn chanted; her voice did not sound as secure as usual, invoking a plea to Silvanus' name and titles many times. "By the Oak Father! Banish this foul magic—banish this unnature—"
Imoen's power flared openly into the first construct; the missiles left no stain on the grey armour, though the figure stumbled. She chanted again, standing brave and ready. Shar-Teel did not falter in her defence.
"—In the name of the Oak Father!" Faldorn shouted.
The flaming swords melted to normal blades; Shar-Teel's sword pierced deeply into one of the warriors—I may also have wildly stabbed with my right hand. Imoen's whirling missiles hit the second, letting Viconia move away. She chanted, allowed her hand to glow red, and then reached out to grab the backplate of its armour, which melted in response to her touch. Faldorn chanted some words over sling bullets she held, to bless them. Her throws pitted and spotted the dark guard, and in the end it was Shar-Teel to finally shatter the pair of them. Faldorn bent to heal us.
Viconia smoothed her hair back in place, adjusted the straps of her leathers, looked smug; did little to correct that impression. "Male, rise," she ordered Ajantis. "You have become impotent and lacking since that time, hmm? A liability."
"You should stop it, Vic," Imoen said. She carelessly brushed the dust from the casting off her hands.
"Never you mind, jalil," Viconia said. Towards the great doors of the tower, the undead served as guards.
Bows and slings do not work effectively against skeletons. They seemed...practically to regenerate themselves from the earth. From people that were buried there in the past, no doubt. Many of the skeletons seemed dwarven, some more human-sized; but Viconia was the first to say that some of those were a thing neither human nor elf. We tried to smash them to pieces; fragments of bone lingered on clothing and, worse, in the throat as we breathed. One became converted to the service of Shar; the blood seemed to drain from Viconia's face whilst she controlled the walking bones, her skin dull and grey-black.
"I have power over the undead," she repeated. "By Shar, this will increase; in Shar's name—lil'alurl, you will fight for Shar—" She moved her skeleton to a gathering of others; it was soon torn apart, but by then Shar-Teel had sprung upon the enemies, her sword and the blunt force of Faldorn's rough club shredding them to pieces.
We passed below a gate that would be great even for an ogre, of weathered and sturdy stone. Beyond it, a wooden bridge covered a deep and dry pit. There were old and dark stains on the timbers, but they did not creak as we walked atop it. The stone doors had been passed through by others; they yielded to Shar-Teel and Ajantis' pushing of them.
The first floor was silent, and burned. There were charred remains of—we thought, humans; black charcoal and white bone fragmented on the floor. No remnants of armour or weapons; not likely to be the adventurers we searched for, and Viconia claimed they had been dead some months. A frame still hung lopsided on the wall, a stone shape blackened by soot; there were fragments of a torn picture still within it, coloured in an indecipherable darkness after this time and damage.
We had brought in a wind from the door, and a fragment of parchment shifted, floating up to my hands. Words in Common filled it:
...come...Durlag's Tow...no touching tapping knocking rapping patting poking prodding standing sitting stroking jabbing spindling most EXCRUCIATINGLY fiendish TORTURE devices known to man...
"I don't think I see any traps that did this," Imoen said. "Can't feel any spell-trigger things, you'd need...some engine to spit fire everywhere..."
There didn't seem anything embedded in the walls that could spill out flames like that. On the floor, there was something about one of the flagstones, standing in an open, shadowed doorway; it seemed slightly smoother, cleaner than those around it. Ignore the black ashes that one stood in, concentrate on enumerating what was there; stained walls with deep scratches upon them, smaller rooms opening from the round entryway, a stone spiral staircase set in the centre.
"No traps? Then it's some firebreathing monster," Shar-Teel said. "Raise a light, witch, and hunt for what's lurking here."
"Shar gives me the knowledge that the flagstone will harm us if we tread on it," Viconia said, pointing to that smoother stone. "I sense undead, undead greater than simple skeletons, nearby; but I cannot hear what caused these fools to burn."
"Right. Disable it, Skie, take a year and a day about it if you must," Shar-Teel said; I went forward and knelt down, dug around to reach the trigger; and a grinning ghast larger than the thing called Korax lurched out at us, twisted claws dripping with rotting flesh slashing out. A crossbow bolt flew above me, as if I was supposed to be the distraction on behalf of the others. It flashed into a miniature lightning bolt, forcing itself to rest in the throat of the undead creature, and it fell back; there were more...
I drew the sword, moved forward; I had wanted to come here and look for the boy. Ice did not do great damage to creatures already with the cold of the grave. Shar-Teel and Imoen aimed their weapons above me, stemming the group of them, the four ghasts that came for us. Ajantis stood, shielded; he was slow and wounded, but at least he resisted being held into place. Both of us were marked by claws by the time the last ghast fell to Shar-Teel's bolt.
"Oil; torch them," Shar-Teel said abruptly.
"I know well how to deal with undead abominations," Ajantis said. Faldorn, bent over him, cast her healing spell; the slashes on his face faded more slowly than his own healing power had done for himself before. On the ground, one of the animated dead had carried a round stone, a rune carved into it. Faldon cautiously ran her fingers over it, and placed it carefully in one of her pouches. Then she summoned a small flicker of flame between her fingers, to finish the burning of the creatures.
"The harglukkin build less above than below ground," Viconia said; "it would be well to first clear the upper floors."
On the second floor, two skeletons, lurking; Shar-Teel was first up the stairs, and she and Viconia took them to pieces. Above there stood an old kitchen that we searched through, with a vast fire-range bigger than any I remember seeing. How many dwarves must have lived and laboured here, in the old days? There were what used to be bedrooms near the kitchen, as though the people here delighted in the warmth. Sometimes the warmest parts of a large, cold house are the kitchens. And there were spike traps here, and tripwires which triggered acid and fire. The bedrooms had once been carpeted a rich rose-pink; some chests within them had been plundered already, and lay bare and splintered. A door outside led to the rooftop.
Basilisks. Viconia flung her cloak over the first's eyes with excellent aim, and fled indoors to protect her skin from the sun. We ran forward; tried to fix the cloak over its eyes, stab its body through. There were many statues of gnolls about, some dwarves badly weathered by rain and partly devoured. One frozen figure was of a strange slim humanlike creature, not quite an elf. Above on the roof—Faldorn called down lightning from the skies before the other creatures could see us; a powerful spell, and she shivered and shook afterwards in exhaustion, but the basilisks' bright scales turned to a burned, sizzling black, and their eyes closed. There were two cruel jets embedded into a chimney-pipe, that seemed designed to spill out fire; the mechanism below was part spell, components mixed together and prepared for a quick eruption. I poured a little water on them to neutralise it, carefully scraped them away; and then one could reach inside that trap to find what had been stored there.
Rashad's Talon; but even though druids consider scimitars a honorary weapon of their order because of the history of its development, Faldorn does not believe in metal. Are the acid-tipped arrows kept with it coated in basilisk venom?
Two floors of Durlag's tower. Deadly traps; signs of others' attempts at this area; Dalton not yet found. The staircase above was still clear, showing that others had passed. At the top of the steps we found another death. The man looked eighty or ninety at least, shrivelled and ancient, his wrists spindling, so many wrinkles set in his skin that his features had vanished, a few clinging strands of white hair falling long from his scalp. There was little stench from him; the way he lay reminded me of an exhibition of ancient Mulhorandi mummies I once saw, dried and desiccated things with all moisture drained from them. He'd worn leather armour too large for him, and in his possessions he had apparently carried a sword, some tools, treasures he must have taken, a few small gems and a lock of hair the colour of yellow ash. Why would an old man make the attempt?
"His age is not natural. He did not enter the tower like this," Viconia said.
"Then can you tell how long this poor man has lain here?" Ajantis asked. Therella had said that her son Dalton wore a protective name-day charm around his neck, that he'd a birthmark on his left forearm, that he was tall and fair-haired. This man had neither of the first two markings, as gruesome as it was to tell by examining him.
Viconia's hands grew a coating of darkness about them. "If your begging amuses me, male; but in the meantime..."
It was a silver transparent shape in the air rising towards us in the glow of Imoen's pink mage-light, and it spoke. Our first ghost of the tower. The rough shape of a dwarf, in swirling robes, speaking;
"Durlag...Your debt owed..." A voice like the turning of an ancient hinge, rattling and creaking as if it had forgotten words.
Faldorn rushed ahead; none of us stopped her, for it happened so quickly, and in her right hand she held the stone she had taken from the fallen ghast. "Let your debt be paid, spirit. Let us pass, and return to your natural rest."
The ghost spoke again. "You are not Durlag, child..."
"I am a Shadow Druid and not counted a child," Faldorn said, facing it with courage. "You and this place serve no purpose, therefore you will depart."
"I agreed to aid Durlag, but he is not here. You bear his stone, but you are not him. You bear his stone, but you are not him. I promised to Durlag. To Durlag, I must..."
The spirit was incoherent, faltering; it attacked with magic, insubstantial itself, casting eight images of itself and burning us. Weapons magical had some effect to the ghost's weird ectoplasm; Shar-Teel swung to pierce through as many of the spinning reflections as she could, and I had to stand beside her. We cut away at its ability to speak the words of its old spells It seemed to dissolve and retreat, returning to wherever it had come... Ajantis moved the man's body to a more dignified place, covering it with a scrap of ancient rug in a corner. None of what that victim had carried, Imoen said, had such an enchantment as to cause his ageing.
The third floor was a library. Horrible rats ran out at us. Bookshelves were splintered and damaged, but some tomes remained—dwarven-runed, ancient and to be carried with us. A yellowed skeleton lay chained to a table, in front of cupboards; these were entrapped, but contained potions. One or two of them even still potent, below the thick layer of dust and spiderwebs that coated them. A dark spider the size of my fist jumped out, whilst I was clearing away the traps, slowly understanding them... It was Viconia to smash it to the ground, grinding it down with the heel of her boot. Faldorn drained what venom it had from my skin.
And set to the north of that floor: a chapel in white marble, age-stained, cracked, but still intact. Heavy pews in a smooth, dark brown wood; twin axes set into the wall that had once been silver, the symbol of the dwarven deity Clangeddin Silverbeard. Dwarven runes were inscribed below them, carved with dignity into the marble. We held, I have to admit, two phrasebooks of ancient dwarven; there had been a dwarven merchant trying to sell off the last of his stock in Ulgoth's Beard, and they seemed like a good bargain at the time to me. I could decipher a few of the words: warfare, wisdom, a verb form probably to learn...
Below the altar, in a small compartment, rested a book. When I lifted its brown cover I could read it in Common, but the words seemed to dance upon the page as if it contained some magic to translate it to the native tongue of the reader. According to Imoen, the magic of it was not harmful. The words told tales of the great battles between the ancient dwarven king Melair I and the drow... It's not literature that Viconia would appreciate, but it is difficult to put down. I longed to read it while we rested, but we had our task to carry out; I should not have thought of such.
The staircase in the library ended at the floor above, and we expected to find ourselves at the tower's highest floor. Dust coated each step. We went up to see what creature was kept there; what ghost, or prisoner...
She was tall and unimaginably beautiful, with a cloud of yellow-ash hair floating to the middle of her back; her lips were a deeper colour than a red rose, her complexion of dark honey, and her eyes a shade of brown that seemed almost crimson in the scanty light that illuminated her floor. Her garb was a simple white shift wound about her body, but it was not the white created from careful washing and soaping; her shift was white as if a rainbow of colours blurred below the surface of the cloth into one prism's vision. The folds of her dress seemed to obscure a definite direction and reason why they hung as they did. It was as if we saw her floating in a palely translucent sea. The shadowed gleam that surrounded her did not come from anywhere that we could identify.
"I have been so lonely," she said, with a voice smoky as rich incense; it was Ajantis to whom she first granted her gaze. "Will you relieve my boredom, if nothing else? Would you wish to come and offer me a kiss; or accept a lock of my hair as a gift, fair male?"
To see her was to feel slowed, to have movement drained, as if by her existence time itself ended.
Then she looked to me, and I remembered the soft locks that I had placed in the pouch I kept for needles and thread, as I had placed away the gemstones the man had carried. Mending adventurer's clothing is a task removed from the embroidered tapestries I once completed. "It is you I hold to keep me company now," the woman said. "I would much prefer a man; but do you talk, at least? Or while away the endless years with a game of chess?"
"My name is Skie Silvershield. I do know how to play chess..." I thought while I said it that I had little talent; but I had played the game enough times to perhaps show her that experience.
"She is a demon from the nether planes and you will not answer her!" Aquerna spoke.
The woman's teeth were an almost blinding white when she bared them. "Small creature, I despise your very existence. Your friend is already my toy until she ages and perishes, and your bones will lie buried in the tower forever."
"What...is your name...unnatural beast—" Faldorn spoke with strong effort. Her voice was deep and strained, and cords in her throat stood out like the lines of a tree-trunk.
"For as long as you live you may call me Kirinhale, little druid." The lady laughed, in a tone not unlike Viconia's; not a laugh comparable to the high tinkling of small bells, but the mellow sound of a splendid old violin played by a master. "Would any other of you desire a lock of my hair, or to taste the favours of my flesh?"
"We'll...kill you..." Shar-Teel breathed out; Viconia seemed to join her in the wish.
"Great Helm; I beg you; allow me to resist this evil demon," Ajantis asked.
"Shut up and leave us alone!" Imoen cried; Kirinhale shifted gently in her position, and not one of us moved. The floating paths of light about her seemed to solidify into lines of symmetry about her back, as if she was given the wide veins of wings rising behind her.
She reached out graceful fingers to Ajantis' chin. "Will you accept the lock of my hair freely from the girl, as my gift to you? Your holy god has rejected you and I find you not repulsive. Seek the lower planes between my silken thighs and I promise you ecstasy that you will imagine lasts a thousand years."
"I will not further sin through you—" he cried out. "Lord Helm, I beg once more—"
"He is withdrawn from you," Kirinhale said once more. "Then you will serve me by your death, virgin knight. I am geased against binding you to my will by force, but I can shed your blood and slay you inch by inch for your refusal." Her smooth, clean fingernails were suddenly sharp claws that raked Ajantis' flesh, drawing lines of blood upon his cheeks. His blue eyes steamed with hatred for her; but the look upon her face and the set of her eyes and lips remained as tranquil and beautiful as since her greeting to us, despite the violence of her words. "You will die with your soul yet destined to the dark planes and knowing that you have refused the rapture I would have granted."
I...do not like it when my friends are hurt.
"No! If you promise not to hurt them, I'll play chess with you!" I cried; it made her laugh.
"You accepted a part of me, and you are bound to keep me company for the next four hundred years. Of course you will live for but a small portion of it, little human; but there is nothing you have to bargain with. I order you, begin to amuse me."
"I'll...play chess with you," I repeated. She was the one who had mentioned the game. "If I win—out of three—will you promise to let them go safe? Safe and out of here until they reach another place safe for them while they're alive and healthy?" There are so many stories of loopholes. Ulgoth the pirate used to set prisoners free by walking them with their hands untied off the plank.
"Skie, you shouldn't!" Imoen shouted.
"The best out of three," Kirinhale mused, delicately brushing her chin with her fine nails. "But you need a stake also, to make it more exciting to me." She tilted her head to one side, her features suddenly foxlike in their slender lines. "We will play three times, no fewer. For each time you lose I shall drain a precious memory from you, that you will never know it again. I will enjoy the savour of that, I think. If you lose, I will feed upon your exquisite agony as all those you brought with you live their final moments, and you will remain my companion until your death."
"And let Dalton and his party go as well," I said. "They're somewhere in the Tower too. Unless..." There was no sign that Kirinhale had murdered others up here; but I waited nervously for her answer.
"I do not know that name," Kirinhale said, and I was relieved. "Perhaps he is a prisoner of those below, or perhaps already dead. I will stake that your friends may attempt to rescue them; I think I will add to my forfeits in return. As well as a memory, I shall subtract a single year from the end of your life, each time you lose. That I shall also enjoy, though I shall have to make the rest of your years last until a better plaything comes to me. Win or lose, you have freely accepted a part of me, and will never leave the tower."
"Fine." That was the reason why we'd come here. It didn't really matter what I promised, not after the things that had happened.
She clapped her hands as if in childlike joy; a wide and almost girlish smile spread across her face. I thought that I saw colourless fog swallowing the others, that Kirinhale took me by the arm and led me through a grey passage that could not possibly exist. I forgot, for a while, why I was there and what I was doing—
It was a small, ornate room; we sat on smooth chairs coloured an ebony black, and the walls and ceiling were painted a silvery white, flecked with gold-leaf. Large pink pearls were set into the wall in deeply irregular patterns. It was a room of games. There was a glittering deck of cards at the bottom of a golden shelf, with a proud black-eyed Queen set at the top of the pile; a board of squares with black and white tokens as for that Kara-Turan game, the black pieces opal and the white moonstone; a checkerboard set with four kinged pieces upon the board, of light cypress and dark walnut; a set of three rods all of the same height, with a stack of eight golden rings in decreasing diameter upon the middle one; a brightly coloured wheel with a black arrow attached to it, the names of different spells printed upon it in a silver and shifting script; and three seven-sided dice that looked as if they had once been the knucklebones of something large, polished to such an ivory sheen that they seemed to glow.
The chessboard rested in the centre of a table of pale marble, its centre inlaid with intricate patterns in a reddish wood. One could view their indecipherable runes easily below the game, as the board itself was made of transparent glass, marked out with the lines of the squares cut into its surface. Kirinhale's pieces were the same shade of dark crimson as her eyes, and before me were chessmen made from a light-coloured jade. The pieces given were usual enough. Eight small pawns, each sculpted as a scrawny foot-soldier. Two giant rooks, muscled and solid. Two brave knights errants, atop rearing, galloping horses. Two priests, their magic ready to defiantly throw at the enemy. A king with a noble face, and a queen serene, unreadable, and powerful.
"We play," said Kirinhale.
I moved my king's pawn forward. I did my best to think about protecting my pieces, about what Kirinhale would try to achieve. I thought about where the other pieces were on the board; I weighed each choice carefully.
"Check," Kirinhale said, and I used my black rook to protect the king.
"Check and mate," Kirinhale said, three moves later, for I had lost. "Give me your hand, little human."
Her flesh itself felt cold and light to the touch, but where my hand touched the flow of blood through her veins, it burned.
"A memory. Perhaps the obvious, to begin with?"
I was with Eldoth again, fiery and slick and exultant, and I should have blushed at the thought of Kirinhale seeing this, but I was too deep within the vision to know it. It was dark but strong, and it felt like victory just as much as the moments of slaying Davaeorn and the boy, before the regret had fallen down upon us. Eldoth was strong and had killed that night, and that I revelled in, his muscles pinning me down. There was some pain, but a savage glee in that; and the thrill of pleasure, him inside me, my nails in his back and digging into skin. I felt his harsh breathing, dirt and sweat between us. There was only the excitement of the moment—nothing else to think about, nothing separating our bodies. His hands tightened around my arms, leaving trails of rough bruises, as my own hold of him deepened. He bent his head to my shoulder, biting, and at the time the passion drove away everything else—
The memory changed. Eldoth had drawn me to his muscled chest, touched me and I'd willingly asked him for the same he wanted of me. But that moment was blank and gone. Pain and splinters from the rough wood under me. Pain as he pressed me, torture as I felt him; knowledge of the murder I did. I'd once wanted this, but it was black and twisted—no longer even a measure of some satisfaction, only cruel torment. Once it was shamefully violent but no violation, and what Kirinhale took left me without even that. Lost to me forever...
"Unimaginative, but such a thing feeds my nature," Kirinhale said. "Have we a sweet appetite for evil, little human? Now I take the second forfeit."
She lowered her mouth to my hand, although she did not break the skin with a bite. Instead she drew something slowly away from me, an unravelling and then a sharp cutting of thread from a reel of thin rope I never knew existed in me.
"Your taste is acceptable to me, and I will take more," Kirinhale said. "That you give this in ignorance is particularly sweet. Let us play the second time."
She negligently waved a hand, and the pieces rearranged themselves in their order. The injured kings and queens returned to their duties as if they had not been damaged or defeated. This time I sat for the dark crimson, she the fair jade; and Kirinhale began her first move.
The dark shade of the pieces was almost the colour of old blood, and when I laid hands on them they felt as if something writhed and pulsed beneath their surface, though the stone they were made of remained still. They writhed more strongly upon a capture of the jade enemy.
I played for defence. I sought to protect my own pieces before even to consider capturing hers. The game was slow and drawn-out; I did not return Kirinhale's aggression for aggression, but retreated about my king as much as I could.
Kirinhale stole my queen; I destroyed both of her priests with two protected pawns, and the foot soldiers seemed to grow slightly in size with the capture. I hastened back to cover on my side of the board, and her own queen attacked. She cut a swathe of offence; I tried to protect, and it became simple attrition. Slowly, she cut away my army from me. The end was coming no matter how I tried, and I knew I'd failed miserably. Twelve more moves, twelve attempts at evading death...
"Your king is dead. For your second forfeit, I know now what I shall deny you." Lost in grief at the meaning of what Kirinhale's second victory would mean, I let her; she found it inside me, and for the last time I lived through the moment—
It was one of the earliest memories I had. The grass was cool and green in the garden, and the trees were close-grown and sheltering. Delicate vines wrapped across the swing, flowering white; and my tall brother Eddard pushed me back and forth. He was so young, his dark hair cut into a bowl-like shape over his forehead, neatly dressed in dark blue trousers and jacket. Not long afterwards he would be sent away to school, and no longer have much time for his little sister. This was probably a composite of memories, packed into one imagination of a scene, in the way that memory played such tricks...
"I remember Mother, and you don't," he said. I liked it when he spoke to me; he was never shrill or stern. I didn't remember that I minded much for the words of it.
"She had lots and lots of black hair to her knees and she was very ill," the child in the swing babbled.
"No, you're just saying that because that's what they tell you. They cut off her hair after she had you, Skie. If you remembered her you'd know that. She said to me that it felt too heavy for her."
The swing went higher. The child inside it was joyful at the excitement and motion, and wished she had the courage to jump out of it and see if she could fly. She laughed and cheered for more.
"I'm telling you because Brilla is going to want you to forget," Eddard said. "She wants me to forget, too. But I'm never going to call her my mother no matter what."
Mummy-Brilla was the yellow-haired woman who sometimes came to the nursery, the child Skie knew. She was their new mother. Eddard had never liked Brilla, but she was the only one Skie remembered.
"Mother died because of you, but it wasn't your fault. You were one year and nine months old. She was so tired all the time, but none of the priests Father brought could do anything. They were always around her, but she had you and me brought to her whenever she could. I recited my lessons to her and she kept you close."
The swing swept up again; the sky was a bright and perfect blue.
"She said you were truly my sister, and I had to watch over you. So you have to promise to remember that when I go away, Skie..."
He meant that he was going away to school; but that memory might have been shadowed by other things...
"Okay. Push me again—" the child called out, laughing, and then it was dark. Nothing was left.
Then something else was taken from me. I'd lost, two out of three, and Kirinhale only smiled triumphantly.
"The third, now? I did promise myself," she said. I moved in anger before she could see to prevent it, grabbed the glass board; and smashed it open on the table in a thousand sharp shards. There was blood on my arms and cheek. I screamed in frustration, threw the pieces at the walls, and stomped heavily on them, repeatedly.
"A tantrum of temper! It perhaps amuses me...but stop that," she said, and because I held her lock of hair I did so. But there were things she hadn't yet commanded not to do, and quickly I struck a tinderbox flare and held the hair to it...
It flared quickly to fire, like human hair, and unlike human hair remained afire. It was not consumed at all. The flames danced about the yellow locks, and the only burning was of my own hands. I dropped the hair in pain. Kirinhale laughed loudly and long.
"I am a succubus of the Nine Hells, and you try fire against me?" She made a small gesture; and the flames spread to cover all of her body, licking along her skin and shift and hair, illuminating her with its beauty, and burning her not a whit. "Feel my flames, human."
She laid three fingers to my wrist, and I saw them sear the skin black, and smelled the burning of my flesh. I cried out in pain. She watched me shake in fear and spread myself to the other wall, and she laughed again to herself. Then she simply waved a hand across the table, and the board and pieces appeared intact and arranged once more.
"I hope this third game will amuse me again," she said; I cringed away from her, afraid. She let her flames die, and I had to take her hair once more. "Begin."
I've never truly understood...what chess players really mean when they talk about predicting many moves in the future, of understanding that a knight in king's bishop five and a rook in king's rook six can mean a feinted attack to your right flank. It's one of the reasons why I'm not very good at chess. I tried again; I thought there was little difference between this game and the last two she had played in the sort of moves she chose to make. It was three hundred years since Durlag's death.
"Was it Durlag who trapped you here?" I asked of her.
She moved a pawn forward with a slim hand, her lips curved slightly upward. "Durlag and I disagreed," she said. "He bound me with spells and wards and took my wings, and set the time of my sentence to seven hundred years."
Three hundred years did not give her much that was new to consider. I could take her pawn; then she could take my rook if she chose; then I could take her king's priest. Her pieces were arranged with most of them going forth; and I did not like the way her white priest had an open way before its. I thought about it; I had only read the beginning of the tome about King Melair. Some of its advice came suddenly to mind; he had sent dwarven knights to go silently into drow territory by day, and raise a mighty alarum to signal the attack when the drow priestesses were unprepared. It wasn't advice that could be directly translated to chess, but I still tried to think...
"Continue," she said. "I will not wait."
My king's knight-errant was moved to skirt her lines, and then my queen's priest tried to attack her pieces. I brought my queen herself closer to Kirinhale's side of the board, trying to prevent it from capture. She had used her priests to attack first, then her knight-errants, then her queen at the end of the game. I'd sacrificed my queen's knight against her king's rook. There was a path; she was attacking me, but one of my foot-soldiers became a queen.
"Check," I said. This time was a closer match than the first attempt. "What about the best of five?" She would refuse, and there was a danger in asking, but it was natural to try it.
"That is too arrogant; I will drain you when you are old and wrinkled, or when I am no longer amused." Kirinhale blinked twice, and selected her knight-errant to threaten my first queen.
We both lost pieces; her priests, a queen from me; my knights; her knights, a rook and a priest. It continued through several checks and blocks, spun out like fine thread—
And she was leading me into a trap; and there wasn't an escape left.
"I will checkmate in ten moves."
I tried; it was twelve moves. When she reached again for me I raised my hand to attack her, but I could not do that under the enchantment.
"You are insipid and pathetic, I think. How strange. I want your sense of loss; for my last I choose a memory of happiness."
Candlekeep was a dull, foreign place, until that day when I first saw the girl with red hair.
"Heya! I'm Imoen! What's your name? I'm the innkeeper's daughter."
"I'm Skie! I came here with Gorion. What do you do here?"
"Not much! I'm telling you, this place can get so full of dry ol' sticks-in-the-mud. There's only so much a girl can read and clean up after."
"I like reading, but I miss dancing. And there's someone else I miss a lot too."
"Hey, race me to the guardhouse over there?"
She was my age, and we smiled at each other and talked, and chased each other over the rooftops and found all the secret passages. We both wanted to be adventuring rogues someday, and talked so much about what we dreamed and hoped for. She took me to the highest point of Candlekeep, a roof overlooking the sea, and we watched the spray of the waves rising above the rocks like the white frills of a lace veil. We drank a bottle of Arabellan Dry together on that rooftop, intoxicated and thrilled with our own daring, and put flowers in each other's hair for Greengrass after I held her ankles while she raided Ulraunt's roses from above.
She knew everything about the fortress and ran very quickly, I found out about her that first day, and we agreed to be friends and kept on meeting every single day, all the time except when one of us couldn't avoid a chore. We discovered new ways to abstract pens and inkwells from the monks and get them back before anybody noticed, and when we weren't stealing we were talking about everything and nothing under the sun.
I don't think I ever told Imoen how much finding her friendship meant to me, how lonely I was before I met Eldoth. I didn't have a best friend before. She's incredible and intelligent and bright and beautiful, almost like a sister—
And then I could remember nothing about how I met her.
"The game is done. Your companions die to feed me." I couldn't fight her. That lock of hair weighed as heavy as a leaden chain; you needed holy water for demons, I thought, or a strong cleric to one of the righteous gods. Neither were going to be possible.
Back within Kirinhale's main chambers, a metal door was bolted over the steps. There were no windows, and no escape.
"You said you were bored, Kirinhale," I said, praying that they had had enough time. "How long has it been since you've had to fight? I suppose you find it exciting."
"Games of the mind and subtler torments are more to my preference." A pink tongue lightly licked the edge of her lips; she watched Ajantis. "Would you like to choose which of them will go first?"
"Viconia," I said, because the dark elf had started to smile in triumph, and then they all attacked.
Viconia has resistance to magic; spell-effects will usually wear away from her more quickly than any of us. All of us were free to move, and Shar-Teel's sword was close to spitting Kirinhale—
The demon moved with incredible speed. She'd her claws out, and swayed the path of Shar-Teel's sword with her bare hand.
"I see you have made use of your time!" she said. "It has been centuries since I last met drow. A shame my arts are wasted on a fellow vixen."
Her claws raked across Viconia's face, leaving four ugly gashes behind; Viconia screamed the name of her goddess, and slumped weakly to her knees. Ajantis struck with his blade, but it touched Kirinhale as if her skin were iron; likewise Faldorn's club left no mark, Imoen's spells meeting resistance. At least Kirinhale shifted away from Viconia, lithely bending away from her attackers.
Then Shar-Teel took a first blood, a cut on Kirinhale's shoulder that closed over seconds after the making. Her sword, the strongest in our possession—
"Ajantis, use this!" I unbuckled Varscona and threw it to him; I couldn't act directly, but that didn't mean I could do nothing. Shar-Teel kept attacking, and each cut she inflicted healed more slowly upon Kirinhale's flesh.
"An evil blade!" he cried. He was going to get himself killed. Though he held Varscona's scabbard in his shield arm, Kirinhale grasped his neck, and held him like a living shield against Shar-Teel's attacks; his struggles weakened, and the succubus' wounds quickly healed on her. His skin was almost as pale as the ghost.
"Come to my aid—" Faldorn hissed, and her undead wolf appeared from thin air, slavering yellow fangs dripping into the air, red eyes glowing bright. It sprung at Kirinhale's throat, and had her drop Ajantis; and then he finally discarded his lesser blade for one with the power to hurt her. Imoen, when she had a clear shot, peppered arrows at the demon's back, some of them even hurting her.
The slashes on Kirinhale's body deepened, stopped healing as quickly, though with incredible speed she turned between those pressing her closely. She shouted in shock, I think, that she was being hurt at all.
"Any bargain with the dead won't count!" I called, and Kirinhale looked at me—briefly, but Shar-Teel's greatsword went into her back once more, slicing down across her shoulderblades. "You're going to die today and return to the Abyss!" She was trying to kill them; I truly had to encourage her death.
Shar-Teel, Ajantis, the undead wolf; Kirinhale gave a powerful kick, and Faldorn's animal flew to the opposite wall, its bones shattered to protrude whitely through its flesh. But Varscona sung cold in Ajantis' hand, piercing the demon's smooth skin, and Shar-Teel's strikes showed no sign of decreasing in ferocity and an even greater strength. Kirinhale's bright blood flowed over her shift in many places; she shouted again in pain. She would have bled badly if she was human, and I thought that perhaps they had already killed her—
She disappeared into thin air. And moments later, Imoen screamed, trying to pry invisible claws from her throat, pushing herself wildly forward and stabbing her sword at something that seemed not to exist.
"Imoen!" I couldn't feel anything around her; she was pale but still standing, wildly glancing about and searching for the next attack.
"Spells gone—" she panted; and then a flame arrow came from thin air toward Shar-Teel, burning her chest. Then magical missiles, a flood of them summing to more than Imoen usually conjured; the musical laugh again, the presence somewhere in the air.
"I can keep this form forever, little flies," Kirinhale's voice said; first it seemed to come from one end of the room, then the other. "This may be even more amusement than I had thought. Tell me, any of you, how long do you think I can remain ethereal?"
"As long as you last before we kill you." Shar-Teel had gulped a healing potion; her armour was blackened and burned.
"The wrong answer. As long as I like," Kirinhale said, and a blue lightning bolt slipped out. I flung myself on the ground and it passed over my head; it was chaos and pain as it bounced from each wall at speeds all but impossible to follow, the demon's perfect laughter echoing in the sharp crackle of its flight. I thought I saw fear in Imoen's eyes. Kirinhale would be untouchable; she couldn't leave the floor and neither could we; we'd tire, she'd drain and then—
"Water—" I said to Faldorn.
"Fool, you think a Sharran or a lorugvith'rell may make holy water?" Viconia called. She had not healed herself; her torn skin hung in ragged strips from the gashes in her face. She looked far less beautiful than usual, curled vulnerable upon the ground. "For once I wish we'd a worshipper in good standing of one of those nauseating deities—"
The lightning bolt had faded.
"There's no natural water to call here," Faldorn said; she started another chant, and the succubus' claws interrupted. She rolled backwards with a harsh shriek; Ajantis and Shar-Teel dashed forward to strike where something had been, and found thin air.
"Water—" I gestured incoherently. Faldorn smiled suddenly, and reached for her canteen; stole Viconia's, and Ajantis and Imoen surrounded her and guarded her. She broke the seals quickly, with a sound like snapping wood.
"Oak Father...bring it to my will..."
Ajantis swung Varscona through the air, seeming to impact on something; Imoen chanted a cantrip, and for a moment Kirinhale seemed to leave a shadow on the carpet. But her ethereal form was as quickly renewed; Imoen struck wildly about herself with her shortsword, and Faldorn kept saying her words—
The water rose from its containment and spun about Faldorn's hands like a silk skein. It left her hands, mutating into a thousand tiny drops. Faldorn flexed her fingers as if pulling open the lid of a jar, and the other canteens we carried burst open in an instant. The droplets whirled around all of us, like Imoen when she chose to juggle eight silver balls with shining magic. Faldorn in her fierce belief was at the centre of it all.
The water thinned into blue sheets barely the width of cotton thread, protectively travelling about all of us, droplets seeking out patterns in the air. Faldorn searched with a druid's instincts. For Kirinhale's unseen abilities had enough physical force to them to attack, and where it was not possible to use fire's smoke against a demon one could use this to trace her presence. The liquid shield swept across the wide room, and then outlined in its sheen were a set of long claws. Ajantis and Shar-Teel knew again where to fight—
I could almost feel the Sharran blade transfixing the demon. It was cold, and Kirinhale's blood boiled a brighter red than human. She hissed, trying again to flee, trying to attack Faldorn; but we were all by her. Kirinhale was a blank figure outlined in the bright droplets Faldorn manipulated, and when she bled it fell to the thick green carpet.
"Four hundred years more—and I would be free to the highest plane of the Abyss instead of the lowest—" Kirinhale said. Once more she became visible, panting; Ajantis had forced Varscona through her ribcage, pinning her to the wall; and Shar-Teel had her pierced through the thigh. Then Shar-Teel ripped out her blade from Kirinhale's flesh; blood poured from the large wound. She raised the greatsword high. "Pray it takes beyond all your lifetimes for me to crawl back," Kirinhale said; and her voice was not natural, for it was far gentler than it was when she had otherwise spoken, as high and sweet as glass crystals tinkled by the breeze. "For you release me, one way or anoth—"
Shar-Teel cut through Kirinhale's neck, and the lips moved silently when the head flew free, yellow-ash hair streaming behind it. The body removed itself from Ajantis, bleeding copiously by tearing itself from the blade, taking two tottering steps forward. The arms caught the severed head in the midst of its trajectory. Beneath the body there was the smell of crackling brimstone and a black portal, and red and terrible things moved below it. Something laughed. Kirinhale's body slowly fell within that place, dissolving into nowhere that any of us could bear to look upon. Her hair streamed above her head when she fell, and then under our feet the blackness disappeared. I searched for her lock of hair; only grey ashes remained. The floor was cleansed of her blood as if Kirinhale had never lived in the tower at all. She'd been a demon; she'd been bored and unchanging for so long, and that was why...
Faldorn gracefully gestured, and the water she wielded took on a bright, white glow for an instant; she spread her hands wide, and it poured back into our containers as if of its own accord.
"This place is purified," she said with a sigh, and sat beside Viconia. She raised a weary hand to pet Ajantis' squirrel, emerged from a hiding-spot behind a damaged vase. "I would much rather work with earth than water. And I hate it up here," Faldorn said. "It is unnatural to be so high up in a stone building like this; I can sense little of nature."
"And," Imoen said, looking down at the metal door that still remained fixed to the room's only exit, "you might have to keep on hating it for a while..."
Kirinhale was gone. I'd been such a fool.
"What kind of lock is it, Imoen? Did you test it?" I said.
"This kind's bolted from the outside," she said. "We all saw it when Vic freed us, we can't pick this...oh, I get what you mean. Hope you're right about that. Yeah, she was the real prisoner here." Imoen scowled, and ran a hand across her stained face. "We've gotta rest. No spells...a succubus..."
I moved, not as exhausted as the others, to that iron door, and stepped through it; when you thought about the illusion, it turned to air in front of you. The stone stairs were comforting to reach again. They had been free to run from the demon's prison all along, and I'd failed to realise it any sooner.
"You defeated," Viconia said, looking at Faldorn slumped to the ground beside her, the pale and wounded Ajantis, Imoen leaning drained against the wall, "one of the lesser forms of demon; whose power lies in seduction rather than any variety of fighting skill—" though she gave a small, self-congratulatory smile at that—"already imprisoned with her powers bound. And it was because of one fool who took what she should not have."
"Two," Imoen said. "You know us rogue types and shinies." She gave a sheepish grin. "Er...I'll try to make the divination spell say more specifically what everything does next time. I was right that it didn't directly cause that poor guy to get all energy-drained, wasn't I?"
Shar-Teel cuffed her on the side of the head. "Fool. Anything else here that's not cursed or damned?"
The chess pieces lay broken on the ground in the room of games, the metal and jewels tarnished in decay. Many of the pieces, I thought, were probably Tethyrian-human, the style of Haedrak I's Empire or even before... That is not important. There were a few broken weapons kept stored in a dusty cupboard; a clean, white porcelain bath, completely dry; in a chest a richly embroidered blue cloak, long enough for a human or elf, that none of us dared to wear. There were no rats nor other vermin on that floor; no sign of life left.
"We must rest," Viconia said tightly; "or rather, I must petition Shar for restoration and rest; mend my cloak for me, Skie, and I need something to eat."
"Y'know, sometimes I'm not entirely sure you pull your weight in the party, Vic," Imoen said; and the two of them went into an argument on the skills of drow noblewomen.
It was dark outside, after all that had happened; the end of the day, Viconia cursing the moon before she prayed.
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lorugvith'rell - treeshagger
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