20 Flamerule
"Alas, but I am only a priestess of unholy magics," Viconia said, shifting gracefully on her dark blue cloak set on the dusty ground. There was no hint of regret to her tone.
"I am sorry," Faldorn said, and truly sounded so, her face furrowed in concentration. "My healing is of the forest, not the planes. I wish I did know enough to fix it."
"'Tis my just punishment," Ajantis said, his blue eyes wide and his twisted arm hopelessly flexing between Faldorn's long hands. "Were I not—my own holy powers could easily have repaired the evil taint—a sign from Helm. It is already sunken into my body..."
He'd taken the demonknight's blow on his left arm to save Faldorn in the abyss of Durlag's tower. I'd been hurt by it too, but not as badly as him... "There's a temple of Helm in Nashkel," I said. "If there's any chance they can save your arm, we have to go there." Surprisingly enough, Shar-Teel nodded; it was useful to us to have Ajantis in good condition.
Aquerna scuttled up on Ajantis' right arm, to rest on his shoulder by his cheek. "Kit, the young woman speaks common sense for once," she said. "It is only right for you to try what you need to heal."
"A demon..." Ajantis spoke hollowly, shivering. "It burned black, not red," he said simply, and glanced down at Varscona by his side.
In Nashkel temple the hand over the door was chipped and stained in its stone, the old light brown granite of the walls weathering away, the white of the graveyard tombstones amidst green grass better kept than the temple itself. Here lies Joseph beloved husband of Hannah, foully slain 1368 Mirtul in the mines... A white tombstone that gleamed particularly brightly in the sun held an inscription about the iron crisis; a miner who'd died by kobolds. Probably before we'd turned up there. The words upon it were smooth and small enough that they were likely magicked rather than carved by hand; that sort of thing is quite a difficult casting, and rather expensive. A young man was bent over by a section of the grass, uprooting a stubborn weed. A groundskeeper, I thought, only a little older than Imoen or me. He'd a set of some tools by him, and a crutch rested on the side of a tombstone near to where he worked. Suddenly he raised his head, seeing us; and slowly got to his feet with the aid of the crutch. It was his right leg that caused him to need it, withered and ill-formed. A birth defect or childhood injury, perhaps, if he worked for a temple and yet the priests had not healed it, though Helmites are stricter than Ilmatari or Tymorans about recompense from even the poor. The young groundskeeper drew from what I had thought were only tools a set of light pauldrons for his shoulders; and his lopsided walk was quick and efficient to cut us off upon the path. Not a groundskeeper after all, then. The miniature iron gauntlet hanging from his neck swung from side to side. His stance was stiff and straight and disciplined; with dark clothing and long black hair flapping in the wind, he looked like a crow bearing omens of misfortune.
"Petitioners," he said brusquely, sticking out a hand to Shar-Teel; "Nalin of Helm." It took a few seconds to gather that it was meant to be his name. "Adventurer's patch jobs: which of you needs it most?" He looked at Dalton first, standing by Clair De'Lain; "You, I suppose, boy," he said, rather hypocritically by his own apparent age. "Don't know why they send you children out to be hurt—" Ajantis was lingering in the back; his walk had grown slower upon the way, and sometimes he had touched his shoulder only to cringe. Faldorn gave him a helpful push forward, and I saw that the sight of him caused the priest to open his mouth and his eyes to widen.
But Nalin said nothing that would have caused Ajantis to flee. "I see you want help. Best come in the temple. Helm's duty's not to turn away those who need it."
"It was a demonknight," Faldorn explained to Nalin, "one which drew from the element of fire. Its sword was a dark black and it drew from some casting when it harmed him, and in the end he slew it with a blade that uses cold ice. And that one was trapped near to it for some time." She pointed dismissively to Dalton. "Can you heal them?"
Viconia and Shar-Teel had left the temple grounds, neither fond of Helm. Ajantis sat stripped to the waist; I couldn't bear to look at that arm. There were yellow parts and livid red parts and black parts along it, the whole twisted in more than one way; and looking at Nalin's face wasn't the least encouraging either. Dalton turned his head from it, grimacing; Clair helped her friend sit on one of the few, uncomfortable-looking chairs carved from a similar stone to the temple walls. The tall image of Helm's gauntlet, thoroughly cleaned, stood above a ewer of clean water at the head of a set of steps in pride of place in the temple. The building was small and far from as imposing or richly furnished as the shrines in Baldur's Gate; Helm is popular among the Flaming Fists, of course, and Duke Belt once served as a cleric of the Guardian. Clean bare stone surrounded us.
Helm is apt to punish those who murder...
An old man was inside the temple, shuffling around with a broom he leaned on. He stood near Imoen and me; I looked at him and saw salt-and-pepper hair, perhaps not so old as his shambling pose made him appear. Ill, seemingly; plainly not a priest himself.
"What am I?" he said in an oddly high voice, and Imoen and I jumped. "What am I? What is it?" he continued. "For it has neither mouth, nor teeth; yet it eats food steadily. Neither village nor home nor hands nor feet to call its own; yet wanders everywhere. Neither country nor means nor office nor pen; yet ready for fight always. By day and night wailing sounds about it; and it has no breath yet to all it appears—"
"Brage," Nalin said, softly and quite gently, "there's no need for you to pester these young women. If you like, you can go to the garden. You've done good work this morning."
The man raised a shaking hand to us, the fingers callused; I pulled Imoen back from him. So strange... He stumbled out in obedience to the priest, his head bowed.
"Death," Imoen said quietly. I looked at her; "The answer to the riddle. It's death," she said.
"A senseless tragedy," Nalin said. "Afflicted by a cursed weapon; not his fault. A Rashemi wychlaran and her guardians were decent enough to bring him here, instead of that bloody fool Ambroso at the garrison. Atonement above punishment. He does a careful job around the temple."
Ajantis cringed as Nalin's hands moved on his arm; "Steady," Nalin said. "Can't heal without a bit of hurt to it. What are you prepared for, young man?"
Ajantis groaned; his face was pale. "The very worst. Will the corruption spread to reach my heart? I have seen it grow and twist about my flesh only this day, from here to here—" He pointed to a large section of his arm shot through with black; I cringed. "I have seen myself in the flesh as a—as a demon creature like it; I dreamed of vile sin and death all around myself; I...could not bear to believe that..."
"Overly dramatic," I heard from Aquerna, poised across Imoen's pack.
"Nonsense," Nalin said brusquely. "Never met a mage, demon, Cyricist or anything that could cast new beyond the plane they were on. Forget what they might lie about." I wondered, later, exactly how many demons one could have possibly met in a border town like Nashkel; but the way Nalin spoke it made you believe him, like Ajantis himself used to be able to say things. "No. Losing the arm."
That was a different kind of horror entirely than Ajantis' ideas of becoming a demonknight himself. I heard Faldorn and Imoen gasp, and Ajantis himself looked genuinely frightened. Without an arm...
"Surely mutilation is an affront to Helm!" Ajantis shouted suddenly, wrenching himself away; "How could I ever perform my duties so?"
"Better than you would dead!" Nalin towered above Ajantis while he was still seated, though were they both standing the knight would have been both taller and far more muscular. Somehow Nalin managed to look demonic himself: black and tall, his dark eyes flashing. "Know the worst, by Helm. That's got to come out, boy—" He pointed to the black streaks embedded in Ajantis' flesh. "You'll be under ether. If you're lucky, you'll wake with a limb still. If not—well, I don't like giving false hope. Now sit still."
Nalin chanted a prayer to Helm, pressing his hands into Ajantis' upper shoulder; Ajantis sat barely moving even to breathe, his lips pressed together so that they were utterly white. "Suspends it for now," Nalin said. "Now for you." He turned abruptly to Dalton. "Ha! A bad sight," he said, looking into Dalton's face. "A simple enough healing spell—" He chanted the spell as quickly and efficiently as Branwen had used to heal us. Dalton looked slightly more healthy, a better colour drawn to his cheeks. "As for how you feel...a more difficult problem," Nalin said. He whirled upon Imoen and me. "Need anything, you two? Then you don't need to stay to gawk."
We'd only wanted to watch if Ajantis was all right. "Here," I said, and pushed across a large ruby from the tower.
"Obliged. Go off to the garrison and send for Chiron the sawbones to come and help me. I'll need his hacksaw. It'll be a long night," he said to Ajantis, who was still pale. "Take your friend into the second alcove down the hall—should have a mat," he said to Clair. "You too, off with you—" he added to Faldorn.
"Can you not tell I can heal also?" Faldorn said. He looked her up and down and nodded curtly. "You'll do. Rest of you, off now."
—
In the Nashkel Inn it was quiet; dusty and small compared to the Friendly Arm and even to Ulgoth's Beard. Neither Imoen nor I felt a need to talk of it.
"They already took the large room at the top," the girl explained. With a nervous air about her, she quickly pointed to Shar-Teel, taking care not to draw her attention. Shar-Teel sat paring her unsightly nails with a small dagger. A tankard of ale and a platter of roasted meat lay on the table in front of her. Then I recognised the dagger as that taken from the demonknight's body; wanted by a dwarf in Ulgoth's Beard as ancestral work.
"They're with us," Imoen explained. "She's not so bad, really." She added in a whisper to me: "Depending on how much you like permanently antisocial androcidal psychopaths."
"Yes, miss," the maid said; but she must have seen in Imoen's smile a reassurance that made her give up the deference. "That cloaked lady too?" she added in a whisper.
"Face burned off," said Imoen, "horribly deformed, you know." She could give at least some humour even now. "Wouldn't ask her about it if I were you," she went on cheerily. "Absolutely hideous, y'know. Of course, below it she's all sweetness and light despite her tragically disfigured and misshapen exterior and attempts to steal other people's evil boyfriends and refusal to help with the chores. Gives all her adventuring gold to save baby animals and build homes for orphaned children." She'd never have gotten away with all of that if Viconia was in the least within earshot; but here she passed, the inn's maid shaking her head in approving empathy.
"Now I can give you rooms on the second floor, only eight silver a night." Imoen insouciantly flipped a large, glittering coin in dwarven gold to the countertop; the girl stared at it, and she'd know that we'd been in the hoard of Durlag's tower...
"Have this ring instead," I said quickly, and dug deep in my bag to give her something from the bandit camp; genuine gold set with a small but well-cut yellow sapphire, at least twice-over taken from someone dead.
"No rooms 'till I ask Reynald at the store what he'll give me for it," she said; and Imoen and I sat down with Shar-Teel.
If Ajantis does not have a left arm then she will leave him here, I thought; Imoen let her own worry show through the cheerfulness she'd given to the innkeeper's girl. She set her right elbow against the table and rested her face on her hand, looking rather wistful. Her left hand drummed a rough pattern against the table's wood.
"Thank you for everything," Clair said quietly, approaching. "Therella will be happy; I've sent message. I'm from Dalvith myself, you see." A tiny hamlet east of the Beard; they grow oats there that the Seven Suns sell. "Known him since he was a kid. I suppose he still is. Suppose you two are, if it comes to it." At a first glance she looked relatively young herself after cleaning her face, yellow-haired and fair-skinned; but then you saw the shadows under her eyes and the webs of crows-feet in the corner of her eyes. White lines of not-quite-healed scarring lay close to her right temple. "We'll stay here for some days, whether or not you will. You've done enough."
Shar-Teel shrugged. "Go ahead," she said, probably with what counted as good-nature for her, and went back to scraping her nails with the dagger.
Imoen picked at her scrolls as the evening wore on; laid them across the table despite the glances of the Amnian folk in the inn, paged through them long after Clair and Shar-Teel had left for their rooms. "Can't focus," she said, holding one scroll sideways and then upside down and then the other side, squinting at it and creasing her freckles together.
"Then go to sleep," I said, and drank the heavy wine.
"You first." Imoen shook her head and laid her scroll back down. "If'n I read this and don't do it proper, the parchment dissolves. Spells're fragile like that. Lucky Islanne didn't have any nasty necromancy ones to sort through; most of 'em enchantment and invocation. Wonder if dwarves have the same specialist schools as humans? Usually either you're good at enchantment or you're good at invocation like Mr G., or you're equally bad at both; they're opposing schools so the way you shape your mind and the Weave is completely different, and so doing a lot of one stops you from getting really good at the other. Invocation for me." She half-smiled, and even though the Amnian maid looked shocked she lit a small fire on her right forefinger. "Enchantment's too fiddly, y'know?" I didn't, but listened anyway. "Give me stuff I can just hit straight out, like with arrows. Except I really want to get these ones." She looked down at the scrolls again; I recognised one or two as some she'd had me translate the dwarven annotations upon. "Maybe later. 'S always fuzzy at the edges with magic. 'Specially if it's sorcery." She drank more wine, and I did the same. Fairly strong; we hadn't watered it ourselves.
"You got...you," Imoen said more slowly, "and Faldy got her, more or less. And Vic got someone who stuck with the Underdark. D' you think she really killed a baby?" I didn't answer her. "Shar-Teel got, I s'pose, her long-lost twin brother. Bet she's the evil twin. Never mind about 'Jantis for now," Imoen added quickly. "'Cept my monster. I thought after that maybe she was meant to be me from after I know the shapeshifting transmutes, how to turn people trying to kill us to nasty toads and me into a beautiful pink dragon with fuzzy wings and silver eyes. Or something else nice and fun that can help us fight. I'm going to learn to wrap my head around those someday," she said, and looked very determined. "An' now I know I've got to not get it wrong an' turn into that thing. 'S not as easy as it seems," she went on. "I quit in Candlekeep, and Dyna helped but Edwin and Xzar sure didn't. I can't just sit down with every scroll and get it right off because Imoen's the wizard, of course she's practically an archmage— Well, I've sorta explained that I was." Her face seemed caught halfway between cocksure glee and rueful, sudden modesty. "But 's not that easy!"
"I've never thought it was easy, Imoen." She'd done that amazing fireball, always used her magic to help and convinced Edwin she was as good as he was. Edwin, gone, of course... More wine would be good.
"'S right," Imoen said. "An' if you do it wrong you're blowing things up all over. Like ol' Ulraunt's second best robes, heh. And Tethoril's cookie jar, didn't really mean that one. But I wasn't talkin' about that, right? Maybe more wine'll get me to remember... Hey. More wine, please." She flipped a loose pearl across the table. It seemed like very clever logic to me; the wine was much better than I'd thought at first, comforting and kind.
"Y'know sometimes you'll dega fool? Digger voo. In your sleep. You're dreaming and you think it's another dream you've had a long time ago." Imoen waved a forefinger, which seemed briefly to multiply itself. Maybe a magic trick.
"'S an old Tethyrian word. Words. Feelings of having already experienced the present situation," I explained.
"That...thingy," Imoen said. "Y' know it but y' don't know how y' knew. Monster in yer dreams years ago. Monster 'side ya. Monster that's ya." She wiped her hand across her mouth, her pink sleeve stained by the wine, and drank deeply again.
"You're not a monster."
Ajantis had not magically become a paladin again after rescuing Dalton. Helm had not forgiven; as if that had ever been possible; had not even allowed him to heal himself, maybe because of undeserving... More wine seemed good.
"Yeah." Imoen held up her hand in front of her face, and squinted. "Seeing about four too many fingers here, but no claws. Not a monster. Donwannabemonster."
You're the least monstrous here, Imoen. She slumped forward; I patted her shoulder.
"Donwannabemonsterslayer. Donwannabeslayermonster. Monsterslayer. Slayermonster," she slurred together. "Where'd that come from?"
Slayer, bring down all their protections, I'd said. "Dunnoeither," I managed myself.
"'S from dreams when I was little. Mebbe ol' book I don't remember. Dun think so though." Imoen drunk the last dregs of her cup, and swirled it around miserably.
"Dunmatter," I said. It was getting easier to forget things. I took the last of my own wine. "Dunmatter if everything goes wrong."
"Here'stonodreams," Imoen said. Everything was blurry after that, someone saying we couldn't have any more wine, and maybe some singing of all twelve verses of The Duke of Darromar's Daughter; and we woke up together on the floor with the squirrel biting Imoen's ear.
—