18 Eleasias
"I don't believe one word of it no matter what those soldiers said of you; I kept it all safe for you," Therella told us. "Dalton stopped by—and joined an adventuring group headed eastwards, no less. But he's missed the war, and that's a balm to it. Fetch your things by night and leave, quickly, for though most in this village won't betray you I can't answer for all."
Sarevok has done..something...to my city. My beautiful city.
"Mendas," I managed first. "What happened to him?"
"A werewolf," Therella said. Imoen gave her face an expression of shock on purpose. "Him and that servant of his. 'Twas sheep and cattle they preyed upon, mind. But they were caught a tenday gone, and not all the Fist guards the Duke sent went unharmed; you can't know when those monsters'll move on to worse. So they chopped off their heads and buried them at midnight by the crossroads."
Kaishas had been a widow when Shar-Teel killed her. We had chosen to burn the charts.
"Then justice was n..." Ajantis began to say, and shook his head. "They were unjust to us and there was other death to them, but... But there is much else we must do."
"The city," Shar-Teel said.
"There were Amnish attacks, they say," Therella said. "Assassinated one of the Grand Dukes; though at the time we cared more for Shandalar's daughters. Then, at the ceremony..."
A wild, red haze rose before my eyes. Reaching out to grab Therella's throat would be wrong—would actually stop her from telling us— "Which ones?"
"Why, 'twas Eltan they killed on the street, gone chasing an Amnian sneakthief with his own two legs; and at the very coronation the lady mage Jannath, and Lord Belt himself. The last one they say is on death's very door; ill and hardly to last the year. At least a strong one like Anchev to lead..."
"Duke—Duke Silvershield. He's ill? But alive?"
Imoen's hand was on my shoulder. "Yes," Therella said, "that's the one."
The four Grand Dukes have all served the city since the earliest I can remember. I'd met them and their children, seen them at so many occasions at my father's estate. But he's still alive, my father—or was the last Ulgoth's Beard heard—I have to go to him...
We left Ulgoth's Beard quietly, well-armed; barely rested. Shar-Teel seemed to understand the seriousness of it. Amn was huge; we'd lose the war— Instead of imprisoned over the Cloakwood slaves Sarevok was a Grand Duke— Garrick, I remembered; what had—
The bridge was down, of course, but Shar-Teel knew of smugglers who took people by night. We were wanted for reward; "Do you imagine I at least am not recognisable, jalil?" Viconia pointed out, shaking me by the shoulders.
"Sanctuary yourself under your cloak," I said numbly. "We'll gather around you and hide you that way. Imoen doesn't have to look like a wizard. We can go as two different groups; Shar-Teel, Ajantis, and Faldorn, and you and me and Imoen. Ajantis and Faldorn could be merchants who want to sell weapons in the black market, if Faldorn doesn't talk; Shar-Teel a guard for them. Imoen and I could be wanting to get back to relatives in the city, as if we're refugees from Nashkel. Then I know there are places running off the Wide to the north-east where they don't ask too many questions for fear of their health."
Tenya's cottage on the Chionthar's shores was deserted, and by the dust across its shelves and sills had been for some time. The temple of Umberlee in the city had kept her, perhaps; for all their ill reputation, they have come to the aid of the city when it has been attacked. We waited there for the hours given us; the group of cloaked men drained much of our coin, but it didn't matter.
The streets were colder than I remembered; they did not bustle with gold lamplights in merchants still at their business after dark. A curfew. We faded into the underfloors of the Blushing Mermaid's damp, dank rooms within a complicated series of cellars. Imoen and I peeled off the clothes we had borrowed from Therella: two long dresses that covered armour, weapons, and in Imoen's case mage robes, making our appearance bulky. It had been a long journey with little rest to come here; Viconia closed her eyes on a bed almost immediately after complaining of the human stench of the place. In truth she was quite right, but we had little choice. Imoen knew it right to stop him. We slept uneasily, various—and some highly disturbing—bangings and clatterings echoing from the rooms and floors above us.
In the morning Shar-Teel knocked harshly on the door, travelling her own way through the smugglers' path and the streets; the agreed-upon rendezvous.
"Perhaps I could—go to the temple of Helm," Ajantis said. "I am guilty, but not of the crimes accused; they would defend me, perhaps exonerate us all..."
No, Anchev wouldn't.
"You're a fool, boy," Shar-Teel said. She glared around at us. "Give me what you're carrying; a merchant's less likely to cheat me than your stupidity."
"I have to go to the estate," I said. "Better alone; they can't have changed all the locks or closed all the servants' passages."
Imoen spoke up, standing tall and chewing on a hank of her hair. "I've got an idea of my own, but it mightn't come to anything. I'll go with you up to a point, Skie, in case you need anything."
"I cannot remain here; this city air is a foul blight and in particular here," Faldorn said. "I will go to the seas to find the Umberlant priestess. She will not betray us after our service."
"Then I can follow and protect you," Ajantis said, perhaps trying too hard to be useful after his first suggestion. "—Although you do not need it, there are rough elements in the docks of any city who would attack not realising that you are a druid."
"Settled, then," Shar-Teel said impatiently. She drew the large pack of spared weapons and potions unidentifiable by Imoen to her back; to find some disreputable black-marketeer, no doubt.
"And I simply to wait in this foul den?" Viconia said, still lying atop the greyed sheets. Anyone would notice a drow in the city, of course. "Discarded aside as if I were a cheap concubine?"
"Nobody would call you cheap," Ajantis said suddenly. We looked at him; a blush came to his cheeks at the attempt of a joke.
"And none at all would purchase a deformed cripple of a failed holy fool!" Viconia shot back, sitting up.
The red flush lingered in Ajantis' face. "I apologise. I took on myself a duty to be courteous to all ladies. Including those one would never consider for those reasons."
"You lie to yourself," Viconia said, angry now and standing, posing in an inhumanly graceful stance, glaring from red-brown eyes that had lost some of their scarlet fire but none of their capacity for force. "You look at me when you cannot help yourself; I have broken hundreds stronger than you—"
He turned his head away from her. "Perhaps, my lady, but I would have to be more foolish than I am to follow. I am sure you will find others who are not deformed and crippled failures to their duties. Shall we go, Faldorn?"
"Follow behind and do not make me tarry," she said, and led the way with her nose in the air.
Imoen and I slipped out of one of the other, many doors of the rabbit-warren of the Mermaid, hiding in the shadows of the smoke. There was the same sweet odour of Black Lotus as I had seen at the Nashkel Carnival, atop the roasting of bad meat and ill-smelling cheese. Scantily clad women plied a trade in the doorsteps, openly inviting; we tried not to stare. I'd seen parts of this corner of the city for myself, wanting adventures and to know more about roguery and thieving. In other times it would have been fun to explore this with Imoen, thieves and thieving wizard together. Further in the city streets, guards drilled openly, hands stacked and watched over supplies stored in barrels in locked warehouses to be rationed. In the high city centre walking across the bridge of the old walls we could see the tips of some of the tall harbour ballistae that must be intended for Amnian ships. What news of invasions would Faldorn bring back from the docks? I turned my head from them.
"This is once where walls were built for an invasion," I said, "but the Dukes listened to the people and expanded the defences to cover the entire city. Oberon has an estate not far north; he was one of my father's old friends...is one of my father's friends. And in that open space—" A patrol of the Flaming Fist marched through it. "I went to a carnival there once, when I was ten or eleven. There were shuggyboat swings..."
And in a cage in the menagerie, I remembered, there had been an avariel elf with bloodied, torn wings, crying out for help; people poked her and the other creatures with sticks simply to see them move. The governess who had taken me reported it to the Flaming Fist, of course, but as far as I know the carnival left the city and nothing happened. Now we were adventurers, we could do something to stop that sort of thing.
"This street is called Thalasser's Walk, and goes into Hamridge and Blessingride," I told Imoen so that she could navigate it for herself.
"—And all the temples, and the magic shops?" she said.
"The temple district is east of the city except for the Umberlants, who are down by the docks in the south, and most wizards live in the east, close to the city gates," I said. "There's even a few necromancers; and Ramazith's tower to the north, even taller than the palace. That's it on the horizon, red." A stray tabby-striped cat ran between our feet; I bent to stroke it behind the head. Baldur's Gate prizes its cats in warehouses and stores.
Imoen nodded thoughtfully. "Who has the most magic books?"
"Ramazith, probably," I said; there are rumours that he is the one who boasts most often of his magical possessions. "But...find one of the magic stores; Sorcerous Sundries is the one with the blue-and-red stained glass. It's very ornate; you'll know it when you see it."
"And up this way...is where you come from," she said. The streets were wider and the cobblestones clean; a plump woman dressed in finely-made wool glanced at us with suspicion. I'd hoped to pass for a messenger of some sort, in trousers and shirt that at first glance might pass for a boy's dress, a small pack slung over my shoulders. Imoen wore Therella's dress again, gathered in at her waist, the long hem dragging on the ground and dirtied from the mud we had walked through in the Mermaid's district.
"Yes. The estate is by the north city walls, guarded by a wall itself—but there's an old gate behind some ivy on the left that nobody bothers with. I suppose I'll have to re-oil the lock to get back in. Then through the topiary and around the back by the lake; there's the second gardening shed, and on its roof it's easy to climb past the shadows of the ornamentation on the walls to get up to the second floor, then just swing up under the balcony of the blue dining room for the third..." I said. Even the smell of this part of the city spoke of the home I'd come from; faint salt from all the way across the docks, cleansed air in this quiet district away from the activity of markets and workmen, the fresh smell of gardens and trees behind walls, orange pomanders and floral perfumes that occasionally drifted by. Everyone has somewhere they remember as their own place.
"Right," Imoen said. "Y' need me?"
"No; go and buy your scrolls."
He could send for the guards and try to turn me in to Anchev; but using the lockpicks in my sleeve would be much better than spells or fighting in his house. If he—said much the same as in the letter; then that would make it over, but this time I would have tried... Or he could believe me, but bringing Imoen wouldn't help that one way or another.
I have his eyes, everyone always said; I was born a Silvershield.
"All right," Imoen said. "Good luck, have a dwarven invisibility potion, and meet you back at the inn."
It took some few minutes, standing in the shadows under overhanging eaves of a bare-walled estate of the Ailshams, for my knees to stop shaking enough to try it.
—
Viconia sat scowling and meditating in the cleanest corner of their room at the Mermaid; Imoen flung herself down on a bed on her return, stretching.
Too expensive; of course the battle-wizzes got all the good spells 'fore we even came, and they won't even talk to a newcomer; in fact, bet I was really suspicious-looking... I got some of what I needed, couldn't leave Viccy all alone here all day and Skie'd worry if I didn't turn up after she was finished.
She idly snapped her fingers, letting a pink-coloured mageflame burn painlessly on her right forefinger.
Ramazith's an abjurer, they say, so's he's got a big tower and lots of protections. That I can't cast. But his rival Ragefast, he's a conjurer, that's kind of important. And they say he's got a good library, too. Maybe... But I shouldn't unless it's for sure, really. We've got to stop this, and the person starting it's around near.
Or maybe it'd be fun to test myself out. If I could transmute my way past abjurations, breach the top of the tower and fry 'em all with evocations, step over the body right into those spellbooks and scrolls...
Sometimes she had things in her mind that came out from absolutely nowhere, Imoen thought. Better not shape out like crazy ol' buffleheaded listen-to-the-voices-in-his-head accidentally-turn-himself-into-a-woman necromancer, right? That'd make her accidentally turn herself into a man, and—heh—Shar-Teel'd hardly know what to think about that.
That'd be completely wrong. He hasn't even done anything that we know about, and 'sides I just beat a wolfwere sorceress and a mad illusionist, not a wizard with his own tower and everything. Yet. Maybe I just need sleep; dreamless sleep. Or picking up more gossip for what's going on; leave Vic here again to look after our things and go up and get something to drink and more than one thing to listen to.
Hey, maybe where the local thieves' guild is, for starters; Skie 'n me promised it to each other. Nothing wrong with making friends who might help you, right? Thing with war is, everyone suffers and nobody really wins... Quoting Mr G. there, Imoen remembered. He'd been right, and she promised herself she'd see the murderer gone. Puffguts'd not object to that— She thought of telling him that she was a transmuter wizardess now, practically an archmage, but she still hadn't forgotten all the rogue tricks he'd taught her, and he'd clap a meaty hand on her back and make a joke about how clever she'd turned out.
Not bad, Imoen. You've not done so bad, you master archmage lady thiefly transmuter you; got slaves out of Cloakwood, got new spells from Ulcaster's beardy, beat up a demon, tramped through old Islanne's tower, made adventuring friends. We're gonna do just fine.
She sat up and reached for her spellbook; might as well go over them all right now before getting out again. Skie'd better get back here soon, or else she'd start getting seriously worried. Some good invocations, in case of fighting; confusion, of course, so's they could get guards off their backs if they had to without killing 'em; one of Islanne's charms for the same thing, even though she wasn't really good at enchantments. She hummed as she studied until Viconia hissed at her to stop it at once, and felt good about herself that she didn't start turning the pages extra loudly.
Then the door's handle did turn. Skie stumbled in; not the neatly-clad Skie of the morning (a pun, Imoen's subconscious told her off for it even as her conscious was concerned) but with clothes torn and slashed as if by sword or even claws; the dwarven shortsword in her hand; her hair wild and loosed about her face; and a fierce and frightened look that burned out of her light brown eyes.
"There's another Skie," she burst out.
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A/N: 'There is another sky'—poem by Emily Dickinson. :D
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