A/N: Translations in this chapter open to correction.
—
"—Faldy!" Imoen burst out of the teleport, panting, destined for one of Sauriram's attics; and here old friends had lived through it after all.
"My aunt spellsignalled for aid at her own capture; it came for us," Claudia said gravely; there were tear-tracks on her thin cheeks. Imoen reached for a scroll and cast, relatively unobtrusively, white light gathering around her eyes; and nodded. "I believe you," she said. "Sorry about your aunt," she added awkwardly. I gave the same mechanical condolence. From the window the ducal palace's shining white walls were visible in the glimmer of lights lit in the dusk of—morning or evening? We'd dozed and then travelled underground. Ramazith's tower still rose high in the distance. The full moon was low in the sky; it had been hours only. My head spun.
Imoen yawned. "We should talk about..." she said.
"Oh, it's a long story," I said. "Turns out I'm a bastard after all, and Imoen's...a very powerful mage." Imoen squeezed my hand.
Claudia looked shocked. "The Dowager Duchess would tell you not to let that out, then," she said. "She's been demanding you the whole day. Lady Silvershield."
"There's an idiot harp-player and a witch who says she respects natural spirits," Faldorn said, and Imoen and I raced down hand in hand like schoolgirls suddenly freed from tutoring.
Garrick seemed...thinner, more weathered, talking to the Dowager and trying to amuse her, as if pretending to be able to bring us out of darker days by his sweet voice. Dynaheir had not changed: tall, graceful, straight-backed in elegant, neat robes. She ever had the look of unshakeable ethics and thoughtful sensibility, necessarily confident in herself, I'd always thought to see her; but this time I was wrong.
Garrick came to us, beaming. There was time for a reunion; to see the bard we'd thought we might never see again, Imoen and the witch who taught her on the road. But their tale was more of loss than success, giving a list of names that stretched into endless darkness. Yeslick had perished by Rieltar Anchev's hand, though at least some of those he and Garrick had brought out of the Cloakwood were safe hiding in the Friendly Arm's fortress; Dynaheir had saved Garrick and hidden him. Minsc and Branwen cut down by Sarevok himself; and as she spoke this Dynaheir bowed her head and claimed a fault for it. Kivan the elf, following his revenge. Edwin, not dead, nor in any kind of trouble for being Thayvian, but rather working for Sarevok: a traitor, perhaps the one who had helped to draw the notice of bounty. They had heard nothing of Eldoth, and I did not realise that they had failed to mention him until far later.
"Mine order sent me here," Dynaheir said, "to examine the truths of the prophecies of Alaundo. I searched for the spawn of Bhaal. Skie..."
"We know," Imoen chorused wearily with me. Dynaheir looked taken aback.
"I owe thee and all of thy city great apology for all that has happened since then. Had I accompanied thee, perchance I would have been able to thwart the betrayal of the Red Wizard; had I ensured thou should reach the city in safety, much would have been altered. Perhaps even the ceasing of Sarevok Anchev's war entire, before its start." Dynaheir held her hands intertwined before her body, as if she answered to a tribunal. "I have caused much evil by inaction and foolish action alike, and would the repayment of my debt."
"The fault's mine. I didn't want to face you because I... Will discuss that matter in private, upon the dethronement of Sarevok Anchev from his pretense of a god's and Grand Duke's throne, which is surely the immediate business required of us," I said, in formal phrases that imitated Dynaheir. I could see slight surprise upon Sauriram's face.
"A worthy spirit, Skie," the Dowager said. "And 'tis one the League must depend upon. You are the daughter of Entar; you have learned to carry a sword; you must take a place in your father's seat and in doing so topple Sarevok from his. Take up the sword of our city's founder for the sake of winning hearts to our cause. As you attempted with the doppelgangers: the League's orders are to give you to the city. Whether, I am afraid, you would prefer it or not."
She was an old, frail lady in black mourning, calmly sipping a thin porcelain cup of some pale tisane at an exquisitely inlaid wooden table; and yet at the same time in a contest of will between the Dowager Duchess and a flight of full-grown dragons I should have placed all I owned upon her ability to stare them down to an unreserved surrender. Beyond Belt she was a power in herself.
"Was there information you learned from your stunts that alters this?" she inquired delicately.
"That Sarevok's truly Bhaal's son," Imoen said. "That we could both challenge him on that one," she confirmed frankly. "Like Dynaheir seems to know...wish she'd told us before," she muttered quietly.
The witch, however, seemed surprised. "Imoen? Thou art also? I had seen signs only for..."
"Yes, well, I am. Lady Imoen, transmuter mage and allegedly demigoddess-in-training!" She placed her hands on her hips. "Sorry I'm a little upset at finding out from old Mr G. today an interplanar teleport and about an eightday travel away, I don't like the idea that I've got the nice legacy of a death god in my bloodstream and maybe I'll go off one day wanting to drown in blood and murder people just like that creepy voice in dreams says. Or like Sarevok. Not very fair, right?"
Indeed it wasn't. I'd known she was special, a mysterious orphan; and she would have better deserved to be Mystra's incarnation or Sune's child or Tymora's daughter. Garrick simply looked stunned; Sauriram controlled her expression carefully. Dynaheir spoke proofs established of the...fairytale.
"That particular insult to your mother we will...suppress unless necessary, Skie," Sauriram said. She laid her delicate cup upon her matched saucer as if it were a greatsword striking a shield. "The hour grew long whilst I waited for you, and you are both clearly exhausted. Rest the night; we all must meditate upon such events. When the sun shines there will be as much to do."
—
Imoen carefully pulled shut the neck of a nightdress decorated with many pink ribbons, tracing its design as if she relished the contrast between that and the garb a daughter of murder ought to wear; and she lay back in the darkness.
"Blow the candle out for me, will you?" Her eyes were already closed. Sleep came quickly for both of us, but it did not come well.
The woman had her back turned, and her black hair floated about her as sleek and lustrous as if she was underwater. Her dress was rich and green, her room elaborate and vaguely familiar somehow; a sound at the door caused her to turn, and her beautiful face grew into a smile. I saw her, fully and in light, radiant as a false portrait. Slender cheekbones, soft eyelashes blinking in welcome, small arched eyebrows and a finely shaped chin; her mouth was kind, and her bright charisma sufficient to illuminate the room.
"Husband, you have returned sooner than you said. I am so glad." Warm as spring she approached him, arms outstretched for the welcomed embrace. He was a younger Entar, hazel-eyed and with some fair hair remaining among the grey, but an expression cold as winter. He gave no affection or return in greeting. Eilma his wife paused in surprise.
"Entar? Is there something the matter, love?"
His stony face was no proper response. "Wife." There was no warmth or kindness in the grow that passed for his voice. He was not the same; he was nothing human.
The man grabbed the woman; the green dress tore. She cried out in shock and pain, but he held the shape of her husband. This none should witness, this none should wish to witness...
I have no memory of my mother.
The dream shifted. The woman was within the night, a midnight cloak flowing freely across her dress; she stepped through wet puddles on badly-cobbled roads, and faded into the shadows on purpose, to secretly meet with her lover. It was familiar, though the buildings were brighter, newer to the eyes. She walked within the doors of a tavern with her hood across her face, the cloak drawn to cover over the expensive dress, a small smile upon her face. She mounted the steps to an upper room, ignoring the raucous noise; and there was a hazel-eyed man waiting for her, as young as she and handsome.
"He shall not notice my absence for hours at least," she whispered to him, and their illicit embrace melted together like running wax from the plain candle by the bedside. They held each other and did not let go. For very proscription the excitement of it was the stronger; —and perhaps, like daughter like mother...
I always wondered if'n my mum had red hair or a snub nose like me, or if she'd freckles and what she put on them in springtime, or if she was a queen or princess or head of a thieves' guild or amazingly beautiful sorceress, or if someday she'd come back to find me. Even when I was with Puffguts I'd still wonder about it, what she was and what she did and why she left a baby on the side of the road; if she wanted me or not, and if neither she nor the travellingfolk wanted me maybe there wasn't much to want. I never knew I'd family, and it's not a good sort of family for all I left home to have adventures with my best friend—the murderer. 'S not all our fault. Maybe I know now my mother wanted to give up her baby after all, didn't want me because the god of murder hurt her on purpose—
Imoen dreamed, and flickers of water and and light came past her. In a fountain in her reflection behind her was a crow in the sky, and though in the water at first her face was dirty it changed to a grown woman, hair flame-red and glorious, the face older and beautiful and powerful and searching for her lost daughter stolen from her—
The crow came ever closer to her. It opened its mouth to caw, but made no sound. Its claws were vicious and nail-like; and its black beak looked like a knife. It swooped.
Then Winthrop ran out, a broom in hand, clubbing it away from her; and he patted Imoen on the head and walked with her to his inn. I looked into the fountain myself, and saw only black stars of night.
"Imoen, wait!" I called, and suddenly I was seven once more, the strange whispered news from my father and the servants that I hardly understood of gods who walked the earth and killed each other. I chased after her and her father who cared for her, not wanting to be left alone.
My mother died because of me.
A third vision opened for the stepping in. The dark-haired woman slipped over her face a black silken mask, cloaked once more; and then she stood in a dark room lit by sconces on the wall where the fire was a strange colour and incense drowned the air. The sound of chanting filled the room: low-pitched, and begging. Below her feet was a drawn circle, and inside it she called for the god of murder to come to her, his priestess by night, gain his favour by a child—
You know nothing and you will always know nothing, thundered a deep voice. Imoen was swept up by a wind, a typhoon, and again we reached out a hand for each other until the air tore us away.
At the last moment our fingertips touched for a hair's breadth of time.
afraid of Sarevok Anchev though I shouldn't, of him cutting into me, I need defence, you need defence, reflections of me and nothing of you, let's take the gift together—
I stood in a stone box walled on three-quarters of it, and it was part of a tower. All was white and grey bar Imoen within the alcove across, though I had not yet looked down. Some alcoves were bare, or contained only a broken plinth and pale dust; in others stood statues. I could see elves, humans, halfings, gnomes, wolfweres, even dragons. One human was sculpted in heavy, spiked armour and helmet, and behind his back was slung the hilt of a greatsword. It was Sarevok, waiting. I saw the statue of another human crumble to dust in a sudden explosion. The dust slipped from the floor of the alcove, wafting and fading away, downward.
At the base of the white tower was the golden face of a skull. It glinted as if it had a consciousness of its own: animated, far more than one of Viconia's undead risen. It gleamed and grinned and waited. Before my eyes it changed to golden smoke, and that smoke covered my city. Baldur's Gate writhed in its death throes. From above I saw armies marching like ants to consume it, ships from the sea sending bursts of fire to raze it, sahuagin arising to salt the remains. The mage's tower and the Dukes' palace lay in ruins. The streets were the colour of old, black blood; houses were splintered stone.
I was diving through the air, arms and legs arcing into a swallow's-tail that divided the press of waters. Through Baldur's Gate; to what of it had inspired the Lord of Murder; I did not land in the city itself but dove through it. In the earth I was insubstantial, intangible, and passing ever and ever down. It was dark and barren and a grave. I screamed.
The small bedroom was the grey-blue of morning before sunrise, and the sheets were dampened by sweat. I sat up, clutching them tightly, the ends of my fingernails driving into my palms. A small trickle of blood flowed from the base of my left hand. It was very quiet, the air of the closed room still and almost stifling. Nothing happened. I hadn't been heard.
Across the room, Imoen seemed to be sleeping peacefully, by all appearance. Hearing her voice there— She had tired herself enough; perhaps it was better not to wake her. Or if, in waking unnaturally, things would pursue one to the waking world due to their incompletion.
I walked to the shuttered window and opened its slats. The cool calming air of the morning blew across my face; I started to think of what I knew of the history of Bhaal-worship in my city. We should tell Sauriram the complete truth. Parchment, notes, plans of attack; anything that came from one's own mind and knowledge. The dawn was just enough light to make out the text of the history of the three.
Imoen dreamed still, trapped; in the blowing winds she had caught at Skie's hand, but then Skie had disappeared away from her. The one who killed Gorion—the one who made doppelgangers pretend to be him as a cruel joke, the cruellest kind of prank she would never, ever play—lay below her upon the skull-face, becoming the golden skull of the tower's base. She saw him rise and raise his sword; then she was divided, reflected, and it swept only through imitations of her. Then she cast magic at him, and suddenly it was she who wore the spiked armour and gazed at the world through bright golden eyes. She strode through the landscape as a brutal god, laying waste to cities with a gesture of her hands and her great and terrible magic. But she was not that, she said to herself, she would never want that, never in the lifetime of anything breathing—
Sarevok Anchev's laughter sounded low and deep around her, and it was exactly as the night where he had murdered her uncle. Her brother was here and waiting for her. Imoen woke.
—
Saioji Tamoko performed her western religious rites. She did this at night after moonrise, because the time of it was a trivial matter; she did it close to dawn and running the risk that her completion would be a second or two past the sunrise, because she could be as petty as any.
She drew a dark circle about herself on which to kneel. In black night came order, certainty, merciless precision. Before the time gods had died and in the first of her days in the western lands she had chosen to worship the disciplined force of the cycle of death; after the time gods had died she had followed the portfolio of the undisciplined and maniacal rabble that was godhood in the persona of Cyric. Tamoko understood that the mad deity found her defiance amusing, and that if he were to continue to hold to the portfolio he must accept the existence of her principles.
"There is no door through which it does not pass," she spoke a creed, using the language of her home. "Nor guardian who may withstand." She thought of the castings she wished to gain: Honoo no sutoraiku, the strike of heavenly flames. Kami no tsuyo-sa de, the strength of the god. Gai, to cause grievous harm by touch. She felt a vague flicker of approval at her choices of destruction.
She was misfit and outsider in these lands, ronin and outcast in her own country. She had no regrets for the path she had taken; she was guided by honour in her own way.
"The life of man is ever full of strife. The life of man must come to an end."
Divine power pulsed through her veins and arteries, dark and solid. She believed in the honour of killing in battle; she had acted as mercenary of the western lands. There was no shame in death.
"There is a promise that men must die. Therefore, oaths must be kept."
It was true that broken oaths separated her from Kozakura and the spirits of her native land. It was no longer true that she lacked a daimyo.
"There must be honesty, for one knows the truth of all endings. There must be loyalty."
Aishiteru wa, senshi watashi no. He belonged to her; they had belonged to each other. Six years younger than she when they had met, a boy, but so impressive a boy and a man in experiences. She loved his strength, intelligence, ambition, the whole of his self. He was taken from her. That ambition rose too high: he exulted himself and lost himself, and she could not reclaim him.
"Patience, for the grave opens to beggars and to kings alike in due time."
Immortality was of no worth if it consumed all of the man she knew. The one she loved was lost to her. She knew well that her god did not wish a rival; and their purposes combined in this matter. Sarevok would be lost.
The grave opens equally to gods, she thought, and Cyric's power within her veins twitched.
"Discipline. A servant of death must show as few weaknesses as her master." Lathander's dawn approached, and though her voice remained steady she hastened through the remainder of her devotions.
"Respect. Rectitude," Tamoko named virtues she had taken from her homeland. She despised traitors and cowards. "Wisdom." That which her deity did not possess.
She bent her head while darkness lasted, speaking the final syllables of what she prayed for. "Death."
A purple glow spread through the circle she had marked out, a sign of the power she called upon. She returned her amulet of the dark sun to its place upon her armour. She erased the circle with all due respect, scrubbing away the marks of charcoal upon wood, and walked to the window's light. Tamoko began her exercises in her armour, muscles flexing, her flail spinning. She could remember her lover's bare brown skin shining with sweat, her hands across his back after his own exercises. She could remember matches upon their sparring mat and the deep embraces that had followed, when he was her man and not her god. Now she was sure Sarevok sweated no longer. She had seen that his body could no longer be pierced by mundane weapons, that no physical act could tire him. He tried to become inhuman; she could not prevent the mindless death he caused. He no longer knew of moderation, temperance, care. She would lose him. She noticed with distaste a weakness in her arms while she continued her forms of the flail.
There existed none with the power to stop him.
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